Embrace Pronoia!

I'm sure you've noticed this in your life: You buy a car and suddenly you start seeing that car everywhere. I used to think because I made this particular brand of car my own, my mind started making associations with similar car brands that I was not aware of before, even though they were there the whole time. I'm now coming to believe something deeper about this interesting phenomenon. What if when I bought that Jeep, I became part of the "Jeep Matrix", and other Jeeps started showing up for me because I'm in that matrix, not because I just wasn't aware of them before.

This type of manifestation has been called "Pronoia"--the awareness that the universe is conspiring in your favor--a term coined by consciousness pioneer John Perry Barlow of the Grateful Dead. Simply put, you ask for something with the conviction that the Universe has got your back, and it (sometimes miraculously) shows up.

It's also interesting to apply this awareness to what is snarkily referred to as the "Placebo Effect". You believe that a substance you ingest will heal or regress some malady or condition, and sure enough, after a little time, it does, even though that substance was a simple sugar pill. The opposite can also be true: You believe a medical treatment will harm you, and it does, but not because the treatment is actually harmful. It's because of your belief. This has been coined the "Nocebo Effect".

In fact, the Placebo Effect is so well-documented, scientists try to short-circuit it by conducting "double-blind" trials for new drugs in an attempt to isolate the actual effects of the drug from a person's beliefs about what it is doing to their body. I would ask, which is more powerful? The person's beliefs, or the drug? Isn't this just another form of pronoia? The universe is re-arranging to your beliefs causing the body to be harmed or healed.

When applied to the universe of nutritional supplements and herbology, it's easy to see a huge complication here. If your beliefs are just as strong or stronger than any supplement you can take: 1. Why take a supplement (or medicine), and, 2. What do you actually believe? Are you a believer at first, but then lose that belief so the supplements start to do nothing? Or, are you convinced nothing will work and you take the supplements (or medicine) to prove yourself right?

So much confusion and frustration is caused by this, and it is in no small part helped by marketing and the physical sciences. For example, a certain supplement is known to contain a certain property, say, ginsenosides. ginsenosides are shown by science to positively affect overall vitality and immunity. Because you believe in the science and you also observe a lack of vitality in your body, you use the supplements with ginsenosides in them to heal or resolve the lack of vitality.

As long as it's as simple as that, your chances of improvement are probably pretty good. But, what if one morning you wake up and you feel worse. You start to believe that perhaps these ginsenosides don't actually work, and soon, because of no result, you stop taking the supplement. You then start searching out other alternatives, and find something else that science says relieves your lack of vitality. This time, you feel better. Ah, now THIS is the answer! And from now on, when you have a lack of vitality, you medicate with this substance.

What if healing and health have really nothing to do with what supplements you take or even what diet you consume? What if the MOST IMPORTANT thing is what you BELIEVE about your health and healing?

I've been experimenting with this lately. I was taking a lot of different Chinese and Ayurvedic herbs, and various vitamins and minerals to address some joint and muscle pain I was having. The herbs seemed to help, as well as the vitamins, yet there was no real resolution (after a year)--some relief at times, but no resolution. In fact, I was bouncing so much between relief and exacerbation, I just got thoroughly confused and discouraged.

I then woke up one morning and had the strong awareness to just STOP taking everything, and fast for a day. Then, re-introduce herbs and supplements ONLY after carefully asking my body and using kinesiology (muscle-testing for strong or weak signals) to determine what I actually consumed. I committed to muscle test everything, including different foods and forms of water. I discovered that my body was struggling with long-term dehydration, and was expending more energy responding to all the herbs and supplements I was shoving down its throat than doing any actual healing.

After about three days, I was feeling much better, and as days went by, I felt better and better. This was confusing to me until I realized that my core belief was that the body heals itself naturally, given proper hydration, oxygenation and my personal conviction in its healing abilities.

So rather than making a judgment call about what I "needed to take" to bring health to the body, I started asking the body what it really needed: how much water, what foods when, what exercise when, how much sleep when, and any vitamins, minerals, enzymes, or herbs. It showed me it just mainly needed the basics: plentiful water, clean food, fresh air, some daily exercise, some minerals, given in gratitude and with my core belief in its healing super-powers. Start asking the universe with sincere curiosity, "What will it take to get rid of _____?", and "What needs to happen in my life to have vibrant health in my body?" This will stimulate pronoia, and awarenesses and answers will start flooding in.

