Published in The Next Truth, Where Science and Myth Meet, January Edition
Happiness is a decision. There’s a direct link between our happiness and the thoughts we entertain. We aren’t talking about the Power of Positive Thinking, or You Can Heal Your Life, although you probably can. Instead, we need to look at science and see how it fits into our happiness.
Quantum particles are the smallest element science knows. They are the building blocks of all we know, the stars and planets, and each of us. So, one would think these essential elements would offer no difficulties in understanding their operation.
Yet these tiny dots of nothing have created the most significant amount of confusion within the scientific community than any other discovery in history. Like trying to catch a greased pig, physicists have been trying to pin them down for over one hundred years. They are demanding to capture an in-depth inspection. They morph from particle to wave in a flash. One quantum particle can go in two directions at once and be in more than one place simultaneously. They go through solid matter, and linked particles instantly communicate with one another from across the universe. This can’t be because the signal would be going faster than the speed of light, and that’s not possible. After all, it takes our sun’s light eight minutes, moving at lightspeed, to reach us.
(Just as an aside here, I think I know why it isn’t possible to go faster than the speed of light. No matter what we see in the macro and micro-universe when it is boiled down to its simplest element, it becomes energy, E=MC2. Of course, this includes light. Nothing can go faster than itself. That would be like asking your legs to go quicker than your head. It simply can’t be done.)
Back to our particle story. After a lot of struggles, scientists were astonished that these teeny things were responding to the researcher’s intentions. As though these bits of nothing could read our thoughts and provide what we were looking for. And if that wasn’t strange enough, it seems these building blocks don’t even exist until we need them.
These are incredibly astonishing findings, and the implications are earth-shaking. Does that mean there’s nothing out there? What do our thoughts have to do with it? How can little ole me bring about anything on a cosmic scale? Given what we know about the behavior of particles, these are fair questions, but perhaps we need to look a little deeper.
To have a better understanding, we need to consider another piece of the puzzle and look at black holes. These giant holes in the universe have enormous gravity that gobbles up anything that gets too close. Hypothesized through Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity in 1915, Karl Schwarzschild offered theoretical evidence that black holes could exist. When the scientific community heard Schwarzschild’s theory, the stampede of scientists wanting to study them shook the ground.
After years of study, scientists were shocked to discover these “holes” in the sky were actually two-dimensional. Wait a minute, we are talking about a cavity, how can a pit be 2D? A hole by its very nature has to be 3D to exist.
A line-up of researchers working separately, repeatedly came to the same conclusions. Physicists Jacob Bekenstein, Charles Thorn, Gerard’ t Hooft, Leonard Susskind, and S. James Gates all, in their own ways, showed that black holes were two dimensional. Susskind went a step farther and showed that this strange phenomenon also related to the whole universe. Everything we know is 2D, including us. David Bohm, Juan Maldacena, and Karl Pribram had already found that the cosmos was holographic.
What does this mean for us? How do we make sense of these discoveries? Is that three-dimensional cosmos we love to behold just an illusion? Yikes, are we illusions too? The quick answer is no, we can relax, it’s all good. The long answer requires a bit more explaining.
For a very long time, science searched for consciousness. Researchers wondered what it did and when it began in a baby’s life. They worked to find out the answers to these questions with questionable results. We now know fetuses react to their mother’s voice, her emotional state, and sounds beyond the womb. Is consciousness present before birth?
It might help us know what we’re looking for. What is consciousness anyway? It appears we are giving credit to the wrong things. The brain is an organ, like any other organ, it does what it’s designed to do. The heart circulates blood, the liver and kidneys filter and clean, and the brain is an empty vessel where data can be stored. That’s it. The brain doesn’t think, make decisions, or bring on emotional reactions. That is the role of the mind.
The mind stores information within the brain. It fires thought down the axon to the synapse and brings forth what is needed. It also connects thoughts.
The consciousness maintains the automatic functions of the body going, including the mind. It keeps the breath going, blood flowing, heart pumping, and the organs doing what they must do. Another part of consciousness reaches far beyond the human body.
