You’re Living in a Box
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Get ready to mix it up with me a bit because I’m about to challenge many of the things you hold dear. You think you’re living in the real world, but actually you’re not. You’re trapped in a little box created by your own neurology and conditioned ways of thinking. You know your box, but you don’t know the nature of the real world. Everyone yearns to be free because almost no one is free. Everyone wants more out of life because no one has nearly enough – living in a box. I have spent my life guiding thousands of people out of the box. I will take you step by step through exercises that will free you from the box you’re now living in, take you out into a larger world and teach you how to control what goes on inside and outside of the box. This is ground-breaking work, the next age in human understanding.
Let’s start with what everyone thinks is “true” but which actually ends up being wrong. When you wake up in the morning the world you come into is real, or so you think. The roads you drive are consistently there and regularly shared with other motorists. It’s reassuring that the toaster works each morning and even that your moody teenage son or daughter will probably be about the same today as he/she was yesterday. Insofar as you are aware, the dream world from which
you awakened is not real. After all, in a dream, a dog might change into a cat, and when you wake up, no-one else knows what you were dreaming about. So, most agree, the world we experience while we’re awake is real, and the dream world is a figment of the imagination. Hang on to your hat, because that’s just plain wrong. The dream world may be pure fantasy, but the waking world which seems so real definitely does not exist the way you think it does. If you think what I just said isn’t true, you simply haven’t been keeping pace with what’s been going on in the world of science.
About five years ago I was sitting in a beautiful renovated playhouse in Greensboro, North Carolina, watching my daughter play the lead role of Maria in West Side Story. A father’s dream come true! She was fantastic, seemingly right there in Spanish Harlem, standing on a fire escape on the second floor of a tenement building. But at intermission, you could walk up to the stage and see that it was all an illusion – a set design painted on a wall just a few inches thick, made to look very real. You could see it was a fake, but when you went back to your seat and got wrapped up in the drama and the music, you’d have sworn it was real – bricks, windows, everything. Much like the stage set for my daughter’s play, our world is a carefully constructed illusion and it is not real.
To explain how that’s true, I’ll start with basic biology. Dogs act like dogs, squirrels like squirrels, deer like deer, and people act like people – we all coexist
in the same environment, yet every species sees the world quite differently. A fly simultaneously sees multiple pictures of its immediate environment, while we humans see just one. We perceive two very different realities. Yet the world the fly perceives works as well for the fly as your world works for you. And what about bats? They fly using an entirely different system than ours – radar - pings of energy they send out bounce back to them off of objects on their radar screen. Though we share the same world, the bat sees an entirely different world from the one you and I see – they have a different box altogether, but it works for them. Or consider the dog. A dog doesn’t see color but can smell, hear and sense things that human beings cannot. Whose world view is more accurate, yours or your dog’s? Almost every dog owner has observed times when their dog was totally keyed in to what was happening – the presence of danger for example, or a storm on the way, or an illness in a family friend. Any dog owner in California will tell you that their dog was aware of an impending earthquake, while the human beings in the family were clueless until it happened.
Who’s got the upper hand here? We humans tend to be a bit egotistical. Most of us are aware of the fact that different species see the world in different ways, yet we’re so quick to conclude “Yeah, but we human beings are able to see and understand things much better than anything in the animal kingdom . . . what can an animal possibly have to teach me when it comes to understanding reality.” Well, a lot actually. During the Southeast Asian tsunami crisis in December of 2004, the news agencies reported a most interesting phenomenon: the wild and domestic animals in Sumatra high-tailed it into the mountains in the hours before the tsunami struck. They knew, through their ability to tune in to electromagnetic energy patterns, about the devastation that was to come. If only the human inhabitants of Sumatra could have known the same thing. So many lives might have been saved, so much trauma prevented. The truth is, human beings can receive and interpret electromagnetic energy signals. I will teach you how to do it. It’s not that complicated.
From these few examples it’s easy to see that every animal species perceives a different world, despite the fact that we all share the same world. Two things are worth noting here. First, different species compete with one-another in the struggle to stay alive based on their particular sensory abilities – the particular way they perceive the box. Second, with regard to human beings in particular,
there is a widely varying ability to perceive: psychological studies show that I can line up a dozen human beings and expose them to precisely the same experience, and every one of the twelve will come away with a slightly different understanding of what happened. That’s partly true because what we think - our ideology, attitudes, the way we’ve allowed our minds to be conditioned to a certain point of view and way of understanding - will help determine what we see and experience. The animal kingdom’s ability to perceive is slightly less variable and less complex because animals are not as “thoughtful” as we are.
