Yesterday I wrote about how the reaction of fans to the TV show Lost shows the choice we make in living life. The fans’ reaction to the storylines also shows why it’s hard for people to grasp how both the new science and the new spirituality say we create our reality.
While Lost’s plot line over its six years is one of the most complicated I’ve seen (if not the most complicated), I want to focus on one aspect. Supposedly an ‘incident’ took place 30 years before the plane crashed in the pilot episode of the show, and the fallout from that incident led to the plan crash that was the start of this series. At one point, some of the characters in the show travel back in time 30 years and do something to change that incident. Their hope is that they will prevent the plane from crashing and so prevent the suffering all the survivors went through in subsequent years.
The thing is, when they do this, they don’t ‘reset’ the timeline. They create a second, alternate timeline. The first timeline with the plane crash continues on with these characters, and there is now also another alternate timeline where the plane doesn’t crash and the same people go on with their lives in the ‘real’ world.
This has caused great consternation and debate among fans as to which is the ‘real’ timeline. There’s huge debate over this on the internet.
In truth, there is no ‘real’ timeline. Both are equally real, and this is what the fans have difficulty understanding – and the difficulty most people have with our everyday reality.
The fact is, in a quantum world, every time we make a decision, there is another quantum reality that is created where we made a different decision. There are an infinite number of alternate quantum realities in existence, all in parallel, where different choices have been made, one after another. No choice is right or wrong. No choice is better or worse. They are just different.
And the truth in the above paragraph is incredibly tough for most people to grasp. Truth to tell, it makes my head hurt trying to grasp the infinite number of realities that have come into existence over time. And yet, this is what the latest science is showing us. It’s not just when big things are done like in Lost to change the ‘incident’. It’s everyday choices that manifest new alternate realities every day.
The reason people have difficulty getting this is that we are in a transition from classical, Newtonian-type thinking to quantum-mechanical thinking, and also from moralistic ‘right-wrong’ thinking to seeing each choice as just a choice, not right or wrong.
Hollywood has also trained us to think there is only ‘one’ reality with movies like Back to the Future and innumerable episodes/movies of Star Trek and much more. In Back to the Future 2, Biff (the ‘bad guy’) went back in time and gave his younger self information that let him change the world. Marty (the ‘good guy’) had to go back, straighten out what Biff did, and make things right, as if there was only one timeline.
The reality is, the first two movies of this trilogy would have created at least 4 timelines. There was the original timeline before anyone time traveled. Then there was the one after the first movie, where Marty made some changes. Then there was the one where Biff corrupted the ‘present’. And finally, the one where Marty ‘corrected’ the present. All 4 of these timelines would continue in parallel, and all are equally ‘real’. You can’t go back and ‘reset’ the past. You can only create a new reality.
So what does this mean for day-to-day life? Well, we often struggle with choices – what’s the ‘right’ choice in a situation? We can think and anal-yze until the cows come home and still be troubled for years afterwards, if not our whole lives.
To me, this says that, once I make a choice, live it fully. There’s another reality where I made another choice, and that experience will happen there. Here, I have to commit to the choice I make, and double-guessing doesn’t do any good. It also is another aspect of how we create and manifest our reality every day in every choice we make. We literally do create a new reality based on how we act and how we think every single day. What reality do I most want to live? What feels most right for me? I’m not living some other reality. I’m living the one I create each and every day. How can I live that to the fullest? That’s my choice. What’s yours?
After six years, the television show, Lost is coming to an end. It is an amazingly complicated show, with a devout fan base, and the reactions of that fan base, especially as it comes to an end, show us the two choices we have to living life.
Those who haven’t watched Lost for six years generally just shake their heads and are totally, well, lost. It started as a plane crash on a deserted island. Then it incorporated flashbacks into the lives of the passengers before the crash, then flash-forwards into their lives after some of them escaped the island, time travel, flash-sideways into an alternate timeline and a deep pseudo-science/mythology that’s slowly being revealed after many mysteries and hints over six years. If you haven’t followed it for most of its run, it’s a tough show to get into. Kind of like life (although we only time travel in one direction).
