“The Science and Magic of Making Your Dreams Come True” by Howard Eisenberg, MD – Excerpt from Chapter 1 ©?
Imagine how radically different your experience and understanding of reality would be if you had been born in a primitive age before the development of modern technology.
Even in modern times, there are many different prejudices, ideologies, and religions that, while all rooted in the same reality, have vastly different interpretations and beliefs.
Our experiences have programmed us to see reality through different lenses, and our beliefs are like filters that blind us to how other people see and evaluate things in completely different ways.
However, if we are willing to examine and challenge these limiting beliefs, we can discover who we really are and who we can become, rather than being limited by the beliefs we've been taught and the way others have treated us.
“For something to become clear, you must be willing to give up your own view of it.” –Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk
It takes courage to seek the truth and seriously question what you believe to be true, especially when it doesn't line up with what you've previously been led to believe (or the views of those around you).
On the other hand, can we really believe the widely held scientific belief that humans are nothing more than a kind of machine made of flesh, that self-consciousness is merely an illusion calculated by the brain, and that humans live in a meaningless universe?
What if our sense of reality, and even the existence of the physical brain itself, despite their convincing appearances, are no more fixed and “out there” than our nighttime dreams?
Many of the world's spiritual teachers think we are asleep, unaware that we are merely trapped in a dream. They teach that it is our ego, with which we identify, that has emotionally trapped us in this virtual, yet all-encompassing world of illusion.
Things are not as they seem
The seemingly solid objects are not solid at all, but are mostly empty space, but we can see and touch them, despite their ghostly reality.
Perception changes reality
In martial arts such as karate and taekwondo, young children are taught to use their bare hands to punch through a wooden board, imagining they are punching through the board rather than hitting it.Similarly, one reality-altering experience has been that of walking barefoot across a very hot charcoal fire and remaining unharmed if one believes they can do so without getting burned.
Your perception is not based on an objective external world, but rather provides a very convincing simulation of a virtual reality that is external.
When we are trapped in our interpretations of reality, our emotional attachments and fears limit our future actions. The Buddha realised that we need to let go of our limiting beliefs about who and what we are because they cause unnecessary suffering.
If we are willing to risk going beyond the familiar comfort of our programmed limiting beliefs, we can learn true magic.
Qi Gong is a form of Asian yoga that has been practiced for thousands of years. Advanced practitioners of this art can imagine intentionally projecting their inner life force, divine energy, outward as a distant healing power or as a defensive weapon against attackers.
A sophisticated Russian martial art, Systema is a fusion of militaristic Cossack combat techniques and Asian martial arts. It was developed for modern military use by Russian special forces experts. Advanced practitioners such as Colonel Mikhail Ryabko have been observed delivering physical blows to people from just a few feet away, using only their trained mind powers.
In both Qigong and Systema, advanced practitioners use the mental imagination to project outward effects into the plasticity of conventional physical reality: they intentionally imagine the desired energy sensations and intended effects and then manifest them in the outer world.
And cutting-edge research from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), founded by American former lunar astronaut Edgar Mitchell, suggests that when talented subjects in experiments intentionally imagine themselves affecting highly sophisticated technological devices that are physically and electromagnetically shielded, something actually gets produced.
Hmmm… maybe you're not just a “self wrapped in a skin.”
Before delving deeper into this subject, we must first pay attention to our existential predicament at the more mundane level of agreed upon reality.
“The situation the planet is in right now is the product of mindless production and mindless consumption. We consume to forget our worries and anxieties. Overconsumption is not the right way to calm yourself.”
—Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and world spiritual leader
An unchecked ego has a delusional and inflated sense of who and what we are. It emotionally hijacks our minds, forcing us to act selfishly and shortsightedly, often at the expense of others. It has an unrelenting desire to compete and prove its worth, constantly looking for external rewards. It belittles and dehumanizes others. This results in a tribalistic, “us vs. them” mindset that leads to the exploitation and pollution of the earth's resources.
In contrast, ethical human behavior arises from a sense of connection with others and is characterized by compassion and cooperation. Ironically, according to stress theory founder Dr. Hans Selye, this is also selfish. As Dr. Selye discovered, one of the best biological defenses against excessive stress is to develop an altruistic self, an awareness and compassion for the needs of others. In other words, the more connected we are with one another, the happier and healthier we are.
Various cultures have creation myths, such as the Garden of Eden, that describe a time of abundance and harmony before humanity lost its connection to its spiritual source.
In the ensuing legend of the Fall, our ancestors mistakenly came to believe that inner happiness depended on outer material resources. The meaning of life was sacrificed on the altar of material consumerism, and the spiritual dimension of nature, with its awe-inspiring grandeur and innate harmony, lost its sacredness and became a mere commodity to be exploited.
“If people understood that we are all interconnected and connected to nature, there would be no ecological crisis and no wars around the world.” —Stanley Krippner, psychologist and parapsychologist
Traditional Native American values are based on respecting and protecting nature and all other sentient creatures. The Iroquois are believed to have codified this stewardship perspective in their Great Law as the “Principle of the Seven Ages,” a vision that looked seven generations into the future to make the world sustainable, in contrast to humanity's current short-sighted obsession with fear and greed.
The current existential crisis for humanity and the planet has culminated with the abandonment of traditional indigenous values, combined with the rise of a predatory and exploitative mindset, which is endangering the entire web of life and leading us to the brink of human extinction.
It is a critical time for all of us to wake up from the dystopian world we have created by our mind-destroying and blindly accepting a materialistic view of reality. According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability. A landmark report published in 2018 by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that we have just 12 years left to contain the impending global climate catastrophe. The Doomsday Clock has been maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. It is an iconic tracking system that indicates the probability of the occurrence of man-made global catastrophes (nuclear conflict, global climate change, pandemic mismanagement, artificial intelligence, etc.). Reflecting multiple existential threats, the Doomsday Clock has been steadily moving towards catastrophe since 2010, but it was only in 2021 that it needed to be expressed at a crisis level, with the clock set just 100 seconds to midnight.
The late Barbara Marx Hubbard (American futurist, author, and lecturer) pointed out:
“We are the first species to face extinction through our own actions and know it.”
Climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was 16 years old at the time, was even more outraged in her 2019 speech at the United Nations.
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!… We are not giving you an escape route. We draw the line here and now. Whether you like it or not, the world is waking up and change is coming.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, with a lack of suitable vaccines for poor and developing countries and the continued emergence of more potent virus mutations, has vividly demonstrated the need for global thinking. As the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has stated, “No one is safe until everyone is safe.”
Ironically, in this age of scientific wonder, the very information technologies and social media platforms that connect us instantly are also the very reasons we feel less connected. This is because, despite their attractive features, IT only connects us on a superficial horizontal dimension, not the deeper and more satisfying vertical dimension. This has resulted in increasing complaints about loneliness, leading governments in the UK and Japan to appoint Ministers for Loneliness.
Despite the dark trajectory we are currently on, all of us — each and every one of us — have a choice: we can continue to be defined by the past and continue to play fatalistic characters in the slowly unravelling story of humanity, or we can become dreamers of dreams and purposefully create new, more desirable experiences.
And, as you will soon see, your dreams have power: by transforming your own dreams, you can participate in sowing the seeds of a new, better vision for the world.
© Copyright 2021, Howard Eisenberg, Canada
Amazon Book Link:
https://bit.ly/4d4HG1T
Book-specific webpage:
https://drhowardeisenberg.com/book-dream-it-to-do-it/
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