Start asking for your core beliefs about your body. What are your convictions about your body and health? By discovering and validating these (or changing them) you can escape from the placebo/nocebo rabbit hole, and allow the universe to simply work in your body's favor. Embrace pronoia!

The Choice Trap

Our most powerful tool, choice, is also our most abused and unused. This basic mechanism of consciousness is the direct demonstration to ourselves of our power and powerlessness. Are we choosing the best life? Are we choosing to destroy it? Are we not making choices because we're afraid? Are we afraid of any choices at all?

These are really deeply existential questions that get at the core of what we are: creators. We create our life only by using choice. In fact, making choices is something so natural, so automatic, we oftentimes don't realize that we are choosing the pain, discomforts and unwanted conditions we "live with" on the day-to-day. We tell ourselves, "We have no choice" about this, that and the other.

I like to call this the Choice Trap. We pretend we're not choosing and things get bad or worse, and then we suddenly realize we "have no choice" but to...(fill in the blank). My spiritual teacher once told me, "Choosing is an exercise in paying attention. Be aware of what you choose, because it's the only way you're going to get what you want." At the time I laughed at this seemingly obvious statement, but later I realized it was quite profound. There are so many "choices" we make in the form of choosing to "go along" with others, or choosing to procrastinate, or choosing to not do what you know needs to be done, or choosing not to think about your life. These are, often times, unconscious choices that become a sort of operating manual for life.

We can too easily choose to be a victim, or choose to look outside ourself for causes, or choose to be "right" as opposed to "correct". In fact, most of our psychology is constructed on the choices we've made to embrace or deny our values. What's the more important choice? Being right or being compassionate? Being truthful or secretive? All of these types of questions point out what we are choosing any given day.

A friend of mine visited last week on vacation, and said, "It's been so nice to be on vacation. I don't have to make any decisions--I just go wherever I want and do whatever I want." To him, making a decision was a big deal, and yet he was making choices the entire time of his vacation as to where to go and what to do. He didn't think of these kinds of choices as being significant. And yet, these are the kinds of decisions that get us from Point A to Point B every day, and are the key to living the highest and best life we can imagine.

There are a couple of "choosing hacks" I like to use to keep me mindful of the choices I'm making moment to moment. One is, "light or heavy". Say you've narrowed your choices down to two. Ask the question, "is this light or heavy"? One of the choices will seem lighter than the other one, or if they both seem heavy, there is another unacknowledged possibility you aren't considering. If they are both feeling light, well, then, have fun! Always favor lightness. It will serve as your North Star for navigating through your day.

The second choosing hack is "follow the energy". This is similar to favoring lightness, but it's much more specific. Get the idea of something you want to have. Feel the energy of that as though you have it. Now, start choosing the things to do in your day or week that make you feel that same energy. Before too long, you will have that thing you originally wanted, and usually more. It's the "act as if" drill applied to energies.

So, carefully observe every time you make a decision, no matter how small or inconsequential. You'll begin to see where you've actually decided to have the life you have. And once that awareness dawns, you can change it by using your most powerful tool: Choice.

Two Tools

There are two tools in Access Consciousness that I have found are absolutely great as what I call "anti-funkifizers". You know, when you feel yourself falling down in life, and beating your own head against a wall you are painfully aware you put there yourself. That kind of "funkify".

TOOL NUMBER ONE: Staying in the Question. Humans are not particularly good about handling answers. We tend to "find THE answer" and then stick with that sucker come hell or high water (even if we caused the hell and high water). I guess there is a sort of comfort in "knowing you have THE answer". And yet (and I speak from experience), when you think you've found The Answer, after some time and life goes by, you pretty much become convinced that it really wasn't THE answer. So you start off again down that road to the Holy Grail. It's in human DNA, I believe, and it's not very useful.

What IS useful, is to continually ask the open-ended questions and sticking with those no matter what happens. Questions such as, "What energy do I need to be to experience my life with ease and joy?" Or, "What else could happen here that is far beyond what I ever could imagine?" Or, "What would it take for me to be happy, creative and inspired?" In other words, you don't want questions you already know the answers to, or that have obvious answers. You're shooting for the moon with the questions, with no idea what the answers could be. In fact, you don't want to have answers, just better questions.

