The Universe begins to look more and more like a great thought than like a great machine. The mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.
—SIR JAMES JEANS, BRITISH PHYSICIST AND MATHEMATICIAN
In the 1600s, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton proposed competing theories for light’s behavior. Huygens proposed that light behaves as a wave propagating through the medium of ether. Newton, in contrast, proposed that light behaves as a particle. Because of Newton’s prestige and the fact that nobody could prove the existence of Huygens’s ether, Newton’s theory was dominant for more than a century.
If Newton was right and light was indeed composed of particles, then firing a straight line of light through a single slit should produce a pattern corresponding to the size and shape of the slit on the receiving screen. However, when this “single-slit experiment” was performed, the pattern on the screen was spread out far beyond the size and shape of the slit. This phenomenon is known as diffraction and results from wave interference patterns. The smaller the slit, the greater the spread. Particles don’t show diffraction. Waves do. Was Newton wrong after all?
Now, if you fire light through two parallel slits at the same time, as Thomas Young did in his famous “double-slit experiment,” in addition to seeing even more pronounced diffraction, you see the light moving through both slits at the same time. No physical particle can be in two places at once, further confirming that light must indeed be a wave and not a particle.
Researchers then did something very interesting: they added a detector next to each of the two slits to watch the photons as they passed. Amazingly, with the detectors present, each photon was found to pass through only one slit (as would a classical particle), and not through both slits (as would a wave). Moreover, the diffraction was gone. So, with the detectors present, light behaved as a particle. With the detectors absent, light behaved as a wave. Because the researchers could not believe their findings, they assumed it must be a problem with their technique and so they performed the experiment repeatedly. To their amazement, they always ended up with the same result.
This unexpected finding, now known as wave-particle duality, radically changed how we see the nature of reality and is one of the fundamental tenets of quantum theory: light functions as both a particle and a wave, depending on how the experiment is conducted and how observations are made.1
At first it didn’t make sense that something could be a wave, fluid and boundless, and at precisely the same time, be a particle, solid and discrete. As Albert Einstein wrote, “We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.”2
With this striking discovery, the question then became: Is light the only thing that functions as both a particle and a wave, or is wave-particle duality a property that can be applied to all matter? This question was tackled by the bold young physicist Louis de Broglie in his PhD dissertation, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929 (the only time a Nobel Prize was awarded for a PhD dissertation!). The de Broglie hypothesis showed that wave-particle duality was not merely an aberrant behavior of light, but rather was a fundamental principle exhibited by all physical matter.3
So why am I telling you about waves, particles, and quantum physics in a book about connecting to your soul and finding fulfillment?
Because the implications are so profound that they turn our understanding of reality on its head and offer a new perspective on the meaning of fulfillment.
What findings like the wave-particle duality actually mean for our lives is a key debate at the heart of quantum physics.4 One of the most widely taught interpretations of quantum mechanics is known as the Copenhagen interpretation. Devised in the 1920s by physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, this interpretation states that our consciousness—or the act of our observing and measuring something—takes physical reality out of its infinite potential of probabilities (the wave function) in which it existed prior to our observation and brings it into the proverbial “here and now” (the particle). This feature is known as wave-function collapse.
For example, when we are not looking at a cloud, the cloud suddenly turns into energy waves. But the moment we look at it, the wave collapses into material particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons, forming atoms and thereby producing the physical cloud we observe. If we turn our gaze away again, the atomic and subatomic particles instantly transform into unseen waves. In other words, the very act of our observation brings the cloud into existence.
In essence, our consciousness “collapses” a wave into a particle, which creates the physical matter we know of as our universe. Werner Heisenberg wrote in Physics and Philosophy, “In classical physics science started from the belief—or should one say from the illusion?—that we could describe the world or at least parts of the world without any reference to ourselves.”5 This interpretation of quantum physics describes the way in which our perception creates our reality and, in essence, how our consciousness creates our world.
In a July 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Johns Hopkins physics professor Richard C. Henry concluded that the universe is not purely physical, as Newton’s ideas would lead us to believe. In quantum physics, a particle exists in a state of infinite potential (all possibilities all at once) as a wave until a person observes it. Our act of observation forces the quantum particle to “choose” a single state of being. Without our observation, the particle is free to return to a state of infinite potential as a wave. This means that every time we observe something, we transform it. Through the act of observation, we are constantly transforming the world of waves that surrounds us into a physical world of matter that we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell.6
This discovery is one of the most profound revolutions of twentieth-century physics. But it is so utterly different from our assumptions about how the world works that it is hard for even the greatest scientists and physicists to accept. Theoretical physicists Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Max Planck tried to explain what this meant for our daily lives, but the idea that we actually create our own reality was far too unsettling for many people. When one of the great physicists, Eugene Wigner, stated definitively that the very laws of physics themselves could not be formulated in a fully consistent way without including human consciousness as a part of the phenomenon, conventional scientists were appalled.7 However, such discord is an expected and necessary part of the scientific dialogue that moves our world along.
