Grow Your Planetary Intelligence--Pay Attention to Subtle Forces and Empty Spaces

The mechanistic paradigm, the idea that the universe is a huge machine, teaches us that big causes create big effects, and small causes create small effects. This is the idea of linear causation or proportionality and is the foundation of our modern world-view. It encourages us to focus on “bigness:” that is the importance of material things over energy, size over quality, speed over completeness. From this perspective, you might as well spend your energy accumulating as much stuff as possible because the winners are “those who die with the most toys.” However, one of the discoveries of research into zero-point energy is that empty space has substantially more energy than objects or solid space. In fact, it is said that a single cubic meter of empty space has more potential energy in it than all the objects you can see around you for 20,000 light years. This gargantuan quantity of potential energy lies in the vacuum between sub-atomic particles and we don't yet have the technology, at least not officially, to harness it. Yet zero-point energy is visible all around us in the behavior of liquid water. What makes water fluid yet “sticky” is the attraction of zero-point energy between the hydrogen atoms in different water molecules. Without this subtle zero-point attraction, life as we know it wouldn't be possible. So this subtle, “weak” vacuum-effect creates the conditions for biological life. Similarly, weak forces all around us create attractive forces that allow for communications, information, and self-organization. Instead of focusing your attention on the loudest, the biggest, and most energetic phenomena around you, take time to look at seemingly irrelevant things, objects, and processes. Focus on the space between objects rather than on the objects themselves. This will give you another perspective on the living energy fields around you and how to use your intelligence to interact with them.

Grow Your Planetary Intelligence--Slow Down

One of the easiest ways to connect with planetary intelligence is to deliberately slow down your pace of life so as to experience more detail and information in your surroundings from moment to moment. Our modern pace of life is so fast now as to create a condition of “information overload” in our sensory awareness. Coupled with a constant barrage of interruptions from email, cell phones, and instant messaging, our attention is subject to fragmentation. This mental interruption has been shown to result in a greater effect in lowering IQ than smoking marijuana (New Scientist, June 28, 2006). Being constantly interrupted is one way that a large, macro-view can be supplanted by an overly narrow, micromanaged perspective that is so common in our contemporary culture. This is similar to what I call “fractal flattening:” a condition whereby the natural variability of nature is condensed into smooth, predictable systems favored by our mechanistic, rationalistic mindset. The result of fractal flattening is the we may, collectively, gain efficiency but lose information and a larger, broader perspective. Intelligence is not only an analytical, logical skill: it is the ability to sense and understand the “whole picture” and to be aware of all the subtle relationships in every living system. To see the big view we need to “stop the world” of our inner dialogue and see the hugeness of the totality of our universe. Therefore, spend a few minutes a day just slowing down and paying attention to whatever is right in front of you. The vastness of your intuitive attention will naturally reveal itself to you.

Alienmind and Undermind--Is there a difference?

In the process of reading Opening Minds aloud, in preparation for the upcoming audio version of the book, I was struck by the encounters of "Bob" and several others mentioned in the text, who reported alien contact of one form or another. Some individuals reported seeing 7-foot tall reptoids near them. Others reported having different varieties of sexual encounters. Looking back at these reports several years after writing about them I began to wonder: What causes people to have these weird experiences? Since I don't think that any of them are making it up, I can only assume that our minds are much more mysterious than we care to admit. Yes, on the surface it seems that science can come up with a fairly coherent explanation of what our minds do from moment to moment. But at another level, there is a degree of pure strangeness to the whole affair. Perhaps there is a continuum which at one level includes ordinary waking-state experience, and at the other, a connection to other life forms and broader universal consciousness. Since we don't have a lot of formal training in dealing with the later, it may across as feeling as if it were distinctly "other." Thus, we project those seemingly bizarre feelings and sensations outside of ourselves as "aliens." But in another way, the aliens are portions of our own undermind, that we haven't integrated very thoroughly in our daily experience. They emerge from our consciousness, and then appear as if they came from "out there." In this sense, the alien mind and our undermind form a continuum and to some extent are the same thing.