If energy follows thought, what was I thinking?
By Susan Creamer Joy - Friday 28 Oct 2011
John Wheeler, one of Albert Einstein’s colleagues and the fellow who invented the term, black hole, once said that, “No phenomena is a real phenomena until it is observed.” Even Albert himself made the statement, “The difference between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
What mystics have known for centuries, science is now just beginning to entertain and that is the fact that nothing outside of consciousness exists; not one single particle of matter with any real properties exists until it is observed.
This truly gives some weighty importance to the saying, “Thinking makes it so.”
But what does this mean? If I wake up everyday to conditions that are less than ideal in terms of my personal happiness, does this mean that it is all in my head? Are they trying to tell me that through the years any suffering, insecurity, aloneness, ineptitude, self-loathing, doubt and verifiable incompetency that I have lived through were a figment of my imagination? What the hell!
I suppose I could approach this from one of two angles: One, from the vantage point of the annoyingly tenacious optimist in me, would interpret this as great news. This would mean that all of the menacing, disappointing, disillusioning and disturbing elements and incidents in my life, past and present, are not real and that I don’t have to worry about the future because if I simply refuse to observe negativity, strife is forevermore banished.
This would also mean that I have remained twenty-something and that I am brilliant, beautiful, holy, humorous, philosophical, perfectly healthy, incredibly gifted in all manner of thought and deed, and basically damn near perfect. (Well? If it works, why hold back?) I suppose it also then stands to reason that the stains in my carpet are not really there, nor is any of the dust or grime or dirty laundry. Not unless I say so, anyway.
Of course, the realist in me would point out that if, indeed, nothing exists outside of my consciousness and since I’ve spend over five decades bumbling around subjecting myself to accidents, injuries, heartache, imperfections and unfulfilled dreams; something within my consciousness must be deeply flawed.
And if this is true for me, then what about all of the other people in the world? They don’t seem to be doing a heck of a lot better than I am. Why do they still lose their jobs, break their legs and get fat? Why isn’t everyone who auditions for American Idol a winner? How come some people have ugly dogs? Or ugly kids?
And since money is such a determining factor in whether a person can eat, own a home, get healthcare, clothes and material pleasures, why don’t we all simply stop observing currency?
The reality of and implications behind this truth are mind-boggling, and if I had the capacity to fully understand and initiate action on the theory in a physical and pragmatic sense, I would be sharing it on YouTube in all my glowing incandescence instead of scribbling away with such strife-funded dedication.
As it is, I’m writing this primarily as a way to distract myself from the escalating “dis-eases” as they circumnavigate my life like karmic vultures constantly reminding me that my own choices and actions have converted me into this choice hunk of prey for the gods of recompense and retribution.
I guess I’ve been observing a lot of the wrong things.
However, my observable management of mind over matter did enable me to survive a dinner out the other night in spite of the intestinal discomfort working against me due to my inherently shy nature and my disdain of and impatience with ‘happy talk’. With the exception of the couple hosting the evening, the restaurant held a table of ‘unknowns’, which immediately clued me into my lack of power over the universe. Fortunately, I sat across from an engaging couple. They met on an internet dating site and seemed so perfectly suited to one another and so in love that I had to periodically cough into my napkin just to remind them they were not alone.
My other half spent all but about fifteen minutes over in the bar area of the restaurant where he had an unobstructed view of whatever football game was life or death that night, as opposed to all the other nights. At social events among strangers he is usually the guy who is present but not actually there. Talk about unconscious. We all have our priorities and ours tend to be antipodal, but after twenty-nine years of marriage, we’ve learned to operate outside the laws of natural physics just to keep the peace and retain a certain measure of cohesive functioning.
However, relative to the whole business of consciousness and our decision those long years ago to inhabit the world as a unit, it does sometimes make me wonder, “What were we thinking?”
For my part, I justify the decision by embracing the notion that opposites attract.
Observation and consciousness aside, life is what you make it, and I suppose that if our collective consciousness' as a species were all that spectacular, we wouldn’t be on this earth right now forced to discover our true divinity under such raw and volatile cosmic standards.
Observation and intention in our flawed state of being have only so much power.
All this reminds me of an incident I read about in the newspaper. The city had recently installed several of those roadside cameras to photograph speeding offenders. A guy received a speeding ticket in the mail along with a photograph of his vehicle in motion. In response, he sent the police a photograph of cash money in the amount of his fine. They, in turn, sent him a photograph of a jail cell downtown.
