The Field

 Around the turn of the 20th century, the Vitalists were finally outmaneuvered. They were scientist of the tradition that held that there is a medium, infinitely fine, motionless and mass-free, that permeates all that exists materially, and that also is the specific life force. Their opponents were the Mechanists, scientists of the opposing tradition that held that there is no such medium or force, that interstellar space is empty except for sparse atoms and molecules, and that everything functions through lifeless physical mechanisms, including living organisms. The two camps, relying on concepts that shifted somewhat over time, had been arguing for centuries.

The contest between these two broad ways of viewing the universe hinged on whether or not a primordial cosmologic medium, referred to as the Ether, actually exists. As a result of experiments with light in the late 19th century, it was widely accepted that it had finally been proven that there was no such medium. An account of the arguments for and against the existence of the Ether is outside our scope, but the truth is that it was never demonstrated that the Ether doesn’t exist.[i]

As a matter of fact, the continuum that came to be called the Ether in western physics had been studied in many traditions, as far back as the earliest science we know of. In India its ancient names are Prana, Atman, and Brahma, and in China it is Qi. In the 18th and 19th centuries in the West, it was Animal Magnetism, Vital Spirit, and Od, and in the 20th century, Morphogenetic Field, Orgone, and Field of Life, among others. We will refer to it simply as the Field. It is manifest in phenomena that have been confirmed and documented, yet are kept beyond the pale of conventional science. They include:

Healing with Prayer Praying can influence the course of an illness, even over long distances, and without the patient knowing that anything is being attempted.

Energy Healing Hands-on and hands-near techniques involving intention to heal can influence the course of an illness.

Shamanic Healing Appealing to ancestral and communal spirits in ritual can resolve illness.

Psycho-kinesis Objects can be move and shaped by intention.

Electronic Anomalies Computer applications that generate strings of random digits can be influenced by intention to raise or lower the frequency of appearance of selected numbers.

Biological Anomalies The electrical resistance of the leaves of a plant can be influenced by thought.

Clairvoyance People can know about distant events in real time.

Precognition People can know about events yet to occur, while awake or in dreams.

Localization Dowsers locate missing things and people on maps. Pets cross wide expanses of unfamiliar terrain to find their owners.

Extra-sensory Perception People can identify something that is blocked from their eyes, such as a picture or playing card.

Animal Communication Slime molds, masses of thousands of undifferentiated identical cells, navigate mazes efficiently in search of food. Flocks of birds and schools of fish coordinate their movements with a speed that could not be attained solely by individual members receiving and processing visual clues from neighbors.

Between individuals the transmission of information, feelings, and attitudes by purely nonverbal means is something about which conventional disciplines have a good deal to say. The biological and psychological processes that transmit affects, emotions, and threat responses through facial expression, tone of voice, posture, pheromones, etc., in parallel with verbal communication, are described in a robust literature. Of interest regarding transmission between generations, psychologists elucidate the ways feelings and attitudes are communicated from adults to children. The ways beliefs, stories, assumptions, and states of mind are spread in societies are explored by philosophers, sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and literary commentators.

The phenomena of the Field lie beyond the generally accepted means of transmission between minds. Awareness of the functioning of the Field helps one to appreciate how effortless, immediate, and efficient the contact between minds can be. It provides the most basic of all means of connection. Transmission through the Field is instantaneous. It is followed and paralleled by sight, hearing, and touch. It joins individual minds within a universal mind. And since lifetimes overlap, the Field possesses a record of all the experience of the species. Carl Jung referred to this aspect of the Field as the Collective Unconscious.

People everywhere sense that all human minds are in some form of contact, and that there is a subtle reality behind the idea we are all one. Appreciating that the Field functions in this way makes it easier to see how the trauma state, affects, and scripts are as contagious as they apparently are. As in the fable of the blind men and the elephant, in our divided realms of thought the Field has different names, each referring to certain of its aspects: in physics, it is the Ether; in psychology, the Collective Unconscious; in biology, the Morphogentic Field, Animal Magnetism, and others; in religion, Holy Spirit, the Infinite Intelligence, and others. Open minds and open hearts will be needed to bring these separated concepts together in an understanding that The One is multifaceted.

[i] The experiments were performed in 1887 by a physicist and a chemist, Michelson and Morley. They never claimed that their work disproved the existence of the Ether. In fact, 20 years of experimental work by Dayton Miller, an esteemed physicist, some of it done in collaboration with Morley and published in peer-reviewed journals through the mid 1930’s, consistently yielded positive results for the existence of the Ether. That work was so important that Albert Einstein wrote in private letters that if Miller’s work was free of fundamental errors, his own theories of Relativity would collapse. Yet the earlier studies, less precise and elegant than Miller’s, and misrepresented in discussions in the journals, was seized upon by those eager for proof that the space of the Universe is empty and dead. This is no insignificant matter. For one thing, the supposed non-existence of the Ether leads directly to the utterly counter-intuitive Big Bang Theory. When mainstream science returns to an honest reconsideration of the primary cosmic medium, the Big Bang will wind up with a good deal else in the dustbin of intellectual history. To illustrate why this will take time: a small number of prominent astronomers offered alternatives to the Big Bang. Their cogent arguments were dismissed. The last of them, Halton Arp, died in 2013, having endured shunning by his profession during his final decades of life.