If we accept the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, then it follows that the content of our mind—our consciousness—is the ultimate reality. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means that nothing exists without our consciousness. Only the conscious mind can give shape and form to the dandelions in the meadow or this book in your hand.8 Without consciousness, even the moon does not exist in a definite state. Einstein struggled with this idea throughout his life: “I like to think that the moon is there even if I’m not looking at it.”9
How is it that anything can be concrete and tangible one moment, but then escape back into the state of infinite potential as soon as we shift our gaze? Since we obviously cannot observe everything at all times, how do physical entities like the moon maintain their continuity? When I am no longer looking at something but my friend is, how we do reconcile our separate “creations” of reality? While you are sleeping, who is watching you to make sure you continue to exist as a physical reality? And how did life start at the very beginning, where there were no physicists and no sentient beings to observe the formation of galaxies and stars?
The Dalai Lama encapsulates our difficulty in reconciling these paradoxes in saying, “The West really has much knowledge about matter, yet Western knowledge on consciousness seems very limited. It is at the beginner’s stage. Without a deep knowledge of consciousness, even a full knowledge of matter is questionable.”10
Although we do not yet fully understand the nature of consciousness, quantum physics has shown that we make conscious and unconscious choices every minute that literally bring the world into existence. It gives all the more credence to our potential to create our own reality through our thoughts, emotions, and intentions.
Popularized by Rhonda Byrne’s book and movie The Secret, the “law of attraction” is a universal principle that describes the way in which our thoughts create our reality. We are what we think, consciously and unconsciously. In other words, what we attract into our lives reflects the contents of our mind.11
When we put out thoughts of lack and emptiness, we attract more of exactly that: lack and emptiness. When we shift instead to thoughts of sharing and giving, we get the same energy coming back to us.12 When we complain that we never have enough time, then we will attract precisely that: the state of never having enough time. When we put out thoughts of gratitude into the world, we attract more gratitude.
According to the Law of Attraction, by changing your thoughts, you can change what shows up in your life. Many psychological theories, like Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), are based on a similar premise: by changing your thoughts, you can change your feelings and behaviors which, in essence, changes what shows up in your life.
According to the Law of Attraction, if you would like more financial abundance to show up in your life, you need to begin thinking thoughts of financial abundance rather than of financial lack. You are even encouraged to start envisioning scenarios that signal financial abundance to you: opening your mailbox to find paychecks for large sums of money, being offered a higher-paying job, eating dinner at a nice restaurant, or whatever financial abundance means to you. The trick is that rather than thinking thoughts about wanting those things, you are encouraged to think thoughts about already having those things. Because thoughts of wanting are actually thoughts of lack. We want what we don’t have. According to the Law of Attraction, such thoughts would attract more lack. In contrast, thoughts of already having are thoughts of abundance, which would attract more abundance. The way to manifest something in your life, therefore, is to think thoughts of already having it in your life.
While the Law of Attraction is a powerful tool for manifesting what you want in life by changing your thoughts, there are many caveats. First, practicing the Law of Attraction does not mean that you should begin to live in a permanent state of delusion or self-deception, believing that you have something you do not. While changing your thinking is a powerful tool for drawing what you want into your life, it is a not a replacement for taking the actions necessary to accomplish and attain those very things. Nor should you blame yourself and your misguided thinking if, despite your best efforts, you cannot manifest what you want via the Law of Attraction. There are many reasons why the Law of Attraction may not work, including:
1. What you asked for is not in the highest and greatest good of all involved (which may be for a number of reasons, including that the timing is not yet right for it to manifest).
2. You were not clear about what you asked for.
3. You didn’t really believe that you could have what you asked for (meaning your conscious mind was saying one thing but your unconscious mind was saying the opposite, which is a common problem).
4. You weren’t able to receive it when the Universe was trying to give it to you (often because you had too fixed an idea of exactly how your desired outcome should manifest).
My patient Alana, a powerful, capable, and spiritual thirty-year-old Dominican woman, felt stuck in her life. Although doing well in her job and happily married to Hank since the age of twenty, Alana had a self-sabotaging behavior—compulsive shopping—that was ruining her life and beginning to ruin her marriage. Both she and Hank grew up in poor families. For Hank, this resulted in a strong work ethic that, together with his talent, intelligence, and charisma, got him many promotions at work and a nice six-figure income as a corporate executive by the age of thirty-five. As the head of counseling and clinical services at a local drug rehabilitation center, Alana also did very well at her job and felt fulfilled in helping people on a daily basis. Given their circumstances, Hank and Alana should have been doing well financially, except for Alana’s shopping compulsion.
