Shifting perceptions

We are many. We are one. We are individuals set in a sea of collectivity. Everything we do affects something or someone else in the world.

And yet we never remember that.

We remember that we are lonely. We remember we are in pain. We remember that we have to make our own way, and that in the end we die alone.

This division, this polarity, could be that which causes us to seek meaning in the midst of our confusion.

At least for me.

But something is beginning to shift. And I start to understand that both those places of connectivity and of aloneness exist at exactly the same time. I can be in one or the other, and both, (and undoubtedly there are many more) depending on the choices that I make and how I choose to interpret the present moment.

In the movie “What the Bleep do We Know” and again in Gregg Braden’s “The Divine Matrix” a theory is posited that if protons of light can actually bilocate, be in two places at once, then so can we. Quite honestly, I don’t see how. Not physically anyway.

But what is starting to formulate in my mind is the idea that it is through our perception that we can experience different realities by creating different reactions to the same experience. We can feel hurt by other’s treatment of us, and we can understand that they are hurting. We can learn about ourselves through our interaction with others and we can judge them wanting.

Ironically, as we hold these many realities, we become one thing – more peaceful.

Cycles of impermanence

I uncover the garden plants, and the sheets are warm with the mid-morning sun. I hang them over the garden fence, allowing them to dry before I will fold them and put them in the covered 55-gallon container that lives in the garden. There they will be handy for the next cool night.

I eye the frost-rendered yellow squash plants with an air of regret and notice that at the inner core of the plant a few small fruits still grow. I look over the beans and see a similar scenario. Here and there I spy a flower, and understand that the plants and my attachment to them are not quite finished.

I wonder what it is about being at the end of a relationship that changes the nature of it. A month ago, the green beans loaded with harvest would overload my system and I would ignore them for days. Was it just that there too many that I was willing to forego experiencing them in their absolute prime? Or was it that it was just too hot to consider picking them in the beating sun?

Today, I am aware of the impermanence of the garden, and the opportunities that we sometimes miss.

I weed in between the beets, not so much that it's necessary, but because I want to participate in this end of the garden season.

I, of course, draw all sorts of conclusions to relationships that we have with those around us. And it comes as no surprise, that when our lives are at their fullest, we tend to take them for granted. It is often only when we know that there is a time limit, and an ending, that we develop the ability to appreciate the minute detail.

Something like a garden, or a child going off to school, gives us a painless opportunity to reflect and find the appreciation in the every dayness of our lives.

Summer's end

The garden is coming to its end. The nights have turned cold and we had a hefty frost the other night. Stephen and I covered the tender plants that we weren’t willing to lose—basil, peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini—and left the others to fend for themselves.

The string beans, which were virtually done, and the yellow squash have met their timely ends. I cover and uncover the others each night now, unwilling to take a risk that the temperature will drop.

Even with the sheet covering, the tops of the basil and green pepper plants got nipped. Today, I trimmed off those burned basil leaves to encourage healthy growth. I cut off the flowers as well, forcing the plant to continue to put forth new leaves. I think about how not allowing something to bloom forces it to continue to try and wonder if there is a truism for other beings. I think not, at least not one that I would want to experiment with.

Stephen tells me that the weather will turn warm again and that last year he made pesto in October. We search for a good salsa recipe and learn a bit about how to can a low-acid food. I look through the Blue Ball Canning Jar Book, which sports a copyright of 1962, reading about how to freeze carrots and beets, and think about a time when families did the bulk of their own food preservation.

What a relief commercially preserved food would have been then. Now I walk around the grocery store, reading labels and putting all sorts of food back on the shelf, unwilling to digest the level of chemicals being presented.

I smile with the thought of the garden, and how well it has fed us, and many others, these past months and how it will continue to sustain us through some of the winter. As it moves closer to its end, it becomes ever more precious.

I look forward to tending it as it ends, and making preparations for another season.

Changing paradigms

And so it is through science that we begin to understand that there is an energy field in which we are all connected. And according to Gregg Braden in his book "The Divine Matrix," the language of this energy field, or universal hologram, is emotion.