At the same time, Lost is a powerful character story, delving into the lives and personalities of the core characters who you really come to care for and about. It’s amazingly well-written.
Over the six years, the show has created mystery after mystery, and much of the fan base is looking for answers as the show ends. AndI think that’s totally the wrong way to look at this show, as it is the wrong way to look at life. The show is not about the answers to all the mysteries – it’s about the journey. How did you feel over the six years of the show? Did you get excited? Did you get angry? Were you sad? Lost has created some incredible hours of drama (many of them in this last season – episode after episode blew fans away). That’s the value of this journey – not the answers to all the riddles, but rather the ride itself.
Just like life – it’s not the goal that matters. We never will end life with all the answers. It’s how we lived each moment. Did we live each moment sucking it to the marrow for everything it gave us, or were we focused on some undefined future that we may or may not achieve – and if we do achieve it, that passes in moments?
The value of Lost is in the amazing journey it afforded us, and kudos to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (known to Lost fandom as ‘Darlton’) for creating such a landmark series that has already left television changed for all time. I’ve enjoyed the journey and am delighted to live these final few hours out for all they offer. Hats off to you, gentlemen!
Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how scarcity is all around us – our choice is to allow it in or not. Some people, I realized aren’t clear what I mean by scarcity, so I thought I should define it here.
Scarcity thinking is fear-based and assumes there isn’t enough for everyone. For me to win, you have to lose. Abundance thinking, in contrast, assumes there is more than enough for everyone – we can all win – and allows you to find win-win-win solutions for all.
In yesterday’s post, I spoke of how our house sold in a day. Scarcity thinking says we under-priced it and lost money. Abundance thinking says we put a fair price on our house, we got what we wanted and the buyer got what he wanted, all due to clarity of intention.
It’s strange that another example of scarcity just popped into my e-mail box – a letter from the community association for the community we’re leaving. The kids from this community will be going to a new school in September. In this letter, someone from the association suggested that the residents boycott the (old) school’s Spring Fair, and its requests for donations since the kids will be going to a different school this year. “Why should we help a school we won’t be benefiting from?” is this person’s argument.
This, to me, is such blatant scarcity thinking. Why help this school when we won’t get any further benefit from it? There’s not enough to help this one now and the other school next year.
What about all the years kids from our community have been going to the (old) school and getting benefit from it? My son and my two stepsons went to this school and it’s been wonderful for them. Why would I want to take away from that school when it has given such wonderful gifts to our kids?
And what are we talking about? A few items? A few dollars? Do we really have that little that a few dollars will hurt us?
A boycott of a Spring Fair. I just shake my head at this type of thinking. Is this what we really want to teach our kids?
Two weeks ago we put our house up for sale and it sold the next day for just shy of our asking price. Several people I mentioned this to said we priced it too low (which, given the market, we didn’t). This reaction shows fear-based scarcity thinking – suggesting that we lost money – rather than understanding flow.
In our marketplace, there were several houses in our price range that had been on the market for several months. We were actually advised by our realtor that our price might be too high, so we weren’t priced too low.
One way of looking at the quick sale is that we could have earned more for the house. That’s not my way.
The way I see it is that there was strong and clear intention for the house to sell for this amount, and that attracted the right buyer who valued what we had to offer and was willing to pay that amount. I give full credit for that intention to my ex. I honestly didn’t expect it to sell. Iwasn’t putting any energy into it ‘not selling’ – just not putting any energy into it at all. I was focused on my new home. However, she had a clear and strong intention, and that’s all it took.
Once that happened, the flow continued. Within a week I had closed on my house which I obtained at a great price and which has most of what I had envisioned. It just flowed.
Could we have charged more? Maybe. I think we charged the right price to get fair value for what we wanted. And I paid within $1000 of what I was willing to pay for my house. It’s all about clear intention.
