E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality (7 page)

—C
HRIS
B
ATY, FOUNDER OF
N
ATIONAL
N
OVEL
W
RITING
M
ONTH
(N
A
N
O
W
RI
M
O
)

Each of the following chapters presents an important spiritual principle and an empirical science experiment to demonstrate its validity. You can do the experiments one after another (which is what most people do, because they get so excited after the first one), or you can skip around. Do one this week. Try another next week. It’s really up to you.

Before launching each experiment, make the intention to give up past conditioning. I usually start with this adage from
A Course in Miracles:
“Open your mind and clear it of all thoughts that would deceive.”

And then be vigilant in receiving evidence. Look for it the same way you’d look for a set of missing car keys. On a day you’re out of milk and the baby’s crying. After looking everywhere you normally put them—in your purse, in the pocket of your khakis, on the counter by the door—you start lifting up couch cushions, crawling under the bed, and sifting through kitty litter. The important thing is, you don’t stop looking until you’re clutching them in your grubby little paws.

If you go to the grocery store for sink cleanser, you don’t come home until you find the shelf with the Comet, the Ajax, and the Mr. Clean. If you go to the bookstore to pick up the latest John Grisham novel, you don’t wimp out with some feeble excuse about not being able to find the “G” section. You go to the store fully knowing it’s going to be there.

At the end of each chapter, there is a lab report. These are similar to the lab reports that real scientists use. It’s important to jot down the time you launch each experiment. Take notes; document every finding. The more detailed the map, the better template you’ll have for further study. As you log all your perceptions and experiences, be willing to risk being “wrong” in order to get the verifiable details to prove you are right.

Okay, ready to become a mad scientist?

EXPERIMENT #1

THE DUDE ABIDES PRINCIPLE:
There Is an Invisible Energy Force
or Field of Infinite Possibilities

“Everyone else is waiting for eternity and the shamans are saying, ‘How about tonight?’”

—A
LBERTO
V
ILLOLDO
, P
H
.D.,
C
UBAN-BORN AUTHOR AND TEACHER OF ENERGY MEDICINE

The Premise

This experiment will prove to you once and for all that there is a loving, abundant, totally hip force in the universe. Some people call it God. You can call it
prana,
“the all there is,” or “Cosmo Kramer,” for all I care.

The problem, up until now, is we’ve had to take this force on faith. We weren’t allowed to see it or touch it, but we’ve sure been asked to do lots of things in its name, like tithe and meditate and put ashes on our head. I much prefer the idea of an energy force that moves on two-way streets. Does give and take ring any bells?

In this experiment, we’re going to let the FP know that, baby, it’s now or never. We are
so over
believing in something that gets its jollies playing hide-and-seek. We want irrefutable proof. And we want it
now.
You know those four little initials—A.S.A.P. Well, those are the ones we’re shooting for. We are going to give the FP exactly 48 hours to give us a sign, a clear sign, a sign that cannot be written off. Neon would work.

Because we bought this idea that the force is vague and mysterious, we don’t really expect to find it. Or at least we’re not surprised when we don’t. Because we haven’t been trained to notice, this inspiring, energizing, life-altering force is zooming in, around, and through us without our awareness.

What Me, Wait?

“If your medicine doesn’t grow corn, of what use is it?”

—S
UN
B
EAR
, C
HIPPEWA ELDER

For those who want to wait for the pearly gates, go right ahead. It’s like a modern-day person refusing to use electricity. All you have to do to access electricity is find an outlet, plug in an electronic device or appliance, and
voilà!
You get all sorts of cool stuff—toasted bread, music that’s piped in from radio towers, movies and news, and fellow humans eating slugs on deserted islands.

We have to retrain ourselves to think of this energy force the same way we think of electricity. We don’t wonder,
Am I good enough to plug my toaster oven into the outlet?
or
Have I prayed long enough or deep enough to deserve the right to flick on the kitchen lights?

We don’t feel guilty for wanting to turn on the radio and listen to NPR. The FP is just as nonprejudiced and available as electricity once we make the decision to really look for it.

And it’s not that hard to find.

Anecdotal Evidence

“God is not the pushover that some people would like you to believe.”

—A
LEX
F
RANKOVITCH IN
S
KINNY
B
ONES
,
BY
B
ARBARA
P
ARK

This is the section where we talk about the elephant in the room. Yes, I’m talking about God.

Unless you just crawled out from underneath a cabbage leaf, you’ve probably observed that an awful lot of people talk about this guy named God. One out of every seven days is devoted to worshipping him. Buildings of all shapes and sizes have been built to honor him. Many newspapers have a religious section right next to the political section, the local news, the weather, and the crossword puzzle.

Some version of “the dude” (to borrow a moniker from cult-classic
The Big Lebowski
) exists in every culture that has ever existed. Even physicists whose sole line of work is studying the properties and interactions of matter and energy know about the invisible force. Most of them do not call it God. Albert Einstein, for example, claimed no belief in the traditional God, but he sure as heck knew there was something a whole lot juicier out there in the cosmos. That juice, he said, was all he really cared about. The rest, he claimed, was just details.