Whenever Alana felt overwhelmed, she would go to Saks, Bloomingdale’s, or online and get the latest and newest handbag, pair of shoes, or pretty dress. For a few hours thereafter, her stress abated and she felt better. But the feeling of emptiness always returned, and she would again turn to “retail therapy” the next day. And the next day. And the next. This resulted in many thousands of dollars in credit card debt and a very upset husband! Hank always wanted Alana to feel good, have nice clothes, and buy everything she ever wanted, but not to the point where they no longer had the money to pay their taxes! Hank was overwhelmed and he encouraged Alana to seek help, which is how she found me.
As Alana and I began to explore her compulsive shopping together in therapy, we realized that her feelings of emptiness and subsequent need to fill it through shopping came from deep long-standing feelings of inadequacy. Always feeling “less than” in comparison to her peers, she was able to make up for her secret belief that she was not good enough with “retail therapy.” It didn’t change her basic sense of inadequacy, but wearing nice clothes at least allowed her to look like her peers. “Fake it till you make it,” she always said.
Alana and I used a number of different approaches to help Alana address her feelings in a positive and constructive way while gaining more control over her compulsive need to shop. This included attending Debtors Anonymous meetings (an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous for individuals with shopping addictions), limiting Alana’s access to credit cards (cash only!), and beginning to address the long-standing feelings of inadequacy at the core of her compulsive shopping habits. These tools were successful in beginning to change Alana’s behavior and improve her marriage. Yet the most successful tool came as a surprise to all of us.
Because Hank and Alana are both spiritual people, I thought they might benefit from learning about the age-old Law of Attraction. After one of our sessions, I recommended they watch the popular movie The Secret. I thought this could be helpful to them as a couple, but I certainly did not expect what was to come.
At our next session, Alana announced that she and Hank watched The Secret, tried out some of the strategies, and were having unbelievable, unexpected results. They were hooked! Hank had “manifested” an unexpected check for a large sum of money within a week, as well as an invitation to watch a boxing match at his neighbor’s home, which he would have been unable to watch because they did not have cable. Part of the formula of the Law of Attraction is getting clear about exactly what you want, and Hank had asked for precisely these two things. Imagine his surprise when they actually happened!
Seeing Hank’s success, Alana decided to start to experiment with the Law of Attraction herself. By this time, her shopping habits were under relatively better control, so she began to focus on three other goals: passing a licensing exam at work, getting a higher paying job at a top teaching hospital in the city, and losing thirty-five pounds. She had tried to lose weight many times before but had never been successful. Somehow the Law of Attraction seemed to change this. Alana came to our next session in sweatpants—she was off to a workout right after. She had also started juicing to aid in the weight loss process.
To help use the universal spiritual principle of the Law of Attraction to manifest a higher paying job, I recommended that Alana read Marianne Williamson’s The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money and Miracles, which begins by saying, “From a metaphysical perspective, every experience begins with a thought, and our experience changes when we change the thought.”13 So Alana began working hard to change her thoughts, through verbal and written affirmations, about financial abundance in her life. She set concrete goals on what she wanted to accomplish: a fifty percent salary increase by year’s end.
Not only did Alana meet her weight loss goal by December 30, she had landed a new job at a top teaching hospital that paid exactly fifty percent more than her previous job! She also passed her licensing exam that September.
In helping patients change their lives, I cannot always know what will create the greatest impetus for change. It is different for every person, which is why I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. While the more standard strategies helped Alana grow, change, and improve her life up to a point, my most effective intervention was recommending that she and Hank watch The Secret and implement the Law of Attraction in their own lives.
In this exercise, we will explore an adaptation of the age-old Law of Attraction. There are three steps to putting this law into action:
1. Ask
2. Believe
3. Co-create/Receive
For the sake of this exercise, let’s start with asking for something relatively small and work your way up to bigger and more important things.
To begin, get clear about one thing you would like to change in your life. For instance: Tomorrow I would like there to be a readily available parking spot for me when I get to work. Or, I’d like to have a positive interaction with my difficult boss tomorrow. Or, by the end of the week, I’d like to hear from a good friend I have not heard from in a while. Or, this month, I’d like my efforts at work to be noticed by my superiors.
