Know the Full Possibility of You

” It is wisdom to know others;
It is enlightenment to know one’s self.”
— Lao Tzu

Who are you?

The first time someone asked you, “Who are you?” you might reply by saying your name. If someone asked, “Who are you?” a second time, you might state your job title, in order to provide information that helps to set you apart and explain your relationship to others.

If I was asked, “Who are you?” on a college campus, I’d likely mention that I am an alumna, or mention that I have a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley. If asked this question at an airport in France, I’d mention that I’m an American citizen who lives in California. When asked this question on a TV interview, I’d say I’m a best-selling author of the books, Quantum Jumps and Reality Shifts. If asked this question by a meditation master, I’d reply, “awareness.” While each of my answers could be considered accurate and true, a good case could also be made that none of these descriptions is who Ireally am—since there is more to me than just my name, job title, citizenship, and other descriptors. And based on what I have learned about the way we exist in a superposition of states—as can be seen in the doubling of the efficacy of the placebo effect over the past thirty years—I am aware of the importance of keeping a positive, open mind to considering myself to be doing better than how any given label or description might seemingly confine me.

One of the things we most take for granted is knowing who we are—yet this is one of the biggest areas in which we have room to increase our understanding of what is possible in our lives. People sometimes discover that they can do things they didn’t think possible—when circumstances require them to handle situations they’ve never previously faced. In an emergency, people have been known to be able to perform amazing feats of courage and strength, such as lifting a heavy car off of someone else. When some people have transformative life experiences, they often realize there is nothing holding them back from pursuing the life of their dreams, seeking out new kinds of friends, activities, and work.

One very important quality that personality tests don’t describe is what level of consciousness you are accessing at any particular moment. Such levels include: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and a sense of oneness awareness—with transitional levels in between. Some yogis and martial artists are capable of developing the ability through meditation and internal energy work of changing their level of consciousness, allowing them to interact with their environment with harmonious grace and ease. While we move between these levels of consciousness on a regular basis, we seldom give much thought to how we engage with these levels of consciousness, or who and what we’re connecting with while we’re dreaming or daydreaming, for example. What scientists can measure is that they associate some of these stages of consciousness with brain waves, with the lowest stages of unconsciousness corresponding with Delta brainwaves in the 0.5 to 4 Hz frequency range, and Theta brainwaves in the 4 to 8 Hz range. We consider ordinary waking consciousness to correspond with Alpha brainwaves between 8 to 13 Hz, and Beta brainwaves between 13 to 30 Hz. Gamma brainwaves at 30 to 42 Hz, are associated with extreme abilities to focus, and high states of ecstasy.Some employers administer personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in hopes of establishing a better fit between applicants and job openings. The idea is that such tests can help sort out tendencies people have toward being an introvert or extrovert, senser or intuitive, thinker or feeler, and judger or perceiver— providing us with clues as to how people with shared personality characteristics tend to respond to various situations. As tempting as it might be to get your MBTI score and think, “At last I know who I am! I am a ______,” filling in blank with one of the sixteen MBTI personality types, such as “INFJ” for example, for “Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judger”, psychologists are finding that people can sometimes move around from personality type to personality type, such as becoming more extroverted.

The question of who you are takes on tremendous importance at this point in history—the dawning of the Quantum Age. Due to the required inclusion of a conscious observer at the heart of quantum physics, it’s no longer possible for scientists to assume such things as that there can be a purely objective observer. In actuality, observers are known to influence every observation they make, simply by their presence and what the observer is paying attention to. And how we pay attention to ourselves can make a tremendous difference in our health, happiness, and wellbeing.

When I ask myself the question, “Who are you?” I discover I am aware of myself on many levels of being. I realize that I am much more than simply my gender, my age, my profession, my experiences, and my socio-economic information. I am much more than my types of expertise. I am more than my skills, more than my hobbies, more than my bank balance. I’m more than my nationality, more than my college degrees, and more than any other types of certifications I’ve received. There are levels of “me” that can be subsets of my body—such as “being in my head” and thinking about ideas like these. There are levels of my being that are aware of living my life for love, with tremendous heart-centeredness. There are also levels of “me” that include many possible superpositions of states of me—some that I’m more aware of than others. And there are levels of “me” based on awareness of my being entangled with and part of much more than my physical body right here, right now. With so many different answers to who I am, I’m glad to discover that the less limited and the more expansive I am with my answer to the question, “Who are you?” the more enjoyable and fulfilling my life becomes.

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/bPHVWDo91jk

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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, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, and BBC. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®

Your Senses Are a Mind•Body•Spirit Bridge

Cynthia Sue Larson

“The bridge between the body and the mind is provided by the senses, some of which are related more closely to the body, some to the mind. Because of this overlap, the senses have the potential to help the body and mind work together naturally. First, however, we must acknowledge our senses and experience them more deeply.” – Tarthang Tulku

Integrating our mind, body, and senses reacquaints us with direct experience and brings us amazing perceptual acuity. We can heighten our sensory awareness to levels most of us aren’t aware is possible. Certain tribes in Africa and South America can identify the position of Venus in daytime. A few hundred years ago, many sailors used Venus to navigate by whenever it was above the horizon, even during the day. Most people today would need some kind of shading or viewing tool to block the sunshine in order to find Venus in daylight, if they were even willing to attempt such a task.

Hyperacuity is our innate ability to feel heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. Researcher Eugene Marais showed that people under hypnosis can recognize differences between apparently identical pieces of blank paper, using minute differences such as small marks, creases, irregularities, and the position of the watermark, which would otherwise go unnoticed. Marais showed in a 1922 study how a hypnotized subject could easily distinguish between twenty apparently identical snail shells, or determine who had handled certain objects by a sense of smell alone. He devised similar experiments to show that humans have an amazing sense of direction, and this finding suggests that the homing instinct and sense of direction of animals is a natural facility that humans often suppress.

While humans may have developed intellect at the expense of sensory ability, we can recover sensory acuity. Some researchers document extraordinary cases of transposition of the senses, such as the cases Cesare Lombroso cited (1836-1909) of seeing through the skin of the ear and nose, and smelling through the chin and heel.

Many doctors are aware that High Sense Perception exists, since they use it! Some healers who feel comfortable using HSP in their diagnoses include: Barbara Brennan, W. Brugh Joy, Dr. Dolores Krieger, Dr. Shafica Karagulla, and Caroline Myss. Karagulla interviewed many medical professionals with HSP, including famous surgeons, professors of medicine, and heads of departments in large hospitals.