Roger D Nelson, Ph.D. head of Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR), and Dean Radin, Ph.D., the head scientist at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) were aware of the anomalies of quantum particles. They wondered if there was a connection between non-locality and entanglement with human thought. Could it have an effect on the Earth’s atmosphere? They developed a method of testing this hypothesis called The Global Consciousness Project.
Nelson developed an acutely sensitive computer program that picked up the slightest changes in the white noise of Earth’s atmosphere. They were pleased and surprised to find definite changes in the atmosphere when significant events happened in the world. Over one-hundred computers loaded with Nelson’s program were placed around the world and left running continuously. The information was sent to a mother computer housed at IONS. The more remarkable the event, the more significant the change in the atmosphere. What does this say about us and our connection to one another, and the consciousness in the world?
Researches have shown an astonishing connection between the mind and consciousness. Subjects were wired with sensitive scanning equipment and exposed to various stimuli, from beautiful to distressing and ugly. The original intent was to identify reactions within the mental functioning. Researchers were surprised that an advanced signal was seen in the brain approximately seven seconds before anything had been revealed. Where were these signals coming from? Are these advanced signals telling us how to react? What does this mean to our connection to the world and the universe? Is this what happens when we know things before they occur, or when we brake the car before we know why?
David Chalmers, Ph.D., a brilliant physicist, and philosopher, has concentrated on consciousness throughout his career, He gave a TED talk, stating that it is a fundamental element of the universe, panpsychism. Rather than four essential elements, electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, there are five, consciousness must be added. This certainly fits with the particles’ reaction to our thoughts, the results gained by The Global Consciousness Project, and the advanced signals coming into the brain before we know what was going to happen.
People who have experienced death return with information that helps bring these questions together. We learn that it’s not the ego, personality, or mind that is living this life. When death arrives at our door, it is the soul that continues on, and the soul resides within our bodies and is having a human experience.
Repeatedly these people tell of feeling connected with everything. The total universe is part of them in ways they don’t understand. We are also told that this world seems like a dream in comparison to how real they are there. They realize we exist in an illusion.
For centuries we’ve believed there is only one Creative Force, called by many names. But what we have a hard time connecting to is that actually means exactly that. There is only One Divine Being. When creation happens, the Source does not split into a billion pieces. Our reality goes much deeper.
The Creator is a self- aware Conscious Being whose base is Love Energy. The same Mindfulness that’s in the Creator is in us. The creativity of the Source is also ours. Awareness is the link here and at the spiritual level. Our connection to the Universal Life Force is thought.
Ernest Holmes, in his book, The Science of Mind, tells us, “Consciousness is the receptive medium into which Spirit operates.”
Thought connects us to Source, and we never left, not even for a fraction of a second. Right this very instant, we are there, busily creating this experience in the forever now. Those quantum particles do our bidding because we created them.
Yeah, so if thought is so critical, how come everyone isn’t healthy, wealthy, and living a dream life?
The ills of the world happen because we married the illusion that this is our reality. This thinking can be traced almost to the beginning of human evolution. Today constant messages smother us, stating we aren’t there yet. We need to be bigger, better, best, or we don’t measure up. No wonder some people can never have enough money and power.
We may realize thoughts play a paramount role, yet we fail to put the pieces together in our lives. The steps are straightforward. Our emotional state, attitude toward the world, and experience take a role in the decisions we make. Then, based on those choices, our lives go in a complementary direction. We know this. But we take a victim’s role. Life is what it is, and there’s nothing we can do.
Wrong, we can change it. Through changing our thoughts.
The things we have talked about in this article have been back up by good quality science. Thoughts really do effect quantum particles; there is nothing out there until we need it. The cosmos actually is two-dimensional, and Consciousness is a fundamental element of the universe.
We have the power to change anything within us. We are connected to the fundamental universal consciousness through our connection with Source. The part we are missing is, that element in the universe is entirely neutral. Just as electricity doesn’t care who sticks their finger in a socket, so to the universal consciousness doesn’t care what we ask for, it merely says, okay if that’s what you want, here it is. There is no judgment or filtering, we get what we concentrate on.
It doesn’t work that we say one million times we want to be prosperous. It will never work if our thoughts of self, others, the world, and what we deserve are negative.
Happiness is a decision, and it is all up to us.