Get as clear as possible about what you would like to happen, as well as the time frame in which you would like it to happen. Through your thoughts, ask for exactly what you want. You do not have to ask over and over. Just ask once. Jack Canfield, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, said that “most of us have never allowed ourselves to want what we truly want, because we can’t see how it’s going to manifest.”14 In this process, you do not need to know how it’s going to manifest. All you have to do is ask, believe, and take whatever steps you can to make it happen. How it will actually manifest is up to the Universe.
Believing is the hardest part for most people. To experiment with the Law of Attraction, you must, at least for the brief period of this exercise, eradicate your doubts, and believe (in your thoughts) and feel (in your heart and body) that what you’ve asked for is already yours. If you have trouble actually believing it, begin by make-believing. Act as if you have it already. As you make-believe, you may start to truly believe.
Since thoughts are a powerful form of energy and “like attracts like,” you are changing your thoughts to draw into your life exactly what you want. Begin to feel exactly what you will feel once your request arrives. Feel and believe it with your heart, mind, body, and soul. Invoke your five senses to experience exactly what you will feel like when you receive what you have requested: What will it look like? Feel like? Sound like? Smell like? Taste like? You may invoke the mantra “I am receiving now. I am receiving _____________ now.” Then feel it as though you have already received it.
In this process, you do not have to figure out how what you have asked for will manifest in your life. Leave that to God, the Universe, Mother Nature, or whatever Higher Power you wish to invoke. Depending on what you’ve asked for, the amount of concerted action you must take to co-create it will vary. For smaller things, like manifesting a parking spot or hearing from a friend you have not heard from in a while, asking and believing may be enough. For larger things, like manifesting a new job or life partner, you must take action consistent with the future you desire and avoid, to the best of your ability, actions that are inconsistent with that future. If you would like to manifest a new job, start networking, applying for jobs online, and telling trusted friends and colleagues your intention. If you would like to manifest a new life partner, tell the people you are close with of your intention and begin to keep your eyes and ears open for how this person may show up in your life.
In implementing the Law of Attraction, be open to different and unexpected ways in which your desired wish may manifest. Often, the Universe may be trying to help us, guide us, and give us what we want, but we just don’t see it. This reminds me of the story of a man who asked God for help while caught in a terrible storm. Being a man of faith, he knew that God would save him. As the storm progressed, his neighbors offered him a ride out of town, but he turned them down because he had faith that God would save him. When the water rose, a man in a canoe paddled up to his house and offered to take him, but the man turned him down, saying, “No thanks, God will save me.” As the floodwaters rose, a police motorboat came by and yelled for him to hop aboard, after which a helicopter dropped a rope ladder and offered to pull him up. The man’s response was always the same. “No thank you! Please save yourself! I know God will save me!” Needless to say, the man drowned. When approaching heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?” God replied, “Son, I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”
This famous story is a reminder to be mindful of how your prayers or wishes may be answered. It may be a bit different from what you expect, and the answer to your prayers may be right in front of your eyes without your ever realizing it. That being said, once you receive what you wish for, acknowledge and be grateful for what you received and begin the process anew with something else. As you put out gratitude into the world, the Law of Attraction will bring you more of exactly that: more feelings of gratitude.
The Law of Attraction can have powerful and enduring consequences, as evidenced by my patient Alana and her husband Hank. That being said, the steps must be followed consistently if the results are to be consistent as well. Having accomplished all her goals, Alana then stopped her daily affirmations and stopped using the Law of Attraction. She thought that she was done. The Law of Attraction had served its purpose.
Not surprisingly, her old thought patterns and behaviors returned, and she gained the weight back over the next six months. This is an important illustration that healthy thought patterns and behaviors require consistent and disciplined practice. Just like some people need to take a blood pressure medication daily to keep their blood pressure in check, it is equally important to have daily disciplined practice of positive and constructive thinking to keep the negative thoughts at bay. Though this process, Alana learned this important lesson and is now taking up the Law of Attraction exercises again in order to lose weight, this time hopefully for good.
The emerging view of consciousness—and our ability to affect our reality by changing our thoughts—gives us a deeper understanding of the science of spirituality. The pioneers of quantum physics—Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, and Wolfgang Pauli—were the first to recognize the spiritual implications of their work.
