E-Squared: Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality (9 page)

What shows up in our lives is a direct reflection of our inner thoughts and emotions. My friend Linda told me an amazing story about a young woman she once observed at the airport. This poor young thing was struggling with three heavy bags. But worse than the unwieldiness of her baggage was her less-than-positive attitude. With great gusto, she was vocalizing her immense disgust at a lack of help.

“Why,” she kept shouting, “is the bus taking so long? Where in the hell is that bus? This is completely unacceptable!”

Linda said she might have felt sorry for the girl except that the very bus she was criticizing was five feet in front of her with its door wide open. Twice the bus circled, each time stopping to pick up passengers, but the irate young woman could not see it. The bus, thanks to her intense commitment to struggle and anger, was literally out of her energetic sphere.

That’s why I named this principle after a popular model of car. Once a new model or make or brand enters your sphere of awareness, you suddenly notice it everywhere.

And that’s what happens when we devote our minds to things we do not want.

Lack, unhappiness, and danger are no more prevalent than a Volkswagen Jetta, but once we bring them into our consciousness, they sadly take over.

According to physicists, there’s a zero-point field (what I call the field of potentiality or the FP) where every possibility exists. For example, there’s the possibility you could be a ballerina, another that you could be a U.S. senator. Still another possibility is being a bag lady in Haight-Ashbury. When it comes to the FP, the possibilities are infinite.

Since I’m not a physicist and can barely pronounce the name David Bohm, let alone understand his theory of layered realities, I prefer to think of the field as a gigantic Walmart with hundreds of thousands of “products,” or possibilities. This is probably a good time to mention I’m not a fan of Walmart, that I’ve never quite been able to forgive the corporate giant for running my favorite corner pharmacy and fabric store out of business. But as a single mom on a budget, I do occasionally lower myself to shop there. And when I do, I know just where to find the fabric, the puzzles, the kids’ shoes—all things I’ve been known to purchase. But I’m completely oblivious to most of the hundreds of thousands of products on the shelves.

Why? Because they’re not what I’m looking for.

That doesn’t mean they’re not there. Doesn’t mean they’re not as “real” as the puzzles and shoes. It just means I’m not aware of them. For example, my daughter once came home from school with head lice. After panicking and briefly considering throwing myself off the nearest bridge, I finally concluded I would provide a much better parental example by going in search of lice shampoo. Sure enough, on an aisle at Walmart I’d walked down dozens, probably hundreds of times was a complete selection of lice shampoo. Why had I never noticed it before?

Because it wasn’t what I was looking for.

The Chains That Bind Us

“Your wildest misperceptions, your weird imaginings, your blackest nightmares all mean nothing.”

—
A C
OURSE IN
M
IRACLES

A few years ago, a sweepstakes agency gave away 100 free trips, to anywhere winners wanted to go. That meant lucky winners could fly to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower or jet to Australia and climb Ayers Rock or lounge on a beach in the Caribbean islands. And you know what? Ninety-five percent of the winners picked a destination within four hours of their home. Four hours.

That pretty much sums up the human condition. So much is out there, but most of us choose to stay within four hours of our “comfort zones.” We refuse to budge, even when there’s ample evidence we’re missing out on big things. Without being truly conscious of it, we spend the lion’s share of our waking hours immersed in the comfort zone of negativity. The pull of the negative is so strong that many of us navigate our entire days jumping from one depressing thought to another:
I overslept again, This war is unconscionable, The economy is in shambles, Gas is expensive, My boss
[or
my kid
or
my
______]
is driving me crazy
.

Negativity and fear start the minute we’re born: “It’s a scary world out there, Jimmy. Don’t you dare talk to strangers. Don’t you dare sing that silly song at the grocery store. Someone might hear.”

We learn to limit. We learn to believe in scarcity. We learn that our natural inclination to love and to create and to dance is impractical and crazy.

