Is Reality a Soul Trap, or a School?

Is life a series of lessons we can learn and grow from, or a prison or soul trap?

Is the message from Plato’s allegory of the cave true–are we stuck in a soul trap?

This past month, I received a question via email:
“Your friend and colleague Christopher Anatra did an interview with Howdie Mickoski, not sure you know of him or if you saw the interview but my question is basically;
What’s your thought on this whole idea that we the people are being “farmed” for energy in this reality? Basically Plato’s Cave with a layer of energy farming from the Arcons, that we’re being held prisoners in this reality.
I hold you and your thoughts in high regard and i am very curious to what your take on this is, would absolutely love it if you made a video about it and if not, just for you just to give me your thoughts here.
I have a feeling that this idea of Howdie Mickoski can be a trap of its own, it certainly isn’t asking how good can it get, more like the opposite.”

This is a terrific and timely question, especially since so many people recently have been feeling more stuck and trapped, due to a variety of events unfolding globally these days.

Soul Traps and Plato’s Cave

Howdie Mickoski’s idea that humanity is caught in a “Soul Trap”  appears to be a valuable topic of discussion, since apparently so many different people have come to similar conclusions with a sense that this is some kind of prison planet (as David Icke describes), or a loosh factory (as Robert Monroe once mentioned), or that we’re all in something akin to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave–chained and restrained and only able to see shadows moving on the cave walls.

 It seems there may be value in taking a look at the points Howdie is making, with regard to the “Soul Trap” idea.  First of all, I like Howdie’s observation very much that there seems something strange about the configuration of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in the sense that it seems weird that people are trapped inside a cave.  Having pointed out this peculiarity, Howdie proceeds to advocate preparing to intentionally leave the existence we’ve come to accept in our lifetime, with an idea that there must be access to something beyond.

What lies beyond 

Plato’s notion that we can step outside Plato’s cave, and Howdie’s notion that we can step outside our current conceptualization of reality provide us with an invitation to rise above current limitations of sensing and knowing true reality.  While it makes no logical sense that we can ever ‘escape’ or leave the foundational reality we are part of, what does make sense is that there may exist levels of conscious awareness within the oneness of consciousness, reality, and All That Is.

The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote in New Essays on Human Understanding:  

Conscious perception arises gradually “by degrees from [perceptions] that are too minute to be noticed.”  (ie: unconscious perceptions)

With awareness of such levels of perception, we can envision how higher levels of consciousness steadily arise, as a natural part of how we see the outside world, and how our mind internally represents what we perceive.  Leibniz is sometimes referred to as “the last universal genius,” making brilliant contributions to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history.  Leibniz was one of the two people credited with the invention / discovery of Calculus, the other being Sir Isaac Newton, and Leibniz provides further clarity with a bit of a mathematical feel to this statement from Principles of Nature and Grace, clarifying how these perceptions arise: 

“… it is good to make a distinction between ‘perception,’ which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and ‘apperception,’ which is ‘consciousness’ [conscience], or the reflective cognition of this internal state, which is not given to all souls, or at all times to the same soul.” 

Leibniz has thus provided us with a sense of how consciousness provides both a first-order perception of ‘x’ and a second order reflective perception of the original perception of ‘x.’  And Leibniz posited a unified field of reality and consciousness. In about 1710, Leibniz wrote a letter in response to someone asking him what philosophical school he followed; Leibniz replied that he follows the school of the perennial philosophy, Philosophia Perennis. 

 

School?  Or Soul Trap?

The idea of the reality of humanity’s existence being one of two things–either a School, or a Soul Trap–seems over-simplified to me. 

I can appreciate how some might narrow down reality to life being a School, based on the idea of reincarnation and people getting a memory wipe so most of us don’t remember past lives.  I observe that the only things any of us truly know are those things that we can never forget. It seems to me that we best learn those lessons that resonate for us emotionally in powerful ways–and these are the true lessons we actually know, and are the basis for us being able to transcend such things as the emotional drama of “playing the part” of:  Victim; Rescuer; or Perpetrator in what Stephen Karpman described as a ‘drama triangle.’  For people caught up in all the drama, it’s easy to feel that the true nature of reality involves both an aspect of it being like a dream (or simulation), and also like there is no free will, and people are trapped and stuck, like the prisoners in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

The ‘Drama Triangle’ can feel like a kind of trap for people who live their lives mostly at the Egoic level of identity, without reaching a level of connection with higher self connecting to what Leibniz called Philosophia Perennis.  For those feeling trapped in the drama triangle, roles are moved through such that many of us start off feeling like sad, helpless Victims; many of us then move out of that role and move on to becoming anxious Rescuers, concerned about the troubles in the world; and many then proceed on to righteous anger about what they know to be wrong, where they become Perpetrators.  Escaping this unhappy merry-go-round can thus provide freedom from feeling imprisoned or trapped.

 

To the question, why do we need to suffer in order to learn more, we can see some kinds of what we take to be suffering can be for our benefit, because we are multi-layered conscious beings.  We operate at multiple levels of conscious agency, and this is the biggest secret that’s been right in front of us all along.  We can learn that we ourselves have the ability to rise above the root source of suffering, and this knowledge is powerfully beneficial to us, not just as incarnate beings, but also as spiritual entities when we exist before we are born and after each life.  There is a kind of wisdom known as the Perennial Philosophy, which acknowledges that there exists a sense of highest conscious identity operating outside of space and time.  In this state of changeless infinite eternity, we can experience awareness that there is a Divine Spark within each and every one of us–and this powerful point-source of our being was forged from the pure state of infinite, eternal consciousness.  

The Biggest Question  

One of the biggest clues to what is really going on–Soul Trap? Or School?–lies in one of the biggest questions that usually goes unasked.  It goes unasked by physicists, and it goes unasked by psychologists and philosophers.  It goes unasked because it seems so simple and basic as to be obvious.  Yet, if we really stop to think about it,we can start to realize the vastness of it, and the way it can provide us with a better appreciation about what life and reality is truly all about. 

This question is:  “Who am I?” 

Awareness of levels of conscious agency–levels of self–provides us with the idea that we have both Free Will, and also Destiny.  When we are living our lives from the Egoic (drama-filled) state of being.  Some (high) level of ourselves have the Free Will, and we can operate with awareness that these higher levels of ourselves are who we really and truly are.  When we own this truth, we gain the responsibility of living with Free Will–which lifts us above the feeling of being stuck in a deterministic, pre-planned storyline. 

For those feeling trapped or imprisoned by reality, and wishing to escape boundaries and limitations, where do they imagine they will be, after breaking free?  Might they arrive in nothingness itself?  If so, they may be interested in contemplating the true nature of nothingness.   Leibniz points out:

“It is true that as the empty voids and the dismal wilderness belong to zero, so the spirit of God and His light belong to the all-powerful One.”

Miracle-Mindedness at Higher Levels of Conscious Agency

 

I feel a sense of intrinsic freedom via my connection with God / Creator / Source of the Philosophia Perennis that was first named by Leibniz.  For those with awareness of divine source, who are open to living in a state of mind of miracle-mindedness, we are operating outside the realm of manipulation by outside forces.  This awareness of sovereignty of spirit arrives thanks to surrendering to living in accordance with our highest principles, ethics, and values.  We can reform those beliefs and assumptions that had been instilled, due to the fact that beliefs can be reviewed and changed, and we can reprogram our beliefs (as I point out in my book, “Reality Shifts”) by noticing what beliefs are circulating in our thoughts and minds, and flipping around and reversing negative beliefs (those that feel sickening or weakening) to their positive opposites.

 

We can gain a finer sense of who we truly are and what level of conscious agency we are currently operating with by observing our thoughts and feelings, and becoming increasingly clearer that we are not our thoughts and feelings–we are the observer of those thoughts and feelings.  We can gain this awareness through meditation, and these meditations can prepare us to retain a sense of higher conscious agency, even after being “memory-wiped,” as occurs sometimes when we dream, and when we move from this life to the afterlife.

 

We need not have any karma or shame when facing our full life review, thanks to training ourselves to rise above the drama of guilt, shame, and regret.  Those emotions are so much a part of the Drama Triangle of Egoic self, yet we are capable of witnessing these emotions and feelings, and realizing while we are alive that we are not those feelings.

 

Practicing lucid dreaming and meditation into silence and nothingness are wonderful ways to train ourselves to access higher levels of our own conscious agency.  From that state of consciousness, we have the ability to practice being in astral / out-of-body form, in order that our lives when we are in material bodies can be the fullest and richest possible.

 

With respect to an Allegory for reality that I feel best aligned with, I love the idea of Axiogenesis, described by philosopher Nicholas Rescher.  Axiogenesis has been defined as:  A form of metaphysical optimism in which the state of affairs which actually obtains is the one most favorable (of all possible states of affairs) to the development of intelligence and the interests of intelligent beings. Such a philosophy is more in keeping with life and reality providing us all with learning opportunities, rather than being a soul trap.  And for those who are agnostics or atheists, such a positive philosophy can be most welcome.

 

I personally love the idea of the Holy Spirit; I love the idea of the Tao.  There is a beauty in the silence of nothingness, and there is a fullness of experiencing the bliss of being an eternal, infinite spirit. When we come out of such meditations, we feel recharged, refreshed, and gain a sense of knowing who we truly are.  And this sense of self identity (with associated level of conscious agency) provides us with much deeper and richer awareness of who we truly are, what reality actually is, what we genuinely are living for, and what has deepest meaning to us.

 

I find there is great value in sovereignty, which seems to be the great gift we can receive from adopting Howdie’s “soul trap” / Plato’s cave view of reality.  I feel we can actually find our greatest sovereignty–and our greatest Free Will–when we live our lives from the highest level of conscious agency identity we can retain.  We can learn through lucid dreaming and meditation how we are doing toward our goal of discovering what we retain even after “memory wipe.”