Enough said.
What mystics have known for centuries, science is now just beginning to entertain and that is the fact that nothing outside of consciousness exists; not one single particle of matter with any real properties exists until it is observed.
This truly gives some weighty importance to the saying, “Thinking makes it so.”
But what does this mean? If I wake up everyday to conditions that are less than ideal in terms of my personal happiness, does this mean that it is all in my head? Are they trying to tell me that through the years any suffering, insecurity, aloneness, ineptitude, self-loathing, doubt and verifiable incompetency that I have lived through were a figment of my imagination? What the hell!
I suppose I could approach this from one of two angles: One, from the vantage point of the annoyingly tenacious optimist in me, would interpret this as great news. This would mean that all of the menacing, disappointing, disillusioning and disturbing elements and incidents in my life, past and present, are not real and that I don’t have to worry about the future because if I simply refuse to observe negativity, strife is forevermore banished.
This would also mean that I have remained twenty-something and that I am brilliant, beautiful, holy, humorous, philosophical, perfectly healthy, incredibly gifted in all manner of thought and deed, and basically damn near perfect. (Well? If it works, why hold back?) I suppose it also then stands to reason that the stains in my carpet are not really there, nor is any of the dust or grime or dirty laundry. Not unless I say so, anyway.
Of course, the realist in me would point out that if, indeed, nothing exists outside of my consciousness and since I’ve spend over five decades bumbling around subjecting myself to accidents, injuries, heartache, imperfections and unfulfilled dreams; something within my consciousness must be deeply flawed.
And if this is true for me, then what about all of the other people in the world? They don’t seem to be doing a heck of a lot better than I am. Why do they still lose their jobs, break their legs and get fat? Why isn’t everyone who auditions for American Idol a winner? How come some people have ugly dogs? Or ugly kids?
And since money is such a determining factor in whether a person can eat, own a home, get healthcare, clothes and material pleasures, why don’t we all simply stop observing currency?
The reality of and implications behind this truth are mind-boggling, and if I had the capacity to fully understand and initiate action on the theory in a physical and pragmatic sense, I would be sharing it on YouTube in all my glowing incandescence instead of scribbling away with such strife-funded dedication.
As it is, I’m writing this primarily as a way to distract myself from the escalating “dis-eases” as they circumnavigate my life like karmic vultures constantly reminding me that my own choices and actions have converted me into this choice hunk of prey for the gods of recompense and retribution.
I guess I’ve been observing a lot of the wrong things.
However, my observable management of mind over matter did enable me to survive a dinner out the other night in spite of the intestinal discomfort working against me due to my inherently shy nature and my disdain of and impatience with ‘happy talk’. With the exception of the couple hosting the evening, the restaurant held a table of ‘unknowns’, which immediately clued me into my lack of power over the universe. Fortunately, I sat across from an engaging couple. They met on an internet dating site and seemed so perfectly suited to one another and so in love that I had to periodically cough into my napkin just to remind them they were not alone.
My other half spent all but about fifteen minutes over in the bar area of the restaurant where he had an unobstructed view of whatever football game was life or death that night, as opposed to all the other nights. At social events among strangers he is usually the guy who is present but not actually there. Talk about unconscious. We all have our priorities and ours tend to be antipodal, but after twenty-nine years of marriage, we’ve learned to operate outside the laws of natural physics just to keep the peace and retain a certain measure of cohesive functioning.
However, relative to the whole business of consciousness and our decision those long years ago to inhabit the world as a unit, it does sometimes make me wonder, “What were we thinking?”
For my part, I justify the decision by embracing the notion that opposites attract.
Observation and consciousness aside, life is what you make it, and I suppose that if our collective consciousness' as a species were all that spectacular, we wouldn’t be on this earth right now forced to discover our true divinity under such raw and volatile cosmic standards.
Observation and intention in our flawed state of being have only so much power.
All this reminds me of an incident I read about in the newspaper. The city had recently installed several of those roadside cameras to photograph speeding offenders. A guy received a speeding ticket in the mail along with a photograph of his vehicle in motion. In response, he sent the police a photograph of cash money in the amount of his fine. They, in turn, sent him a photograph of a jail cell downtown.
Enough said.