What's weird is when you ask questions like these, you begin to get certain awarenesses that look like answers. It's the "ask and you shall receive" mechanism in this reality. And it's nice, but you want something even greater. "What else is possible?" is a great question when you start getting "answers" or awarenesses as a result of an open-ended question.

What's also weird is that apparent answers or changes relating to the question start coming at you from the Universe at large. Someone will say something that relates to your question, or an event or scene will suddenly strike you as particularly relevant to your question. It's fun, really, and really helps restore your curiosity. Much less frustrating than burdening yourself with the search for answers. The Universe is much better at those. Let it do it's job.

TOOL NUMBER TWO: Interesting point of view. This is a very useful way to snap out of negativity of any kind, or to "reset" yourself when you realize you're being judgmental or making a bunch of conclusions not supported by evidence. Just say, "Interesting point of view I have that point of view." The self-observation that your behavior was the result of a specific point of view allows you to shift outside of it, and in so doing neutralizing the energy with that point of view. For example, I have late bedtime and late rising hours, and this morning someone was hammering on something next door. After waking up three or four times all grumpy about it, I remembered Interesting P.O.V. I made the statement a few times and lo and behold, I wasn't grumpy anymore, and was able to go back to sleep and not be awakened again by the noise. This is a good one for driving in traffic, too, or in any social gatherings or events. It keeps you light and in present-time awareness. Much more fun!

Experiment with the two tools, and who knows where you could go and who you could be?

Chasing Success

A business colleague of mine posted this meme on Facebook the other day: "Dreams x Goals x Learning x Plans x Actions = Success". At first glance, it seemed logical, but something snarky was welling up inside of me. I couldn't resist. I commented: "Seems so complicated. Instead, how about Dreams X Action = Success?"

This "formula" my business partner posted is part of what I call the "worker bee" syndrome. You dream something up, make it a goal, then educate yourself about how to get there, make a bunch of plans, and only THEN take Action = God laughs. Why not just go from what you'd like to see happen (dreams) to taking action to get there (success).

In some cases, having a "dream" is all that's needed. How many times have you wanted something to happen, and it just did without you doing anything? But we seem to want to jump immediately to planning, learning, goal-setting and "success formulas". You know what? Most of that stuff is the Universe's job! When we take it over, we end up working our asses off and "success" seems to wander further and further out into the future.

Much of this is cultural memes we've made our own: You gotta WORK HARD for what you want; or, nothing valuable in life is ever EASY; or, no pain, no gain; or even, God helps those who help themselves, etc., etc. These memes nullify personal power, and ignore the proven fact that the Universe really does have your back, and it constantly is working on your behalf--even when you try to do its job! The harder you work at something, the more personal power you invalidate. You think there's something you're not doing somehow, or don't know how to do, so you bash your head against the wall repeatedly trying to "come up with answers", when all along, the Universe has had all the answers, and is ready to give them to you, as well as the dream you seek, if you'll just shut up and receive.

There's a word I love: pronoia (coined by Grateful Dead songwriter, Perry Barlow). It means the awareness that the universe is working on your behalf.

Conjure up a dream (or vision, I prefer). Now, ask, "What is it going to take for this vision to become physical reality?" You'll start getting some information as a result of that question. Ignore it. Now ask what action can I take for this vision to actualize in my life? Watch what pops into your head over the next half hour or so. These are the things the Universe would like you to do in order to receive your dream.

You see, because you asked, it's already there. It's just our beliefs or judgments or conclusions that it is not there that keeps us from receiving it. We get what I call "time pollution". That's when you ask for something to show up, and then time transpires (sometimes it seems like forever), and it pollutes your self-esteem and personal power. You think you have to start working really hard. No. You just need to welcome what you asked for into your life.

It's supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be fun. If it's not, then you're asking the wrong questions, or have gotten trapped in seeking for answers. Or, you have an agreement with and attachment to those cultural memes that are running you, telling you to work harder for what you desire.

Put what desires you have "out there", then open your arms and heart to welcome these new things you desire into your life. Observe how things begin to change in that direction. Follow that energy, ask what actions, if any, you can take in the meantime. And, lo and behold, what it is you desire will begin to show up. Yes, it's magic! You're welcome.

Back to the Future, Forward to the Past

My brother is always coming up with interesting fringe ideas about reality which inevitably suck me in to a dialogue (I can't resist the fringe, you know). The last one was about The Past.