Our parents think it’s their sworn duty to teach us to be careful, to be responsible, to act like adults. And if for some reason we’re lucky enough to get parents who don’t dispense these lessons, our culture quickly indoctrinates us into believing that collecting material things is our purpose in life and that the only way to get those goodies is to put our proverbial noses to the grindstone. By the time we’re in grade school, we’re already masters at competition, old pros at living in scarcity and fear.

But guess what? It’s all a big ruse, a bad habit. As
A Course in Miracles
clearly states, “Once you develop a thought system of any kind, you live by it and teach it.” Once you form a belief, you attach all your senses and all your life to its survival.

Physicists call this phenomenon “collapse of the wave.” Infinite numbers of quantum particles are out in the universal field dancing around, spreading out in waves. The moment someone looks at these energy waves they solidify like gelatin in the refrigerator. Your observing is what makes them appear solid, real, material.

Remember in Disney’s
Snow White
when she’s lying on the forest floor crying? She feels as if all these eyes are staring at her. And indeed, dozens of forest creatures are skittering and scampering about. But the moment she raises her head to look, all the cute little birds, squirrels, and deer dive behind trees. All she can see is a solid, unmoving forest.

In reality, our universe is a moving, scampering energy field with infinite possibilities, but because our eyes have locked in on problem mode, that’s what appears to be reality.

It Sure
Looks
Like Reality (or You’ll See It When You Believe It)

“You will not break loose until you realize that you yourself forge the chains that bind you.”

—A
RTEN IN
T
HE
D
ISAPPEARANCE OF THE
U
NIVERSE
,
BY
G
ARY
R
ENARD

In 1970, Colin Blakemore and G. F. Cooper, scientists at Cambridge University, did a fascinating experiment with kittens. This must have been before animal rights activists got vocal, because what they did was take a litter of kittens and deprive them of light. Except for once a day, for just an hour or two, when the scientists beamed in just enough light for the kittens to see a couple of vertical black and white stripes. That’s it. A couple of hours, a couple of stripes. Now, I don’t know whether their consciences finally got the better of them or whether some PETA-type predecessor started breathing down their necks, but after several months they released the kittens from the dark. What they discovered was the kittens’ cortical cells (cells in the eyeball for those of you who aren’t scientifically minded) that favored nonvertical orientation had gone into hibernation. They could no longer make out horizontal lines. They literally bumped into horizontal ropes that were stretched out in front of them.

In 1961, when anthropologist Colin Turnbull studied Pygmies, he took one of his subjects outside of the forest where he lived. Since he’d never been exposed to wide, open plains, the Pygmy’s sense of depth did the same disappearing act as the kittens’ cortical cells. Turnbull pointed out a herd of buffalo in the distance, and the Pygmy, whose depth perception was distorted, refused to believe it. “It
has
to be ants,” he insisted.

His perceptions were influenced by what he had been conditioned to see. As thinking beings, we continually try to make sense of our world. Sounds like a good thing, right? Except that any piece of information that doesn’t quite fit with our beliefs, we alter without even noticing. We knead and we squeeze until everything finally fits into the tight box of our limited belief system.

We think what we perceive with our senses is true, but the fact that I will keep banging you over the head with is … it’s only one-half of one-millionth of a percent of what’s possible.

At the base of the brain stem, about the size of a gumdrop, is a group of cells whose job is to sort and evaluate incoming data. This control center, known as the
reticular activating system
(RAS), has the job of sending what it thinks is urgent to the active part of the brain and to steer the nonurgent stuff to the back. But as it’s organizing, it’s also busy interpreting, drawing inferences, and filtering out anything that doesn’t jibe with what we believe.

In other words, we rehearse ahead of time the world we want to see. Too bad we all picked up the wrong script.

This simple, 48-hour experiment will prove that what you see in life is none other than what you look for. It will also prove that it’s possible to
find
anything you look for. And most important, it will prove that by changing what you look for, you can radically change what shows up in your world.