 

Some of the daily practices I follow on a daily basis is practicing the meditation of aching with the entirety of my being to experiencing living the answer to the question, “How good can it get?”   By asking this question, we provide ourselves with the opportunity to feel strong emotions that motivate and inspire us, and give us a sense of self identity and meaning, while steadily gaining higher levels of conscious agency, and higher emotional vibrational levels of such feelings as:  compassion, kindness, unconditional divine love, and reverence. 

You can watch the companion video to this blog post on YouTube here:

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REFERENCES:

Anatra, Christopher and Howdie Minckowski.  “Exposing the Matrix.”  Symphony of Realities Podcast.  Episode 15.  31 Jan 2023.  https://youtu.be/WATYVAw10U8

Karpman, Stephen. “Fairy tales and script drama analysis.” Transactional analysis bulletin 7, no. 26 (1968): 39-43.

Larson, Cynthia Sue. Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. RealityShifters, 2011.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, and Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz. Leibniz: New essays on human understanding. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Principles of Nature and Grace (1714).” (1992).

Rescher, Nicholas. Axiogenesis: An essay in metaphysical optimalism. Lexington Books, 2010.

Novak, Michael. The experience of nothingness. Transaction Publishers, 1970.

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and first President of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

®RealityShifters

Interpreting Mandela Effects and Meeting a Guardian of Time and Space

Are Mandela Effects trying to tell us something?

How can we hear the message?

When we start from the philosophical point of view that the Cosmos springs fundamentally from consciousness, we can then imagine that we might expect that we are in constant communication with All That Is.  This communication happens via our thoughts and feelings, which are constantly engaged in receiving answers to questions that we often don’t even realize that we have asked.  When we learn that we are constantly engaged in asking Nature questions, and that we are receiving answers in the form of events unfolding in our lives, we can bring this conversation out of the subconscious and into the light of conscious awareness.

This past month, I received a question from someone asking me if there might be a message in Reality Shifts and Mandela effects that can often seem quite random.  we sometimes notice things that disappear, and then show up again, or we might notice that they change their color.  This person asked me,
“Is that some kind of message from the universe?  

Because I cannot figure out the message when these things occur on a personal level.”

I love this question very much, because it gets to the core of this beautiful conversation that we can start to begin we are having with nature.  Sometimes we can immediately discern some kind of message from a reality shift or personal Mandela effect, and other times, it’s not quite so obvious.

Mandela Effect Dream Symbol Interpretation

One thing I recommend doing, is starting a practice of documenting and analyzing your dreams. The reason for this, is that it develops a mindset for interpreting real time symbolic conversation with the cosmos. While real-time symbolic conversation is the end goal, actually, it’s enough just to make progress in terms of recognizing the kind of symbolic conversation that we are constantly having with the world.  As I point out in my book, Reality Shifts, reality and life truly is like a dream.  Put another way, we can view it as being a simulation, where material things and events spring forth from hidden, unseen consciousness.   For this kind of dream analysis, I recommend doing our own dream symbol interpretation, rather than looking up dream symbols in dream symbol reference books. The reason for this, is that each one of us is very unique, with particular subjective meanings that likely don’t exactly match with anyone else.

You can start analyzing Mandela Effects by doing a dream analysis approach that includes the following four steps:  writing a descriptive narrative; listing relevant symbols; free-associating meanings for relevant symbols; and reconstructing a new symbolic narrative.  With practice, this process can become smooth and speedy.

(1)  Write a narrative of your experience, much the way you would describe events in full to share with someone who wasn’t with you at the time.  .

(2)  On fresh paper, write each dream symbol word at a time (every significant noun, verb, and adjective) on the far left side, leaving leaving lots of space to the right of each word, and skipping lines to provide additional space.  Be sure to include all key ideas, such as key nouns and verbs.

(3) Go back to the list of words from step two, and utilize a process of free association brainstorming to document everything that comes to your mind in response to each key word, generating many words and phrases to correspond with each of the dream symbol key words.

(4) Covering over the words from step two, read through all of the free association words from step three, and write a new summary narrative.

Practicing this four step analysis method can provide you with a deeper sense of personal ongoing conversations with reality. When I receive first-hand reality shift reports, one of the things I do when documenting them is write back and forth to the experiencer, to find out what they were thinking and feeling at various times.  Extraordinary realizations can happen from going through these experiences with an eye toward thoughts and feelings at various point along the way, and these are important to include.

Sun Dial Example:
Revisioning Space And Time

One of the first Mandela effects that I experienced and shared with a couple of friends involved noticing the sudden appearance of a large concrete sundial sculpture at the Berkeley Marina, where it had never been before, one day on April 26, 1997.

After brunch, we continued our conversation with a leisurely stroll around the marina.  I told my friends about some reality shifts I’d seen, and how much I wished that they could see one, too, when one occurred right there on the spot!

We were walking together toward the pier, when one friend asked us, “Do either of you recall ever seeing that statue here before? as he pointed at a giant sculpture of a sun dial.  My other friend replied, “No, I don’t.”  and I felt tremendously excited, because I’d seen that sculpture there, but never before when I was there at the marina with these two friends!  The sun dial seemed to rise up proudly to toward the sun to greet us, as we walked in awed silence, to get a closer look.

We walked around the ten foot tall concrete sculpture as children sat and climbed on it.  This sculpture was clearly placed in a central location for people to notice it, right in the middle of a square at the foot of the Berkeley pier.  Amazingly, the sun dial sculpture’s absence had previously allowed us to clearly see another giant sculpture situated up on a hill above the sun dial, when we were on the pier and walking back toward the shore.  But now that the sun dial was there, we noticed that we couldn’t see the other sculpture as well, because it was partially obscured by the sun dial.  The other sculpture is a larger-than-life size oriental archer on horseback, with fully drawn bow, aiming his arrow out over the San Francisco bay–shooting over the sun dial sculpture’s spot.

I told my friends that the sun dial sculpture had always been here when I had come to the marina without them, but never when we were here together, until now.  The sun dial is chipped and worn, made out of concrete, and bears the inscription:  “The peoples of the bountiful Pacific Ocean are brought together by the sweep of time.  This sundial honors the citizens of Sakai Japan, the sister city of Berkeley.  United in warm friendship and goodwill, the peoples of Sakai and Berkeley strengthen mutual understanding and respect through the exchange of visitors and cultural programs.  This sundial is dedicated to the continuing friendship and growing association between Sakai and Berkeley.  1970.”

I was deeply impressed that something as large and majestic as this sun dial had vanished and reappeared, as I realized the magnitude of what must be possible if such large things can so easily be transformed or transported in time and space.  My friends and I marveled in respect and awe at this simultaneously new and relatively old addition to our shared experience of the marina, and I was inspired by the way the three of us were able to share a reality shift experience as we were in the midst of discussing reality shifts.

I subsequently followed up with Berkeley Marina Harbor Master Brad Gross on June 8, 1999, to ask him whether anything had been done to renovate or relocate the sun dial sculpture during the time he was employed as Harbor Master.  Brad replied, “I’ve been here for three years, and it hasn’t changed since I’ve been here.  I’m about to celebrate my third year anniversary on the 16th of this month, and we haven’t done anything to it for three years.  The sun dial does not need adjustment!”

On June 8, 1999, I spoke to Berkeley Waterfront Manager, Cliff Marchetti, regarding the sun dial sculpture at the Berkeley Marina.  Cliff commented, “It’s been here an awful long time, and we haven’t done any renovation on it.  I kind of remember seeing a plaque on it, stating when it was placed there.  I have been here for four years, and it’s been there the whole time, with no changes.”

I’ve learned this year that the Archer statue is a good luck archer god, riding on the back of a good luck lion god.  There is a plaque associated with this sculpture, that reads:  Guardian, Fredric Fierstein–To Protect the Life Spirit.  There is some wonderful historical back story in an article describing the origin of this statue, described in an interview with Fredric Fierstein from 2011.

Sun Dial Interpretation

When interpreting the above narrative, I create a list of key symbols, placing them with lots of room between them and to the right of them, and including them in the order they appear.  These key words would look something like:

Brunch

Friends

Stroll

Marina

Conversation

Reality shifts

Sundial

Concrete

Children

Square

Archer

Statue

Horseback

Hill

Shooting arrow

San Francisco bay

Plaque

Sister city

Sakai, Japan

Chipped and Worn

For the third step of interpreting the symbolic meaning of this experience, we can do free-association brainstorming for each of the above key words we have listed from the original narrative.  This process is completely individual and personal, and has less to do with dictionary perfect definitions as whatever seemingly random associations and connections arise.  For example, here are some free-associations for some of the first key words in this narrative:

Brunch – nourishment; relaxation; at ease; resting & digesting; comfort; receptivity

Friends – emotional support; encouragement; confidants; mentors

Stroll – leisurely; moving forward; sightseeing; fresh air; sunshine; warmth

Marina – threshold between land and sea; bridging consciousness and the subconscious; gateway to other lands

Conversation – friendly dialogue; open communication; discussion; sharing new ideas

Reality shifts – mind-matter interaction; miracles; anomalies; metaphysical events; extraordinary experiences

Sundial – connection with time and space; attempts to measure time; connection between time and space

Concrete – solid; material; physical

Children – future; hope; potential; playfulness; learning; imagination

Square – plaza; society; shared area; community space

Archer – warrior; alert; protective; sharp, specific focus; keen perception; strong

Statue – respectfully honoring; legacy; important individual

Horseback – empowered; independent; sovereign; free

Hill – higher vantage point perspective; higher wisdom; ethical standing; spiritual strength

Shooting arrow – focused attention; specific intention; target

San Francisco bay – sheltered access to Pacific ocean; safe harbor; view of Golden Gate

Plaque – official acknowledgement; recognition; credit; honor

Sister city – friendship; community support; international positive relations

Sakai, Japan – seaport; tea; swords; castle; Asia; eastern thinking

Chipped and Worn – weathered; experienced; moving through time

“The Guardian” archer takes aim protecting San Francisco’s Golden Gate

Summary narrative of Sun Dial experience:

In times of ease and comfort, emotional support and encouragement occurs naturally at the threshold between conscious and subconscious thought. In such environments, new ideas about extraordinary experiences and miraculous events can be comprehended as they flow through time and space.  What appears to be solid in physical, material form appears where it had not been before, in ways that foster playful hope, potential, and imagination in a shared community space.  With keen perception and focus, as well as respectful intention, a sovereign sense of higher wisdom and spiritual strength ensures focused attention on ensuring a golden future.  Positive relationships of friendship and community serve to unite eastern and western ways of thinking, in harmonious movement through space and time.