Just as there are gravitational and electromagnetic fields permeating the universe, so to there is an information field, called the Akashic Field, that we can tap into, and that we can influence. Stepping into a deep state of presence allows us to not only access information from that field more clearly – it also allows us to influence it deeply. These are the doorways that open from living more authentically in our lives.
Evidence is growing in fields from quantum physics to cosmology to the social sciences about a vast informational field that fills the universe, a field that has been called the Akashic Field. Just a few of the many observations of the Akashic Field that are being recorded include:
The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton has 38 Random Number Generators (called ‘eggs’) around the world. On September 11, 2001, just before the first jet crashed into the WTCC, the data from these eggs became non-random and stayed that way for 2 days
Incidences where large numbers of people are gathered to pray for peace show a significant reduction in the crime rate in those cities for some days following the gathering
Double-blind studies clearly show that prayer has a measurable impact on health, even when the person being prayed for didn’t know that (s)he was being prayed for, and even when the person doing the praying didn’t personally know the person for whom they were praying
Scientific experiments with the same apparatus, and participants selected randomly from the same pool produce different results based on the beliefs of the experimenter
Simply put, this Akashic Field connects all of us, and as quantum mechanical and cosmological evidence of this field shows, distance is not an issue. This information is transmitted instantaneously, even across the universe.
What we are discovering is that stepping into deeper states of presence allows you to attune more deeply to the information available in this Akashic Field. What’s more, stepping into deeper states of Presence impacts not only people around you, but potentially people all over the world.
Something else that is being discovered is that one plus one equals far more than two. If two or more people enter a certain state or entrench in a certain belief, their influence is far greater than the sum of the two. The studies on praying for peace also showed that you don’t need everyone to focus on a given intention. There were only a limited number of people in each case, and yet the impact was felt across the whole city. Only a small critical mass is required to influence the broader world.
This is the philosophy behind Presence Hour, on May 8, 2010. The intent is to have a number of people in each time zone simultaneously stepping into deeper states of presence, amplifying the impact of each individual who participates through the Akashic Field. What we are hoping for is to have a ‘wave’ of deepening presence sweeping around the globe, impacting the broader consciousness.
Won’t you join us at 2pm (your local time), to engage in your practice of deepening presence? What it is – nature, yoga, walking, meditation, running or whatever you choose – doesn’t matter. What does matter is investing that hour for yourself and the world to step into deeper presence with the world. Go to www.PresenceHour.com for more information – and please pass the word on.
There are two groups (with different perspectives on retirement) that concern me, and that show me how few people are living – and working – authentically. The first is those people who are desperately ‘holding on’ for retirement, and the second is those who are excitedly looking forward to retirement. It’s time we could step up and live fully and authentically now.
First, let’s put retirement into perspective. It’s often seen as an entitlement and something that’s always been there and should always be there. Most people are surprised to learn that retirement and pensions were only brought into existence in 1889 in Germany by Count Otto Von Bismarck. He brought it in for people who were over 70 years of age. Interestingly, though, at that time the average life expectancy for the average Prussian was 45 years of age, so hardly anyone lived to the point of earning it.
As it spread around the world, other countries followed Germany’s lead (and their abstractly selected age), with some modification leading to a ‘retirement’ age of 60-65 in most places. And then it got locked in.
Unfortunately, the world has changed. The average life expectancy is now over 80 years. To put that in perspective, if the pension/retirement age had changed in tandem with life expectancy, it should really now be at 105 years of age – or more. Yet people still expect it at 65.
Now, with the history lesson complete, let’s go to how this connects with living authentically.
When I started Chrysalis back then I would often hear people speak of how they were looking forward to retirement and all that they would be doing in a couple of years. Today, I often hear people speaking of how they’re holding on for 10, 15 or (God-forbid) 20 years until retirement so that they could have their benefits. These people truly hate their work and have often put the rest of their lives on hold. Without question, these people have surrendered being authentic, and, my experience has shown that, after putting themselves into hibernation for that long, they are challenged ever finding themselves again.
