The Great Experiment: My Thesis On How to Heal the World

I’ve decided to start something that I call The Great Experiment. This experiment is based on my own life experience as well as the synthesizing of psychological and spiritual information to come up with a new hypothesis about spirituality and mental health and their role in healing the soul. My theory is that people can find their true spiritual purpose by first healing the mind and heart which will then open them up to finding their spiritual purpose, leading to the healing of the soul.

Healing the mind is determined by the ability to correctly reason by unlearning negative belief systems and recognizing how to see through cognitive errors and fears. Healing the heart is done through spirituality and the unseen healing arts and is about learning to love people unconditionally and finding our shared humanity beyond just the physical, or tapping into the collective subconscious, a term coined by Carl Jung. Once both are balanced, a person can then experience the healing of the soul. Finding their true spiritual purpose.

As a mental health therapist I have helped many people heal their brain, or thought processes, by leading them through their negative thinking patterns and belief systems, through their fears, which resulted in higher life satisfaction. In going through my own spiritual awakening I realized that the healing of the brain is not the only thing that brings great satisfaction. There is great meaning and joy found in understanding that which we don’t currently comprehend on a deeper level than the physical plane: spirituality. 

Spirituality to me is simple. It is learning and accepting who you are by following your intuition. It is becoming love embodied, first to yourself and then to others. It’s self discovery.

The idea started after I had gone through a year and a half long experimentation of spirituality. Previous to that I had done extensive EMDR on myself but wasn’t able to work past certain issues that triggered me. Eventually I turned to spirituality for answers due to a healing experience with Reiki that was profound and instantaneous that worked where standard psychological healing techniques had not. I chose to fully test spirituality as a result, mostly as a means to try and help others heal the same way I had through Reiki. I tried anything and everything I didn’t understand but that people claimed worked. I tried Reiki, past life regression, Peruvian shamanism, ayahuasca, light language, and more to see if I could make sense of the unseen and unknown. This process led me to a level of healing that I would never have guessed I needed. It was like finding a part of myself I had locked in the basement cellar of my being that I finally let free. After I felt that I had both healed my mind by working through my fears and my heart by healing my lack of empathy towards others, I quickly came into a larger sense of purpose, the purpose of my soul. Some may call this God’s purpose while others may call it the alignment of the subconscious brains’ values and what someone finds meaningful. I don’t care what you call it, either way the goal is to align yourself with your true instinctive desires. That is what I refer to when I say the souls’ desire. That is what true spirituality is about. Helping people rid themselves of fears in order to discover themselves and love themselves unconditionally and free them to pursue their deepest desire, their soul’s desire.

Before I continue with my theory I’d like to elaborate on its foundations.

My theory of healing the mind and emotions sets its foundations in the theory of differentiation presented by David Schnarch in the book Intimacy and Desire. In the book he states that problems in relationships are caused by the problems of the individuals involved. His solution to fix relational issues is for each individual to heal themselves by taking complete accountability for their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. In doing so, a person is able to recognize their own insecurities and learn to work through them rather than internalize or externalize the fears that caused them. He argues that you are the cause of your problems and the solution to those problems should you choose to take a hard look at yourself and stop making excuses for your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. One of my favorite quotes from the book says that "people who can’t control themselves control the people around them." A healed person does not seek to control the people around them, they only seek to control and master themselves.

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a theory about how our belief systems create our reality. It postulates that all of our negative emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are a result of our own negative belief systems. The solution? Change your beliefs. In doing so, you eliminate old patterns and form new, healthy ones. One of the top five trauma therapies in the world is called Cognitive Processing Theory which essentially states the same exact thing but for trauma. The event itself is not what causes distress, it is our belief about the event, our belief system, that causes the trauma. We form belief systems based on fear that, in turn, create our negative experiences. For example, two people get mugged randomly. The first person has the belief that it was a one time experience and will never happen again. That person likely wouldn’t experience trauma. The second person starts believing that they could be mugged at any given time and lives in constant fear of it happening again. That person would experience trauma. The point of REBT, in my mind, is to get rid of our negative, fear based beliefs.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) is a theory that operates on the principle of bilateral stimulation, the idea that activating the left and right hemispheres of the brain in an alternating and repetitive pattern leads to healing. This assumption is founded on the prevailing theory of why dreams occur and what their function is for humanity. Dreams are thought to be the body's way to heal itself in sleep through metaphor, or in other words symbology, and we dream the most in the fourth stage of sleep called Rapid Eye Movement Sleep or REM sleep. EMDR is highly researched and is an extremely effective method of treating trauma and almost any other psychological issue I’ve come across as long as it’s linked to changing people’s belief systems, a method that is not taught in EMDR, or at least not in my training.