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Family Constellation Work

It’s hard to really grasp what Family Constellation Work is about without having seen it in action. The process is shamanic, but in western form. It brings in a person’s Ancestral Field to assist with a life difficulty when its source can’t be understood…and simultaneously intervenes to bring healing to that Field itself.

A participant in the workshop presents a problem in need of addressing. The facilitator asks for some information about it and then inquires about the family: who the primary members are and were, and what disruptions may have occurred to the way love naturally flows in a family, such as abortion, premature death, adoption, divorce, abuse, life-altering illness, violence, ejection, etc. The facilitator then decides which family members are to be represented in the process. Members of the workshop are intuitively chosen to represent them, and are intuitively placed in space in relation to each other, initiating the Family Constellation.

After a moment of silent receptivity the representatives spontaneously find themselves experiencing thoughts, feelings, things they want to say, and impulses to move. What has happened is that their selection and positioning, guided by intuition, along with their openness, have invited the spirits of family members, living and passed on, to enter the healing process in the room. Freed of earthly connections, the spirits exist in love and good will, and are open to revealing and renegotiating unfortunate events in the past that are entangling the participant’s life.

The facilitator elicits what the representatives are experiencing, in speech and movement.  They may be asked to say things to one another: they may be rearranged. Events, relationships, emotions, needs, consequences, etc., are revealed, and a story unfolds. The tale often is historically factual, though it may be more of a evocative, metaphoric nature. The scenario depicted almost always involves circumstances that are out of the order love naturally wants to move in within a family. The facilitator structures a new arrangement that aligns with the natural order of love, directing communication in very basic phrases, which are the soul’s language.

This process is more of spirit than of mind or of emotion. People come to do their personal work and serve as representatives, or only to serve as representatives. Following are a few examples of ways in which a person’s entanglement with the fate of an ancestor is explored and addressed in the Family Constellation:

  • A serious injustice was once committed…the participant, a descendant, lives in angry moods, unaware of the connection…the perpetrator is confronted…apology is made…the participant feels acceptance…soon, his moods start to lift…
  • Someone is excluded from the family…a descendant lives in isolation, unaware of any connection…the rejecting family members acknowledge the excluded member’s rightful place…soon, the participant begins to become more social…
  • Someone lived in pain…a descendant lives in suffering, out of misplaced loyalty…the suffering deceased one is acknowledged…he tells the participant to pursue happiness, to live as he could not…soon, he is extricating himself from bad situations

The Internet has many sources of information on Family Constellation Work. You can Google those words or the name Bert Hellinger, the man who developed the process. Suzi Tucker, who brought this work to the USA, has two particularly good articles on her web site: Simply Put and Seeing is Believing.

 

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Losing Weight

This is not some new method for losing weight, but if you’re watching what you eat in order to shed excess roundness, here are two practices that can make the method you are using to achieve your aim even more effective.

First, a Chewing Meditation. When you are eating, try chewing very, very slowly, bringing your attention to the many sensations you are having, most of which you ordinarily don’t notice. In addition to the flavor and aroma of the food in your mouth, feel into its firmness or softness, its warmth or coolness, its texture, resilience, crunchiness, dryness…any of the physical qualities that it has. Do this with one quality at a time, in whatever sequence your mind picks them out. After a while, shift your focus from the food to the sensations in your body parts that are engaged in eating: tongue, cheeks, lips, palate, teeth, jaw muscles, throat. After a while, return to your awareness of the food. Notice how it changes as you chew, and how the wisdom of your body manages the process of swallowing. To do this you’ll have to abstain from reading and watching TV while you’re eating, and that would be an added plus, since those activities are powerful distractions from being conscious of your eating process. They make it more likely that you will overeat.

With this Chewing Meditation you maintain awareness of what is in your mouth and what your mouth is doing. That makes it easier to keep in touch with all your bodily sensations, and that is a help in preventing overeating. In other words, staying conscious of sensations in the mouth helps you be conscious of other senses that are related to eating, including the early subtle sensations of having had enough. Overeating always involves not being fully in present reality. This practice will help you stay in the Now as you eat.

Another potent boost for your approach to weight control is offering Blessing. Along with practicing awareness of your sensations, you can practice awareness of the way your food has come to you. In whatever style is easiest for you, invoking Divinity or not, express your gratitude for the earthly processes and for the human activities that have combined to bring you life sustaining nutrition. If you are aware of your food as a gift, you are less likely to misuse it. You can do this silently or out loud. Giving thanks for your body’s needs being met supports your intention to keep from harming it through overeating.  Good luck.