Perhaps part of the reason we don’t realize how sensory awareness can be heightened is that our senses are so often bombarded that we rarely notice we’ve lost some sensual acuity. We seldom take time to savor any particular sensory experience … to relish the way grass feels tickling under our bare feet, the way the surface of water feels in our bathtub when we stroke it from above with our palm, or the way our food and drink tastes as we swallow it slowly and savor its subtle consistency, texture, temperature and flavor. It rarely occurs to us to delight in the way cold air pours out of the refrigerator onto our ankles and toes when we open the door, or the way we sigh quietly when we sit or lie down. We don’t need to lose our senses of smell, taste, touch, sight and hearing as we grow older … we can refine and develop our senses. Recovering sensitivity is a great way to feel fully alive. We can improve our sensitivity at any time in life by appreciating how keen our senses are, and intending that they improve.

An amazing example of someone who did the seemingly impossible by curing his blindness is Meir Schneider, who was born with a number of eye problems including: cataracts, glaucoma, small cornea, strabismus, astigmatism and nystagmus. After five unsuccessful surgeries, he was declared legally blind. At the age of sixteen, Meir began the Bates method vision exercises and gradually gained functional vision. He now has a current unrestricted California driver’s license, sees quite well, and teaches people to heal their bodies and improve their vision to the point that wearing glasses is unnecessary. The British writer Aldous Huxley also used Dr. Bates’s exercises to recover from a condition of near-blindness.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome before we come to our senses is our belief that our eyes can never improve, or that presbyopia (or ‘middle-age farsightedness’) is an unavoidable result of aging. Neither of these beliefs need be true, and an insistence on believing in such limitations can certainly interfere with improving our sensitivity. Actually, one of the keys to improving your ability to see is simply to believe you can see, and relax. Many people notice their vision improves immediately. This has been dramatically proven to work with visual perception, and it may also work with other senses such as hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/jSAM04oLxpM

 

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This article is excerpted from Cynthia Sue Larson‘s  best-selling book, Reality Shifts, pages 159-161.

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps, Reality Shifts, Aura Advantage, High Energy Money, and Karen Kimball and the Dream Weaver’s Web, and the Aura Healing Meditations CD, but you’re just as likely to find her meditating or practicing martial arts as writing books. Cynthia has been featured in numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, and BBC. Learn how consciousness changes the physical world by subscribing to her (free!) popular monthly ezine published at: www.realityshifters.com

Quantum Jumping Tip: You’re Bigger than Any Situation

“A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” – Albert Einstein

As children, we intrinsically know the joy and value of going beyond ourselves, every time we get the chance to play. When children play, there’s an implicit understanding that all is happening in a spirit of good fun, and even when playing games with “good guys” and “bad guys,” there’s a sense that at the end of the day, regardless what happened in the game, everything’s just fine.

Children know they are much bigger than the games they are playing, so a fresh start is possible every day. This sense of wellbeing comes from the realization that as engaging as games can be, they are just games. We are bigger than any game, any problem, any situation. And in being bigger, we can see solutions to problems from a bigger-picture point of view.

One technique that is a regular part of my most successful experiences with reality shifts and quantum jumps is remembering that awareness is always larger than any given situation–that through remembering this, and through identifying with being awareness, solutions always present themselves naturally. You can see illustrations of what this kind of topography looks like if you read theoretical physics papers written by Yasunori Nomura and Raphael Bousso with Leonard Susskind, showing how the Many Worlds of the quantum realm are one and the same as the expanding multiverse. When we expand our awareness to observe larger areas, we are capable of interacting in a more expansive way that recognizes positive opportunities we are entangled with through the many possible worlds.

This tip for improving your reality shifting and quantum jumping experiences is a meditation in three parts: (1) Breathe to your lower abdomen while feeling joyful enthusiasm, (2) Imagine that your true identity is Awareness that has access to all possible realities, (3) Feel, trust and playfully follow gut feelings and intuition as they arise.

 

(1) Breathe to your lower abdomen with joyful enthusiasm

Start this meditation by taking slow, deep, steady breaths to your lower abdomen. Close your eyes and smile softly while slowing your breath down to the slowest natural rate you can reach that accommodates full and complete inhalations and exhalations. Relax, and intend that you invite joyful enthusiasm into this moment.

 

(2) Imagine Your True Identity is Awareness

Imagine that your true self is awareness–the awareness who can recognize how you are feeling and what you are thinking right now, for example. This awareness enables you to enlarge your frame of experience through nondualistic meditative processes, so you can experience firsthand that you are always larger than whatever concerns you have. In this moment, right here and right now, everything is just fine.  Intend that you are now experiencing a sense of being more than any dichotomy or category that your rational, analytical mind can label, and rather a sense of awareness that exists always and everywhere.

 

(3) Feel, trust, and playfully follow gut feelings and intuition

You can now access a state of being-ness in which you feel inspired to be in the right place at the right time, doing what feels best. Allowing yourself to trust this inner knowingness can guide you to experience some of the most extraordinary experiences in your life, so you can feel like you are living in a waking dream. This kind of experience is one of doing what feels right to do in this moment, and living each moment of the day in this way. This is the state of consciousness I describe in my book, Reality Shifts, as Lucid Living, and it’s available and possible for us all. From such a state of consciousness, we have the ability to transcend limitations that we may have presumed to be walls or barriers in our lives.Staying in the present moment, feeling what feels most joyful and beneficial, and being at one with that feeling provides the setting for experiencing the greatest, most satisfying coincidences, synchronicity, miracles and extraordinary events.

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/6OrbQ10nc1Q

 

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps, Reality Shifts, Aura Advantage, High Energy Money, and Karen Kimball and the Dream Weaver’s Web, and the Aura Healing Meditations CD, but you’re just as likely to find her meditating or practicing martial arts as writing books. Cynthia has been featured in numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, and BBC. Learn how consciousness changes the physical world by subscribing to her (free!) popular monthly ezine published at: www.realityshifters.com

Top 5 Quantum Jumping Myths — Busted!

Gauging by some of the comments and questions I hear about reality shifts and quantum jumps, there is a fair bit of confusion about exactly what might be in store for someone contemplating making a quantum jump. Some recent reviews posted for Quantum Jumps at amazon indicate there are some pretty big misunderstandings about what it’s all about. Let’s take a look at the top myths about quantum jumps, and get some clarification about what’s going on.