My theory of healing the mind is a synthesis of these three psychological theories. By taking radical accountability for oneself and working through negative belief systems with bilateral stimulation, you can learn to live a life free from fear. The elimination of fear allows the mind to reason accurately instead of being clouded by the lens of insecurity. My clients, as a therapist, have gotten better extremely quickly with the integration of all of these principles.

My theory of the purpose of spirituality is to heal the heart. Scientifically, the heart has its own nervous system that could function completely independently from the brain. That is proven. My hypothesis is that it’s the spiritual center of the body. Healing the heart comes from recognizing our connection to others and to the entire human race. It’s erasing unhealthy individuality, not healthy individuality, and replacing it with universal love. It’s the recognition and understanding that we are all interconnected beyond the physical. 

Spirituality leads to the healing of the heart because I believe that the nature of humanity is instinctively spiritual, hence the difference between the brain and heart as epicenters of the body. I believe it’s an essential part of full scale healing, the healing of the mind and the heart, yin and yang, to form a greater and more complete whole.

Through spirituality we can gain knowledge and understanding in the form of wisdom. The scriptures are the most common way that people seek to gain spiritual knowledge by means of sacred texts including the Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Torah, Book of Mormon (shoutout to my old religion) and all other sacred texts. They are designated as sacred because they hold truth. All of them. We have made a mistake in thinking that one culture or religion has the monopoly on truth and we need to synthesize the wisdom that each brings instead. We need to synthesize them to form the coherent picture of what spirituality is supposed to be. Unity. The unification of truth, oneself, and the human race. 

In addition to ancient texts, I believe in current scripture, what is called channeled texts. A channeled text is wisdom gained through the act of channeling, or what most would call getting divine inspiration, which anyone is able to do if they create the appropriate space within themselves. These should also be integrated into the larger concept of what is. 

A few weeks ago I decided to delete all distractions from my life. Everything but books, writing a coherent framework of my beliefs, and people. It was something I knew I intuitively needed to do and would understand later. Previous to that I had other impressions about my spiritual purpose which I eventually came to believe. Part of it is my study of religion and showing that there can be a synthesis between seemingly disparate ideas while also trying to form a greater picture incorporating that which doesn’t currently fit in the framework or current paradigm. 

I will speak more about my spiritual thought processes in my podcast that I will be starting soon. For those that want to read the books that started this journey, I’d recommend five books. Between Death and Life by Dolores Cannon. Jesus and the Essenes by Dolores Cannon. The Three Waves of Volunteers by Dolores Cannon. They Walked With Jesus by Dolores Cannon. And finally, Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung. They form the basis of what I will be systematically studying for spirituality.

Dolores Cannon was a hypnotherapist that chose to explore the validity of past lives some clients would experience under deep states of hypnosis. She would attempt to ask her clients questions that she could then verify with research to see if past lifetimes were possible. After thousands of sessions and thorough research, she claimed that past lifetimes were real. Some of her clients named foods, customs, locations, other knowledge, and even spoke in other languages, having no possible way of knowing that information based on their upbringing. Other experts validated her claims by asserting that her clients had no way of knowing such esoteric knowledge in the expert’s chosen field of study. These aren’t the only cases of people knowing knowledge they shouldn’t. There are many children who have been studied who have knowledge of people, history, languages, and many other forms of information. Look it up. 

This is from the University of Virginia:

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/

Real research is being conducted with thousands of children who claim to have lived past lifetimes. This phenomenon is not limited to Dolores Cannon, it is being studied by prestigious universities (or one anyway).

Other investigations have been about children with psychic abilities. This is from cia.gov. The official CIA.  https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1.pdf

It basically says that China conducted a study with thousands of psychic kids and concluded that it’s possible that these children may be able to do what we currently consider impossible. The author concludes that while improbable, it’s not impossible. You could do other research on psychic children if you want but that’s enough for me to show that even the CIA considers this a possibility however unlikely. 

After some time, Dolores Cannon started getting some clients who would have transformative states during deep hypnosis in which an entity calling themselves the collective subconscious (which Carl Jung speaks about, the father of modern psychology) would speak through them. She notes that their tone, speech patterns, and all other manner of speech shifted depending on who was speaking through them as a channel. That’s the spiritual concept called channeling mentioned previously. There are many very famous channelers in the world channeling all sorts of energy beings. These beings slowly told her the meaning of life which she sorted and consolidated in her book, Between Death and Life. I read this book because I had an experience in past life regression, a spiritual meditation that I tried on a whim, not believing it would work, that turned out to be life changing. Why not give it a try? I did and was faced with some unexplainable experiences. 