So who is right in what they see, and who is wrong? Science proves that all the species are wrong, and that perception of what’s going on within the human species is generally not accurate. Why? It turns out that the sense abilities of
everyone and everything are based on a unique neuro-anatomy, unique neurochemistry, unique ability to perceive, interpret and think. That’s a little complicated, but worth understanding. How do the senses work? Let’s take a brief look at human neuro-anatomy. Take for example, how we see a shiny car. A light wave from the car hits a receptor nerve cell in your eye. At the same time, electrical energy is running from your brain into the same nerve and into the eye. The two currents of energy melt in the eye and an electrical signal is sent to your brain and you “see” the shiny car. Then you have to cognize that signal, or “interpret” it. That’s where thought and conditioning come in. Shiny cars are a known phenomenon and rather easily interpreted and understood in our culture, so you probably “see” the shiny car with some degree of accuracy, or so you think.
Perception is not that simple. If you have almost no energy in your nerves, like when you are sleeping or anesthetized for surgery, your eyes may be open but you won’t actually “see” a thing. No current is sent to the brain. Or perhaps it may be the case that the signal gets sent, but your brain is not functioning at peak efficiency due to fatigue or medication, or maybe this is simply the first shiny car you’ve ever seen in your life – in which case you will mis-interpret the signal and you will not “see” clearly because your thoughts and attitudes will filter the signal that is being sent. So, the act of perceiving what’s going on is dependent on how much energy you have in your peripheral and central nervous systems, how adequately your brain is interpreting sensory data, and on how your patterns of thought will allow you to interpret what is being received. So, according to biological science, the act of perception is a complex process involving a lot of variables – and still, it’s all a fake.
Now let’s turn to biophysics. We know from the physical sciences that a shiny car isn’t really a shiny car, a smooth solid table isn’t really smooth and solid. Actually, the car and the table, and everything else in the physical universe, are made of atoms – electrons flying around a nucleus of neutrons and protons – atomic units of energy in constant motion. What seems solid is actually made up of active energy particles. And just as intriguing: most of the “space” that makes up an atom is empty! An atom looks just like our solar system, with a “sun” made up of protons and neutrons, and “planets” made up of electrons, with vast amounts of space in between. What we perceive as solid is actually mostly empty space tied together with energy particles. Our brain receives signals from these energy particles and the electromagnetic energy fields they generate in “empty” space. The brain then interprets these signals as solid, gas, fluid, color, weight, loud, soft, smooth, rough, etc. The brain’s ability to interpret these signals is strongly influenced by our thought constructs, or what we think is possible. Thought and sensory data are then used by the brain to “build” a consistent sensible construct through which all of these electromagnetic data are interpreted. So, our physical world is perceived by an instrument (the brain and sensory nerve system), using electromagnetic stimuli (which consist chiefly of energy particles and empty space), filtered through thought (our ideas regarding what things are and how the world works).
Think about this for a moment. When it comes down to it, the world as you are aware of it isn’t as real as you think. You are creating the box you’re trapped in. It is simply a reflection of the map of your own neurology and your thought, stimulated by electromagnetic energy. Each species creates its own kind of box and the effect of the species-specific box is to hold all members of a single species together as a unit. There’s a fantastic old Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, where all these identical-looking black and white penguins are crammed onto an iceburg, and one penguin in the middle with his flippers up singing I’ve Got To Be Me . Society’s reaction is, “No you don’t have to be you, you’re a penguin. You’re all the same. Get in line with the rest of ‘em.” The species has a way of keeping its members in the box as a means of maintaining the status quo.
The world outside of the species-specific box is wondrous, full of opportunity, nothing like you think it is. The first step toward getting out of the box and into a larger world is to realize that the box you live in is just an illusion. You’re not seeing an objective reality, though you think you are. Like the West Side Story backdrop that looks real until you get up next to it, it’s just a stage set. The “set” is constructed based on the flow of atomic and sub-atomic energy, the way your senses are structured, and the picture your brain constructs, which is filtered through your thought and ideology. So, this 3-D world that you live in is a fraud. Oh, it’s consistent from day to day, and it makes sense of life so you can survive as a human animal. But you cannot overlook the fact that, like all species, our perception of the world around us is driven by neurochemical processes in the body that are set off by electromagnetic stimuli and interpreted by our beliefs. Each animal species is creating its own view of reality that is different from ours by varying degrees. We don’t share the same ability to perceive with most other species. We human beings only barely agree with one-another about what is happening in any given moment. Each of us is in a box of our own creation.