He said, "I would anticipate that once a certain percentage of correction is made in the past (by re-framing it), it would translate into future events, putting you in control of future outcomes. The body would recover from past damage because you changed the memory of the original incident in a way that removes the repeated memory, allowing the body to return to a state prior to the injury be it mental or physical because, as far as your body is concerned, it never happened the way you repeatedly created it."

I like that viewpoint. I commented back:

"I fully agree. We construct the past as well as the present and the future. Reconstruction of the past (as church and government historians will tell you) is a great way to soften mass traumas. The constant search for what "really" happened is a red herring. What happened back then happened to a different person than you are now, so there is no way to recreate the past "accurately" without physically going back there.

"Andy Basagio, NASA chrononaut, makes this point. When a person does physically go back in time, they become part of the events objectively and subjectively. There is no way to "correct" an "error", because if it weren't for that "error" you would not have gone back to "fix it" in the first place, therefore, you were always part of the event. So changing the "past" from right now is something done subjectively and emotionally. That is what the DNA is responding to--your reaction to the past--not the past events themselves. That reaction energy is always in play, or active, until the energy of the reaction is dissipated (using any number of modalities).

"A 'negative' (or positive) reaction is always caused by a judgement and conclusion about a past event. Remove the judgement and conclusion, and you've removed the energy from that event and the DNA will be unburdened."

In quantum reality, there is no past or future. These are constructs of the mind. What we use as the past is simply a way of categorizing perceptions of experiences in chronological order because it's become easy for the mind to operate that habitual way. Quantumly, however, everything is happening at once.

We say we have "memories", but what we are actually referring to is a state of being within which we perceived certain things. That state of being is then categorized as a "past" event because current perceptions don't match the perceptions in that state of being. We just say something "happened" that is not happening now. The quantum truth is that, yes, it is happening now--it's all happening now--it's your mind and brain automatically categorizing what perceptions go with what states of being across what we arbitrarily classify as the Past and the Future. We call that "time".

We set up all sorts of scenarios and mechanisms to make time "real" to us: aging, property ownership, relationships, consequences, calendars, holidays, maps, news, TV, Newtonian physics... anything on a schedule or in a certain chronological order, usually cause = effect, that builds creative consensus with the society in which we live.

In the quantum world, time has no "flow" from past to present to future. In fact, quantum time can run backwards, skip around and do a mobius strip--of course, all from the reference of our arbitrary viewpoint of what we classify as a past or future event.

Play with this quantum truth in order to free yourself from time-based frustrations and upsets. Consider a "past" event. Now, reassign it to the future. It hasn't happened yet, or it may or may not happen. Consider that event happening to another person, or consider it as having happened to everyone.

This can be a little disconcerting when you realize how fragile our house of time cards is. And, it allows for more possibilities to show up for you. You can consider something you would like to see in the future, and look back at it as it has already happened. You can step into completely other realities in this way, simply by untethering yourself from the consensual matrix of time.

I believe exercising the mind and brain in this way will open up new abilities and super-powers dormant within our DNA--activating new areas of perceptions and experiences; new areas of joy and well-being.

Make Life a Meditation

I somewhat cynically used to say in my youth that unconscious meditation--the kind we all do when we are obediently serving The Matrix--is the single most untenable problem in human history.

I'll agree with that now in my mature years with the exception that "obediently serving The Matrix" is not "untenable". Why? Because it's a matter of choice. It's one thing to point out how we are all victims of our own unconscious behaviors (which is a victim statement in and of itself), it's entirely another to transcend that victim mentality with the freedom of choice.

I call the obedience to The Matrix hypnotic compliance. And meditation is the "red pill" available to you anytime to wake up from the trance.

I go further down the rabbit hole by claiming that the whole conscious-subconscious model of human psychology is a myth. We say that a person is "driven by subconscious motivations" when they misbehave or fall victim to depression, criminal activity or insanity. No. Why? Because if it were truly subconscious we wouldn't be conscious of it, and once conscious of it, it is no longer subconscious. I know, I know...sounds like semantics, but is it really?

Isn't it more accurate to say that a person chooses to give up their own power or self-determinism and that's what we're calling "subconscious motivations"? We choose to shut off our awareness of some things and then classify it as the "subconscious", which has a definition that includes "beyond our control". This is a myth. At some point there was a choice. Of course, we can also forget what we chose, but that's forgetting something on purpose in order to dodge responsibility for our actions.