As an attempt to understand that experience I read The Three Waves of Volunteers which was recommended by the practitioner. Reading the book was a weird experience for me because it felt like the truth from the moment I started reading it which was even more odd considering I was in a state of jadedness from my previous religious experience. It was very unexpected. The book speaks on the purpose of this planet’s existence as well as the role of other life forms’ unique roles in Earth’s purpose. It gives a more complete understanding of the purpose of spirituality in the world right now.

I read the others over time. Jesus and the Essenes talks about the organization of the Essenes who taught Jesus, another well documented but lesser known fact. I am currently reading The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls In English translated by Geza Vermes. The author starts the book by talking about the Essenes and how they were known to have taught Jesus and their teachings were vastly different from the rest of Judaism at the time. This is historically validated information. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the findings of thousands of documents from the Essene group, hidden in caves, discovered between 1947 to 1956. I’m sure I will speak on that eventually once I read the book but for now the important thing is that Dolores Cannon, in one of her hypnotherapy sessions, just happened upon a person who said he was a teacher of Jesus in the group of the Essenes. Through this person, she wrote a book on the organization of the Essenes and what they believed. 

Her last book, They Walked With Jesus, discusses people in past life regression that claim they walked with Jesus at some point in a past lifetime. She wrote about their experiences with him and what they saw in him/ how they experienced him. The basis of which is to say that Jesus was meant to be an example of what humanity could achieve, not a deification of something unattainable and worthy of worship. None of this has to be believed based on my conclusions. The test is to have an open mind and read it and see for yourself if you come to the same conclusions I do.

I then read Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung, considered the father of modern psychology, which I will talk about in a few paragraphs. That book opened my mind to understanding spirituality in a way I hadn’t previously considered. It formed the foundation of what I am currently theorizing. I will speak on it in a few paragraphs.

While I recommend reading the books in a specific order based on how I believe people will best integrate the information, I recommend that you follow your intuition above all else. Read whatever you want in the order you feel like you should. My theory on spirituality centers on the idea that your intuition is your highest wisdom and supersedes all others’ intuition when it comes to what is best for you. Your intuition is a knowledge of what is best for you.

I would also recommend reading the book Conversations with God by Neale Walsch. The author claims that God influenced his writings and, in doing so, constructs a very different God from the one we are so used to speaking about. The God described in this book is one I can get behind, unlike the version we’re used to hearing about in our current religious systems. He has several other books in the series that I’d also recommend reading.

For me, the purpose of existence is progression and change. The idea is that we are eternal beings that reincarnate here on Earth in order to learn something that we chose to learn previous to agreeing to reincarnate in this lifetime. Between Death and Life goes over this. The way I see it is, if we are eternal beings, then we would eventually get bored doing the same activity over and over for an unfathomable number of years. Might as well shake things up and try something new. That’s the simplest version of the purpose of Earth I can come up with. The other books give a more in depth explanation. If we are infinite, change eventually becomes purpose. 

There is a lot more to say on my own spiritual healing but that will be the focus of my podcast. For now, suffice to say that I’ve had very surprising, beautiful, mystical experiences in spirituality and it’s opened a new paradigm from which to see the world. Those that choose not to experience this are missing out. The unknown is not to be feared, it is to be experienced.

I am calling my theory of healing Radical Accountability Theory (RAT) which is the integration of all of these ideas. Our beliefs create our reality and we can change our reality by using bilateral stimulation, the body’s natural method of healing, to change our belief systems if we take accountability for changing them. The most integral part of this theory is taking radical accountability for oneself. One of my favorite quotes by Carl Rogers, one of the founders of Humanistic psychology, which posits that people heal from unconditional acceptance and love, says: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” In other words, we can’t change unless we admit we have a problem. Liken this to having a flat tire. You can ignore the fact that your tire is flat and drive on a flat tire. You can even get where you want to eventually. But more than likely you will destroy the car as a result. Not taking accountability for oneself is like ignoring the flat tire. Only in admitting the tire is flat can a person change the tire and restore the car to its full functionality. This is the premise of my theory. Radical accountability for one’s beliefs which influence negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors which will enable and empower individuals to resolve their problems. Ignoring a problem just means that it will remain a problem. Fixing your own negative beliefs will heal your mind. I have seen this theory work wonders in my practice as a mental health professional. Fixing your spiritual relationship with yourself, on the other hand, will heal your heart. It will connect you to the greater whole and help you realize the beauty that comes from knowing that you are a drop in the ocean and the ocean itself. It helps you learn unconditional love for humanity and your purpose in the greater purpose of the universe leading to flowing with the river instead of fighting against it. Both are necessary for achieving long term peace and Nirvana, the dissolution of suffering.