The God most of us believe in is an invention of man, fabricated for the sake of convenience. We accept this human-made God as an indisputable fact. But it makes no sense. If God is love, if God is perfect, if God is all the other beneficent descriptions we ascribe to him, why would he toss anyone into a lion’s den? Furthermore, why would anyone in their right mind want to hook up with a capricious and unjust god who gets his jollies from punishing them? Even the ditziest of women knows theoretically she shouldn’t hang out with a guy who might hurt her.

I mean, who needs it?

God as Terrorist

“I don’t know if God exists, but it would certainly be better for his reputation if he didn’t.”

—J
ULES
R
ENARD
, F
RENCH AUTHOR

No sooner had I mastered my ABC’s than I was taught that I, little Pammy Sue Grout, was a miserable sinner and had fallen short of the glory of God. It was a fact, same as two plus two equals four and
el-em-en-oh-pee
is more than one letter in the alphabetical lineup. The only redeeming part of this all-important lesson is at least I wasn’t alone. Turns out, everybody else in the world is a sinner, too. Even Mrs. Beckwith, my tenderhearted kindergarten teacher who let me bring Pokey, my pet turtle, to class every other Monday.

The bad thing about being a sinner is it guarantees a one-way ticket to hell. It was a little hard getting a handle on hell, being I hadn’t traveled much farther than the Kansas border. But, according to my dad, hell was not a place you wanted to be. It was hotter than my Aunt Gwen and Uncle Ted’s house in Texas the summer their air conditioner broke. And, unlike that vacation that ended after four days, you stay in hell for eternity. To understand eternity, he said, you think of how you felt last December 26 waiting for Christmas again.

The escape clause is that you can “get saved.”

So when I was four years old, with the church organist playing “Just as I Am,” I walked to the front of the little Methodist church in Canton, Kansas, plopped down on my knobby little four-year-old knees, and asked the good Lord to “forgive me for my sins.” My family, from a long line of Methodists, collectively breathed a sigh of relief. Dad and Mom called all the aunts and uncles that very night to broadcast the good news.

“Well, our oldest is officially saved now,” they crowed proudly. “At least, we can be assured that Pam is going to heaven.”

The best part, they figured, was that my conversion couldn’t help but set a good example for my sister, Becki, who was two; and my brother, Bobby, who was only three months old, although I secretly hoped they would give him until he was old enough to talk.

Of course, you didn’t want to take any chances. I mean, Jesus could come back at any time—night or day. He was like a thief in the night. He could come in the morning while you were stirring circles in your Cap’n Crunch cereal. He could come at recess while you were hanging from your knees on the monkey bars. He could even come at 2 in the morning while you were sleeping, which could be a real problem if you happened to be a heavy sleeper. Jesus could snatch you up before you had time to get the sleep out of your eyes.

And
that
you didn’t even want to think about. I mean, Aunt Gwen and Uncle Ted’s house was hot.

At the same time I was learning to accept my true sinful identity, I was being told over and over again that “God is love.” Never mind that the churches presented God as a sort of hidden camera that watched over everything I did.

It made no rational sense. But, of course, I was only four. What did I know?

Even though I was yawningly close to being a perfect kid (I made straight A’s, tried not to fight with my siblings, stayed away from drugs and alcohol, and even made my bed without being told), I felt I was constantly being critiqued by this “loving God” who was sitting up in heaven, gleefully rubbing his hands together whenever I screwed up. Which, gosh darn it (oops, there I go again, using his name in vain!) seemed to be pretty often.

What a legacy to dump on an innocent child.

God Looks Like Z.Z. Top and
Other Annoying Myths

“Our ideas of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”

—T
HOMAS
M
ERTON
, C
HRISTIAN MYSTIC

Ask the average individual if he believes in God and he will probably say something like, “Well, duh!” However, it’s unlikely he will have ever asked himself exactly what he means by God. When pressed, he’d probably offer some cliché about “the guy upstairs.”

Trying to define God, of course, is impossible. God isn’t static, any more than electricity or light is static. God lies beyond the material world of matter, shape, and form. It fills the cosmos, saturates reality, and supersedes time and space. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to construct definitions. Here are the top eight whoppers we’ve made up about God:

Whopper #1: God is a him.
Even though the progressive churches sometimes refer to God as
she,
the FP doesn’t really have a gender. We certainly don’t talk about Mrs. Electricity or Mr. Gravity. The more appropriate pronoun would be
it.
The FP is a force field that runs the universe, the same energy source that grows flowers, forms scabs over skinned knees, and constantly pushes for wholeness.

God is more like the force in
Star Wars,
a presence that dwells within us, a principle by which we live. That’s why Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader have become such a phenomenon.
Star Wars
is a myth that speaks to us at a deep, gut level. Some part of us knows that “the force” is with us and that we, through our words, thoughts, and deeds, create the world.

Whopper #2: God looks like ZZ Top, makes black check marks after your name, and is basically too busy working on world hunger to care about you.
God, if you believe the accepted box, is a little like Boo Radley in
To Kill a Mockingbird:
this mysterious neighbor constantly peering out the window of his penthouse suite, waiting to catch us doing something “naughty, naughty.” We can’t really see him, but we’ve been properly warned that he’s there. Watching. Judging. Monitoring our every move. If you don’t follow this commandment or if you break that rule, God just might send his angel Secret Service after you to bop you on the head like Little Bunny Foo-Foo.