In The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, physicist Fritjof Capra described his early struggle to reconcile theoretical physics with Eastern mysticism. As far back as the 1970s he discussed the ideas of mysticism with physicist Werner Heisenberg in Munich. While developing quantum theory, Heisenberg had gone to India to lecture. There he spent long hours discussing Indian philosophy with Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali polymath who was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in literature. This discussion helped Heisenberg to recognize that there was in fact a whole culture believing very similar ideas. Heisenberg said that this was a great help for him. Niels Bohr had a similar experience when he went to China.15
Erwin Schrödinger, the Austrian physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his seminal work in quantum theory, also had a long-standing interest in Eastern religions.16 Although he was an atheist, the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism appealed to him, especially the idea that our individual consciousness is a manifestation of a universal consciousness.17
Wolfgang Pauli worked closely with psychiatrist Carl Jung in studying psychoanalysis, archetypes, and Kabbalah. Pauli could hardly deny the effects of invisible interconnectedness. He had such a reputation for breaking experimental equipment simply by standing in its vicinity that his colleagues lovingly called it “The Pauli Effect.” The events were inexplicable examples of synchronicity and enlivened the dynamic collaboration between Pauli and Jung.
It is not surprising that these physicists turned to mystical texts for insight into the strange subatomic world they had discovered. Were they perhaps uncomfortable with the implications of these new ideas, and thereby looking toward spiritual texts to anchor these strange new discoveries in a cultural context? Or did their predilection toward spirituality and mysticism precede and foreshadow their interest in the mysterious world of quantum physics?
Newton and Descartes considered us to be the observers of reality rather than its creators. In contrast, the quantum pioneers discussed above believed that our act of observation, namely our consciousness, creates reality and therefore is central. But what exactly is this sublime and mysterious thing we call consciousness? Where is it located and how can we observe, study, and understand it?
According to the “old” ideas of consciousness, the brain is a discrete organ and the home of the mind, which is largely driven by chemistry—the communication of cells and the coding of DNA. This is what is taught in medical schools, so most doctors share this belief and use the words brain and mind interchangeably. In this paradigm, the human being is a survival machine largely powered by chemicals and genetic coding. These processes, including the DNA mutations that fuel evolution, are ultimately random as opposed to somehow “guided.”
The “new” ideas of consciousness are that communication between cells, organs, and organ systems does not occur in the visible realm of Newton, but in the subatomic world of Bohr and Heisenberg. Cells and DNA communicate not only physically (i.e., through particles), but also energetically, through frequency and interference patterns (i.e., through waves). The brain is not the creator of consciousness, but a filter allowing us to experience a limited aspect of consciousness here and now in the physical world. Just as there are light frequencies the human brain cannot see and sound frequencies the human brain cannot hear, there are also aspects of consciousness that the human brain cannot perceive. The brain records the world through pulsating waves, by resonating with everything around it. In this way, consciousness is not just a bunch of physical processes, but energetic processes that transcend the physical realm.18
The brain certainly plays a role in shaping our conscious experiences, but this is different from saying that the brain creates consciousness. Philosophy professor David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem of consciousness” to describe the difficulty in understanding how something nonmaterial like consciousness could arise from something physical and material, like the human brain.
Scientists such as Walter Schempp and systems theorist Ervin László believe that human memory does not reside in our brain at all, but is instead kept in an infinite storehouse of consciousness that connects all human beings.19 Some scientists have gone so far as to suggest that all higher-level cognitive processes, including intuition and creativity, arise from our interaction with this field.20
This is a belief shared by many spiritual healers, mystics, shamans, and yogis. Some hypothesize that among the information contained in this field is a blueprint of all the ideas, stories, technologies, great works of art, medical breakthroughs, innovations, inventions, and imagination from the past, present, and future. According to this theory, every great idea came from this all-pervasive field. Some individuals are gifted with an exceptional capacity to tap into this field of information, which can result in rarely seen talents and abilities.
One such example is Srinivasa Ramanujan, a self-taught math prodigy from India with almost no formal math education who is considered to be the most innately brilliant mathematician who ever lived. In his short lifetime of thirty-three years, he independently compiled nearly thirty-nine hundred mathematical works and was “discovered” and sponsored by a British mathematician, Godfrey Harold “G. H.” Hardy, to study and work at Cambridge. How did a man with no formal math training independently compile thirty-nine hundred mathematical works? A spiritual man deeply committed to his Hindu faith, Ramanujan said he would receive visions of scrolls of complex mathematical content unfolding before his eyes. In this way, he believed that mathematical equations represented the thoughts of God.21 Ramanujan, therefore, believed himself to be a channel or conduit for inspired information in the form of mathematical knowledge.
Although Ramanujan’s talents were indeed exceptional and may represent a particularly powerful example of tapping into “the field,” it has long been recognized that strangers in distant parts of the world have simultaneously made some of our most important discoveries in science and beyond. This phenomenon is so widely acknowledged by the scientific community that it has been named multiple discovery. Oxygen, calculus, evolution, the existence of black holes and the stratosphere, and personal computers were all discovered by scientists working independently of each other. Did two people simultaneously tap into this mysterious storehouse of wisdom, knowledge, and information at precisely the same time? Or is the mechanism of multiple discovery far less mysterious? Given that new discoveries arise from thinking about old concepts in new and innovative ways, it’s not surprising that multiple individuals can draw similar inferences from the same set of existing facts. Mysterious or not, multiple discovery is not an aberrant historical event but a common pattern in science.22 Likewise, in business, it is widely assumed that the next big idea is out there, waiting to be discovered. The first one who does it becomes a multimillionaire.