What may make people curious is that I’m also concerned with those people who are looking forward to retirement. To explain, let me bring in my perspective on retirement: confusion.
If you are doing what you love, I can’t understand why you would ever want to retire. I gave up working for a living nearly 20 years ago when I started Chrysalis – I now do what I love. Sometimes I take a sabbatical for my family or myself, sometimes I do this more intensely, and I love it.
Why do you have to give up what you truly love until retirement? If that is authentically you, why aren’t you doing it now? The reality is that only the minority will have enough savings or pension to support them when they retire, so they will have to keep working anyway. Why not do what you’re passionate about?
I just saw the film ‘Up In the Air‘ about a corporate hatchet man who travelled the country firing people for various companies and it reminded me how many people have left their passions ‘up in the air’ to fit society’s expectations of what success is.
In this movie, a middle-aged or older gentleman who was being let go (they couldn’t use the word ‘fired’) told George Clooney that his kids wouldn’t be able to look up to him any more. Clooney’s character surprised him by telling him his kids didn’t look up to him now because he gave up on his dream of being a chef to be ’successful’. Clooney helped the man realize this was an opportunity to reclaim his dreams and his passions and return to being authentic to himself.
Several years ago a team I know of in a bank was laid off. They were devastated. Then, a few months later I started running into some of those same people and they were happier than they’d ever been. They’d changed jobs to what they really wanted, or started their own companies or gone back to school to train in their true love. That was the source of their passion, but they had not had the courage to take that step before they were fired, when they had a ’secure’ job.
How many people have sacrificed (or never uncovered) their passions and their authentic selves to meet society’s expectations of success?
Have you ever been around someone who is profoundly present? What I’ve experienced is that I feel different when I’m around them. It’s almost like there’s a field around them that starts to slow me down, just as I can get agitated simply being around someone who’s extremely stressed. What’s amazing is that if there is more than one person who steps into a deep state of presence, this field increases exponentially.
Now imagine ten or a hundred people stepping into a state of presence. Perhaps it’s through meditation or sitting on a rock by the water – whatever works for each individual. How would that impact that field. Now imagine hundreds or thousands of people doing the same all over the planet. How much could that influence or impact the world?
That’s exactly what Purpose Hour is. On May 8 at 2pm (your local time) people from around the world will be investing one hour to step into their practice of presence. This is nothing elaborat. Whatever your practice of presence, be it running or yoga or playing with your kids/grandkids, just take one hour at that time, and you’ll be joining an ever-growing number of people impacting the world. Won’t you join us – and pass word of this on to those you know? You can find out more at www.PresenceHour.Com.
In this powerfully, concise interview, Marianne Williamson shows us how we can choose to be fully present – or allow ourselves to be pulled from that place of presence – each and every morning.
So connecting with your authentic self is important – so how do you do that? How do you connect with your own authenticity. The answer is no so much something that you do – it’s more about being.
Your doorway to connecting with your authentic self is being present in this moment right now – stepping into presence. Presence is about being fully in this current moment – not thinking about what you should have done last week or yesterday, not worrying about what you need to do tomorrow. It’s not about thinking at all. It’s about being fully and completely present with yourself and this current moment.
Normally, our heads our full of what’s in the past or the future. Being present is about stepping out of those thoughts to be fully and completely present in whatever is your experience now, and stepping fully into that to sense who you authentically are now, and to sense the world around you and your connection with it. It’s something most people are really uncomfortable doing, and yet it’s the only way to connect fully with your authentic self.
Some people do this with meditation, some with yoga, running, or walks in nature. You can be fully and completely present in a conversation, or playing with your kids or cleaning the house. It’s not what you are doing as it is how you are. And it’s completely accessible to us all at all times, if we simply choose it.
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