Unfolding Beauty and Richness of Meaning

I am awestruck, humbled, and amazed by the beauty that unfolded as I revisited my experience from nearly 26 years ago, back on April 26, 1997.  After a quarter century, the inspirational message to me–and to all of us–from this Mandela Effect experience involving the Berkeley marina sundial sculpture has developed richer depth of meaning than ever before.  I now recognize greater significance, connection, and relevance of these two statues, with their special message of hope, strength, wisdom and steady focus on ensuring safe passage for humanity into a new Golden Age.

You can watch the companion video to this blog post on YouTube here:

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REFERENCES:

Sundial at Berkeley Pier.  Berkeley-Sakai City Landmarks. 1970.  https://www.berkeley-sakai.org/index.php/about/city-of-berkeley/berkeley-sakai-landmarks

Larson, Cynthia Sue. Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. RealityShifters, 2011.

Whittaker, Richard.  “Interview with Fredric Fierstein:  An Outrageous Act.”  Works and Conversations.  23 Feb 2011.  https://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=264

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and first President of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

®RealityShifters

Mandela Effect, Reality Shifts, Timelines, Afterlife and the Simulation / Dreamtime

What is the relationship between timelines, reality shifts, and the afterlife?  If we exist in a simulation when living, where do we go when we die?  What, if anything, exists outside of the simulation?  When we go within, are we accessing a part of us outside of the simulation? 

These are questions sent to me by my friend, Ross, who also asks:

Since physical reality is an illusion, does everything that I experience exist only in my mind/consciousness, or is it being dreamed by my soul (or some other part of me), or is it all just a part of the simulation or some combination?  Where is the simulation coming from?  Is it being beamed from Saturn’s rings, as David Icke suggests?  Who created the simulation?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Timelines and the Afterlife

The same day that Ross wrote to me, so did my friend, Gina, who has begun hearing loved ones who have passed on, as well as ancestors.  Some of the information Gina receives includes suggestions on how to do things the “old country” way, as it was done generations ago, and can be easily confirmed to be accurate and useful information, since to include such advice in Gina’s home brings instant success.  Gina is able to hear her deceased relatives and ancestors just fine, and can ask questions and get answers that assist her in bringing back what otherwise might have been a long-lost way of cooking, baking, and working with various crafts.  Not only can home-making information be relayed, but perhaps more surprisingly to Gina, so can real-time assistance in Gina’s life in the here and now.  Gina relays how she met a deceased great uncle who asked her, in Italian, if she was okay, showing great concern and caring–in fact, more care than most living people.  Gina replied that she needed to find a house as soon as possible, since she was deep in grief from news of her mother having just died, and needed to leave her cousin’s house, where the family had been staying.  “You need a house?”  he said in Italian.  The next thing Gina knew, he’d gathered a group of family, who discussed what could be done, with the men making arrangements while the women provided grief-support and comfort for Gina.  The very next day after this conversation with Gina’s deceased ancestors and relatives, Gina’s cousin told her that she’d found a house from a friend of hers that was available for her family to rent.

Gina’s question to me is, “How is it Cynthia that I have never heard of anyone else experiencing this in such a real time way?  And are they all ghosts hanging out in their old houses? Or is it like they’re in another plane that Looks like how it was when they lived?  How can they see me and know what I’m thinking? What about people who go straight to heaven? I don’t understand how this is possible.  Yet it’s becoming more and more a part of my daily life! And what they tell me proves itself to be true.  Can you help me grasp where they are? And how they can see and hear ME? Did mom have something to do with this sudden ancestral connection? It literally began the day she died.”

Gina had not heard of anyone else doing this, although of course this is something I’ve done regularly over the years.  One of my recent experiences involved my being interrupted on a rather busy day, on March 17, 2021, as I was preparing go get ready for our IMEC Open Tables episode the next day.  I was scrambling at the 11th hour to prepare for a guest on our show, and was redoing all the power point slides.  In the midst of all this business and mental focus, I was surprised to feel my childhood friend’s (deceased) grandmother, Margaret Hall, whom I’d never met, getting my attention by asking me very softly if I’d like to include her photo in the family genealogical records. Well, of course I would!  I’d never met this grandmother in person, since she’d passed away shortly after giving birth to my friend’s mother.  When I asked her what she had in mind, she indicated I’d be able to find it based on where she was at the time of the 1920 census.  My initial reaction was skepticism, since she lived in a large metropolitan area at the time, and her last name, Hall, was common and ubiquitous–so wouldn’t this be like finding a needle in a haystack?  After all, that’s why nobody had yet found her before.  She reassured me that with my help, I’d find her photo in her high school yearbook with no difficulty.  Because I loved her positive, charismatic energy so much, I set my afternoon tasks aside, taking a chance that maybe she was right, and she’d lead me to find that long-missing “needle in a haystack” of her yearbook and photo.  And sure enough, she indeed directly me clearly to the correct part of the large metropolitan city.  And what a jackpot I found!  There were three more photos in that yearbook of her in performance in a play she starred in.  When I reached out to inform my friend of this news, her phone line was uncharacteristically busy–but when I got through, I was thrilled to be able to share this wonderful news that felt so much like a grandmother’s love for her grandchildren, arriving (as it turned out) at exactly a time when a grandmother’s love–and long-lost missing photos–made all the difference!

when considering the relationship between timelines, Reality Shifts, and the afterlife, the common connection between all of these is awareness of conscious agency being integral to aspects of consciousness itself.  All three of these topics make more sense from the perspective of recognizing that each individual is much more than their physical body, and each individual‘s mind is much more than their brain.  There can be sensed and felt and known An identity as a being of conscious agency who is capable of contemplating decision points between timelines, and who can have continuity between physical lifetimes.  From such an identity as being a pure conscious agent, One can benefit from wisdom, experiences, and knowledge that are accessible through meditation, contemplation, dreams, and prayer.  Reality Shifts can then be known to occur when a person, in the form of conscious agent existing and pure consciousness, makes a jump from one reality to another.  Timelines can be appreciated as Forks in the Road of life, which we can sometimes choose retroactively in ways that for example, might contribute to our experiencing mysterious spontaneous remission of some supposedly incurable condition.

Where do we go when we die?

For those of us who have a memory of being aware and conscious before we were born, in a state of being called born aware, by author Diane Brandon, it is possible to have a foundational sense of awareness based in a sense of being consciousness and awareness outside of ordinary space and time.  With awareness of having come from a place of  conscious awareness prior to existing in physical form, it is not that much of a leap to acknowledge there is a sense of intrinsic being this that transcends space and time. From such a starting point, we can envision the possibility that each and everyone of us is essentially timeless.  And from such a perspective, it is not too big a leap to imagine that this is the same place, that is actually not a place, that we go when we die.

What, if anything, exists outside of the Simulation/Dreamtime?

One of the biggest questions we can ever ask is, “Why does anything exist at all?”  This point was driven home to me by the philosopher Nicholas Rescher, whose excellent book, “Axiogenesis” is one of my favorite books.  We often don’t give this question much thought, since we tend to presume that the material world is the foundation of reality itself, rather than questioning its existence.  When we consider the idea that all of reality might be some thing a kin to a dream, we are viewing the world from a philosophical perspective that has been prevalent going back thousands of years into ancient indigenous wisdom, as well as  ancient yogic  teachings from India.  there has been a long tradition throughout human cultures and civilizations acknowledging the ultimate reality that exist beyond space and time, in the form of what has been sometimes known as the dream time.  The Australian concept of the dream time is one’s strong such example, where we can acknowledge that everything that exists first begins in and comes from the dream time.

When we go within, are we accessing outside of the Simulation/Dreamtime?

When we go within, to a state of meditation, it is possible to experience the cessation of thought, movement, and change. In meditative contemplation, it is possible to gain access to higher levels of self, operating outside of normal typical daily egoic consciousness.  For those who do access these higher levels of conscious agency and conscious self, it is possible to engage in communication and conversation with other conscious agents, who have controlling access to various physical material beings, events, and forms.  There exists such a thing as an experience of nothingness, where we can appreciate a formlessness that exists but he’s form, and a changeless nurse that exists as a foundation beneath change.  this experience of nothingness is available to us through meditation, contemplation, and prayer.  This experience of nothingness provides us with a glimpse of the true reality that supports all of space and time, yet exists outside of space and time.

What is the nature of everything that exists?

We tend to focus on those material forms, and events that we can measure, such that there is some degree of objectivity by which we can reach agreement. These measureables are actually somewhat limited, in the sense that the material realism model cannot accommodate most of the existence of things that we are actually living for.  If you ask yourself what you were living for, it is highly unlikely that your authentic true answer whatever involve anything that can be absolutely measured in terms of its three-dimensional size, its shape, its weight, or its monetary value.  Sometimes people go through phases where some of these things might be given as their answer to what they are living for, but typically as people grow and mature, they come to recognize that what they are really living for involves qualities that do not lend themselves to absolute material realistic measurements.  And those same things that people would probably typically say they are living for, such as unconditional divine love, and peace, are so beloved it’s such a deep levels, that we can feel the probable truth that this indeed is the true nature of everything that exists.