So much for biology and biophysics. Now let’s have a little fun by moving on to quantum physics and get even more free from our day-to-day assumptions about “reality.” Lets go to Einstein. He’s really not so hard to follow. Go back to that lightwave that is striking your eye from the shiny car. Let’s say the car is driving along. That image of the car is carried to you by a lightwave traveling at, of course, the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Now that’s really pretty darn fast, but it still takes time, even if just a little, for that light to reach you. By the time you’ve seen the speeding car, it’s actually a little further down the road. The difference doesn’t really matter much at close distances, but look up at the sky tonight and pick a distant star. The light coming to you from that star may have traveled for hundreds of thousands of years. The star that existed behind the light may have already imploded ages ago – it’s not there anymore, but you wouldn’t know it. You see the light, and the light makes it appear as if the star is still there, solid and real to you. Hint: nothing in the universe is as solid and real as it seems!
According to Einstein and every noted quantum theorist who came after him, time itself moves at slightly different speeds for all of us, based on how much we weigh, how fast we’re moving, and how far we are from the center of the earth. We all age by the clock at slightly different speeds and a day is a bit longer or shorter for each of us depending on our weight, speed and altitude. Most of the time the difference is too small to care about, but you could send an astronaut into space for 40 years as measured by the clock on the space ship and have him return to earth 500 years later in earth time. This is not science fiction - it’s a fact, verified by NASA scientists who’ve measured time differentials on rockets moving at various speeds. Interesting. Time is not what you thought it was. How real is it?
Let me challenge you a bit more. Say you start traveling faster and faster until you reach the speed of light. In this case, time stops completely for you, everything is infinitely heavy except for you. You have become pure energy, pure light, have no weight and no mass. Do you even exist? If you slowed down and came back to earth, you would not have aged a day, while everyone else on earth might be 50 years older. So much for the one world we all share. Einstein showed that the more you push the box – further and faster – the more it breaks down. We’re actually each in his or her own box.
So grant me please that I’ve shown you that the world you thought was real and unchangeable does not exist the way you thought it did. So what really is out there. Let the fun stuff begin by considering how Bell’s Theorem starts to show us what’s outside the box. John Stuart Bell was a prominent physicist in the 1950’s. Bell’s Theorem is regarded by some in the quantum mechanics field as one of the most important theorems of the 20th century. To understand his theorem, first ponder just how things work in this world through the process of simple cause and effect. Moving pool ball A hits stationary pool ball B. A stops and B starts off at a little slower clip than A due to the energy lost in the collision. B hits stationary pool ball C. B stops and C goes off a bit slower than B was going. All of the events that go on in the world follow this law, whether it is how a car drives down a road or a phone call is put through from New York to L.A. Bell’s Theorem scientifically proves that in order for normal cause and effect to exist, at a subatomic level, all parts of the universe must be connected to each other instantaneously, faster than the speed of light with no time lost at all (something the physicists call “superluminal”). What occurs in one place occurs in all places at the same moment. While a pool ball has to roll to hit another pool ball, a subatomic particle moves and makes another particle move in a distant part of the universe at the same time. The real world that lies outside of our little boxes turns out to be one massive organism in instantaneous communication with all parts of itself. Imagine what you could do if you knew how to operate that system. I can teach you how.
So what is the nature of this thing that exists outside of our sensory-based awareness that Bell is talking about? The nature of reality at the sub-atomic level is most intriguing. To begin to understand it, we can look to the work of Max Planck, considered to be the founder of quantum mechanics and one of the most important physicists of the twentieth century. To understand his work, go back to the shiny speeding car that we were discussing before. We know it is made out of molecules composed of atoms. Atoms are mostly empty space with small atomic energy particles – electrons spinning around neutrons and protons. These atomic parts are made out of subatomic energy particles – quarks – tiny bits of energy that come and go for short periods of time to repeatedly reform each proton, electron, etc. Take an atom and put it in an atom smasher and we see the traces of each bit of subatomic energy. As these subatomic particles are broken down into smaller and smaller units, they reach such a light weight (a weight below Plank’s Constant) that the same particle winks in and out of existence, going from something into nothing and then back into something again, and so on. At a sub-atomic level then, the energy particles that form the physical world aren’t always there. The whole world ends up being a vast nothing spinning around nothing solid. Intriguing.