The idea of tapping into “the field” for creativity and inspiration is never more present than in the world of art. Artistic creativity can be seen as an act of listening and receiving, rather than creating. When a painter is painting or a writer is writing, for instance, he or she may begin with a plan, but the plan is soon surrendered to the artwork’s own plan, whereby “the brush takes the next stroke” or “the book writes itself.” In dance, writing, sculpture, filmmaking, and any other work of art, the artist is the channel for the creative process rather than its sole and independent creator. The ideas and inspiration for works of art exist just a bit beneath the surface of our consciousness. If we know how to listen, we can tune in and receive the necessary guidance for a higher level of creativity. As artist Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way,23
Be alert: there is a second voice, a higher harmonic, adding to and augmenting your inner creative voice. The voice frequently shows itself as synchronicity. You will hear the dialogue you need, find the right song for the sequence, see the exact paint color you almost had in mind, and so forth. You will have the experience of finding things—books, seminars, tossed-out stuff—that happen to fit with what you are doing.
Learn to accept the possibility that the Universe is helping you with what you are doing.
In this way, all forms of creativity—whether mathematical, artistic, scientific, or otherwise—may involve connecting to an infinite storehouse of ideas, wisdom, knowledge, and information. Like Julia Cameron’s quote suggests, people connect to this field in many different ways, including recognizing the synchronicity of their lives. Others connect through meditation, intuitive flashes, dreams, premonitions, sometimes even telepathic connections and visits from the dead, which we’ll explore later. This type of connection is not something reserved for the chosen few, but something we can all cultivate and experience if we so choose.
One powerful way of connecting to “the field” is through our dreams. Dreams have been used by people of various cultures throughout the centuries for healing, guidance, and answers to life’s difficult questions. Sigmund Freud believed our dreams represented our unconscious wishes, conflicts, and desires. Carl Jung believed dreams were messages from our unconscious of what we need to do as human beings to attain wholeness. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were like oracles, bringing messages from the gods. They thought that the best way to receive divine revelation was through dreaming and thus they would induce (or “incubate”) dreams. Dream incubation is a practiced technique of learning to “plant a seed” in the mind right before you go to sleep, in order to receive guidance or solve a problem through your dreams. Ancient Egyptians would go to sanctuaries and sleep on special “dream beds” in hope of receiving advice, comfort, or healing from the gods.24
In ancient Greece, dreams were used in a similar way to confer healing. A person with an illness would go to sleep in a designated temple, where the Greek God Asklepios would appear in a visionary dream to perform a symbolic operation. The person would awaken either healed, or prescribed a specific treatment that would lead to healing.25 To this day, Native American dream quests involve young boys going out alone to the wilderness as a rite of passage into manhood. Among the Ojibwa tribe of the Great Lakes, for example, a young boy prepares himself a ritual nest, where he remains and fasts until he receives an anticipated dream. In the dream, his particular gift or ability is revealed to him by a representative of the spirit world. This is the gift or ability he will use to serve his community thereafter.26
The benefits of dream incubation are not limited to ancient civilizations or indigenous cultures. It is something that each of us can use to help us solve creative, emotional, or personal problems in our lives. In a study at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Deirdre Barrett had her students focus on a problem, such as an unsolved homework assignment or another objective problem, before going to sleep each night for a week. She found that it was certainly possible to come up with novel solutions in dreams that were both satisfactory to the dreamer and rated as objectively solving the problem by an outside observer. In her study, two-thirds of participants had dreams that addressed their chosen problem, and one-third reached some form of solution within their dreams.27 Others have found this type of bedtime dream incubation effective in solving problems of a more subjective, personal nature.28
In Barrett’s book The Committee of Sleep, she describes her study of prominent artists and scientists who draw inspiration from their dreams. While most of these dreams occur spontaneously, a small proportion of the respondents discovered informal versions of dream incubation on their own. They reported giving themselves successful pre-sleep suggestions for everything from seeing finished artwork in their dreams, to developing plots or characters for a novel, to asking dreams to solve computing and mechanical design problems.29
In the following exercise, we will utilize the technique of dream incubation or “programming your dreams” to obtain clarity and guidance about a personal or professional issue or problem.