Where is the Simulation/Dreamtime coming from?

The source of the simulation or dream time is one of the greatest mysteries, since intrinsically the answer is not knowable to us from outside of it, because we are so immersed within it.  Our traditional sciences can only hypothesize as to the source of the Simulation / Dreamtime, since traditional science has no means to step outside of the Simulation / Dreamtime to experimentally confirm or discount various theories.  From a purely intuitive sense, it feels to me that we might consider the Simulation / Dreamtime to arise from consciousness itself, which we are a part of.  We seem to gain clues as to how we participate in mind-matter interaction through such experiences as synchronicity, deja vu, reality shifts, and the Mandela Effect.  The Dreamtime / Simulation comes from Divine Source, Creator, God which we are all related to and connected with at a very deep level that transcends material realism, and is at the level of our pure conscious agency, spirit, or soul.

Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World

How Good Can it Get?

I hope you will join me in asking, “How good can it get?” in any and all circumstances, no matter may seem to be happening, so we may each individually and all collectively experience what is truly best for all.

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REFERENCES:

Brandon, Diane.  Born Aware:  Stories and Insights from Those Spiritually Aware Since Birth.  Llewellyn Publications, 2017.

Larson, Cynthia Sue.  “Comes True Being Hoped For.”
PARABOLA: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. 25, No. 1. (Spring 2000): 84-87
http://www.parabola.org

Larson, Cynthia Sue. Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. RealityShifters, 2012.

Novak, Michael. The experience of nothingness. Transaction Publishers, 1970.

Rescher, Nicholas. Axiogenesis: An essay in metaphysical optimalism. Lexington Books, 2010.

Tulku, Tarthang. “Time, space and knowledge. Emeryville.” (1977).

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and first President of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

®RealityShifters

The Revolutionary Power of Radical Optimism

An attitude of optimism is a revolutionary act.  It has the power—through imagination—to introduce miraculous transformation and change. Just as a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, a journey into our best possible reality begins with a single question: “How good can it get?”

Optimism is a rebellious act because this attitude often flies in the face of adopting an attitude of fearfulness that is typically encouraged by our governments and societies.  Optimism is perhaps the most rebellious when adopted even when situations truly are looking genuinely scary, and clear and present danger has arrived.

Optimism as Ultimate Survival Skill

How is it possible that an attitude of optimism might be the ultimate survival skill?  Author Jeff Bollow tells us that yes, that’s exactly what optimism is.  He adds that when you start to deliberately improve your optimism skills, the rewards will be phenomenal. There is a logic to this, since where you are today and where you want to be are literally in two different worlds–and at each decision point, every single day, we are either resisting or supporting some future unknown.  How we greet the unknown has everything to do with what actually happens next in our lives.

We see some evidence of optimism being an ultimate survival skill, since optimists improved quality of life, while also tending to live longer.   A study in 2004 of nearly 1,000 people found that optimists have a 23% reduction of the risk of heart disease, and a 55% reduction in all causes of death.  A meta analysis of 15 studies including 229,391 individuals found that optimism was associated with lower risk of cardiovascular events, and pessimism was associated with higher risk of cardiovascular events, on par with other well-established risk factors.

How Much of an Optimist Are You?

I began a talk about the Mandela Effect by acknowledging the importance of attitude for exploration–whether we’re going back in time to join Charles Darwin on his voyage aboard his ship the Beagle, or welcoming reality shifts, Mandela Effects and quantum jumps into our lives.  Those intrepid adventurers who truly love the unknown are adopting an attitude of greeting the unknown future with open arms.  Another word for this attitude is Optimism.

You can get a sense of where you naturally tend to be on the optimism scale that goes from maximum resistance to maximum support of the unknown:

1. Cynicism — “Everything is bad, doomed, and untrustworthy.”
2. Pessimism — “Things are likely to have negative results.”
3. Realism — “Things just are what they are.”
4. Optimism — “Things are likely to have positive results.”
5. Idealism — “Everything will work out brilliantly.”

Increase Happiness Chemicals

So now that we are seeing increasing evidence to suggest that a mindset of optimism is associated with lower cardiovascular risk, it’s possible to realize that encouraging optimism can play an essential role in our health and wellbeing.

It’s possible to move to a position of greater optimism, by increasing such happiness chemicals as: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotin, and Endorphin.  We can  feel pleased with completing tasks and celebrating little things with Dopamine; we can be playful, kind and loving to enjoy Oxytocin; we can meditate and enjoy nature to benefit from Serotonin, and we can laugh or exercise to release pain-inhibiting Endorphins.

For best results, I recommend that we remind one another and ourselves to initiate and maintain positive onward-and-upward intentional guidance by asking, “How good can it get?” every day and in every situation.

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REFERENCES:

Bollow, Jeff. “Why Optimism is the Ultimate Survival Skill.”   http://thephenomenalexperience.com/content/why-optimism-is-the-ultimate-survival-skill

Giltay, Erik J., Johanna M. Geleijnse, Frans G. Zitman, Tiny Hoekstra, and Evert G. Schouten. “Dispositional optimism and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality ina prospective cohort of elderly Dutch men and women.” Archives of general psychiatry 61, no. 11 (2004): 1126-1135.

Rozanski, Alan, Chirag Bavishi, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Randy Cohen. “Association of optimism with cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” JAMA Network Open 2, no. 9 (2019): e1912200-e1912200.

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Rise above lower vibe realities

If reality is different for each of us, and our thoughts and feelings influence our physical reality, how can we best employ an attitude of optimism in the real world–especially when surrounded by those who are not optimistic?

I received an intriguing email question this past month:

“I was listening to a 2 or 3 year-old presentation by Bashar (channeled by Darryl Anka) as I was driving home, where Bashar essentially said the following:  (1) We are each creating our own, unique simulation – that has similar core reality to the one everybody else is experiencing.  (2) Our simulated reality is actually a series of parallel realities that changes billions of times per second – giving us an illusion of movement and time – however each frame is fixed. This is similar to the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but we don’t take all possible paths. (3) Instead, our frequency determines our path through the parallel worlds.  (4) Even our core/common simulated reality is splitting into at least two worlds. And, even though we are in the world of the lower vibe peeps, we are not of the world. That is, we can witness the lower vibe peeps … and their supporting cast – but it’s like we are watching them through a thick glass window. They don’t affect us — unless we choose to be affected.”

(1) We are each experiencing our own individual subjective realities, though we tend to assume that everyone is experiencing everything exactly as we are–yet when we really look more closely at this, we can see for sure this is not true.  I’ve researched and written about how it’s evident that we experience different realities from those around us–including people who are right with us when events unfold.  I’ve shared examples of this in my book, Reality Shifts, where I have had conversations with people where information was relayed that they swear they never said–and people have heard me say things I know for sure I did not say.

 

(2) We are continually receiving invitations to experience vast multitudes of possible realities in every moment–yet we seldom consciously recognize all of the choices we truly have.  This is the premise I describe in my book, Quantum Jumps.

 

(3) I have experienced that a combination of energetic attitudinal ‘vibe’ with level of consciousness together determine my path through the multitudes of possible parallel worlds.  The energetic attitude is something like feeling thankful and reverent, while the levels of consciousness have to do with awareness of “how big” or “how small” one is at any given moment in time.  So I’ve noticed two important, complementary qualities of self at play, that taken together can make a huge, sometimes startling, impact on reality.  At lower vibratory emotional levels, and when feeling smaller, effects can seem so small as to be nearly invisible or non-existent.

 

(4) We can sometimes bring people with us.  When we interact with others who are seeing clear evidence of some situation–such as a broken dishwasher, or a dog who seems to have cataracts–we have opportunities to acknowledge that “even though it looks, sounds, and smells like this dishwasher is broken,” we know we need it to be just fine right now.  We can thus invite those of us around us who wish to share our joyful intention, while doing that beautiful combination of staying high vibe while simultaneously feeling a sense of certainty and need in our gut that we are selecting the reality we need to–and already are large enough to– experience.  We can thus bring others with us into desired realities where what we know we need is what is actually unfolding, regardless what it looked like.  This kind of moving through doorways of possibility is the fine art of making Quantum Jumps.  I see from ancient teachings of yogi masters, Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters, martial arts masters, and Buddha and Jesus Christ that these kinds of miracles have been happening consistently for thousands of years.  We may notice them more right now, and this is a time of the birth of the 5th world, as predicted and prophesized, but from my direct experience, this can be a beautiful experience by which some of us can grab the hands of our loved ones and show them, “Yes, we know it sometimes LOOKS like a horrible situation, but actually, everything is fine.”  And this is how we enter the dawning of this 5th world. 

Dawning of the 5th World

We can see some signs of the dawning of a Golden Age, when we see animals turning gold, or new golden animals and plants we’ve never seen before.  We can see signs of this great change also in the return of animals and plants long presumed to be extinct.  We’re coming together all around the world, learning and growing together, and sharing inspiration and insights.

For best results, I recommend that we remind one another and ourselves to initiate and maintain positive onward-and-upward intentional guidance by asking, “How good can it get?” every day and in every situation.

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REFERENCES:

Larson, Cynthia.  Quantum Jumps:  An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.  2013.

Larson, Cynthia.  Reality Shifts:  When Consciousness Changes the Physical World.  2011.

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

Quantum mind, timeline shifts, and karma

What role does karma play in timeline shifts?  And how can we sometimes remember things so very differently, when there is little or no supporting physical evidence?

I received a fascinating email question this past month:

“Isn’t shifting to a new timeline simply changing direction, like a ship changing course? For example a ship’s captain can decide to alter course and go in a completely new direction, but the captain cannot change where the ship has been.  So in the same way, a person cannot alter their past or Karma, which is actually good because we create good karma also. For example, let’s say in a person’s past they had a huge argument with another individual, you may have healed it within yourself but the other person has free will to choose how the deal with it. It is impossible to jump to a timeline where the incident didn’t take place because of the law of karma.  So aren’t we just really adjusting our current reality in order or adjust our future reality?  There is no jumping to a parallel timeline outside of karma.

