from Judith's newsletter The Still, Small Voice. org

Vol 12, Jan-Feb, 2005

 

I traveled with a busload of Unity folks to see "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" last August and was delighted with this unique film, which weaves a storyline through scientific interviews and funny animated episodes to dramatize how we create our own reality. There’s a lot more to it, but you’ll want to see for yourself.

In late November, I attended a "Physics of Consciousness" conference at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach and, one evening, had the pleasure of attending an intimate party with the speakers, most of them physicists. This was just after the presidential race and some who had campaigned for John Kerry were openly discouraged by the outcome of the election.

Curious to see how these enlightened speakers would handle what seemed like defeat, I asked Fred Alan Wolfe, a California-based author and physicist, what would be his next best step. You will remember him from "What the Bleep." He’s the physicist with the wild hair and wide eyes who resembles a highly animated, enthusiastic Einstein. He must be an immensely popular university teacher.

I was delighted with his answer, which precisely parallels my own philosophy and possibly yours too. "A few days from now, I’m going to give a talk to a roomful of Fortune 500 businessmen," he replied, his windmilling hands now perfectly still. "I plan to do what I always try to do: awaken them to awaken people to who they are and can be."

"What the Bleep" accomplishes this too. The movie started out on the West Coast early in 2004 and was seen and loved by my soul sister, Rebecca Skeele (makeitheaven.com), a nationally known spiritual teacher, author and personal coach based in Santa Fe. She suggested that we dialogue about the film. This is the result.

J: What do you think is the ultimate value of the movie?

R: Well, I’m going to talk about the movie from the perspective of someone who has worked in consciousness for the last 15 years. I’m not a scientist, but I have a degree in Spiritual Science and have worked in the area of human consciousness and divine consciousness and have helped people change their lives.

I think, first of all, that the movie beautifully dramatizes the emotional, addictive behaviors that keep occurring over and over in our lives and why they keep occurring over and over. The other thing it showed beautifully was the value of being able to step outside ourselves and get in touch with what is going on outside of the reality that we think is going on. It’s like the shaman on the shore who sees the ships. No one else can see them or knows they are there. So I think that those two points were wonderfully illustrated. How about for you?

J: That idea about perception was exciting to me, too, because this was the first message in my meditative writings back in 1987 and the notion that actually kept me listening to my inner voice, even though I didn’t know what it was or where it came from. The message was, "We cannot perceive more than we are." I gave this some thought and realized that, well yes, of course we can’t grasp more than we are able to comprehend by virtue of our knowledge, experiences, openness and receptivity to something new.

But that wasn’t all. By extension, this message also said that everyone has a different perspective on reality and thus a different truth. I had always thought that everyone sees any given event the same way, and once I realize that this was not the case, I could see why there’s so much conflict in the world–because no two people see things through the same eyes.

R: Yes, and the universe is based on so many variables that until we begin to tap into them we don’t know what truth is and struggle to grasp it, anyway, since truth is constantly expanding.

Another thing that struck me came near the end of the movie, when one of the scientists or philosophers said that at the root of all being–because we’re all particles, molecules and waves–we are all one, which means that our thoughts and what we put out affect everything around us.

The idea is for us to change the world by changing our reactions and opening our consciousness to something else that’s there. The movie really nails down what I’ve found to be true–that we’re really addicted to the emotional patterns inside of us and to the way we perceive the world. The world is the way it is because we uphold our patterns and perceptions with our thoughts, stories and feelings. So if we begin to tell ourselves a different story and unhook from our emotional, addictive reactions, our world and our perception of it will change.

J: Yes, that’s the beauty of this whole issue of perception, and it’s why my meditative writings started out by clearing my confusion about our differing perceptions of reality. AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) has an expression: that you talk the talk until you can walk the walk. This is what I did every step of the way in my own journey, as do we all. If we are just willing to stay open and receptive, our perceptions expand beyond the limits of our conditioning.

R: Exactly. We’re more than our conditioning, more than our limiting beliefs, more than our fears, thoughts and feelings and more than our sensations. And what is that "more"? To me, what the movie alluded to and didn’t get into fully, was the "more" of who we are. In other words, it stepped into talking about God, and at one point, the channeler in the movie (J.Z. Knight) said, "Welcome to the kingdom of heaven."

They started talking about what there is beyond this ordinary reality. But what we’ve perceived about that name, G-o-d, has been so limited up until now. To me, the movie was saying that we don’t begin to perceive G-o-d even close to what It really is. We want to deify it, we want to limit it to our own understanding. We want to make it some kind of punitive, right/wrong-thinking God, like we are. But that’s not even close to what this energy is.