The idea that the universal consciousness is communicated through emotion makes sense to me. Animals respond to emotion. Studies show that water responds to emotion. Plants respond to emotion. Why wouldn't the universal life force respond to emotion as well?

Braden says that scientists have been chasing after the proof of this energy for some time. In an experiment in 1841, scientists set out to prove that there was an "ether" in the world. They sent particles of light in opposite directions and tried to measure if one went faster than the other. They recorded no discernible difference and announced to the world that there was no energy field on earth.

But the key here is the word discernible; and in 1986 another study was performed and the results sought after in 1841 were confirmed. The difference was the sensitivity of the machinery and the discovery that the "ether" was all around. Further studies show that all living substance make up this "ether," being contained in a separate form and as part of the whole. It is within and without at the same time, and it is responsive to emotion.

I find this thought fascinating. If we are interested in affecting change, we might do well to become more versed in this emerging science. We must provide opportunities for emotion to flow through us and the people which whom we are in relationship. Paying attention to overall emotion and providing space for reflection and processing seems almost more important than the actual discussions that are being had.

More precisely, perhaps change occurs not by what we think about something, but rather what we feel about it.

Week Two

I begin week two of the fall 2007 semester with a sense that I am where I am supposed to be, which, of course, is an odd sort of concept because where else could I be but where I am.

But according to Gregg Braden, scientist, theologian and visionary, there is really no here or there. In his book "The Divine Matrix" he writes "from the perspective of life as a universally connected hologram, here is already there, and then has already been now."

This concept, he says, is being discovered and explored through traditional sciencific methods.

I am taken by the thought that the whole of our world is like a hologram.

Everything and everyone is connected and each alters the energy or consciousness of the universe. This energy is like one blanket, that wrinkles and forms itself into our physical universe and into each of us. We are intimately connected, and we tug on this blanket, smoothing it over us, around us and through us with every single thought and, specifically, every emotion that we have. This tugging affects everything around us.

It's actually not a new thought.

Ancient spiritual traditions remind us that in each moment of the day, we make choices that either affirm or deny our lives. Every second we choose to nourish ourselves in a way that supports or depletes our lives, to breathe deep and life-affirming breaths or shallow, life-denying ones, and to think and speak about other people in a manner that is honoring or dishonoring.

Through the power of our non-local, holographic consciousness, each of those seemingly insignificant choices has consequences that extend well beyond the places and the moments in our lives. Our individual choices combine to become our collective reality and that is what makes this discovery both exciting and frightening.

And by and with this reasoning--that it is our emotions that form the basis of our transformational abilities and a measure of peace in our world--I am doubly happy to find myself content with where I am.

Blessed Unrest

The first day of classes for the Fall 2007 semester begins tomorrow. And with it, I begin my fieldwork in the Upper Delaware River Valley.

Having enough hours in the day will be a challenge, and I spend time formulating a daily schedule that will keep me vigilant to my educational responsibilities. I am proposing to start my day at 7:30 a.m. with an hour of something I call “independent study reading.”

I am currently making my way through Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.” Hawken postulates that there are over one million--and maybe even two--million organizations working toward ecological sustainability, social justice, and the rights of indigenous peoples.

It’s not a movement in the traditional sense, because it has no one leader or ideology. “It is dispersed, inchoate (which means, imperfectly formed), and fiercely independent.… It is taking shape in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, companies, deserts, fisheries, slums and even in fancy New York hotels. It is tentatively emerging as a global humanitarian movement arising from the bottom up.”

Hawken believes this to be the largest social movement in all of human history and that it is comprised of coherent, organic, self-organized groups involving tens of millions of people dedicated to change. He questions whether it is an instinctive, collective response to threat.

The fact that there is an unrecognized movement underfoot is a heartening thought that seems to run counter, thankfully, to the average apathy on the street that we have no power to change our current path of environmental and cultural destruction. Even the thought of the upcoming election seems to have the populace supposing that nothing will change.

Hawken writes: “Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act.”

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique … You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open …. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the other."

Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper

I look forward, with this work, with this challenge, to being alive with all of you. Together, we will be the change we want to see in the world. It's something we can count on.