With the karma question, let’s use a little more of an intense situation. Let’s say a 19 year old individual did something really dumb, was drunk driving and caused someone to lose their life. They paid their debt to society, and years later got their life more in order and became a spiritually aware human and began living as a new person.  Are you saying that they could manifest out of a timeline reality where their drunk driving never happened?  Not only did they create karma with the people and families involved in the accident, but also their family and friends went through this event with them.  And sometimes the negative things that happen are major growing points in life, so by jumping out of karma, we lose those lessons?

I replied that some of us notice that apparently, our official histories have actually changed.  For me, sometimes that means more money is now in my bank account, or my body is slightly different physically.  For others, sometimes long-standing ‘permanent’ physical disabilities are gone, as if they never existed.  Our memories are quite real, and certainly this is where karma comes in, since many of us clearly remember events that ‘never were.’  Yet, we know they were true. 

We see evidence of this now in some recent physics experiments where observational devices can witness different events even though they are at the same place and time.  The key to grokking this aspect of the quantum paradigm is to acknowledge that our Mind is capable of operating at a higher order of perception than our Brain–and sometimes, we can remember past events more than one way.

I have sometimes seen in my own life, and in the lives of those close to me, that the past can change quite radically from what we remember.  I’ve shared some truly astonishing reality shifts in my books, such as the time my friend, Susan, was talking with me on the phone about how she’d recently broken her leg, and during our conversation noticed that her leg was feeling itchy–and soon after, she returned to the same doctors who’d examined and X-rayed her leg, to discover her leg was not broken.  Not only was it now never broken (thus never needing a cast), but it never had been broken.  This created a bit of a confusing situation for all involved at that time, if attempting to make sense of what had just transpired. 

Such radical changes seem to happen not so much through someone intensely wishing for and intending such changes to their personal past, but as larger parts of a greater spiritual awakening and development.  The lessons are seldom lost when they are felt deeply on an emotional and energetic level, and thus are real to memory and Mind, despite not being part of any current physical historical records, in some cases.

Quantum Mind, Classical Brain

I was recently talking with a physicist friend of mine, who’d just experienced a wild reality shift, involving reality being completely different from what he knew to be true, and what he clearly remembered.  Though we’d often discussed how reality shifts can occur, this had been more of a philosophical conversation for him, until one day this year when he experienced a shocking reality shift in his own personal life that he knew for sure was real.  He and his wife both shared memories involving certain medications being kept in a certain location in their home–yet these medications that had been prescribed were now gone.  The pharmacist and the doctor had no records to suggest that the prescription was still current, and they were not open to hearing a theory regarding quantum physics, consciousness, and observation to explain what to them was not a mystery at all. 

My physicist friend sincerely longed to know how is it possible for someone to have memories that no longer match confirmation and corroboration from current external physical reality?  Because, as my physicist friend put it, our brain might be expected to match with and correspond to all other aspects and details of this reality, so we could be expected to not even notice anything had changed.  Yet many of us are noticing some changes have occurred.

My go-to explanation for this seeming discrepancy that provides some of us with the ability to remember a different reality–a different reality–can be credited to the way that German philosopher, mathematician and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz defines consciousness.  Leibniz describes that consciousness arises thanks to levels of perception.  Leibniz is one of two famous inventors of Calculus (the other being Sir Isaac Newton), and I adore his brilliant way of showing that we have consciousness of something when we have a second order apperception of a first order original sensory perception.  For example, Leibniz writes in Principles of Nature and Grace:

“it is good to distinguish between perception, which is the internal state of the monad representing external things, and apperception, which is consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of this internal state, something not given to all souls, nor at all times to a given soul.”

From this view of levels of perception, we can envision how our memory can be thought of as residing in consciousness in our MIND, while the physical historical records and details, along with our brain can stay attuned with a given physical reality.  In this way, memory and the mind form a kind of collaboration capable of operating outside of everyday experiences of space and time–suggesting that sometimes we can experience such things as:  premonitions, deja vu, intuitive insights, and retrocausality.  With a quantum mind accessing various levels of memories, we can flex our sentient ‘muscles’ and gain increased levels of experience with and comfort in shifting reality, quantum jumping, and collectively experiencing Mandela Effects together.

We may begin to notice that what we consider to be karma might be also viewed as higher levels of our consciousness collaboratively co-creating with higher levels of others.  These higher levels can be viewed as converging at the very highest levels, at which point we can envision a convergence at a point where there is zero entropy.  This looks a lot like what Leibniz posited as being the “perennial philosophy.”  In about 1710, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote a letter in response to someone asking him what philosophical school he followed; Leibniz replied that he follows the school of the perennial philosophy, “Philosophia Perennis.”

Optimizing Quantum Mind and Memory

When we acknowledge that we are not manifesting in a bubble, but rather are collaboratively co-creating, we can begin to better appreciate the value of the Mandela Effect.  Thanks to the Mandela Effect, we can witness the return of some long-extinct plants and animals, or so-called “Lazarus species.”  Thanks to the Mandela Effect, we can witness some instantaneous upgrades to our physical bodies, such as our hearts now being situated in the center of our chest, and our kidneys now being located farther from risk of possible injury from “kidney strikes” to the relative safety under our rib cages.  Our collective memory can sometimes remember that things were different–and sometimes, we can remember things more than one way.

For best results, I recommend that we remind one another and ourselves to initiate and maintain positive onward-and-upward intentional guidance by asking, “How good can it get?” every day and in every situation.

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REFERENCES:

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Principles of Nature and Grace (1714).” (1992).

Proietti, Massimiliano, Alexander Pickston, Francesco Graffitti, Peter Barrow, Dmytro Kundys, Cyril Branciard, Martin Ringbauer, and Alessandro Fedrizzi. “Experimental test of local observer independence.” Science advances 5, no. 9 (2019): eaaw9832.

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

Success Against All Odds

Thanks to quantum physics, we can see bigger opportunities and better realities than seem physically present in our lives; we can help ensure success against all odds.

Handbags of the Gods

I greatly enjoyed watching the Quantum Businessman’s video discussing how “it’s bigger on the inside,” covered in his video, Gucci of the Gods.  One of the things I most enjoyed about watching the Quantum Businessman’s video about pocket universes is that it brings up some of what Chris Anatra (aka “the Quantum Businessman”) is calling soft disclosure.  This particular soft disclosure has to do with ideas about ancient artwork that shows up in many civilizations around the world–not just in one place.  This artwork indicates that there exist some kind of “handbags of the gods,” or “Gucci of the Gods,” as Chris Anatra puts it.  These mysterious handbags seem to show up everywhere, and both these bags and some watches seem like they might be more than they appear.  They might have something to do with playing with space, time and reality, such as we see in popular shows such as “Doctor Who.”  Doctor Who’s Tardis device is famously bigger on the inside than the outside, while traversing time and space.

The Quantum Businessman’s “Gucci of the Gods” video also presents some fascinating thoughts of one of the world’s top physicists, Alan Guth.  I’ve mentioned Alan Guth many times, usually in conjunction with a physicist that I’m very fond of, Dr. Yasunori Nomura, who I interviewed in 2014 after meeting him at a premiere of the documentary “Particle Fever” at UC Berkeley.  Alan Guth and Nomura co-authored a paper, but the big deal about Alan Guth is that he is recognized as a being one of the top thought leaders having to do with ideas about the Big Bang and the inflationary universe.

How does this tie in with everything about Mandela Effects, reality shifts, and things being bigger on the inside than they are on the outside?  Good question!

Quantum Logic and Paradigm

I wrote a paper about the Primacy of Quantum Logic in the Natural World, where I discussed quantum logic and the importance of the idea that quantum logic is much bigger than classical logic.  This is significant, because we often ironically tend to think of quantum physics as being the ‘physics of the very small.’  We tend to downplay the significance of any aspects of quantum phenomena in our macroscopic classical material world, since we assume we can for the most part completely disregard quantum effects, since they have to do with extremely small quantum particles, such as electrons or photons.  We tend to assume that material, classical reality and logic is primary.  Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

In my “Primacy of Quantum Logic” paper, I assert that a case can be made that classical logic and theory is a subset of quantum logic and theory, given that elements of quantum physics exist that can never admit classical understanding, including: Bell’s theorem, Hardy’s theorem, and the Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph theorem.  Physicist Spekkens points out,

“all quantum states, mixed and pure, are states of incomplete knowledge.”

Spekkens draws our attention to contextuality, and the idea that whereas our choice of how we conduct a given experiment does not affect the experimental statistical results, that choice definitely influences knowledge about what is going on in reality. And while we might have expected that we could detect such changes experimentally, this very notion of contextuality that Spekkens presents shows us that
such informational signals do not get through. When we consider reality being nonlocal, then adding this idea of contextuality indicates that exceptional fine-tuning must be operating to prevent our changes in knowledge from influencing changes in predictions of what we will observe.

Insights from Deriving Quantum Theory

Many seemingly intractable problems with the orthodox interpretation might primarily be an artifact of viewing quantum theory through classical logic assumptions.  In order to minimize such classical bias, some quantum foundations physicists found a way to derive quantum theory from scratch. In 2001, Lucien Hardy presented an elegant method for deriving quantum theory from five simple axioms involving:  probabilities, simplicity, subspaces, composite systems, and continuity.

Lucien Hardy designed an experiment in which an electron and its antiparticle, a positron, may be detected in one of two interferometers. However, a certain combination of detectors can only be selected by the pair if the two particles have previously traveled along bent path trajectories in which they annihilated each other—which means they can’t reach the detectors. Except that in many cases, they do reach the detectors. Hardy’s Theorem shows that even finite dimensional quantum systems must contain an infinite amount of information.