 

MYTH #1: Quantum Jumps Only Occur in the Quantum Realm  

This misconception apparently comes about from the belief by some that the phrase “quantum jump” has been misappropriated, and resides only in the domain of quantum physics. As with many phrases in the English language, including many scientific concepts, what starts out meaning only one thing can often end up meaning much more. Some concepts are much more central than others, and can thus be expected to be encountered far beyond where they were originally intended. Dr. Warren Nagourney of the University of Washington described the palpable excitement felt by the teams of physicists who first witnessed quantum jumps with their own eyes,

“You have to hold yourself steady and look for minutes at a time, and then you’ll see it switch. You see the trapped ion blinking on and off, and each blink is a quantum jump. It’s a striking illustration that things occur discontinuously in nature.” 

While it’s true that in 1986 when the above observations were made, the quantum jumps being referred to were only those of quantum particles, there has been progress since then in terms of increasing numbers of physicists coming around to believe, as growing numbers of physicists including UC Berkeley University’s Raphael Bousso and Stanford University’s Leonard Susskind assert in their 2011 paper published in High Energy Physics,

“… the many worlds of quantum mechanics and the many worlds of the multiverse are the same thing, and that the multiverse is necessary to give exact operational meaning to probabilistic predictions from quantum mechanics.” 

 

MYTH #2: The Multiverse is an Unprovable Theory, and therefore Not Scientific

Very recently a method was devised by which the idea that the multiverse could be tested, using mathematical models that show what we would expect to find in our universe if bubble universes collided. Being able to prove or disprove a theory is essential in order for a theory to be considered scientific, so it’s big news that we will soon know what to look for astronomically that matches what computer models will show us we’ll expect to see when bubble universes in the multiverse crash into one another. Perimeter Institute’s Matthew Johnson is creating a computer simulation of our universe, which he says, “is easy.”  Thanks to computer simulations, it’s now possible to rule out certain models of the multiverse, so if we are living in a bubble universe, there is a chance we might be able to confirm this is actually so.

 

MYTH #3: Quantum Jumps Encourage Unethical Identity Theft

There is a concern that some people have that if many possible versions of you and many possible versions of me exist in the multiverse, then messing around with other possible realities is just looking for trouble, and we should keep to our own universe without engaging with others, thank you very much. I would not have even known about this concern, had it not been brought to my attention by an alert book reviewer at amazon, who voices a concern that my book, Quantum Jumps, is a how-to guide for cosmic identity theft. If you’re having trouble following what this reader is concerned about, they summarize the concern as, “If you are immoral enough to destroy another person’s life to benefit your own, then be aware that it could be YOUR life being screwed up by a version of yourself who is better at quantum jumping.”  The best way to straighten out this misunderstanding is to return to physics papers written by UC Berkeley University’s Yasunori Nomura, and also by Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind. The key concept is that while growing numbers of eminent physicists are coming to agreement that it looks quite likely that the many worlds of quantum physics are one and the same as the multiverse, the way this comes into being is a matter of probabilities. Put more simply, when you make a jump to another reality, you are not messing up someone else’s life by giving them a worse state of affairs so much as you are experiencing a different path down the decision tree of your life, based on new information.

 

MYTH #4: You Might Get Trapped in an Alternate Universe

Fears of becoming trapped in some alternate universe without any way to return home are unfounded, based on all reports I’ve so far heard from people who have experienced remarkable shifts in reality. The idea of “home” in a multiverse that exists in probability space actually implies that we are physically experiencing one particular universe amongst multitudes of possible universes, much the same way that while you might imagine many possible travel routes to get from one place to another, you only physically experience one.

 

MYTH #5: If You Don’t See Instant Results, Quantum Jumps Don’t Work 

Mastering quantum jumping abilities at a level of proficiency some people expect immediately creates unrealistic expectations. There are skills involved, some of which require a body of prior practice and experience. Just as you wouldn’t expect to be able to be an award-winning chef after taking cooking lessons for a month, or be able to play first violin with the London Symphony Orchestra after a few weeks of training. Mastering the art of quantum jumping requires developing skills in honing your internal energy, or Qi; clearing your energy body of blockages and fears; and moving into a state of being-doing-awareness that is very different than the typical left-brain thinking based on categories and labels that is so prevalent in the western way of thinking and living.

 

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/Fz8C6tmXgCk

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps, Reality Shifts, Aura Advantage, High Energy Money, and Karen Kimball and the Dream Weaver’s Web, and the Aura Healing Meditations CD, but you’re just as likely to find her meditating or practicing martial arts as writing books. Cynthia has been featured in numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, and BBC. Learn how consciousness changes the physical world by subscribing to her (free!) popular monthly ezine published at: www.realityshifters.com

Top Ten Ways to Shift Reality and Quantum Jump

 

Our thoughts and feelings change the world around us, whether we’re aware of it or not. We get lots of little clues this is happening when we pay attention; we’ve all had days when we can’t find our car keys because they aren’t where we know we put them, or we discover one sock is missing from our load of clothing that just came out of the dryer. At times like these, it can feel like “Shift Happens! #@$! “

 

The good news is that we don’t need to suffer from discordant thoughts and feelings! We can learn how to minimize the frustrating reality shifts, and learn to make our favorite dreams come true.

 

1. Pay Attention 
The world seems full of whatever we focus our attention on. When you’re thinking of buying a new car, you see the kind of car you’re thinking of almost everywhere you go. Be sure to start looking for evidence that indicates your wishes and prayers are being answered. Seeing the world with a Zen “beginner’s mind” is the key to paying attention properly in this present moment, right here, right now. Meditating daily helps you make time each day to quiet inner self talk and become increasingly mindful and attentive.

2. Appreciate 
Being grateful for what we have is the best way to receive more of what we most enjoy. Expressing appreciation and thanks feels good and helps us continue to pay attention to what we most love, allowing more good experiences to come our way. When making a few moments each day to review what you’re grateful for, be sure to truly feel thankful as an emotion that builds and increases inside you with every breath you take. 

3. Review the Scientific Studies 
Reproducible, double-blind scientific studies conducted by doctors in real-life hospital situations are now proving that distant healing through prayer and meditation improves the health of those being prayed for. The wishes and prayers have come from people with a wide range of beliefs, indicating that we are all non-locally connected and can influence physical reality from great distances.