After I felt that I had healed both psychologically and spiritually, I was reading a book by Carl Jung, one of the founders of modern psychology best known for his expertise on the subconscious brain. His book, Man and His Symbols, goes over Carl Jung’s hypothesis on why mankind has lost his connection to divinity. He theorizes that by ignoring and disregarding that which we don’t understand rationally, things of a more ethereal nature including dreams, symbols, and the arcane knowledge of past civilizations, we have unintentionally cut ourselves off from our connection to the divine. The divine to be interpreted as spiritual connection to something greater. He says that symbology is the language of the divine and in order to connect with the divine, we must learn its language. We have to stop writing off that which we don’t understand. Furthermore he argues that archetypes, symbols known instinctively by humanity at a primal and subconscious level, are man’s instincts in the same way that an animal is guided towards survival by its instincts. While not explicitly stated, I interpreted this as saying that if archetypes and symbols are the language of the divine, and our instincts are symbols and archetypes we understand subconsciously as a race, then what he was truly saying is that our instincts lead us to our own divinity, whatever that means. 

I integrated his ideas with my own religious upbringing and teachings that I had since childhood but had since discarded in adulthood to be agnostic. Religion states that we are children of God and that salvation is found through following him. In other words, our instincts are God’s blueprint for humanity to find our own divinity. Many within both religion and spirituality argue that nothing is due to chance. I don’t know about you but that strikes me as pretty odd. If true, that means our instincts aren’t due to chance. They are somehow related to helping us find our higher selves, our divine selves, although I believe that divinity is likely largely misinterpreted by the majority of civilization, both from the religiously inclined and those that ascribe to atheism. It’s simply discovering oneself.

The book Siddhartha is a tale of a supremely gifted monk who knows that spirituality is found by discovering himself and the story speaks about his journey of self discovery. At the end of the journey, he is a river guide, and perfectly content with learning from the river and his friend/ companion. He found peace in his purpose, flowing with the river and learning from his friend. Spirituality doesn't have to be something crazy, it can be found in the everyday.

Eastern philosophy emphasizes the collective. The idea that we are the ocean, not the individual drops that comprise it. Going with the flow. They see the forest, not the trees. Often this results in refusing to acknowledge the path of the individual and emphasizes surrendering to the greater good. Western philosophy focuses on the opposite. We are the individual drops and try to ignore being a part of the ocean of humanity. Clanism. We fight against the flow and refuse to become one with the river. We see the trees, not the forest. Often this results in refusing to see our mutual humanity and care beyond our loved ones.

Maybe the divinity of humanity is the middle path and to become divine means to become what Buddhism calls Nirvana and enlightenment and Christ exemplified and taught about being love itself in the beatitudes. The divinity of humanity might be as simple as seeing each other's humanity and becoming at peace with ourselves and the world. From the synthesis of these ideas I formed my own hypothesis that I began to test.

My hypothesis is that if divinity exists, it can be proven by the scientific method. If divinity is real, and our instincts are our path towards unlocking our own divinity, then I can test this idea by following my instincts 100% of the time and trying to learn from them, assuming they are there to teach me something. I chose to follow my intuition using my mind and body as an indicator of what was intuitively true for me by only making a decision once I came to a state of complete physical and emotional relaxation, my chosen indicator that my subconscious was on board with what I had decided. This idea is derived from my knowledge of therapy and making use of the body in the same way I did in my experience specializing in EMDR (one of the top trauma therapies in the world), relaxation techniques, and from famous trauma therapy books like The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van Der Kolk. All argue that the body holds a wealth of information about the subconscious mind and our true, innate desires and that the body can be used to heal the mind if we learn to pay attention to what it’s telling us. This is scientifically proven. Two of the most famous trauma therapies in the world are solely focused on relaxing the body, trauma therapy being my chosen field of expertise which I wrote about in my grad school thesis paper. Those theories are Stress Inoculation Training and, surprisingly, yoga. Those theories may be outdated at this point, or even incorrect, but the idea is that many theories of healing revolve around healing through the body which have been highly researched and proven to be effective. NAET, an energy based allergy treatment, has been gaining popularity recently as a potent means of eliminating allergies. Many members of my family have directly benefited from this treatment even though they don’t believe in energy that same way I am postulating.

