Elaine Grundy: looking for Urban Enlightenment

Rupert Sheldrake – The Extended Mind

I have been recommended Rupert Sheldrake by two separate friends in the past month so thought I better check him out – wow! This guy rocks!  It’s long but very well worth it, fascinating.

Can you tell if someone is looking at you? In the Amsterdam Science Museum – over 20,000 people have participated in an experiment to see if they can tell if someone is looking at their back. Results are significant, you CAN affect people simply by looking at them, people in the security industry take this for granted, so why is it so hard for the scientific community to accept.

Because the scientific community believes that everything happens in the mind, therefore what we see is actually an image created by the mind, and not an outward projection. Sheldrake’s theory is the obvious one, that we are not seeing the world as a huge image in our mind, but we are reaching outward with our energy and interpreting the world through our senses – an outward extension of our mind and not just inside the brain.

The extended mind model
Take a flock of Starlings, movements are so fine-tuned they never bump into each other and cannot be explained by individuals watching out for each other but rather by each bird being connected to a larger energy fields – emergent fields that depend on each other and are formed by each individual but also the entire group. Sheldrake believes that all packs and groups of higher animals have this ability.

He also believes that telepathy is a normal and not paranormal effect of the mind’s ability to reach outside of the body. He has some fascinating experimental evidence on dogs and their masters and Mothers and their babies. Many of us have had this experience, especially as parents and our ability to ‘sense’ when we are needed. We often talk of ‘telephone telepathy’ where you think of a person and they call instantly or you can tell who it is before you pick up the phone. It seems the closer you are to them emotionally, the more connected and accurate you are. Is this a surprise? Not really as it is a normal phenomenon – but for some reason, it is dismissed by the scientific community as it doesn’t fit in with their ‘mechanical’ view of the way the human body works.

Time for a change?
What is so fascinating is that Sheldrake’s theories are taking on mass, public debate and involvement, it also begs the question, as one field of energy, can we affect the course of our history? If we are all connected and can influence each other, if we can move and form like a flock of Starlings, then is there hope for us to all move towards a better future?

For more info and lots of experimental results www.sheldrake.org. Also some fun ideas for school projects

Love and Relationships by Katie Byron

This is a section of Katie's Feb 'Valentine's newsletter, the woman is a treasure - take the time to read what Stephen, her partner, has to say about their first meeting - wonderful! http://www.byronkatie.com/newsletter_fe09.html

If you say that you love your husband, what does that have to do with him?

You're just telling him who you are. You tell the story of how he's handsome and fascinating and sexy, and you love your story about him. You're projecting that he's your story. And then when he doesn't give you what you want, you may tell the story of how he's mean, he's controlling, he's selfish—and what does that have to do with him? If my husband says, "I adore you," I think, "Good. I love that he thinks I'm his sweet dream. How happy he must feel about that!"

If he were ever to come to me and say, "The sorriest day of my life was when I married you," still, what would that have to do with me? He'd just be in a sad dream this time, and I might think, "Oh poor baby, he's having a nightmare. I hope he wakes up soon." It's not personal. How can it have anything to do with me? I love him, and if what he says about me isn't true in my experience, I would ask him if there's anything I can do for him. If I can do it, I will, and if it's not honest for me, I won't. He is left with his story. No one will ever understand you. Realizing this is freedom. No one will ever understand you—not once, not ever. Even at our most understanding, we can only understand our story of who you are. There's no understanding here except your own. If you don't love another person, it hurts, because love is your very self. You can't make yourself do it.

But when you come to love yourself, you automatically love the other person. It's not a choice. Just as you can't make yourself love us, you can't make yourself not love us. Husbands, wives, lovers—all a projection of mind. When you truly love someone, a thought like "You should love me" brings laughter to your heart. Can you hear the arrogance of that thought? "I don't care whom you want to love. You should love me, and I'll even trick you into it if need be, or at least I'll try to, out of my self-deluded head." This is the opposite of love.

If I think my husband should love me, I'm insane. Whose business is it whom he loves? His, of course. The turnarounds show me the way toward what is truer to my heart: I should love me, and I should love him. Let him love whomever he loves—he's going to anyway. The story of whom someone should love keeps me from the awareness that I am what I'm seeking. It's not his job to love me—it's mine.