Dreams often speak to us in symbols. As such, the guidance you receive through them, whether obvious or subtle, often speaks directly to the heart of the issue you are asking about.
When working with dreams, it helps to keep paper and pen handy to record information as you awaken. It’s extremely common to forget dream content once you get out of bed. Keeping pen and paper at the bedside ensures that you can record your dream impressions immediately upon waking, thus not losing pertinent information or answers to memory. It has also been shown that the more often we record our dreams, the more we remember them.
1. Before you go to sleep tonight, write down one question you would like some guidance on in your life. If your question easily lends itself to an image, hold it in your mind and let it be one of the last things you envision before falling asleep. If it’s a personal problem, you might envision the person with whom you have the conflict. If you’re an artist, you might envision a blank canvas. If you’re a scientist, you might envision the device you’re working on that’s half assembled or a mathematical proof you’ve been trying to solve.
2. Deeply feel your intent to receive guidance and connect with your sense of trust that this will happen. Go to sleep with full confidence that you will in fact receive an answer by morning.
3. Immediately upon awakening, record every aspect of your dream(s) that you can. Include all action, experience, sights, sounds, colors, and very importantly, all the feelings involved.
4. Peruse your recorded dream for any symbols that jump out as being obvious. The more literal the better. Did you receive an answer to your question?
5. If an immediate answer does not reveal itself, get up and go about preparing for your day. Allow at least one hour before returning to your recorded dream to try again to ascertain an inherent answer within it. While at times the guidance is immediately obvious upon awakening, I sometimes find that allowing a bit of time between recording the dream and interpreting the guidance helps.
6. If you do not feel you have received guidance through your dream, repeat the above steps for at least two more nights. Receiving guidance through dreams becomes easier with practice.
Receiving answers through dreams is a wonderful way to get to the nuts and bolts of a personal issue. If you get into the habit of taking a few moments prior to sleep to “incubate” your dreaming process, you’ll be amazed at all that your dreams may reveal. All you need to do is to pay attention and listen. After a few weeks of asking questions prior to sleep and recording any dreams remembered upon waking, you’ll be successfully receiving guidance through dreams on a regular basis. In this way, dreams are a powerful way of tapping into the infinite field of consciousness.
But let’s be clear that not all knowledge, information, guidance, creativity, and invention that arises from the infinite field of consciousness is “good” or has a positive impact on humanity. For instance, inventions like guns, weapons, and the nuclear bomb have only added to world violence, warfare, and our ability to hurt and kill one another. With respect to dreams, Babylonians and Assyrians divided dreams into “good,” which were sent by the gods, and “bad,” sent by demons. Hebrews also differentiated between good dreams (from God) and bad dreams (from evil spirits).30
Along with the force of creativity at the heart of our consciousness is another unseen influential force of consciousness in the world. It is the dark and destructive adversarial force of negativity, often acting in direct opposition to the creative force. Every single one of us has this force within us. Some call it ego. Some call it the adversary. Some call it Satan, or the evil inclination. Some call it our inner darkness. For every one of us, this force manifests in different ways: as anger, negativity, addictions, cynicism, victim mentality, pessimism, inauthenticity, hatred, jealousy, pride, violence, and destruction. These are all negative extensions of the ego. Overcoming this very force in our lives forms many of our soul corrections. This force of consciousness is real, powerful, and will “attack” us where we are most vulnerable. When we know something is bad for us, this negative consciousness makes us do it anyway. When we know something is positive, this force rejects it or makes us procrastinate.
Part of each of our soul corrections is overcoming the adversarial force within us. Another way to say this is that we must transform our ego consciousness into soul consciousness.31 In chapter 4, we did an exercise on the Proactive Formula, a four-step process to enable us to transform your ego-based, reactive responses to soul-based, proactive ones. In this lifetime, each of us has the free will to resist our ego, transcend it, and become aligned with our soul. As we transform our ego-consciousness, layer by layer, piece by piece, our lives gradually improve. Each time we transform a measure of ego, it’s like flipping on a light switch: darkness is replaced by newfound light. Just like a filament creates resistance in a bulb to produce light, our resistance of the negative force within us creates the light or positive energy that we radiate into the world.
Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, scientifically equates that matter and energy are two forms of the same universal substrate of which we are all composed. All matter is also energy, so every living thing emits a subtle energy that results in an information exchange at the quantum level. All our bodily functions—thinking, eating, sleeping, dreaming, living, growing, and breathing—participate in this exchange with the energy field of which we are all a part. The mechanisms of this energy exchange are resonance and wave interference.