Because this consciousness is very impersonal. It’s completely outside of that, and it has to do with the energy that we put out. In other words, if we put out the kinds of thought, feeling and heart processes of peace, joy, love, gratitude, forgiveness, abundance and prosperity, then that’s what will be brought back to us. But if, on the other hand, we put out fear, limitation, worry and threat, that’s what’s going to be brought back to us.

J: Yes. The movie shows, through microscopic physics, that what we think and believe is what we create and that the purpose of being here is to become scientists of our lives so that we can develop our gifts of intentionality and become creators of goodness, peace, prosperity and whatever else we gauge as our ideals.

But I hear what you’re saying. I traveled to the movie with a busload of people from my Unity church and on the way back, several people were disappointed with the focus on science and not on God. I see that as an opportunity for a sequel. I’m pleased that the movie speaks on the level of science right now, because so many people are still angry at the conventional God, but will look at the scientific foundation of concepts like these: that what’s happening within us will create what’s outside of us, that what the brain sees and imagines are exactly the same.

As a matter of fact, I have to admit that every now and then, I get lazy about intentionality and, like most people, tend to "smear positive thinking over a world of negative thinking," as the movie puts it. The day after I saw "What the Bleep," I felt moved to write three powerful affirmations and posted them above my desk, on my bathroom mirror and in my meditation room, where I see them often. I speak or silently voice the words of these affirmations daily, most effectively, I think, after meditation, and always with a heartfelt belief in their truth. Since then, I’ve seen some significant reality shifts, some very positive improvements in my health, work and prosperity.

People don’t have to believe in God to work these concepts, so they’re able to bypass religious obstacles and simply use the science. Our success with intentionality helps us climb the ladder from the bottom two rungs, "life is happening to me" and "my life is being created by me," on up to the top two rungs: "God is working through me" and "God is working in the world as me."

Early on, we become aware of multiple realities and the presence of a benevolent and loving force in the universe. Once this occurs, we don’t need a movie or its sequel to convince us of the existence of God. Once we see the divine in action, our gratitude and surrender to All That Is intensifies this powerful force in us and we’re on our way home.

So the movie, I think, went as far as it could, and I’m thrilled that it went that far.

R: Absolutely. People always say how can God be good if there is so much bad in the world and this movie helps us realize that the bad things are the result of the thoughts we’re creating. As long as people are hooked into fear and ideas of "I’m right and you’re wrong," and "You’re less than and I’m superior," we’re going to create on this planet situations where there’s evil and suffering.

Our world will change for the better when we begin to move out of that polarized thinking and don’t engage in it on a practical, day-to-day level. Situations like "I’m not going to get mad at my neighbor because their dog tips over the garbage and gets trash all over the yard, so I’m not going to send bad thoughts to my neighbor." And "I’m not going to damn the person whose car pulls out in front of me." "I’m not going to gossip in the workplace. I’m going to disconnect myself from that because I want to do something different."

I’ve used three practical, everyday situations that people can relate to, because that’s really the level on which all of us have to begin our spiritual science. We have to get to that level and say, "Well, wait a minute. Let me clean up my world first before I try to clean up the big world. Let me make sure that in my world I send love, withhold that angry comment, observe and witness myself so that I put out good energy."

J: Yes, you remind me that I knew this even as a small child. I was aware that being angry at someone else was actually hurting me. I could feel it. Couldn’t you?

R: Oh, absolutely. It does hurt us.

J: So yes, if we want peace in the world, it must begin with us. I loved that the movie interviewed physicist John Hegelin, because I admire him so greatly as a peacemaker. He has a site online (permanentpeace.org) about the Maharishi Effect and shows scientifically how prayer and meditation decrease surrounding crimes rates by half, and how we have, in meditation, a "Star Wars" defense system that doesn’t cost anything.

I was also happy to see Dr. Masura Emoto’s water molecules in the movie. His pictures are just so spectacular, so visually beautifully, and they prove so perfectly what we’re saying here.

R: Yes. When the movie came to Santa Fe, everybody and his son was talking about it and then we had Emoto come to town. At the beginning of his talk, he spoke about sound and sound particles, then showed us a film clip of a water molecule expanding while Beethoven’s 5th Symphony played. As you watch that molecule expand, you realize that, "What is water? Liquid light," and "What are we? Water and liquid light," and you are seeing that expanded state that we feel when we get in touch with whatever you want to call it: the Holy Spirit, the Christ Consciousness, the Buddha nature.