Anecdotal Evidence

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

—B
UMPER STICKER SEEN IN
L
AWRENCE
, K
ANSAS

You’ve probably never heard of Peter and Eileen Caddy. But I’ll bet the name Findhorn rings a bell. Remember that garden in Scotland that yielded cabbages big enough to knock over a postal truck? Well, Peter and Eileen Caddy are the folks who grew those 40-pound cabbages (keep in mind that the average cabbage is four pounds, five ounces), and they did it by focusing their thoughts on a higher truth.

They certainly didn’t have anything else going for them. In fact, when the Caddys, their three sons, and fellow spiritual seeker Dorothy Maclean moved into the trailer on that windblown peninsula jutting out into the North Sea, the land could best be described as dead and profitless. Nobody in their right mind would have chosen it as a spot to grow anything, let alone a garden. The soil—if you could call it that—consisted of rocks and sand, the gales were strong enough to knock over the average second grader, and their “less than
Better Homes
” locale was smack-dab between a garbage dump and a dilapidated garage.

But by focusing on a higher truth, they created a garden that can only be described as miraculous. Although it was the 40-pound cabbages that got all the publicity, the Caddys also grew 65 other types of vegetables, 21 kinds of fruits, and 42 different herbs. And this is before they started adding flowers.

I know what you’re thinking: rich compost and good organic husbandry. But the truth is, the Caddys’ soil was so pathetic that the county extension agent said even compost couldn’t help. At the time they started their experiment in higher consciousness, the Caddys had never gardened, nor did they have money to invest in gardening supplies. They were broke—to put it mildly. Peter, who had managed a successful four-star hotel, had been laid off, and the six of them were living on unemployment that amounted to roughly $20 a week.

No, they started growing vegetables for one reason: they thought it might be a nice gesture to feed their three growing boys. But as they began aligning their consciousness with spiritual truth and nothing else, all sorts of strange things started happening. Straw bales fell off passing trucks just in time to mulch. Leftover bags of cement mix mysteriously showed up in a neighbor’s trash bin just in time to pour a patio. Their plants, while the crops of their neighbors suffered, became resistant to diseases and pests. Eventually, people started flocking to the Caddys’ garden, and today Findhorn is a prosperous spiritual community that attracts 14,000 seekers every year.

As Peter says, “You can bring about anything by your thoughts. Align yourself with God consciousness and you can bring about truth in material form. What you think, you create.”

There is no power on Earth that can cut you off from this source except your own consciousness.

The Method

“Everything we think we’re seeing is all just a guess, a prediction our brains are making.”

—K
URT
A
NDERSON, AUTHOR OF
T
RUE
B
ELIEVERS

For the next 48 hours (that’s all—a pain-free, two-day commitment; you are free to go back to your miserable life as soon as this experiment is over), you are going to actively look for certain things. And just like sixth graders who start out dissecting worms, not human bodies, you’re going to begin with something simple—green cars. Or if you insist, pick another color. Sunset beige, for example. For the first 24 hours of the experiment, you’re going to make the following conscious intention. “I hereby intend, for the next day of my life, to look for [okay, you win] sunset-beige vehicles.” Again, nothing special is required. Just keep your eyes open and make the intention. And then simply notice if your conscious awareness has made a difference in the number of sunset-beige cars you see.

On day two, during the second 24-hour period, you’re going to make the intention to find yellow butterflies. Or purple feathers. Just make the intention. My friend Jeanette tried the experiment in January in the upper peninsula of Michigan and found yellow butterflies on stationery and on a paper cup at her daughter’s friend’s birthday party.

Another friend, Angela, was reading
The Secret
on a plane. This popular book on the universal law of attraction suggested that readers make an intention to receive a free cup of coffee. She laughed because, after all, the onboard flight attendant was just two aisles away from asking her that important flight-attendant question: “Coffee, tea, or soda?”

“That isn’t quite fair,” she noted, making the intention and moving on to the next paragraph.