What does all this really mean in terms of the nature of reality? The famous Danish subatomic theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate Neils Bohr said it best when he said that the whole universe is one vast thought. The world is not actually a thing, nor many things. Rather, it is thought, expressing itself as quantum energy, which then masquerades as a solid physical universe. Now, Bohr’s work has been well-respected since the 1920’s, but people who really want to cling to the box just don’t get it. “What do you mean that my experience is just energy being driven by thought?” They think Bohr’s science means that nothing is real – it’s just an illusion. They want to react, “I’ll tell you what’s real – my shiny car is real, my wife is real, so’s my breakfast!” People who hold this opinion simply don’t understand what thought is or how powerful it is. When they do, then they get it.
Others among us - the faithful – often react to Bohr’s work by saying “Oh yes, there’s a thought behind the universe alright, it’s God’s thought.” Religious thinkers of many faiths have long held that the universe exists as a thought held in the mind of God. As a man of science and a man of faith, I am quick to agree. Religious thinkers have a few things going for them. Unlike the rationalists and the scientists, they tend to have an unlimited view of what goes on outside the box and they assert there is a purpose playing out there. That’s good. Anyone who’s made it outside the box knows that’s true.
But religionists miss the mark in some important ways: they too often adhere to doctrine at the expense of actual experience, and they don’t have a really reliable way to escape the box - the way out is “scrambled,” highly esoteric and hidden, available to only a few. That’s just not true. Every single individual has the power to effect what goes on inside and outside the box and there are methods that can be used with scientific precision to experience that power. The benefit of science is that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something outside the box, that the thought that exists back behind the box is your thought, and it insists that all persons are equipped to get there if they want to. I’ve proven that to be true for thousands of people. Everyone can get there and I can tell you how to do it. My methods transcend the ancient debate between science and religion. Einstein said it best when he said “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind . . . a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.” In the end, there is only one Truth and humanity can approach it elegantly and efficiently by combining the best of science and religion.
The key to pursuing Truth, to understanding the nature of reality, rests in experiencing the hidden power of the human mind. Most people don’t understand what thought really is. When you know more you will be able to operate the laws of nature through the thoughts in your own mind. All objects, all events, will fall under your sway. You will be able to accomplish whatever you truly desire through the power of your mind – not in fantasy but in reality. If you are a scientific humanist, you will be delighted with the precision of the mind and the degree of expansiveness you encounter using the tried and tested methods of mental exploration I share with my clients. If you are a person of faith, you will equally well enjoy the journey, and you will discover that, at the highest levels of your own consciousness, your mind and the mind of God are one. It is indeed possible to “know” God. It’s just not that hard to do.
The problem is that so far you have been living in a box, thinking it was real. To break out of the box, you need to use different ways of thinking. There are four distinct kinds of thought which occur at ever-deeper levels of awareness for every single human being. Most people are only familiar with one of them – the conscious mind (simple logic, or the thoughts and feelings of which most people are typically aware). The conscious mind is the weakest, smallest part of the mind. There are three other levels of mind, each more powerful than the last, and you need to be able to access these levels of consciousness in order to expand outside the box and manage what goes on inside of it. I will teach you how.
Before you can understand what you don’t know about the hidden dimensions of the human mind however, you need to understand what you actually are. Just as the world you thought was real was only a box, the “you” that you presently experience isn’t what you think it is either. What are you made of? We human beings are composed of energy: from the subatomic energy that forms the basis for electrons, neutrons and protons – the building blocks of chemical composition and cellular structure in the body - to the electric impulses that govern the human heartbeat and the functioning of our senses. Science proves conclusively we’re not just biological beings composed of chemicals, we are biophysical beings consisting of energy. Like the world we live in, we are composed of atomic and sub-atomic particles, space and electromagnetic energy fields. Let that sink in, because it is the first key to breaking out of the box. You are made of energy. And the engine that drives your energy is your own thought. Thought governs the structure of your being and the structure of the world around you.