There's a type of hiding in forgetfulness of our choices that got somehow mixed up with victim advocacy. When a person is a victim, others with control issues advocate for them, saying, "This person is not in control of their actions. They need me to help them live." This is all a master-slave crock of shit.

I got into a debate with a Caucasian friend of mine on Facebook who was bemoaning the fact that she felt she was--somewhere down deep inside--a racist. Despite the fact that her grandmother was black and her mother was brown, she saw something in herself that she labeled as "racist"--a kind of resistence or unwillingness to empathize with another person of a different skin color.

I said that it was a matter of choice, whether or not to be racist. And if there were racist thoughts and feelings coming up for her, that she could practice mindfulness meditation--a type of meditation that allows undesirable thoughts and feelings to simply float on by like clouds in the sky, and from this, infinite options show up to choose something different.

Well, this got her dander up. "I love meditation, but I find it incomplete as a means to address issues of social justice. There's more to do. And ingrained subconscious beliefs are not so easy to release... I worry about hiding behind spiritual concepts." Then don't hide. These "spiritual concepts" you speak of are what make the world go 'round. The thoughts we create that lead to the feelings and actions we do out there in the "real world" are all driven by our own choices. Failure to choose is at the heart of complacency and victimhood.

This discussion illustrated for me, once again, what I refer to as the "Quantum Reality Gap", which I've written about before. It's the perceived difference between what we desire to see in the world and what we think we see in the world. I'm saying that there really is no difference. It's just that everything is happening just as you've chosen (or not chosen) it to be. There's just time in there to make you doubt yourself.

Life can be a living meditation every moment by simply paying attention to your thoughts and words, allowing them to flow, and choosing something different when you want to change things. There is no powerful "subconscious" that is causing all the ills in your life--that's victim behavior. Choice is more powerful. Choose to be happy. Choose to be healthy. Choose to be the very best of who you are.

Pain is not Suffering

I posted this as a meme on Facebook from Teal Swan: "The circumstances you are experiencing are not the cause of your suffering. The cause of your suffering is the thought that what is happening should not be happening, or is not supposed to be happening."

It's an expansion on the old Buddhist saying I heard in yoga class frequently: "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."

The Facebook post got several comments mainly about physical pain. One friend wrote, "Well, then, whoever wrote that was never severely burned in a car accident." Another wrote, "I really resent those who say you can control everything with your thoughts. You can control some things, but we live in a physical world." Still another commented, "They're talking about emotional pain, not physical pain, right?"

In all cases, the people completely missed the message of the meme. It was not saying that your thoughts caused the pain. It says that your thoughts about the pain and/or its causation is causing the suffering.

In my own case, in the past, for several years, I had debilitating lower lumbar disc inflammations that would put me in bed sometimes because I could not move without extreme pain in my back and down both legs. I suffered greatly because I kept judging how unfair it was, and why me, an active, professional musician who ate right, exercised, took good care of himself should be burdened with this disability. Sometimes I cried. Not so much because of the pain, but because of the circumstances of it--and the situation I was in because of it.

I finally just decided to stop suffering and do something about my condition. I began yoga classes, and within a year, my back was completely healed. Yes, it was very difficult to do the yoga, and there was a lot of pain along the way, but I was convinced that it would work, and I had the drive and determination to get out of pain. This is the remedy for suffering: change the circumstances. Do something different. Get out ahead of the situation. Allow the pain, allow all the inconvenience, all the gripey thoughts and emotions, and just soldier on.

Anyone who has a serious disability, for example, Stephen Hawking, absolutely could not be in suffering and do the things he's done. Sure, he's probably in a lot of pain, but his vision, will, and determination to live his life cancels out what could be certainly the best of reasons to suffer.

What Hawking has done, and anyone overcoming any sort of painful disability, is to focus on what is working; the things in life to be grateful for, because that's where the energy is. That's where the inspiration lies, and that's where LIFE is. Life is not in the suffering, because suffering is a mental construct of victim behavior. It defeats hope, it neutralizes motivation, and rips the color right out of life and living.

So above all, my friends, gratitude trumps suffering, and will certainly lead to ease, joy and a zest for life.