Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Living Matrix.

Last night the Mindshifters group did something we have only done one other time in the last four years. We watched a movie which was not one of Dr. Michael Ryce's lectures. We watched the movie, The Living Matrix, which talks about the integration of the science of Quantum Physics into the science of biology and medicine. The point is made in the movie, as in a book by Bruce Lipton, that the science of biology and medicine are the last sciences to hold out against accepting, and integrating the findings of Quantum Physics. The movie makes the point in many different ways, that our insistence on seeing the body as being only solid matter, and treating "illnesses" by attacking symptoms on a physical and chemical level, is what is keeping us sick and making us sicker.

This is a very interesting movie and it makes the case for opening a person's belief system so that they are able to "believe" that they can get healthy, even without, or in spite of, surgery and medication. The film introduces a new way to think about "The Placebo Effect", and even re-defines it as "The body's ability to heal itself", or "The Belief Effect". Both of these terms are more positive and descriptive of what is happening when someone gets better after taking, "a placebo". Bruce Lipton is quoted in the movie as saying that fully one third of all healing that takes place in our medical system is attributed to "The Placebo Effect". He goes on to say that at a time when we are drowning in health care costs, it is remarkable that the medical community does not acknowledge this and begin to actively use "The Belief Effect", which would immediately reduce health care costs by at least one third.

I highly recommend the movie for anyone who is questioning whether they should try an "alternative" approach to traditional medical care, or anyone who wants a nice refresher, and an optimistic update about where medical science and research is possibly headed in the near future.

However, I must say that as I watched the movie for the second time, I was struck repeatedly by the thought that it is a shame that they are still so focused on the physical and the "scientific" proof of this and that energy, etc., etc. I kept thinking that what they are talking about in terms of healing and health and wellness, has been known for centuries and is found in a number of "religious" and healing traditions. As I watched this movie about the latest in scientific advances and the theory of "fields" of energy which govern the physical body, and its expression and response to thoughts and emotions, I kept thinking about a friend of mine who was raised as a Christian Scientist, and who has seen dramatic, powerful, "miraculous healings" all her life, and knows that they are completely ordinary!

I kept thinking about how ridiculous it would sound for someone who was raised in Christian Science, or Religious Science, or any of a number of other Healing traditions, to watch a movie today which talks about how "New" and "Amazing" and "Powerful" this new science of healing is. It would probably sound about as silly and useless as the words of an ice salesman to an Eskimo.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.


Friday, January 08, 2010

Getting The Stress You Need Part 1

This week the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled: Getting The Stress You Need. What struck me most about the lecture this time was how Dr. Ryce described how my intentions are the raw materials of my goals. When I hold a number of intentions and eventually elevate one of them to the level of a goal, that goal then organizes my energies and my behaviors to guide me to the accomplishment of that goal. Therefore, the quality of my intentions determines the quality of my goals.

Dr. Ryce described how each of us has a filter over the intentions in our minds, and a filter over the perceptions in our minds. These filters can be set to fear, hostility, or Love. Whenever the filters are set to hostility or fear, they distort our perceptions and show us a false set of data. We then take that data and build our perceptions of reality based on that false data. This is why we were told that the first and most important instruction is to keep the filter of Love set in our minds whenever we are thinking of God, neighbor, or self. The reason is that if the filter is set to hostility or fear, it will distort our perception and show us false data. So we are encouraged to frequently monitor our emotions and mental state and act quickly to reset our filters to Love, whenever we notice that we are feeling something other than Love. By definition this means that we are perceiving things falsely, and therefore we will not be reacting to actuality, but we will be reacting to the false reality we have constructed from the corrupt data that is created by the filters of hostility and fear.

Another critical concept that was introduced is the definition of stress as: "The tension within me that is created by the difference between the way things actually are, and the way I perceive them to be". The greater the difference between these to things, combined with the amount of energy I pour into wanting things to be different, determine the level and intensity of my stress.
This concept alone is worth the entire time I invested in the lecture. The more I monitor my own thoughts and emotional responses and catch myself earlier and earlier in the process, the less time I spend in the tension of stress. As soon as I catch myself feeling tense, angry, frustrated, confused, irritable, or unhappy I ask myself some version of the following question - "I wonder how this is all going to work out for the better?", or "I wonder how this is going to help me learn a critical lesson I need to master?", or "I wonder how this will work out to be a blessing?"

This one process alone has improved the quality of my life more than I can even begin to describe. In the last five years that I have been practicing and applying this process, I have seen that it does two important things. First, it stops me in my tracks when I start thinking negative thoughts which generate negative feelings in my body. I find that since I have started this process, I have spent much less time feeling negative emotions in my daily life. Second, it leaves me more open and observant to see the ways in which things do turn out for the better. I find that I see positive "coincidences" much more often than I ever did before. My hunch is that these positive "coincidences" were always there, but because I was angry, fearful, or frustrated when things did not happen the way I had planned, I was not able to see or notice the positive "coincidences".

Dr. Ryce presented one more very important quality of goals, which is that once a goal has been set in the human mind, it keeps running until it is either attained, or consciously canceled. This is absolutely true, even though it may be running in the unconscious part of the mind, it is still active and the mind is looking for ways to achieve or satisfy the goal despite the fact that the person may be completely unaware of it. This leads to some very confusing and unproductive behavior in people, as their unconscious mind is working to satisfy un-achieved goals, while the conscious mind is unaware of the motivation or the goal.

It is suggested that we take time to consciously cancel all un-achieved goals from the past, with a focused visualization exercise. Then we can implement a nightly routine which has us reviewing the day, and canceling any un-achieved goals before going to sleep each night. In this way we can rid ourselves of some unproductive baggage and prevent ourselves from creating more of it each day.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.