Energy flowing throughout the body creates bio-electro magnetic energy fields, or BioEm fields, in and around the body. The composition, size and movement of these fields correlate with various states of physical, mental and spiritual health. Human thought and feeling also exist as subtle electromagnetic energy. I’ll explore this understanding fully later, but for now consider this: when a patient is connected to an electroencephalograph (EEG), his/her brain activity is measured in the form of energy waves whose amplitude and frequency correlate with various states of consciousness (i.e. waking or sleeping, anxious or calm, reasoning or imagining). Think about that for a moment: different types of brain waves correlate with different types of human thought. Consider the implications. What you think translates into physical change in your body. And further, what you’re thinking and feeling radiates out into the world as subtle electromagnetic energy, to have a deciding effect on your experience (a subject we will take up in great detail later).
This is not mumbo jumbo. Highly reputable institutions like the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health and the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSEEM) are examining the mind-body connection, the roll of BioEm fields and our ability to manipulate BioEm energy to effect healing (called “biofield therapy”). Other notable organizations like The Institute of Noetic Sciences are studying the role that thought plays in shaping human experience and the structure of our world.
Oh, pleeease,” you may still be thinking, “I get the science and it’s intriguing, but what the heck can it really do for me in terms of my quality of life.” A lot. In fact, everything. The methods I’ve developed can be used to heal yourself, heal others, change your environment, realize your dreams, improve social welfare, and more. Interns come to study with me from around the world – physicians, psychologists, social workers and other health professionals – who use my methods to improve treatment outcomes for their patients. I maintain a private practice, serving an international clientele, but every week I hold a free clinic for the public. Countless people have come through the doors over the years, ailing from things like arthritis, orthopedic injuries, fibromyalgia, diabetes, cancer, depression, anxiety, excessive grief or overexposure to trauma. Many physically and emotionally healthy people come seeking a way to get out of the box.
Frequently, my methods result in a complete, instantaneous, permanent healing of physical illness. A large number of the folks who come to the clinic with physical problems walk away having enjoyed a full recovery after a session lasting 30 minutes or less. A fair number experience a major reduction in symptoms, along with renewed optimism and a commitment to full healing. Such is the power of the mind when combined with the biofield therapies I teach at my clinic. You should be aware that a tiny handful who come to work with me do not receive benefit from the methods, and before they leave my office, they usually know why. The methods I teach will not be effective in any case that involves overriding another person’s free will - a subject which I will go into later.
In 1998 I was a presenter at a conference on alternative medicine in Washington, D.C. After my seminar on how to manipulate BioEm energies to heal physical problems, I invited volunteers to come up to the dais from the audience – I always like to demonstrate the methods because it really brings home their power and simplicity. Up walked a woman, laboring badly with the aid of a tripod cane. She had been a dancer in her youth and her knees were completely shot. Knee surgeries had done little to restore their functioning. For about 10 to 15 minutes I used a combination of thought and my own biofield therapy techniques to heal her injured knees. The effect was stupendous, and she began to dance about, ecstatic with her newfound health. She threw her cane away and left the auditorium without it!
Five years later I was sitting in the front row at another conference, waiting to move up to the dais as a speaker. This same woman took the seat next to me. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said smiling. Terribly abashed I had to confess that I recognized her but couldn’t remember her name – a professional hazard when you see so many people for very brief encounters. She reintroduced herself as the woman with the tripod cane from years before. She registered for this conference knowing I was a speaker, with the sole purpose of thanking me. She went on to explain that, after I healed her knees, she embarked on a three month tour of Europe, followed by three weeks in Australia. Her life had been one great adventure since she’d regained the use of her legs. The pathology that had plagued her knees had never returned. I have known countless experiences like this one – complete and instantaneous healing. Sometimes I am the one who applies the methods, but I prefer to teach people to heal themselves. The methods work, and anyone who wants to can become very good at applying them.
In the series of talks that follow, I will help you re-define how you understand yourself and the world around you so you can tap the unlimited power of your mind. Then I’ll show you how to use that power to get what you most want out of life. If you want to redecorate the walls of your box so that you have love, prosperity, health, or a larger purpose in life, I will give you exercises that will allow you to mentally operate the laws of the real world outside the box. At the other end of the spectrum, if you want full liberation from the box and the immense joy, peace and wisdom that come with that freedom, I will guide you there.