4. Revise Your Assumptions 
The old assumptions that we can be objective observers without influencing what we’re watching or having any long-distance effects have been scientifically disproved with recent quantum physics experiments. We now know that we can only make predictions in terms of probabilities, and that we can’t disregard consciousness or spirit simply because we can’t measure those things. Many of our views of who we are and how we ought to live can change in very positive ways as we take time for reflection, meditation, and reviewing what we believe to be true about ourselves and the multiverse we live in.

5. Energize Yourself 
Take a few minutes to reverse the damage stress causes to your body every day. Breathe love in, feeling it in your heart, and recall some of your favorite memories. These feelings of Love will energize you tremendously, which increases the probability that you will experience enjoyable reality shifts. You can dowse your energy field and the energy fields around others to see how energized people are using dowsing rods, metal coat hangers, or even your hands.  

6. Reverse Negative Self-Talk 
Our inner self-talk is a running dialogue with the universe. When self-talk consists of put-downs and negativity, it directly interferes with anything good we wish to observe. We can minimize negative self-talk by first quieting the mind in order to hear what kinds of self talk are going on, and then “flipping” each negative statement we notice around, making positive affirmations out of reversed statements. Posting these affirmations and reading them every day is a powerful way to remove the destructive interference with personalized affirmations. 

Reality Shifts is now available as an audiobook!

7. Feel Non-Locally Interconnected 
Just as quantum particles are found to be intimately interconnected with twin particles located great distances away, we also are non-locally interconnected with everything and everyone we love. Though you may sometimes feel lonely, the truth is that you are never alone, isolated, or cut off from everyone. You are connected with everyone and everything else in the multiverse that you affect All That Is. 

8. Visualize What You Desire
Visualize what you most desire to experience in your life–all your favorite, wildest dreams–with the idea in mind that we actually create reality as we observe it. As we think and feel, so we become. One of the best ways to see wishes come true is to visualize and feel them clearly with all your heart, and then let them go, much as Jane and Michael Banks, the children in the movie “Mary Poppins,” do after singing a poem about what they wish for in a nanny. 

9. Let Go of Wishes 
The best way to make our favorite dreams come true after we’ve visualized them is to release them. This gives them the degrees of freedom required to exist unobserved as pure energy waves, before our observation collapses the wave functions and one possibility materializes. Returning to the example of making wishes from the movie, “Mary Poppins,” Jane and Michael Banks’ father throws their wish list of qualities into the fireplace, representing the necessary step of letting go–which floats up the chimney to the clouds where Mary Poppins finds and responds to it.

10. Choose Your Attitude 
The most important thing to remember when you face challenges or seemingly impossible situations is to remember that reality can shift! You can choose to replace your feelings of stress, fear, or anger and breathe Love. Choose to let the wise, timeless part of you do the thinking… from your heart. The more you practice this meditation of “thinking with your heart,” the easier it will be, and the more wonderful reality shifts you’ll experience! 

 

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/KHhhpxtoC0k

The Power of Attention: Fine-Tuning Our Focus

I noted on a morning walk this month while walking our family dog on a route we have been taking quite often on our daily walks over the last several years, we passed a house marked with a whimsical sign:”Place Trilling.”

Though I’d seen this same sign and this same house day after day for many years, on this particular day the thought occurred to me that this might be the house of my favorite UC Berkeley physics professor, Professor Trilling. I imagined how nice it would be to see Professor Trilling again, and that it would be especially wonderful to get to say “Hello!” and tell him how well I remember him and his wonderful physics classes at UC Berkeley after all these years. It’s well worth mentioning that I was in a meditative state when these thoughts occurred to me, as I often meditate while I walk, and on this day I was in a particularly blissfully meditative state of mind.

our dog

The very next day, while walking our dog along the same route and past the same house, I saw an elderly gentleman assisted by a middle-aged man getting into a car. As I walked past, I thought about interrupting to inquire whether this was the Trilling I’d studied physics with some three decades ago, but couldn’t bring myself to interrupt them. I would have kept on walking, but my dog stopped abruptly in his tracks, completely transfixed by a goat sculpture he saw standing in the car port next door.

intriguing goat sculpture

Our dog loves goats, but I’d never seen him so captivated and enthralled by any piece of artwork before! In the moments that passed, he pulled vigorously toward the life-sized wooden goat sculpture, complete with its tattered wool coat and beautifully carved wooden horns. Thanks to this interruption in our walk, a few moments later I realized I had the opening I needed to introduce myself to the middle-aged man, who had finished helping Professor Trilling into the front seat, so I tugged my dog along with me on his leash over toward their car.

Professor Trilling

“Excuse me,” I said, “Is this Professor Trilling? I was a student of his at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, and he was a favorite professor of mine!” The man looked surprised at first, then nodded and said, “Yes he is.” I proceeded to tell him how much I loved Professor Trilling’s classes, and that he was my favorite physics professor at UC Berkeley, and the man suggested I tell Professor Trilling myself. I replied that I didn’t want to bother him, but the man replied, “He’ll be happy to hear from you!”  So I walked up to the car and spoke to Professor Trilling directly, telling him how much his classes meant to me, and that I’d never forgotten him or his wonderful teaching after all these years.

The significance of this sequence of remarkable events of:

(1) finding out that this indeed was the home of professor Trilling,

(2) getting a chance to know whether professor Trilling is still alive and well, and

(3) having the opportunity to thank professor Trilling in person for being one of my favorite physics professors at UC Berkeley.

The fact that all this came about thanks to my being stopped by our dog’s fascination with goats at just the right place and time to provide the perfect opportunity to introduce myself was not lost on me. Thanks to his focused attention on something of tremendous interest to him (goats), I was able to experience something of great meaning to me that I was focused on (professor Trilling).

Experiencing these kinds of coincidences between what I pay attention to and how subsequent events unfold can at times like these be so precisely tuned when I’m in meditative states as I am during my walks, that I have a vibrant sense of living in a waking dream… or what’s known as “lucid living” as described in Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World. For me, being in a meditative state is akin to letting go of feeling attached to any particular reality while being fully present and open to experiencing what is right here, right now. In my walking meditations, I am often in a state of feeling blissfully unconcerned about worries about the future, regrets about the past, or any other emotional baggage or “stuff.” Time and time again, whatever I think about and feel strongly about in such a state of consciousness comes into being. This is a special way of paying attention to myself and those I care most about, including my dog and his love for goats, and the possibility of reconnecting with a favorite professor.

