By John-Michael Lawrence
If practitioners of different religions claim results, maybe the seeds of those results are in the practitioners themselves, not the dogma.
The brain is capable of millions of different things. People don’t realize how incredible their brains actually are and how incredible their minds actually are. The brain can do so many things that humans are as yet unaware of. Your brain can help you learn, change and adapt, it can make you something better than you are, and it can help you to transcend yourself. Your brain can take you to a higher level of existence where you can understand the world in a deeper way, you can understand your relationship to things and people in a deeper way, and you can ultimately make more meaning for yourselves in the world. There is a spiritual part of our brain. It’s a part that we all can have access to and these are things that we can all do.
When I meditate I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. It takes effort to settle down and organize your thoughts if you are examining all the things you need to get done but, with effort, you can intentionally create your day and your life. There are a multitude of methods: quiet meditation, chanting, prayers that are focused on your own efforts and not asking for resolution from outside of yourself. Prayers that seek resolution from outside of yourself are a practice of religion. Prayers that concentrate on your own efforts are a form of meditation, an effort to influence the quantum field. Religion strips people of the need to feel responsible. But quantum mechanics puts the responsibility squarely in your lap.
When meditating I concentrate on creating my reality, my day and rest of this life. When I create my day, things happen that I can recognize as a result of my own creative process. The more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain where I accept what’s possible, and it gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.
Quantum physics shows that your consciousness influences others around you. It influences material properties. It influences your future. Quantum physics shows that, although unaware of it, you are creating your future through your thoughts which, in the sub-atomic realm, are tangible things. Thought alone can even completely change the body. But most people don’t affect reality in a consistent, substantial way because they don’t believe they can. But humans create reality. Humans are reality-producing machines. You create the effects of reality all the time. At the very least, take time to mentally create your day, infect the quantum field.
We’re so conditioned to the way we live our lives that we buy the idea that we have no control at all. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world. Quantum physics says just the opposite; it says what’s happening within us will create what’s happening outside of us. There is no “out there” independent of what’s going on “in here.” Have you ever thought about what thoughts are made of? We’re not appreciating the power of thought. We think that the world is already out there, independent of our experience and input. It is not. Quantum physics is clear about that. We need a change in paradigm.
Quantum physics calculates the possibilities. They’re all possibilities of consciousness. We can choose among these possibilities to create the desired event. I choose “that” experience. And therefore, literally, I create my own reality. I use chanting to create my own reality.
These experiences tell me that I am much more than I think I am. I can be much more even than that. I can influence my environment, the people. I can influence space itself. I can influence the future. I am responsible for all those things. I and my surroundings are not separate. They’re part of one. I’m connected to it all. I’m not alone.
The deepest level of truth uncovered by science and by philosophy is the fundamental truth of unity. At that deepest sub-nuclear level of reality, you and I are literally one.
When I was young I seriously pondered and wondered about what God was. Asked questions in religion class and was simply told that I had to have faith. I am an atheist as a result of a process that began when I was 7.
Religious people mistake their god and religious props as the source of influence on their environment. They are not–people are. Humans themselves are the reality creating machines, they just don’t know it. Religion and its symbols are not the source of the power, the person is–you are.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.