So, I decided that I would get my body to a state of complete relaxation and then follow my intuition about what to do next. If I did that thing, and it made me uncomfortable, I would assume that my body was telling me something about myself that I needed to learn from, my own internal wisdom. I would search for the source of the discomfort, resolve it using the scientific method, reasoning why I had the reaction until it was resolved, and continue forward, once again following my intuition. Rinse and repeat. And do it all over and over and over again to see if my intuition steered me wrong or learn how my intuition was a reflection of something I needed to work on in my own emotional or mental health. Thus far, two months into my experimentation, I don’t regret it at all. It has definitely had some major setbacks, but even from those less than desirable outcomes, I have learned a lot about myself including my own blindspots and what I've needed to heal as well as my spiritual purpose and what I’d consider spiritual wisdom.

I recently found out that I was not the first person to try this experiment.

Michael Singer is the author of two best selling books, The Surrender Experiment and The Untethered Soul. The Untethered Soul talks about how to maintain a state of constant meditation by analyzing yourself from a third person viewpoint. Instead of getting lost in your emotions, he advocates to take a step back and learn from what they are telling you about yourself. He now owns a famous meditation center called the Temple of the World in Florida. The Surrender Experiment talks about a similar experiment he conducted in his life in which he would go with the flow of life without resistance and see what happened. He would say yes to everything assuming it was part of God’s plan. The results? He became CEO of the most successful medical software firm in the USA. 

Michael Singer’s experiment is slightly different from mine although it could be argued that it’s basically the same. I don’t advocate for complete surrender to the universe necessarily, but I do advocate for following your intuition to tell you what is going to be the best path for you, which is probably often complete surrender to the universe. I argue that you need to know what is best for yourself by getting yourself to a place of complete inner stillness, enhanced by constant metacognition, the practice of constantly monitoring your own thinking, and, to me, constantly monitoring your own body to see what creates complete stillness or not.

The book Mind Magic by James Doty discusses the neuroscience behind how the brain operates at optimal levels when it’s in a state of complete calm. He says that the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, has the power to completely hijack all brain function if it’s coming from a place of fear which interferes with higher brain functioning coming from the subconscious. In fact, the whole book is centered along that principle. This is why getting to a complete state of inner stillness is paramount to The Great Experiment. If you are operating in a place with any degree of fear, you will not be operating at optimal brain levels. This highlights the importance of balancing the mind, or in other words, the act of releasing yourself from fear. A mind without fear is a mind that can be used for what it was made for, creation.

In the same book he also discusses the importance of operating from a place of eudaimonic states, or from a place of pleasure derived from acting in accordance with one’s meaning and purpose. According to him, hedonistic states bring about physical reactions akin to severe diseases including inflammation and things like cancer. He also advocates for the purpose of ritual in manifestation. He says “ritual is one of the most potent ways of aligning our conscious and subconscious minds into focus, allowing us to enter a flow state.” In other words, ritual enables us to somehow manifest our desires by following our intuition. This lends some understanding to the rituals readily transparent in ancient cultures. I will be going over my own personal rituals I’ve started later as a way to show how they have led to my own introspection and learning in another post.

The blending of the scientific method, the mind, and following my intuition, the heart, speaks to much of how the Eastern world has defined spirituality: balance. Yin and Yang. Wholeness found in two seeming opposites. My experiment is to blend the Western worlds’ and Eastern worlds’ views on what creates meaning and see where it leads me. This idea is substantiated by reason and intuition as well as others’ experiences and science. I am attempting to blend all of them together into one cohesive whole.

If God is all knowing, then nothing is chaos to him. That which we don’t understand can be explained. That is the foundation of the scientific method. Both agree that everything can be explained just by different means. Carl Jung also argued in Man and His Symbols that the great advances in scientific discovery have happened when someone followed their intuition and tested it with science. I hypothesize that by merging the two, following our heart, our intuition and the spiritual, and then using the scientific method to help us learn from the analysis of the results, using the mind and reason, we can gain a deeper understanding of what is and of ourselves. That is my hypothesis. And I’d like everyone who is willing to test it with me. The more evidence that can be collected the better. I want to test everything. 