“Quantum Jumps” front and back cover art

Fine-tuning our focus of attention thus becomes a skill of remarkable influence and meaning, as the seemingly simple act of focusing awareness is capable of making connections through vast unseen realms, across multitudes of parallel worlds of possibility. From our vantage point, the world still appears “normal,” and life goes on… yet at some point in the near future, chances are very good we’ll see evidence of the direction we chose to focus on just now. At such times, we might be witnessing evidence that we live in a holographic multiverse, which is not the multiverse you may have heard of in which each parallel universe is completely separate from all others, but instead is a multiverse of interconnected possibilities. To be alive in such a multiverse is in some very real sense to be aware of other possible me’s and other possible you’s… to have a sense of imagination that we might be happier, healthier, or more creatively involved, for example, than we currently are…. and that we can make quantum jumps to those realities.

These kinds of jumps are part of our everyday normal experience of life in a reality that is primarily quantum in nature… though what we often speak about being most real is the material reality of classical physics… until such time as we remember some of the most important “things” aren’t things at all. Love is one of those completely unmeasurable “things” that has no part in classical material physics, just as consciousness is not considered necessary either. Though anyone who has ever fallen in love, had a child, or experienced the death of a loved one will surely agree that a scientific explanation for reality that does not include such things is obviously incomplete.

 

The video version of this blog post can be found on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/Ej-sKdvm3mo

Welcome to the Quantum Age

While it’s true that we just left the Industrial Age behind a few short decades ago as we entered the Information Age, the times are again changing, as we are now arriving at the dawn of the Quantum Age.

Such a bold statement demands an explanation, I realize. Like most changes in eras of time throughout human history–from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Iron Age to the Industrial Age and the Information Age–this one too is based on new ideas and technology. There is right now a race to build quantum computers, which is driving forward a staggering number of new discoveries in the realm of quantum physics on a weekly basis. These new Quantum Age computers are to our current classical Information Age computers as typewriters are to laptops… a technological leap forward in exponential orders of magnitude.This race to build the first working quantum computers is rocking our world to its very foundation, as quantum processes are being demonstrated at room temperatures on the macroscopic scale in repeatable laboratory conditions.

You can better appreciate the origins of our current Information Age by taking a look at the first classical computers. Our first computers became commonplace in the 1930s and 1940s, with the hefty accomplishments of the ENIAC computer’s memorable debut. This gigantic milestone computer weighed in at thirty metric tons. Although it needed to be rewired in order to be reprogrammed initially and operated without any operating system, the ENIAC captured public attention and helped popularize the idea of computing as essential to everyday business and life. The first computers changed peoples’ lives and way of thinking far beyond what was originally envisioned, making the world better connected and informed than at any previous point in history.

Quantum Age Computing: The Power of the Qubit

Whereas classical computers are based on a principle of recordable, reproducible facts in the form of flat, two dimensional world of zeros and ones, Quantum Age computers are based on the physics of possibility. And what makes Quantum Age computers possible is a brand new idea we’ll become much more familiar with as we move more fully into the Quantum Age–the qubit.

The qubit, or quantum bit, is the simplest building block of quantum information. Qubits are designed to handle simultaneously superimposed possibilities, working together in entangled clusters of computational coherent complexity. A single quantum memory is capable of envisioning, for example, every single possible path home you can take during rush hour–all at once–so a quantum computer can instantaneously select the fastest possible route. Whereas classical computers have difficulty solving practical problems such as these, these real-life problems are tailor-made for quantum computers and natural quantum computational capabilities built into the photosynthesis process in plants.

Another mind-boggling difference between classical computers and Quantum Age computers is that qubits are much more than the sum of their parts. Whereas the bits and bytes of classical computers become just slightly more interesting and complex when more of them come together, truly mind-bending possibilities arise when two or more qubits are working together. Qubits work together in ways unlike anything ever seen in classical computing, beginning with entanglement, so that any single-qubit measurement performed will give a totally random result, whereas any time such a single-qubit measurement is performed on two entangled qubits, the two measurements will give opposite results. If you picture two entangled qubits as entangled coins being randomly flipped some great distance apart, so that whenever one came up Heads, the other would always be Tails, you see how very different the basics of Quantum Computing are from Classical computing.

Feeling the Pulse of Various Parallel Realities

One of the basic aspects of quantum computing is that energy is required to make a jump from one state to another. When quantum particles are observed to make a quantum jump, they can be seen to blink out of and into existence, like bright flashes of light, as they make the jump. There is an “oscillating phase” of vibration associated with each energy level state, so the faster the vibration, the higher the level of energy required to exist in that state. And whenever the energy of any one of the entangled particles in an entangled state increase energy, the entire entangled group of particles beat faster in that potential reality.

The Impact of Quantum Computing on Daily Life

The very existence of qubits and entanglement is already having a powerful impact on society, in similar fashion to the way the advent of ever-smaller classical computers and the internet has had on our lives in the past several decades. While most people might not be able to explain the difference between a bit and a byte, or explain the difference between RAM and ROM in a computer, there is now a great reliance upon global communication via a freely accessible internet for communication of news from person to person and group to group.

First proposed in the 1980’s, quantum computing is expected to change everything from the way the stock market functions to every aspect of information security, weather forecasting, and trend analysis. Thanks to quantum superposition of states, quantum qubits contain information in all possible states, and entangled qubits thus have the capability to efficiently compute optimal solutions for some of the most complex, vexing and currently “unsolvable” problems known to man.

The first quantum computers for sale fetched fifteen million dollars, and was purchased by NASA and Google. The size of a large garden shed, the Canadian D-Wave-Two is the first commercially available quantum computer to hit the marketplace, and heralds the start of a brand new age of computing… and civilization.

The Quantum Age Mindset

The Zen of qubit processing logic can be more easily understood from an Eastern fourfold logic view. Rather than adopting a simple Yes/No, Zero/One, True/False dichotomy of classical computing bits, qubits exist in the realm of such possibilities as: True, False, True-and-False, and Not-True/Not-False. Such a lack of certainty in favor of optimization may seem strange at first, but this seemingly fuzzy logic is one of the core foundational aspects of the new Quantum Age.