When two systems or entities vibrate at the same frequency, they are said to be in resonance. When two systems are in resonance, the total energy of the system is greater than the sum of its parts. The system with the higher vibrational frequency at the outset causes the other systems to sync up or entrain with it. In this way, we are always entraining with the rhythms, frequencies, and vibrations of the world around us, although we are not aware of it most of the time.
Everything in our world is essentially composed of energy waves, complete with phase, amplitude, and frequency. Everything in nature has its own unique or characteristic resonance or signature vibration. Moreover, everything is a vibration. All matter is also energy. All particles are also waves. They are two forms of the same universal substrate. Our sensory systems, especially our eyes and ears by way of the brain, process information through the frequencies of vibrating waves. This could be electromagnetic radiation presenting as light visible to the human eye, or sound waves traveling through air and striking our eardrums.
Our brain interacts with the world around us by resonating or getting in sync with it. As we do, we create wave interference patterns. Stanford University professor and neuroscientist Karl Pribram was one of the leading thinkers about the language of wave interference at the subatomic level:
When we observe the world… we do so on a much deeper level than the sticks-and-stones world “out there.” Our brain primarily talks to itself and to the rest of the body not with words or images, or even bits or chemical impulses, but in the language of wave interference: the language of phase, amplitude, and frequency—the “spectral domain.” We perceive an object by “resonating” with it, getting “in sync” with it. To know the world is literally to be on its wavelength.32
Our internal vibrations, pulses, or frequencies are inseparable from those of the outside world. In fact, our internal rhythms will speed up or slow down to match a stronger external rhythm. This is why we may start to feel relaxed around certain people, tense around others, connected to some, and completely disconnected from others. In essence, we are vibrating systems and we are literally resonating with our world at all times. We know our world by resonating with it.
Some people, like psychiatrist David Hawkins, MD, PhD, have suggested that just like everything else in the universe, every human being has a characteristic resonance or signature vibration that changes as a function of everything we do, including the thoughts we think and the emotions we feel. Certain emotions—like shame, guilt, apathy, grief, and fear—decrease our vibration, while other emotions—like acceptance, love, joy, and peace—increase our vibration. Dr. Hawkins equates increases in vibrational frequency to a literal and metaphorical elevation in human consciousness—the thoughts, emotions, perceptions, attitudes, world views, and spiritual beliefs that make us who we are.33
Research at the HeartMath Institute is being done to explain the way in which different body systems communicate with one another through the vibrational processes of resonance and entrainment. It turns out that the heart is the most powerful biological oscillator within the body, with an electromagnetic field that is at least five thousand times greater than that produced by the brain. Many people think that the brain rules the heart, but research suggests that it is actually the other way around. Because the heart has the most powerful resonance, the rest of the body systems can be pulled into entrainment with it.34
At the moments when we enter a flow state or feel in harmony with something else—a glorious sunset, inspiring music, or another human being—we are coming into sync with ourselves. Not only are we more relaxed and at peace at such moments, but the entrained state increases our ability to perform well and offers numerous health benefits. People can develop their ability to maintain entrainment by sustaining sincere, heart-focused states such as appreciation and love. Many people have been able to cultivate this through the discipline of regular meditation. Research indicates that energetic information contained in the heart’s field isn’t detected only by our brains and bodies but can also be registered by the people around us, which is how we connect or resonate with people on an energetic level that occurs outside of our conscious awareness.35
One way of increasing our own vibrational energy and positivity is by sending love to others. This is a practice that can significantly improve the quality of your relationships over time, simply by sending unconditional love to or praying for the people in your life for a few minutes per day.
In chapter 7, Transforming Fear, we used the twenty-five-hundred-year-old Buddhist practice of loving-kindness to fill one’s inner emptiness. In this exercise, you will use the loving-kindness meditation to send positive energy to somebody in your life. It could be somebody you love dearly or somebody with whom you have a more challenging relationship that you would like to improve. In either case, repeating this exercise daily can create profound positive changes in that relationship due to our inherent interconnectedness.
1. Find a relaxed position, whether sitting or lying down.
2. Focus your attention now on the area around your heart.
3. Now imagine that you are breathing in and out through your heart. With each inhale, your heart expands as it fills with fresh air. With each exhale, your heart contracts.
4. Now close your eyes and take several slow deep breaths through your heart in the following way:
• Inhale through your nose for the count of two.
• Hold your breath for the count of four.
• Exhale through your nose for the count of eight.
• Repeat for five breaths.
5. Now picture the person to whom you would like to send loving-kindness and repeat inwardly to yourself the following four phrases:
May you be free of worry and fear.
May you be happy.
May you be free from suffering.
May you be at peace.
6. Repeat these words to yourself for at least three minutes while focusing on this person. To enhance the power of this meditation, you can imagine this person bathed in a white light as you repeat these words.