It doesn’t matter to me what name you put on it. It’s that expansion in which we actually feel bigger, connected to All That Is, being at-one with All That Is. Emoto demonstrated it in the movie, and it was so exciting to me to watch that. That’s what I went away with.

J: And of course, as you say, that’s the expansiveness we feel during meditation when we go beyond the boundaries of the self’s ego and the idea that just because we’re in physical form, we are separate, or just because someone has skin of a different color, we’re different. Then we realize, like the movie and Emoto are saying, that the deepest truth is the fundamental level of our unity, that on the molecular level it’s all empty space and light, and potentiality in this empty space, beautiful and harmonious, balanced and flowing with the divine.

This makes me think of a quote by that wonderful chiropractor in the movie who said, "The more I create my day, the more I am aware of a neuro-net and can do it the next day."

R: We actually create the web in our brains when we begin to practice certain mastery skills. One of the skills that was demonstrated and alluded to in the movie was the observer, especially toward the end. The observer was standing there, noting the choices the woman could make, and the question was, "Have you ever seen yourself as someone you have become?"

To me, what they were alluding to, and we know this from being meditators, is that we develop a witness, a part of us that can step out of us–not in dissociation–but in stepping out of ourselves into the consciousness of the observer and its compassion. What that ability does is create an interrupt in our brain patterning. In every part we interrupt we lay down a new neuro-net and create the new wiring. We actually rewire the reactions inside of us and that’s what gives us the ability to then not-react. To become compassionate and to withhold an angry comment, and to send love instead of anger, to say I understand that we’re different and we see things differently, and God bless you, or whatever, instead of one of us having to be right and one of us wrong.

But that takes practice. And hopefully, people will wake up out of this New Age idea that burning our incense and reading Tarot alone will make a real impact.

J: To me that’s good for attunement, but what attunement is about is awareness and that, as the movie is saying, is about becoming scientists of our lives.

R: Yes, awareness is an ongoing revelation. It’s an ongoing growth process and a rewarding one when we wake up to that and say, "Oh, wow, look at the goody." It’s not like, "Oh God, I’ve got to go practice," like I had to do when I was a little girl and had to practice my piano. There’s a payoff to it, because immediately we begin to receive the gift that comes from that lightness of being, the unburdening that we feel, the feeling that things have lifted and cleared. Our consciousness all of a sudden becomes clear of things like guilt, worry and doubt. We know how to work with those things, and we’re not overwhelmed.

J: Yes. That’s the path of the master, isn’t it? The beauty of the journey is its being an adventure in consciousness, an exciting journey. And I think that was the ultimate message in this movie. Not only are we able to create our own reality and change our hard-wiring in the process–and therefore heal our bodies as well, since the mind literally creates the body–but we are also creating a higher-frequency neuro-net that will raise the consciousness of All That Is at the same time it’s raising our own. And that is really exciting. (Laughter) It’s one thing to vote. It’s another to change the future of the world.

R: Both of which happen on different levels. To me that’s what the movie is so hopeful about. I know that all of us who see the world different from the way our government sees it, from time to time get hopeless, discouraged, overwhelmed and angry about what’s going on. And yet, if we know that there are different levels going on simultaneously and I practice my mastery skills and widen my neuro-net, then I can take actions that are aligned with my values and vote accordingly!

J: If we stay peaceful enough not to get bogged down in anger at someone who disagrees with our viewpoint.

R: Well yes, that is the hook of human nature and where each of works from day to day. It doesn’t matter whether we’re having a conversation in a grocery line, or at a town gathering or watching some commentary on television. As soon as we’re hooked, as soon as that addictive pattern starts running again, we’re off and running. Here comes the drama again. And the mastery is not so much to beat ourselves up or to say, "Oh well, I’ve failed." The mastery is to choose in that moment, "Ah, I want to disconnect from this. I want to find my true self."

J: That’s right. And to me, meditation is a really big part of that. You can be the scientist of your life and you can do it the hard way, through analysis, or the easy way, by meditating and literally changing your biochemistry to a more peaceful nature, allowing the hypothalamus of your brain to calm your stress hormones so that your fight, flight or freeze response is not so keen. You have a few seconds or even a nanosecond to reflect before attacking or counterattacking.