Classical Paradigm as Subset of Quantum Paradigm

When we acknowledge that some aspects of quantum physics can never be classical, and that all of quantum physics can be derived from five simple axioms, we find ourselves at the remarkable junction where we can start to envision the Classical, materialist paradigm as a subset and special case of the larger, more universal set of the Quantum paradigm.

If you’re familiar with set theory, then those pictures of circles with some circles intersecting and a Universal set containing all other sets may be familiar.  Basically, what we’re noticing is that Quantum Physics and the Quantum Paradigm may be more like the Universal set, rather than a subset of Classical Physics.  There’s no way we can fit quantum physics inside classical physics, but we can fit classical physics into the quantum paradigm.

Bigger on the Inside

This realization that quantum physics and the quantum paradigm is primary, and classical physics, paradigm and logic is a special case subset inside the larger quantum paradigm immediately reminds me of the notion of things being “bigger on the inside.”

When we look at the idea of pocket universes and bubble realities, we can immediately feel inspired to flip the entire conceptualization that we typically have regarding something small like a pocket or a purse.  We might tend to naturally assume that since quantum physics deals with the realm below the Planck scale having to do with such miniscule things as photons and electrons, it would be a subset and special case within our familiar classical paradigm with its associated classical logic.

As we look more closely at the extraordinary properties of the quantum realm, we see what Alan Guth describes in the “Gucci of the Gods” video by the Quantum Businessman.  Alan Guth talks about the likelihood that our inflationary universe indicates that there are lots and lots of bubble universes.  These bubble universes are out there all over the place, and essentially we are most likely living in a multiverse. This is also what I’ve been writing about in my books, Reality Shifts and Quantum Jumps, and this is a huge idea for each of us to contemplate in our everyday lives.

Why it Matters

You might well be wondering how any of this has anything to do with you, which is an excellent question.  One of the main reasons this is of such great importance is that very often, when we think of classical physics and material realism, most of our mainstream educational systems emphasize that such a materialist view is foremost, primary, and dominant.

People who consciously or unconsciously go along with this worldview can easily become confused, depressed, or just feel stuck or trapped by circumstances. We might feel that we are looking at all the facts that are right in front of us.  We might feel we are facing an indisputable, unchangeable situation. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

When we realize that the quantum paradigm is dominant, then we are better aligned with what has been taught in spiritual faiths and traditions, including the perennial philosophies.  These perennial philosophies of love, kindness, compassion, and having faith that even when things seem extremely difficult, you can actually witness miracles.  And these miracles might come in the form of things that you need, and maybe you don’t notice that it’s happening.  You might think, “Well, I needed that.  It’s just some coincidence.”

After considering these ideas from quantum physics, we can begin to take a closer look, with a sense of wonder, reverence and awe that maybe we always get what we need.  And those times when we notice we’re not seeming to get what we are intending, perhaps what’s really blocking us is that our heart is not in it, or we’re not keeping our eyes open to the fact that in some ways what we’re dreaming of and wishing for is already here.

Success Against All Odds

The key idea we can get from this insight that reality is “bigger on the inside,” thanks to quantum physics, is to not be emotionally triggered by situations.  We can look inside every situation, to discover what is happening right now that we can be grateful for.  And to recognize that we don’t need to trust the depressing aspects of what looks like physical truth–because a lot of historical facts change.  They can change in ways that lots of us are noticing together, which is what we call the Mandela Effect.  They can also change specifically just for us, which would be a reality shift.  And if we observe a change that we  were intending, they can shift as quantum jumps.

These big ideas are brought to you from the seemingly tiny world of quantum physics, which is “bigger on the inside,” helping to ensure the possibility of success against all odds.

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REFERENCES:

Hardy, L. Quantum Theory From Five Reasonable Axioms. No. quantph/0101012. 2001.

Jennings, David, and Matthew Leifer. “No Return to Classical Reality.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.03202 (2015).

Larson, Cynthia Sue. “Primacy of quantum logic in the natural world.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2015): 326-340.

http://realityshifters.com/media/Larson2015PrimacyQuantumLogic.pdf

Larson, Cynthia.  Quantum Jumps:  An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity.  2013.

Pusey, Matthew F., Jonathan Barrett, and Terry Rudolph. “On the reality of the quantum state.” Nature Physics 8.6 (2012): 475-478.

Spekkens, Robert W. “Evidence for the epistemic view of quantum states: A toy theory.” Physical Review A 75.3 (2007): 032110.

You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

My Thoughts on Tom Campbell and the Mandela Effect

This past month I was fortunate to be able to talk with physicist Tom Campbell during a special live broadcast of International Mandela Effect Conference (IMEC) Open Tables.  Tom reviewed ten examples of the Mandela Effect, and remembered things differently for five of them.  Toward the end of our conversation, Tom discussed four factors that he considers to be involved in the Mandela Effect phenomena. Tom said, “I thought about it a little, because I knew that’s what you guys were about, and I found four different things that contribute to it. So I don’t think it’s just one thing, I think there are several things that lead us to this.”  

You can view this part of our mini-conference with Tom Campbell in its entirety in Tom Campbell’s Big TOE, Virtual Reality, and the Mandela Effect, or starting at about time marker 1:19  to start at this part of the conversation.

(1) Observers have Individual Subjective Realities

The first thing Tom mentioned is that reality is only in the mind of the observer.  Tom states:

“Well, every observer has his own reality because it’s his interpretation of the data that he gets.  So for one there is not a reality ‘back then’ that existed, there is no ‘master reality,’ that exists.  It only exists in the minds of the players, and the players all have a somewhat different reality, because they interpret the data they get.  So there isn’t a reality that is kind of the right answer to what it was.  So that’s one thing.  So just looking from a perspective of consciousness, there is no ‘the reality that was.’  It doesn’t exist–never has existed.  It’s a bunch of individual realities.  And now we can look at it and see what we in general, most of us you know, saw or heard.  So there’s that idea that there is no right answer to what it was; we all have our own reality.”

I love how Tom starts contemplating the Mandela Effect with this notion of Subjective Reality (in contrast to Objective Reality), since this is a view of the quantum paradigm that I feel is at the heart and core of both quantum physics and reality itself.  Physicist George Weissmann and I wrote about this in our paper, The Quantum Paradigm and Challenging the Objectivity Assumption. The really BIG idea here that is paradigm-shifting in the extreme is that quantum physics shows us quite clearly that there may be no such thing as objectivity, or ‘one true reality.’

(2) Pattern Matching in Consciousness

This next factor that Tom Campbell considers as involved in people experiencing the Mandela Effect has to do with the way consciousness operates with attributes of perception, and how we perceive and remember, with pattern matching.  Tom elaborates:

“We perceive things and remember things in our memory.  This is just kind of the fundamentals of the way consciousness works, we work with pattern matching.  That’s kind of the fundamental way we do things.  We work on pattern matching, and what happens is we’ll get a new image, we’ll go into our data bank to find a pattern that fits it.  Now if we can find an exact fit, oh great, we’ll put that out.  But if we can’t find an exact fit, we’ll pull out anything that even fits a little bit.  If it fits sort of well, we’ll pull that out, and that what it’ll be.”

Tom then shares his experience with people frequently calling his wife a similar, yet incorrect name, that starts with the same letters.  Tom’s wife’s name is Pamela, yet frequently when they go out and meet people, even after she’s introduced herself as Pamela, a few minutes later, someone will say, “Oh, Patricia.”  So Tom is pointing out that we might be fooling ourselves with some examples of what we think are Mandela Effects, that actually have more to do with the fallibility of our minds and memories.

In the more than 20 years of research I’ve been conducting in this field of the Mandela Effect and reality shifts, I’ve been careful to winnow out cases in which this kind of mental error occurs.  I’ve also referenced this past year the work of Tony Jinks and his book, Disappearing Object Phenomenon: An Investigation, since he made a comparison of experiencers of personal Mandela Effects (or DOP, or reality shifts), and found no statistically significant differences in mental functioning and processes of experiencers versus non-experiencers.

While I’ve witnessed cases of what Tom calls pattern-matching, and what researchers like Elizabeth Loftus refer to as false memories, I have been careful to include first-hand reality shift reports in the hundreds of pages in the Your Stories section of the realityshifters website where experiencers are certain they are not simply mis-remembering.  Elizabeth Loftus was surprised to learn that she was ‘mis-remembering’ some things when she appeared on the Mandela Monthly show with Moneybags73 and the Ripon Rabbit in July 2020.

(3) Collective Consciousness

The third factor that Tom Campbell considers as involved in people experiencing the Mandela Effect has to do with the way collective consciousness operates with attributes of perception, where we are part of a group or community.

“Another thing we should think about that’s in this thing too is there’s a thing called collective consciousness.  Collective consciousness is any group of people who have a connection who feel they have a connection together.  They basically form a collective consciousness.  So you have have a collective consciousness where you work with all the people you work with, there’s a collective consciousness that goes with that.  Or if you do child care, there’s a collective consciousness that goes with that.  You have a collective consciousness with your nation; you have one with humanity.  You know, Carl Jung called these archetypes. They’re basically collective consciousness pieces that you identify with and you connect.  Well, the collective consciousness is just the vector sum of all the consciousness that are in the membership that are in the group.  So you get stuff out of that collective consciousness, and you take it on.  So you know you become more like that.  Now you affect the whole, but you only affect the whole a little bit, because you’re one person and there’s maybe 10,000 in your collective, so you don’t affect the whole that much, but the whole affects you more.  So you work for IBM and after you’ve been there 4 or 5 years, guess what?  You start wearing blue shirts, you start dressing like they do, you start talking like they do, you start having the same interests that they do, because it’s part of the collective consciousness.”