There have been many accounts throughout history of people who have healed by mystical means even when science lacked the answers. One of the more famous examples in our lifetime is Dr. Joe Dispenza who wrote the book Becoming Supernatural. He uses science to validate spiritual concepts about healing and has documented how his techniques have healed people with all kinds of medical issues that were deemed untreatable. Others have also propagated the same ideas including Adam who wrote Dreamhealer2 and Dr. Bradley Nelson who wrote The Emotion Code. Dolores Cannon is another who said that physical maladies are a result of the spiritual and claims to have healed many incurable ailments in her past life regression sessions while her subjects have been in a state of deep hypnosis. Edgar Cayce is another interesting case example, known as the sleeping prophet and a famous modern day psychic, who had little formal education but was able to give complex and accurate medical prescriptions while in a state of deep trance. What was also interesting was that he was a devout Presbyterian but relayed information in a trance state that ran counter to his belief system. What’s interesting to me is that all of these sources are saying the same thing, just in different ways.

My theory is that all of these people may be onto something that anyone can learn to do if they choose to explore the boundaries of the mystical and the unknown.

My current theory of wellness stems from the balance of yin and yang, the primordial energies of chaos and creation. Understanding them and how they interact is integral to understanding my theory of how spiritual knowledge is gained and developed. 

Chaos is the unknown. It is a traditionally masculine energy that indicates passion and energy as well as destruction and chaos in any form. I have no idea why it’s a typically male energy, and honestly it's arbitrary, but the purpose of it is to understand the structure of creation by stepping into the unknown and making sense of it. Following through with action. Its purpose is structuring intuitive knowledge. Fire is its symbol. 

Creation is the intuitive. It's typically a feminine energy (also arbitrary) and represents a higher knowledge from the subconscious that is not currently understood by the logical and rational mind. It represents a silent knowing without the structure of understanding. It represents empathy, intuition, creativity, and nurturing. Flowing with what is. Its purpose is recognizing a higher principle. Water is its symbol.

The I Ching is an Eastern philosophy about how to attain spiritual wisdom. Richard Rudd who wrote the Gene Keys, a channeled book talking about how we all have pre programmed genes that can lead us to our own learning and divinity, explains it in his paid course:

“The Fire Eye

Deep inside the arc of your being there is an eye. This eye was born when you were born, and it will die when you die. This is the Fire Eye. When you see the world through this eye, you see a world of adventure, of excitement, of passion. When you see through the Fire Eye, everything is vibrant and changing and bursting with potential – the very air around you crackles with the electricity of your longing. Through the Fire Eye, you live in the unpredictable and ever-changing landscape of dreams – one moment you are wandering carefree through the green valleys of comfort, and the next you are staggering hopelessly through the parched deserts of desire.

It is the Fire Eye inside you that has led you here. It is the seeker inside you, the inquirer, the believer, the knower. The Fire Eye leads you on a dance through life as you leap from one experience to another. It lures you across continents and carries you over the threshold of every relationship in your life. 

The Fire Eye never ceases to dream of what once was, or of what may one day become. When you look out at life through the Fire Eye, you wonder about the purpose of your life. You may feel you could be doing more. You know you have so much to give but you don’t yet know how to give it. You feel a restless longing to accomplish something, to fulfill your highest destiny. The Fire Eye dreams large dreams. As the turbine that drives all human genius, the Fire Eye knows that anything in life is possible. It has already accomplished so much in our world. It is the Fire Eye that builds the great civilizations and puts men on the moon. 

It is the Fire Eye that drives our human evolution. Those whose lives have unfolded through the Fire Eye have become our great heroes and heroines – those great statesmen, warriors, explorers, inventors and geniuses whose lives remain forever enshrined in our history. 

As the energy of eternal youth inside you – the Fire Eye is wonderfully dynamic, endlessly hungry and always, always filled with hope. But for all its fertile vitality and raw power, the Fire Eye has a flaw. It is self-obsessed. 

The Fire Eye cannot see beyond its own need for satiation. Like a wild dog chasing its own tail, it does not know how to rest. No matter how great are its achievements in the world; the Fire Eye is not capable of finding inner peace.

The Water Eye

Deep inside the arc of your being there is another eye. This eye was present before you were born and it will remain after you die. This is the Water Eye. When you see the world through this eye, you see only that which is before you. When you see through the Water Eye, your primary awareness rests with your breath, your body and its gentle rhythms, and with the movement of life all around you. When you see through the Water Eye, all of life sees with you, and all of life comes towards you. Through the lens of the Water Eye, all is still, all is quiet and all is fathomless. 