This helps me enormously and is the balancer which consistently sends me back to the meditation room, besides my love for the divine and the very real physical healing in the flowing currents of light. I see that I am a much more peaceful and integrated being, and that my perspective is tremendously expanded. Well, that’s the Maharishi Effect. It makes all the difference in the world for me.

R: Yes. And the effect of loving. That’s the other big benefit in my life, a goodness consciousness, as we’ve identified it. It’s always giving to us and sending us that vibration, that energy. We can call it loving, peace, grace, many other words. If I am not in a state to receive it, then I don’t know it’s there. It’s just like the shaman who’s standing on the shore and finally sees the ships. He couldn’t see them and then he could see them and pointed them out to his villagers.

It’s the same thing. Unless we’re in the receptive state that meditation puts us in, we can’t receive that energy. We don’t know it’s there. We don’t open to it or experience it. So when we talk about loving or the love of God, or self-loving or opening your heart, people don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a nice idea, but until we get into that meditative state, we don’t know what that is.

There are other things that bring it in. Meditation isn’t the only thing, though it’s one of the main things. I think that really traumatic experiences can bring it in. How many stories have you read or heard about people in the middle of a car accident who see their lives flash before them, and they experience this incredible rush of love or peace. They sense the presence of this energy. I think a lot of times, something happens inside us and we step outside of ourselves, and all of a sudden it’s there. This benevolence, peace, grace and love.

J: So what we’re saying, I think, is that the two go hand in hand. You achieve the peaceful state and then become a scientist of your life, discovering and creating with the power of intentionality. What we’re really talking about is a balanced left and right brain, isn’t it? The scientists of life would be more the left brain, with the meditative, peaceful approach the right brain. So we’re really talking about uniting the two, as conscious co-creators of our lives.

R: I think so, and also, I think we’re talking about opening the center of the brain, which is classically the pituitary gland, opening up that chakra, that doorway, to receive the intelligence that is beyond the brain and is held in the auric field, in the noetic field, that is around our body and within our body and holds that intelligence that is beyond the brain.

I want to go back to the statement you made about the Creator and the two brains co-creating. Of course you know that my whole thing is about co-creation. I just loved the film because right at the end it started talking about co-creation in heaven on earth and this intentionality reality that we’ve been talking about. The chiropractor who talked about the neuro-net also said, "The way that I create my day every day is to ask that I affect the quantum field and I ask the..benevolent consciousness, or whatever he called it...to show me a sign today that it’s paying attention."

J: I think our sign today is this movie, don’t you?

R: Yes. That’s the meaning of co-creation. We are affecting the quantum field with our intention, with our love, and what we want back is that benevolent consciousness to show us a sign. In other words, to let us know that we are co-creating here. The words I put on that are, “Looking for the blessings." But I loved the way he put that. That’s what co-creation is, when we really begin to get that we can invite and invoke this consciousness to work with us daily, from minute to minute. That’s very exciting to know that, live it, do it. That’s heaven on earth.

J: Yes, in perfect unity, and I think that’s what we’re all seeking to move toward. To move out of that stage of to-me, by-me and through-me into as-me. If we’re consciously working with this, we become not only the instrument, but the actual blessing of that benevolent light on earth.

R: Because we carry it.

J: We carry it. We are it.

R: So we bless all because we know it. And that, to me, is what the light in this film is, that we all have the potential of becoming like any of the enlightened ones that we have studied and revered. I don’t care what religion you want to look at. All of them (the masters) became that. They became the blessing, the radiance of it, and that’s what each of us has the potential to become.

J: Yes. Consciously, through the work. We have to deal with our addictions, intolerance and short tempers, and as you say, not dally so comfortably with outer trinkets. We have to stand back and watch self go by.

R: Yes. What the movie is talking about is, to me, what I really love to talk about, and that’s the level of mastership to which we must aspire if we’re going to save this planet.

J: For me, the ultimate value of the movie is not only putting together a microscopic and macroscopic template by which we can look at and transform our negative emotions into a path of light, but also, a simple yet incredibly important achievement: to get people asking these kinds of questions. The more they do, the better off we will all be.

R: Absolutely. I have several clients who told me of going to the movie with their spouses or significant others and coming away from it profoundly affected. All of a sudden they were looking at their behaviors or patterns of irritability or addictions and wanting to change them. To me, that is the most wonderful gift of the movie–that we just open up to that next step. As long as we’re opening up to that next step, to receive from the “field” that next step, the doors will continue to open.

The revelation will not stop, if we just give it some attention and say, "Okay, here it comes."

© 2005, Judith Pennington. All rights reserved.

 

— Anna, New Mexico