The Quantum Age invites us to embrace uncertainty, recognize interconnectedness, and raise our level of energy in order to experience a better way of life. Through quantum entanglement, we find a mechanism by which to comprehend intuition. Through quantum teleportation we see how we can sometimes travel farther in less time. Through quantum coherence we better understand synchronicity and coincidence, and through quantum superposition we glean insights into spontaneous remissions from disease that can occur when people are in lucid dream or near death experience (NDE) states of mind.

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

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Juicy Reality Shifting with Lilou Macé

I was just interviewed by Lilou Macé in my garden for her Juicy Living Tour, which was a truly delightful experience. To prepare for her arrival at my home, I’d cleaned and dusted my living room book shelves, thinking Lilou might wish to gaze upon some of the books I love and cherish… but when Lilou and her assistant arrived, the morning sunshine and our canine backyard ambassador beckoned, so we filmed our conversation in the garden.

I’m a big fan of Lilou Macé’s, ever since finding her wonderful interviews of best-selling author Dr. Larry Dossey on YouTube. I love Lilou’s interviews with Dr. Dossey and his beautiful wife Barbara Dossey, because they capture the best sense of who they are as human beings, and what his passions and interests are. I was thoroughly charmed by the tour of their book shelves, showing a Tibetan labyrinth meditation, and a great way to relax when traveling… with needlepoint! As it turns out, one of the interviews I love best of all–the Dossey home tour in which Lilou walked around Dr. Dossey’s home and talked with Larry and Barbara about books on their book shelves, Dr. Dossey’s service years in Vietnam, oriental dragons, and treasures from their travels–was one of the first Juicy Living interviews Lilou ever did! I loved the effortless way she raised interesting topics for discussion with Larry and Barbara Dossey, and the way the conversation flowed so naturally. I truly felt like it was the next best thing to being there, and felt totally at home. This, to me, is what makes Lilou’s Juicy Living Tour such a delight and joy to watch–that feeling that you’re right there with her, enjoying fascinating heartfelt conversations with good friends.

Lilou and I talked about energy, fearlessness, love, meditation, near death experiences, time shifting, reality shifts, and what’s involved in shifting gears energetically to achieve a higher vibrational state that accesses a parallel universe reality you’d like to experience.

Lilou Macé asked me specifically about time shifting, which is an interesting variety of reality shifting. One of the ways most people experience time shifting is when they find they’ve gone very far in a short amount of time. Lilou pointed out it would be nice to be able to control this ability, and have access to it when one wishes. We also talked about bilocation, and the way sometimes people are seen in more than one place at the same time. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions when I was daydreaming that I was exactly where people later told me they’d observed me to be.

The best way I know to help ensure these positive types of reality shifts occur more frequently is to meditate more often. I told Lilou Macé that meditation is something we can do that takes us to no-when–the place where all time is accessible–the place that near death experiencers like Anita Moorjani describe having visited. Meditation can act a lot like putting our foot on the clutch pedal of a stick-shift car, which serves to disengage the gears (this reality), allowing us to move up to another parallel universe (another reality). When we combine favorite relaxation activities with favorite ways to focus our attention, we see there are many types of meditation open to us. Gardening, doing dishes… and even doing interviews can be forms of meditation!

We talked about how at this time when physicists have found what appears to be the Higgs Boson through experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the Holographic Multiverse Interpretation of quantum physics appears to now be the leading explanation for how reality works. According to this interpretation, we exist in a multiverse of parallel universes with many possible you’s and many possible me’s. We can experience new realities when we bridge the gap between two universes of possibility, and such bridging happens naturally when we access a “no-when” state of mind.

I talked with Lilou Macé about my favorite question, “How good can it get?!” and the way it serves to access fresh new imaginative ideas and inspiration that the universe can then share with you!

Near the end of my video interview with Lilou, we both shared our mutual adoration and respect for best-selling author and inspirational visionary, Dr. Larry Dossey! Here is a link to my interview with Lilou, followed by her video from her visit to the Dossey home. Enjoy!

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

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Quantum Jumping to Find True Love

Imagine that everything in your life has been a dream, and you are just waking up for the first time right now. Can you feel a jolt of energy as you look around your surroundings–with a fresh sense of wonder that in some way you are here for the first time?

This exercise is designed to improve mindful awareness. When you envision you are starting your life with a completely fresh beginning in this very moment… you can feel a heightened state of awareness regarding all the possibilities open to you right here, right now. Mindfulness is the key to appreciating the reality we’re currently in, as well as recognizing the direction we’re moving in, and the direction we’d most like to go.

HALT! Are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired?

Notice whether you’re feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired (H.A.L.T.). If you are feeling any of these things, you must first take care of your basic needs. Just as grocery shoppers are advised not to go shopping on an empty stomach so as to not purchase impulse items that tend to be junk food rather that what’s best for us, all life changes you make will be better coming from a place of strength.

When you’ve halted for just a moment to ask, “Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?” you can rise above relapsing into any old patterns you’d rather leave behind. Eat good food if you’re hungry. Get more sleep and rest if you’re tired. Exercise, write in a private journal, or talk with a trusted friend if you’re angry. Connect with others if you’re lonely.

Envision Seeing a Possible You with Your True Love

In a multiverse in which every single physical thing–including you–exists in a superposition of states, there are a multitude of options open to you right now. This means that amidst infinite possibilities, there is a you who has already found true love and is enjoying a healthy, respectful, loving relationship right now. This possible you knows the secret to how to find and keep true love, is enjoying the benefits of being in a wonderful relationship… and can help you find true love in your life.

You can envision meeting this possible you through entering a daydream or meditation state, imagining all the details of being in the presence of this possible you. Know that simply being in the presence of this possible you grants you access to feeling, knowing, and harmonizing your thoughts, emotions, and feelings with the state of being in a relationship based on true love. While you might be tempted to focus on the person your parallel self is in a relationship with, and that’s OK, make sure you pay special attention to the alternate you. Notice what that you is wearing, what that other you is saying, how that other you is behaving in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

As you see a possible you enjoying being in such a positive relationship, get the attention of that possible you, and ask to receive whatever it takes so you, too, can find and keep your true love in your life.

Make the Quantum Jump

When you come out of the meditation / daydream in which you saw and felt a possible you with your true love, take some time to write down what you noticed, if anything, that was different about how the possible you who’s found true love spoke, moved, and interacted.