Perhaps it is the Water Eye that has led you here. If you are here because you do not know, then you may be in for a gentle surprise. 

The Water Eye has no interest in achievement or knowledge or dreams. It has no interest in purpose or fulfillment or change. The Water Eye has no interest in human experience. Rare is the human being who can give their life over to the Water Eye. It is the subtlest of the subtle. It is the softest, most paradoxical, most mysterious presence inside you. The Water Eye is a power without force, without emotion, without warmth. If you allow the lens of the Water Eye to open inside your being, you will begin to view your life and the world in a completely new way. 

In the outer world, the Water Eye has built nothing. There is nothing impressive about it. It passes unnoticed. Those whose lives have unfolded through the Water Eye have generally been misunderstood and misrepresented. They did not discover it on purpose for it cannot be chased or hunted or sought. 

Of all the mysteries in the universe, the Water Eye alone brings inner peace. But for all its allure and wonder, nothing you do in life will lead to its opening. The Water Eye responds to one thing and one thing alone. It responds to the one who yields.

Putting the Fire Beneath the Water

If you have been drawn to the Gene Keys, then you may already know that it is based upon the ancient code of the Chinese I Ching – the Book of Changes. This deeply mysterious book continues to circle the world in many diverse forms. Its most common use is as an oracle – a tool to give subtle guidance in any given life situation. In essence, the I Ching is designed to attune you to the presence of that subtlest inner wisdom – the Water Eye within you. 

The ancient Chinese had their own words for the Fire Eye and the Water Eye. They called them the Hsin and the Yi respectively. When used over time, the correct use of the I Ching is a spiritual path in itself. It will guide you to listen to your innate, silent, intuitive wisdom – your ‘Yi’ (the Water Eye) above and beyond your human desires and longings – your ‘Hsin’ (the Fire Eye). Unfortunately, our modern global lifestyle is so strongly developed around the Fire Eye, that even the I Ching has now mostly become another toy for that restless longing inside us. We no longer realize the level of commitment that the I Ching requires of its students. Like most sacred and magical texts, it has now been taken far away from its original context, and its true secrets lie for the most part lost to modern humans.”

In other words, true wisdom comes from following your intuition while in a state of complete and total inner peace. Following the chaos of intuition, that which seemingly doesn’t have a pattern before knowing why, but maintaining peace in yourself while doing so, can lead to a higher understanding by backtracking and using the scientific method, reason, to make sense of it. The basis of my theory. 

So knowledge is gained like a step ladder that is unevenly spaced out between the left and right foot by half steps. Intuition is the left side and while you know that you could step up a whole rung, it creates imbalance and threatens the structural integrity of your balance on the ladder. Likewise if you try to skip to the next step on the right side of the ladder. Knowledge is gained by half steps. Trusting your intuition, testing it, seeing how it’s partially wrong by stepping up the next run into chaos, and then gaining insight into how it’s a half truth by stepping up to the next run of intuition while also knowing your new knowledge will be a partial truth discovered at the next rung of chaos. This is the path to wisdom and higher knowledge. Knowing that you only have half truths and figuring out why by marrying intuition and the scientific method.

What I have decided to do is to follow what others have claimed and document how I have done it to hopefully inspire others to do the same, should it work. There is evidence that it works. I plan on testing it myself. 

Following your intuition, trusting it fully in becoming who you were meant to be is the purpose of this experiment. Finding yourself. And in doing so, healing yourself.

A few caveats to following intuition. First, if your intuition is to cause harm to yourself or others, then your intuition is imbalanced and is incorrect. Second, if your intuition is for other people by telling them what to do or telling them what is right for them, asserting your dominion over their own autonomy, then it is also imbalanced and incorrect. Third, if you are not in a state of complete peace within yourself, emotionally, physically, and mentally, then your intuition is imbalanced although possibly not incorrect. And fourth, if you are at complete peace within yourself but your relationships are not in complete peace, then once again, your intuition is imbalanced and not correct.

Following your intuition doesn’t mean that you will be perfect. Following your intuition will lead you to learning about yourself and what you need to change in order to become a more perfect/ harmonious version of yourself. A more Christ-like version for those that are Christian, or a more whole and complete being for those that are not.

So how can we know if the experiment is working? How can we measure it?

Synchronicities.

Synchronicities are a phrase coined by Carl Jung to mean: “an acausal connecting principle, whereby internal, psychological events are linked to external world events by meaningful coincidences rather than causal chains.” For all of us who don’t understand what that means, synchronicities are chances of fate. They are odd coincidences, chance encounters, or divine timing. One alone means very little. But one becomes two, then two becomes four, and pretty soon there are an improbable level of coincidences. At some point one has to concede that the improbable has become probable based on statistics alone. I did anyway.