This is really interesting, since it helps to clarify how sometimes we might see someone start to remember something as a Mandela Effect, and then within a few minutes we might witness them “take the download” or succumb to the “Mr. Smith Effect” where suddenly they say that actually, it seems to them that what they remember is whatever matches the current historical records.  Sometimes, we might even notice the influence of the collective consciousness groups we belong to if we start remembering something more than one way.  It can feel like we remember both, yet know that’s impossible, since we must have only had one previous timeline of choices and events.

(4) Paranormal Likes to Open Our Minds

This fourth factor involves the way the Cosmos engages with us in order to get our attention and open our mind to new and expanded possibilities.  Tom incorporates the idea of the fundamental consciousness, or Larger Consciousness System (LCS) here:

“Sometimes the LCS can change things up on us just to get our attention and open our mind.  It likes to do that.  For instance, crop circles.  You know you have crop circles and overnight, one night… totally dark, maybe a few lights running around, no sound.  And the next morning, you’ve got 34 acres covered with a very complex design that isn’t just straight lines.  It’s all kinds of curves and things that would probably take a surveying crew of 20 people like three weeks to lay it out with their transoms if they were trying to do it.  So the system does things like that just as a wake up calls: ‘Hey! Think out of the box!  Reality is not just this little thing you think it is. Open your mind.’  You know there’s more going on here than you’re aware of.  Well again we jump to conclusions and make up the first thing comes to our mind, ‘Oh, aliens did it–you know, the aliens must be doing those things.’  Well, not necessarily.  You know the Larger Consciousness System triggers lots of people with paranormal experiences, just to open their minds.  I got triggered to open my mind with an ability to debug software.  I know a lady who a week after her mother died, she got a phone call from her mother–the phone rang, she picks up the phone and it’s Mom, telling her that ‘I’m okay. I just wanted to let you know everything’s fine,’ and of course she was freaked out, so she took the phone and slammed it down onto the receiver, because she thought somebody was messing with her, and what a cruel joke it was.  And then she realized that wasn’t the case at all–she just hung up on her mother who was trying to get in touch with her.  So people have these kinds of things.  The system goes out of its way to help us see bigger pictures, because only when we see bigger pictures do we start becoming seekers and start learning and growing.  So the system does that all over, so part of the Mandela Effect that was my fourth one is that the system often plays these sorts of games just to rattle us a little bit–to get us to open our mind, and think out of the box, instead of just being stuck in this little materialist groove.  And it just does that to individuals and it does that like in crop circles to whole populations and it does other things as well.  So a lot of the extraterrestrial things that people see you know, with spaceships landing in their yard and chatting with aliens and so on–all the system has to do to create that is put that data in their data stream.  That’s it.  And then it’s there, it’s real.  They interpret it, and it wakes them up and after that, they’re different people.  They start researching.  They start wanting to understand things.  So that’s part of the Mandela Effect.”

This concept of getting our attention is something I discuss in my book, Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World, and it is thoroughly covered in the book Contact Modalities: The Keys to the Universe by Grant Cameron and Desta Barnabe.  Clearly, one of the biggest messages I’ve gotten when asking the Cosmos, “Why do these things such as reality shifts happen?” is the simple two word answer:  “Be Cause.”  This is a time of  Great Awakening, where we can step into our larger consciousness ‘shoes’ with some truly wonderful reality shifting and quantum jumping capabilities.

How good CAN it get?

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Cameron, Grant and Barnabe, Desta.  Contact Modalities: The Keys to the Universe.  2020.

Campbell, Thomas W.  My Big TOE:  Awakening.  Lightning Strike Books.  2003.

Jinks, Tony.  Disappearing Object Phenomenon:  An Investigation.  McFarland & Co.  2016.

Larson, Cynthia.  Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. 2012.

Weissmann, George, and Cynthia Sue Larson. “The quantum paradigm and challenging the objectivity assumption.” Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2017): 281-297.

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters

What’s the Meaning of the Mandela Effect?

The Mandela Effect is now mainstream enough to qualify its very own topic on the TV show Jeopardy TV show, and as the topic for the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle.  While some media sources might maintain “there’s nothing to see here” since supposedly it can all be explained as mass misremembering, a steadily growing number of people feel quite differently.  I asked the question on several social media platforms, “What does the Mandela Effect mean to you?” and I was delighted to receive so many insightful responses. 

What the Mandela Effect Means to Me

I’ve dedicated decades of my life’s work to exploring the phenomena of reality shifts, quantum jumps, and the Mandela Effect–and related aspects of mind-matter interaction.  I’ve been publishing online first-hand accounts of reality shifts and Mandela Effects since the 1990s, in what is possibly the oldest and largest such publicly available archive.  Recently, I’ve been part of monthly IMEC Open Tables live-stream events on the International Mandela Effect Conference’s YouTube channel.  What I haven’t talked much about–until now–is why am I dedicating my life’s work to researching this subject?

The simplest answer to this question is that I’ve had a lifelong dedication to and fascination with the nature of reality–and consciousness.  Thanks to a number of my own personal life experiences, I’ve been keenly aware that my thoughts and feelings definitely influence physical reality.  We now see scientific evidence to support that this is true, in such phenomena as the placebo effect, which I write about in my book, Quantum Jumps.

The more complete answer is that I believe the Mandela Effect helps show mankind a way that together, we can collectively experience changes to our shared reality–including changes to historical events.  We can experience miraculous reality shifts, quantum jumps, and timeline jumps together. 

What the Mandela Effect Means for All of Us

This past month I asked people in several different places on social media, including my YouTube community, my Facebook page, and various Facebook groups. I got some wonderful responses.  Here are some that express how so many of us are feeling about this topic at this time.

“… it means that we create our realities.  We can see/know beyond what we’re being told is truth.  Life is what you make it.”

“… it means I shifted my reality, and Mandela Effect episodes are an artifact of the ones I left.  It’s evidence to me my intentions to level up were successful.”

“I personally just find it to be something fun and exciting in my life; I know the deeper meanings, however I get a kick out of seeing a supposedly solid reality changing in front of my eyes.”

“They show me how I/we are progressing and expanding into different timelines and alternate/parallel realities.  It makes me way too excited every time I notice something, because I feel it is a sign I am doing something good and moving in a positive direction.”

“I generally think that the universe, All That Is, etc… is trying to get my attention.”

“… it means learning how to survive in almost a new environment.  At first it was like I was propelled into a different dimension, but as time goes by I am adapting to it.”

“It means we can shift this reality into a more love-ful and aware state when the collective will truly wishes for it.  It gives me hope.”

“For me, so-called ‘reality’ exists, but not the way we think it exists.  It is plastic, mold-able.  There is no cnocrete, solid, objective we can point to and say, ‘this is the only thing that is real.’–That is a mental, socialized construct that we all want to agree on, so we can feel comfort.”

“My opinions keep fluctuating as I keep trying to make sense of it; it means different things as I grow through them.”

“We are coming together as timelines merge and solidify.”

“Merging and aligning with highest Golden timeline.”

“I think it is a natural part of our evolution into higher dimensions–the effect will become more frequent and speed up to where our thoughts can manifest instantly and our lives are symphony of synchronicity. It will be accepted as our everyday reality that the past, present and future shift instantly. I had a glimpse once of what it will feel like as this speeds up and, from my current perspective, it’s dizzying! Like stepping into the flow of a fast moving stream and letting go!”

“I see them as breadcrumbs letting us know that we are moving in the right direction.  The first ones I think bring us to a personal dark night of the soul, so to speak, and generally force us to work through some things on our own–mainly because it takes some personal work to realize that we aren’t crazy and that it is real.  It then allows people to decide which road they want to take.  Do we believe that it is a confabulation (as the powers that be want you to believe) or do we realize that we create our reality and we can decide, as Cynthia Sue Larson likes to ask, ‘How good can it get?’  I’ve had a lot of fun with asking kids about if they could create any animal, what would it look like?  And the results are pretty amazing! We have shifted to realities where some of them actually exist!  And we couldn’t find proof of them when I had asked them.  So it can be super exciting!”

. . . . . . . . . . .

This last comment reminds me that when I saw the movie Napolean Dynamite, I remember the main character drawing something in a sketchbook, and being asked what he was drawing.  He replied that he was drawing a “Liger,” which was a combination of a lion and a tiger.  I remember looking it up at the time, to see if such an animal existed, and seeing at that time that the movie came out in 2004, that it did not.  But this year, I noticed seeing a real living Liger, that actually is a mix of lion and tiger. 

This in turn reminds me of the perennial wisdom from indigenous wisdom keepers, that all ideas come from Nature, and that this is the true source of Original Thinking.  This idea of “original” is thus a bit different from what we often think of, in terms of presuming human ingenuity and creativity are the source of novelty.  I highly recommend meditating on this other perspective of the meaning of Nature being the true source of all “original thought”–in a kind of complete and absolute compendium of all possible ideas and notions.  To glean a sense of what this is all about, I recommend Glenn Aparicio Parry’s book, Original Thinking.

Renewed Hope

With respect to the ideas of merging timelines, the Golden Timeline,  idealism, optimalism, philosopher Nicholas Rescher’s idea of Axiogenesis, the Hopi Prophecy rock, and Revhumanism–I also love the Mandela Effect for the way it is helping us recognize how some global changes might be able to resolve otherwise seemingly insoluble problems.  Solutions can arrive as if they had always been there.  And that’s definitely part of what I envision as my best possible future reality.

Which of course reminds me that I also recommend in any and all circumstances that we all keep asking my favorite question, “How good can it get?”   Let’s find out! 

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You can watch the companion video to this blog here:

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

 

RealityShifters

Thoughts on Simulation Theory and ‘Glitch in the Matrix’

I recently saw the documentary, “Glitch in the Matrix,” where filmmaker Rodney Ascher asks the question “are we living in a simulation?”  He includes film footage of Nick Bostrom, and Philip K. Dick, as well as others intrigued by this idea.  Here are some highlights from the documentary, from my perspective.