Write down whatever you may have received from the other possible you who is already with their true love. If you got a sense of receiving feelings of confidence or being more relaxed, for example, describe what you felt. If you felt a sense of knowing you are intrinsically worthy of love, jot down everything that will later remind you of how that felt. If you heard your other parallel universes self tell you something, write it down. The idea here is to lock on to the sense of being at one with the feeling of experiencing true love.

Most of all, remember the feeling you get of being in such a loving relationship. Now that you’ve seen another possible you in an ideal relationship based on true love, know that this is attainable for you. You can also remind yourself of what true love relationships are all about by reading books, watching movies, and listening to songs that take you to that blissful, ecstatic state. By locking onto these new emotional / energetic coordinates, you are helping ensure this reality is on a bee-line straight to you.

The Honeymoon Effect

If you’ve had past relationships that were less than stellar, and doubt your ability to experience true love, I think you’ll love the wonderful new book by biologist, Bruce Lipton, The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth. One of the things I love most about Bruce Lipton is the fearless way he shares intimate details about his life, with such joy and contagious zest for life that one feels one’s spirits lifting even when hearing tales of past traumatic events. What makes Lipton’s new book, “The Honeymoon Effect” such a treasure is how Lipton shares his passion for understanding the underlying biology of our interpersonal chemistry side-by-side with autobiographical accounts of what’s worked and what’s not worked in his relationships in the past.

Would you believe that the cascade of chemicals that drive love can be unleashed not just by falling in love with a person, but also by falling in love with a project or idea? Lipton assures us this is so, since “wherever there is passion, not far behind are the potent chemical brews that motivate us to pursue the objects of our desire.” As an author who once made the mistake of filling the bathtub while working on a chapter of my book, Karen Kimball and the Dream Weaver’s Web, this is something I definitely relate to.

As it turns out, the keys to living happily ever after with one’s true love are found within. Lipton explains through tales from his own relationship lessons in the past why it’s not enough to simply find the man or woman of our dreams. People subconsciously seek familiar patterns from the past, so unless we address underlying psychological issues in ourselves, relationships will only ever last until the initial bursts of love endorphins wear off.

Readers seeking a how-to book might want to dive into chapter four, “Four Minds Don’t Think Alike,” to get to the heart of weird ways we so often find our partner knows just how to push our buttons at the point we know ‘the honeymoon is over.’ Lipton explains that what is actually happening when the love of our life is no longer acting all that loving is that they are expressing their subconscious mind, with all of its programming instilled in us going all the way back to childhood… and before that, into the womb. Our subconscious mind soaked up a great deal of our environment in the form of cascades of chemicals running through our bodies, in such ways that sensitize us to particular repetitive patterns of emotional patterns around us. Fortunately, by becoming mindful, we can reprogram our subconscious mind, so we are compatible with the kind of partners we’d most like to live happily ever after with. Only through such reprogramming can we hope to break free of negative relationship patterns.

The Honeymoon Effect is an inspirational book containing a real-life successful love story, together with lots of recent research in the fields of biology and psychology… and some wonderful tips on how you can become more mindful and successful in love and life. Highly recommended!

Here’s my video summary of this topic:

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Thank you for reading this blog post! Chances are good that if you read and enjoyed this post, you’ll also enjoy my books, especially the one I wrote about mind-matter interaction that shares real world experiences, science and meditations to make jumps between parallel possible worlds: Reality Shifts: When Consciousness Changes the Physical World

Shift the World with Deep Listening

Cynthia Sue Larson

Imagine what it would feel like if everyone you spoke to, and everyone you met listened deeply to all you had to say, with obvious empathy and without once interrupting or interjecting their own thoughts or feelings. How does it feel to envision a world in which everyone listens respectfully to everyone else? Can you picture your family, neighborhood, and community all listening to one another deeply and fully?

Heart-centered, open-minded listening provides us with the power to change the world, one conversation at a time. When our personal truth is honored, we feel an enhanced sense of respect, connection, and trust with those who listen deeply to all we have to share. We feel kinder, gentler, and more courageous when we are honored for speaking our truth. Barriers between people of wildly disparate backgrounds crumble and fall, as a sense of shared oneness permeates relationships based on deep listening.

Deep listening allows people to shift between parallel worlds of possibility, moving from communications based in mistrust and doubt, to relationships founded on respect and trust. Deep listening has the power to transform our lives by inviting us to reconsider all manner of assumptions, prejudices, and beliefs. Rather than pushing ideas forward of what we think best and right, we can experience exceptional results by listening to and addressing ideas that are very different from ours. Deep listening is a state of mindfulness we enter humbly, by emptying our mental cup of whatever point we are trying to prove, and whatever beliefs we fear may be threatened. Deep listening requires a courageous leap of faith, as all preconceived notions are set aside in order to give one’s full attention to what is right here, right now.

The basic steps involved in mastering the art of deep listening can be taught and learned. They involve providing speaker and listener with a time and place to converse, and providing steps for the listener to follow that serve to inspire confidence, trust, and openness from the speaker. Within such a framework, listening becomes an active process, in which the listener demonstrates respect for the speaker as a person, and respect for what the speaker focuses on. The art of paying such rapt attention to a speaker may seem unusual, yet people everywhere recognize listeners who show such uncommon levels of interest and respect.

I had an extraordinary experience with the power of my deep listening to transform the world when I was involved in a grass-roots local political campaign to rebuild a Berkeley neighborhood elementary school in the early 1990s. The school site council I led faced overwhelming opposition from the superintendent and the school board members. Some of us felt discouraged because we were completely disregarded by those with the power to influence change. Rather than more loudly proclaim our point of view, I actively sought out and listened deeply to all aspects of each school site council member’s concerns. Through listening deeply to what they had to say, we addressed their concerns one at a time, slowly but surely changing the school board votes from “no” to “yes” for our proposal. I experienced amazing intuitive guidance during that time, which further revealed the power of listening as the ultimate way to influence positive change in the world. Before one evening’s school board meeting, I was about to drive my car out of my driveway, when an overwhelming impulse to stop the car and pick one of the roses on my rose bush became too tempting to ignore. I carried that salmon-colored rose with me into the large room where the school board meeting was to be conducted that evening, and followed another powerful impulse to place the rose on the table of a school board member who’d been on the fence regarding our proposal. I wrote a note that simply said, “Please vote according to your conscience,” which I left with the rose. When the doors to the closed chambers opened, and the school board members entered the room, I was stunned to see the woman I’d left the note for embrace the rose lovingly in her hands for the entire meeting… a rose whose color exactly matched the two piece suit she was wearing!