“The East bases much of its science on this irregularity and considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of the West. The more we busy ourselves with dreams, the more we shall see such coincidences—chances. Remember that the oldest Chinese scientific book [the I Ching] is about the possible chances of life.” - Carl Jung

The author of that article ended it with this:

“This may include synchronistic phenomena for larger scale events, not just for individuals, but for groups, cultures, and even worlds.”

THAT is what I am trying to do. THAT is The Great Experiment. If you follow your intuition, will you start to experience synchronicities? At what rate? Does that rate increase as you continue? And what happens if many of us start doing it? And what if our instincts lead us to our spiritual purpose? What if many of us start fulfilling our spiritual purpose? 

I theorize that something will start to happen called the Maharishi Effect.

The Maharishi Effect is an effect of concentrated prayer that has statistically proven impacts. The group effect of prayer is a scientific fact (or close to it). Here is a study from Harvard stating it’s a real thing based on 43 studies about it. And the passage in the book explaining it from The Isaiah Effect by Gregg Braden.

Apparently, prayer is real and has measurable effects. Concentrated energy.

Furthermore, the book claims that ancient manuscripts were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls claiming to be written by the prophet Isaiah, hidden by the Essenes, the group that taught Jesus. Many elements of my theory are supported by the findings. 

One of quotes of the Essene documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls discussing peace says, “Peace is the key to all knowledge, all mystery, all life.” It correlates with the belief of Nirvana in Buddhism, the key that one must unlock to open the door to their spiritual purpose, enlightenment.

Braden posits that prayer is just a concentration of energy, a concentrated focus, but it’s not about the words, it’s about feelings. The author says that as he sought out ancient learning from Tibetan monks, they described their chants as less about words and more about the feeling it created. Their chants were prayers of feeling. Feeling was the prayer. Peace was that feeling. “We are invited to embrace our lost mode of prayer as a consciousness that we embody, rather than as a prescribed form of action that we perform on occasion” as described by Braden. Our prayer is what we are, who we are, and what we become.

Again by Braden, “prayer is, to us, as water is to the seed of a plant.” The water eye of the I Ching is the peace described earlier by Richard Rudd. Yielding to our instincts is quite literally described as the water to the seed of faith. “Becoming” is the key. It is the river. The entire idea behind The Surrender Experiment. The title of Edgar Cayce’s autobiography. The water of life described by Jesus. The action of having faith, following your intuition.

This idea was described by Jesus in the beatitudes and by Buddhists in the term enlightenment. I imagine the concept exists elsewhere as well. How do we become peace then?

We become peace by becoming love embodied, specifically loving ourselves without judgment which then allows us to do the same for others. “Because we are one with our Father in heaven, in doing so, we have just loved ourselves.” In other words, our peace comes from self love. It comes from self healing. And it’s the key to the Maharishi Effect. The measure of whether or not this experiment works in conjunction with synchronicities. 

Believe in God or not, it doesn't matter. Focused energy about peace has a real world impact and self healing brings that peace. My theory is how I believe that peace can be achieved. I believe that because I have achieved it. I have achieved my own inner peace. Doesn’t mean I’m perfect but 99% of the time I am in a state of complete peace and happiness. And that’s when I felt like I understood my spiritual purpose. This experiment.

The book The Alchemist is one of the most famous books in the world having sold over 150 million copies. It is a masterpiece of fiction exploring the synchronicities that occur in life when someone seeks out their personal treasure, their life purpose. It's interesting that a book discussing seeking out one's life purpose is so highly regarded.

The book Conversations With God, book 1, describes the exact same concept, that you attract what you pray for. You attract what you are, what many recognize as the law of attraction. This idea is universal within spirituality. It also applies to the scientific concept of resonance, when a vibration's frequency matches the natural frequency of another object, the second object will vibrate with a higher amplitude. The Maharishi Effect, the amplification of energy of mutual frequencies.

Your intuition is your guide to your own peace, divine purpose, and possibly the healing of humanity. No big deal.

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."

- Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist.

“He who seeks solutions outside of himself dreams. He who looks inside himself awakens.”

- Paching Hoe in Words of the Shaman.

The experiment is to see if we can awaken humanity to its own divinity.

P.S. The same day I finished writing this I found out that this is just a different version of the spiritual documentary "Inner World Outer World." Pretty cool.