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A Word About Prayer

It’s a human instinct, to call on a Power beyond the processes of nature, for assistance in bringing about something one is in need of. This impulse comes from our awareness of a nonphysical Intelligence, energizing all earthly events, that maintains a resonance with human words and deeds.

The specific way in which we go about offering a prayer of this kind determines how effective it is. Unfortunately, the form most of us have learned to use for a prayer of supplication is of no use, because it is wrong on two counts.

First, there is a beautiful and rich relationship between the Divine Energy that enfolds a person and the Divine Energy within that person. It is sad that the typical prayer of request imposes on that relationship the dynamic of a child in need addressing a beneficent parent. That misconception distorts  the very real relationship between the individual and the Universe, and interferes with its functioning.

Second, the typical form of prayer emphasizes deficiency. Its core statement is, “Please bring to me that which I lack and need.” But when one’s cognitive and emotional focus is on a void of that kind,  the primordial Intelligence is drawn to focus there, too. If your awareness is on your being without, the Universe can only confirm your reality.

Therefore, the usual form of prayer wastes an opportunity. Worse, it risks corroding your capacity for hope. Fortunately, a vastly different approach is available. You can visualize yourself having the result that you desire. You can see the void as already filled. You can let yourself feel the joy of having a once desperate need becoming a thing of the past. You can speak of what in actuality is yet to come by using the present tense, letting yourself feel gratitude just as you would for a gift that you’ve already received. In realistic terms this seems highly illogical. However, it is in full accord with the functioning of Spirit, which is timeless. That is, you are shaping what is ordinarily thought of as the future, by shaping your present state with your chosen belief.

If you open yourself to this form of prayer, you are taking a leap emotionally and cognitively, allowing yourself to manifest faith that you are being heard and that you will be responded to. As one who has done this over and over, and who has seen my heartfelt desires develop from images into living realities, I can attest to the power that lies with this form of prayer.

 

 

 

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Seeking Help

I know I need help, but where do I start? All these different approaches! How am I to know what’s best for me at this point on my journey?

Exactly. Choosing an approach to healing from all those that are available can seem like an overwhelming task. It may make your quest feel easier if you shift your inquiry for a while from “what” to “whom.”

The person of the practitioner is just as important as the specific process that he or she is offering, probably even more important. As you set about deciding whom to walk with on the next portion of your healing path, open yourself to the questions below. You will not go wrong if you let your intuition guide you through the information that they help you to gather.

In your initial contacts, does the quality of her voice begin to help you feel more comfortable, more safe? Do you sense in him a genuine interest in who you are? Do you feel that you are being welcomed…or sized up? Without anything having been promised, as the two of you talk is a spirit of hope starting to stir? Do you feel a helpful lightness in her, a sense of humor? Is he generous with his time and thoughts over the phone? Do her answers make it easier to ask more questions? Do you feel that you are talking with a totally real and present person…or are you meeting the protective mask of professionalism?

These are the kinds of questions you need to be considering, because the person to person relationship is the vehicle for any healing process. Trust the answers to them that you sense within yourself and if they aren’t positive enough, keep looking, with faith that the right person is out there.

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Getting Things Done

There are things on your d0-right-away list…checks to be written, calls to be made, a repair. You will probably be interested to know that the way in which you think about those tasks beforehand will do a lot to determine whether you take them on feeling capable and positive, or feeling burdened and negative.  In other words, the way in which you look ahead to what you’ve got to do will have an impact of your effectiveness when you do them. How can this be?

The usual way of considering what’s needing to be done involves telling yourself something about when you will do them, for example, “I’m going to do the laundry this afternoon.” That seems to be a positive assertion, but it contains an unstated negative one, namely, “…but I can’t do it right now, because…”

Since all we really know is what is happening in the present, and since we can’t know for sure what will happen in the future, this typical form of intention is actually putting out a negative statement, psychologically and spiritually: “I can’t do the laundry now.” This expression of limitation has a subtle but very real way of dragging you down.

Here’s another way of looking at this sequence. When you first bring the task to mind, you stir an interest in completing it, generating a positive affective state. But when that interest is interrupted by reality, the frustration of the energy that got started produces a negative affective state, one which will stay with you and will to some extent compromise your actual abilities.

Fortunately, there is a totally positive and empowering alternative to the usual approach to one’s tasks. When you consider the job ahead you can skip the self talk entirely and instead visualize yourself completing it and imagine yourself enjoying the moment. This only takes seconds. By bringing the desired state of affairs into your perceptual present, you will experience an immediate lift that will stay with you. The positive currents of pride and relief will actually enhance your abilities.

Longstanding mental habits, especially ones that are cultural norms, take months of conscious attention to change. By practicing this one consistently it can become your new norm, one that will work small wonders for you.

 

 

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