One of the most radical, powerful, effective actions we can take in any situation is to choose to listen deeply. Deep listening is akin to the eastern concept of Yin, whose complement is the active Yang. We are blessed to live in a highly interactive universe, full of energetic responses to our every thought, feeling, and action. While we often become preoccupied with getting things done by projecting our thoughts, feelings and actions, we can lose our balance if we forget to be as receptive as we are active. Attaining a state of optimal receptivity for deep listening requires that we achieve a disciplined state of mindfulness in which we remain alert, open-hearted, and open-minded. Such disciplined mindfulness can be attained by a variety of methods, including athletes refer to as being “in the zone,” what psychologists call “active listening,” what Quakers call, “a clearness committee,” and what physicists and linguists call, “Bohmian dialogue.”

Get In the Zone

Before delving into relationships we have with others, we can begin the art of deep listening by mastering the fine art of listening to ourselves – by learning a more disciplined way to hear our own self-talk. Some of the top experts in this field of expertise are athletes, who must learn to master mind-body clarity and discipline in order to succeed. Athletes refer to the optimal state of mind-body clarity as being “in the zone” – a rarefied state of consciousness in which performance is exceptional and consistent, automatic and flowing. Mental conditioning trainers such as Trevor Moawad explain that the average person engages in self-talk at a rate of 300 to 1,000 words a minute, and this self-talk can range from being phenomenally empowering to extremely self-critical and self-destructive. Athletes learn that the way they handle their self-talk makes a tremendous difference in their performance, particularly at times when things don’t go according to plan. Good mental conditioning allows athletes to recognize when their self-talk is negative, positive, or escapist, and to manage thought processes accordingly. Rather than attempting to eradicate negative self-talk, athletes learn ways to rapidly switch mental gears any time negative thoughts arise, either to positive self-talk, or by asking themselves how a mentor or role model might handle a particular setback or challenge. Athletes show us that optimal human performance is achieved when we feel relaxed, alert, confident and strong… in a state of mind-body harmony that allows us to experience seemingly magical states of synchronized balance.

Master Active Listening

Thomas Gordon coined the term “active listening” in the 1970’s to describe the importance of paying full attention when hearing others speak. The three main components of active listening are: comprehending, retaining, and responding. While the individual steps involved in active listening seem simple and straightforward, they can be challenging when conversations are emotionally charged, competitive, or full of conflict. At such times, additional tools in the active listening tool belt come in especially handy, such as the four-step Non-Violent Communications process (also known as Compassionate Communication) developed by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960’s which consists of conveying one’s observation, feelings, needs, and request. Active listening provides people with ways to talk to almost anyone about just about anything, while empowering both listener and speaker in the process. Rather than feeling blamed or judged, people can begin to recognize areas of shared interest and connection, as well as begin to develop a better sense of empathy for what others are feeling, and what they need. Learning and utilizing active listening skills is one of the best ways to ‘be the change you wish to see in the world,’ teaching others by example how to compassionately respect and honor the true feelings and needs of others in our lives.

Create A Clearness Committee

In the 1660’s, the Quakers created a spiritual process guided by simple rules, including an understanding that what transpires within dialogue be treated confidentially, and not shared with anyone afterward. A clearness committee is initiated by a focus person, who selects committee members from the most diverse variety of backgrounds, experiences, ages, and viewpoints possible. The focus person writes about the past, present and future aspects of area of concern, and shares this with committee members prior to meeting. When the group convenes, committee members are forbidden from speaking to the focus person in any way other than asking honest, open questions, such as, “Did you ever feel like this before?” “Who are you trying to please?” or “How will you change?” Committee members are encouraged to remain totally attentive, and to ask brief questions inspired by intuition. The focus person responds to questions as they are asked, taking the conversation deeper and deeper… with the understanding that the focus person is in control of the process, with the power to not answer questions. Clearness committees are expected to help individuals become better focused on the true nature of their questions and concerns, in ways that provide them with a deeper, fuller sense of themselves in relationship to their area of focus.

Experience Bohmian Dialogue

Physicist David Bohm’s provided a significant contribution to a better understanding of quantum physics through a theory that described the universe of having an enfolded, or implicate, order in which space and time are no longer the primary factors nor foundation by which all of reality exists and interacts. Bohm proposed that our belief in so-called laws of space and time arise from our experience of an explicate order… one that arises from a unifying undivided whole. Intrigued by the striking similarity between Bohm’s worldview and that of the Blackfoot and other indigenous tribes, Leroy Little Bear approached physicist David Bohm and initiated the first “Language of Spirit” dialogue with scientists, linguists, and indigenous scholars and elders in 1992. The Bohmian-inspired Language of Spirit dialogues encourage participants to sense underlying oneness while consciously suspending self-defensiveness, and to actively engage in experiencing new perceptions through listening deeply. These annual dialogues are mediated by an indigenous elder, and continue for several days. One person at a time speaks when feeling inspired, and others listen, in a talking circle dialogue format, until the speaker says everything he or she feels strongly inspired to share.

The deep listening I’ve experienced has affected me in ways that defy simple explanation, leaving me with a keen sense of being better and more completely attuned to everyone and everything around me. I can feel my heart more fully open, and I can sense stronger connections between my heart and others. I’ve witnessed people befriend those whose experiences and worldviews were vastly different, and seen emotional dams burst open and healing tears flow forth. I’ve watched people bridge rifts that seemed impossibly deep and wide, and develop trust and respect for those they’d previously feared and mistrusted.

When we improve our ability to listen deeply, we see profound benefits to our civilization and world that we could not have predicted nor foreseen. Deep listening opens the doors to our hearts, and enables us to feel an expanded sense of belonging and connectedness with friends, family, colleagues, neighbors and strangers… who might not stay strangers very long.

This article is one of three chapters written by Cynthia Sue Larson in Sacred Shift: You Are the World

You can watch me discuss this topic on my YouTube video, Shift the World with Deep Listening... and please feel free to comment with your thoughts and ideas here on this blog and in the comments under the video. I’d love to know how you feel!

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

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