Philip K. Dick and the Mandela Effect

I’d been looking forward to see “Glitch in the Matrix,” since I’d heard that it references the Mandela Effect.  One of the highlights for me in watching “Glitch in the Matrix” was the inclusion of Philip K. Dick’s 1977 talk in Metz, France, entitled, “If you find this world bad, you should see some of the others,” around the time the first Star Wars movie came out in theaters.  Philip K. Dick (PKD) gave this talk three years after having an extraordinary experience in his life on February 3, 1974.  After that experience and other epiphanies, PKD’s  interest in the idea of other parallel possible realities became much more pronounced.  In his 1977 talk in Metz, France, PKD expressed his expectation that some people will recall other possible histories.  In 1977 when Dick gave this talk, I was experiencing reality shifts and what would come to be known as the Mandela Effect, and I am favorably impressed by his comments about the significance and importance of people noticing alternate histories.  By the year 2010, the term “Mandela Effect” would come to be acknowledged as a worldwide phenomenon.  In his 1977 talk in Metz, PKD said, “We are living a computer programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable has changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs.  We would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present deja vu, perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words.  I submit that these impressions are valid and significant and I will even say this such an impression is a clue that it’s in past time point a variable was changed–reprogrammed as it were–and that because of this, an alternative world branched off.”

While I certainly appreciate the view that abrupt changes such as reality shifts and Mandela Effects to what has supposedly ‘always been true’ might seem similar to what we’d expect to see if we were living in a computer-programmed simulated reality, the Simulation Theory itself seems more like a description of the way we sense and experience the world, rather than a comprehensive and complete true theory of the nature of reality.

NPCs and Nothingness

The “Glitch in the Matrix” documentary shows how some people have experienced a sense of vast nothingness, when going beyond awareness of others around them.  It makes the point that such an experience of nothingness can feel quite bleak.

I had a profound experience of feeling a sense of nothingness during the time I underwent a Kundalini awakening in 1994, which was part of my spiritual awakening.  At that time, I felt a deep loneliness far beyond anything I’d ever felt before or since. I recognized in that experience that any kind of existence disconnected from all relationships with others is a truly intolerable sensation.  I found my way through that experience by knowing at a deep level that I refused to be alone, and by knowing that other realities and other worlds exist, so therefore I would make contact with other consciousness(es).  It seems to me that the meaning of noticing such vast nothingness is to remind us that we need relationships with others in a very deep, profound, and fundamental way.

Some people believe NPC (non player characters) exist, such that some people are not truly inspired nor motivated, and “Glitch in the Matrix” presents this concept–along with the potential dark side of possibly making a mistake in treating others as NPCs in a given moment, which we can come to regret when we were not acting with kindness nor compassion. When I was a little girl, I had an experience where I was shocked to witness that people–including my own family members–sometimes move through daily like on autopilot, as if they are not fully and completely present and sentient and actively making choices in each moment.  I write about this idea that so many of us are running on autopilot in my book, Reality Shifts. I discuss the importance of getting past our masks and facades, and our tendency to think, speak, and act on autopilot.  We can all be ‘called in’ to be more fully present in our lives, and this can be part of our spiritual evolution, both individually and collectively as a species. 

GANS and Human Purpose

“Glitch in the Matrix” presents the idea of GANS – Generative Adversarial NetworkS–where two (or more) Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are in competition with one another as they create simulations.  One is the FORGER whose task is to create human beings who look enough like humans to fool someone. Another AI system is called the INSPECTOR, whose job is to tell the difference between fake and actual people. Some feel it’s possible that the human role in Simulation Theory is to fine-tune and improve the Simulation according to this GANS process. 

While I agree with those in the “Glitch in the Matrix” documentary that humans are certainly capable of channeling and editing inspirational ideas, it seems clear that without any underlying sense of meaning and story and relationships, these simplistic roles would seem to hold little long-term interest for most humans.

The Dreamtime and Plato’s Cave

“Glitch in the Matrix” points out that in the movie, “The Matrix,” Neo keeps his money and special things in a book, “Simulacra and Simulation,” which is a tip-off at the start of that movie that all is not what it seems. There is a long tradition within indigenous societies of acknowledging dreams within dreams, and ‘the Dreamtime.’ This idea of dreaming the world into existence, with layers and layers of dreams and awakenings is a much more ancient concept even than Plato’s cave, to the point that there exist words to express how seemingly real physical reality is just ‘maya’–just illusion

When Neo first awakens, and wonders why his eyes don’t work, Morpheus explains, “Because you’ve never used them before.” This matches what we know scientifically, as I’ve shared in a podcast I did with Dr. Donald Hoffman:  Perception, Truth, and Reality with Donald Hoffman.  Dr. Hoffman describes how our sense of the world through our perceptions is not truly real—our experience of true reality is filtered.  Donald Hoffman talked with me about his interface theory of perception, in which what we typically assume to be “out there” is not necessarily reality–but rather something akin to the desktop user interface on a computer. And just as we don’t need to execute machine language commands in order to send an email or delete a file, biological evolution has been proven to favor perceptual fitness over truthful completeness and accuracy of perception.  As Hoffman writes, “… to experience is to construct, in each modality and without exception,” and new findings in quantum physics and quantum biology increasingly provide scientific evidence to show this is true.

Similarly, in the allegory of Plato’s Cave, the true light of the world is much more brilliant than the shadow world as seen within the cave. When Plato comes back into the cave, he sees his friends are still watching the shadow play, giving one another acknowledgement for being first to spot what’s going on. This allegory of the cave reminds me of how anyone who has enlightenment experiences feels transformed when returning to everyday life. Quite often, it’s impossible to interact with friends, family, and colleagues the same as before the epiphany and transcendant experience. It’s also challenging, if not impossible, to explain or properly convey the experience fully to others.

Will We Recognize Our Reflection?

In “Glitch in the Matrix,” Jesse Orion expresses feelings of frustration when noticing he’s been stuck in digital worlds that aren’t going so well. And then when he gets out of those games and simulations, he’s noticed he was still stuck in a reality that’s not going so well, either. And he can’t help but draw parallels, since “the grass is dead on both sides. It’s like they’re ‘quick-patching’ reality,” because (just like in glitchy games), real life is not going that well.  “People are broken. Cosmologies are broken.”   This sounds to me like “glass half full” kind of thinking, where whatever we focus our attention on, we will see more of whatever we happen to be focusing on. 

I notice that humans are becoming more capable of instantaneous manifestation, at which point our ability to maintain good emotional and energetic hygiene (keeping to good and nurturing thoughts) is becoming ever more essential to our personal and social well-being. We can start to observe how we can experience more of whatever we focus our attention and energies upon. Many of us have habits of dwelling on complaints, worries, fears, and observations of lack—rather than nurturing gratitude, appreciation, and reverence. 

PKD writes about worlds which may be inhabited by just one protagonist, or who may have others who join them in their peculiar world, or those others remained in their own worlds throughout. PKD wrote on these themes of ‘pleuriform pseudo-worlds’ because he, “was sensing the manifold of partially actualized realities, remaining tangent to the actualized one—the one that the majority of us, by consensus gentiem, agree on.” I love how PKD was so tuned in to the way that it seems people can—and often do—experience simultaneous parallel realities. I love how this matches some recent experimental findings in quantum physics, in which observational devices even at the same place and time can witness different events. This seems to clearly indicate that there may be no such thing as one ‘objective reality.’

Another character in “Glitch in the Matrix” asks the question:  “When we know we may be in a simulation, how do we ethically deal with others—when we also know others are there like me, who aren’t simulations? How do I deal with someone who’s behind a false avatar, but who I really want to communicate with?”  He also points out: “Simulation theory seems to kind of solve problems, but it really makes the problems more poignant, and in your face.” 

Again, this is such a perfect juncture to invite ourselves to find a story line we actually wish to inhabit—it’s such a great opportunity to care more about our relationships with other people, animals, plants, things, and the Earth and moon and sun and stars and sky.  When we make the most of our epiphanies through lucid dreaming and recognizing how our physical senses merely show us a kind of illusory facade that is not complete reality—we can become the change we wish to see in the world.  We can become more caring, more compassionate, more kind.  We can care more about our relationships with others. 

Divine Awakening

“Glitch in the Matrix” mentions that PKD’s friend, Tom Disch, first suggested to him that his experience on Feb 3, 1974 sounded like “Enthousiasmos” by Elijah, and PKD liked the idea, and found it pleasant.  The experience of feeling inspired by God seems uplifting, and like it would have given PKD a feeling of spiritual epiphany, which seems to have been the case.

One character in “Glitch in the Matrix” points out that: There are fundamental metaphors we have about reality, such as “life is like a journey,” and “Waking up from a dream”—and shifting between ontological realities (sometimes quite abruptly, or with intense emotions) is a fundamental, cognitive experience—is “stitched into us.” 

Yes; humans do seem to be wired to experience many levels of awakening, in order to discover many levels of identity within ourselves. Perhaps the greatest unasked question, and the question that potentially can do the most for us in terms of answering all our questions and solving all our problems is simply, “Who am I?”  

This question of identity can enable us to begin to realize our true identity is involved with co-creating our experienced dream-within-a-dream; and also that we have many levels and layers to our conscious identity. 

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I invite you to keep focusing on “How good can it get?” and watch the companion video to this blog at:

https://youtu.be/Q7Mkysze4tQ

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps.  Cynthia has a degree in physics from UC Berkeley, an MBA degree, a Doctor of Divinity, and a second degree black belt in Kuk Sool Won. Cynthia is the founder of RealityShifters, and is president of the International Mandela Effect Conference. Cynthia hosts “Living the Quantum Dream” on the DreamVisions7 radio network, and has been featured in numerous shows including Gaia, the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, One World with Deepak Chopra, and BBC. Cynthia reminds us to ask in every situation, “How good can it get?” Subscribe to her free monthly ezine at:

http://www.RealityShifters.com

 

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