LOVE, LUST, MIRACLES AND MAGIC

What I’m about to say may sound weird, but there were several pivotal ‘light bulb’ moments that changed everything and rearranged my molecular structure. These events were so extraordinary, so uncanny — I have to pinch myself to believe they really happened. These events were nothing short of full-blown miracles. That’s the only way to describe them.

My awakening was of the spine-tingling, Twilight-Zonish variety. It’s hard to talk about this stuff because it appears to exist in the realm of the magical.  But these things actually happened, and continue to happen. They give me concrete, tangible evidence of a loving, caring force in the universe. And now I’ve finally figured out the key to activating these gifts, which are really natural laws.       

I've never publicly spoken about this to anyone outside of recovery circles, but I’ve often stopped to wonder ‘how did these seemingly miraculous events happen?’ There was one common element: surrender. When I gave up fighting, the outside picture totally changed. But what is the metaphysics of surrender?  How did an ( invisible) inner change affect an outer result? In order to understand this, I had to study Quantum Physics, which inevitably led me to Einstein, who said, “No problem can be solved at the same level it was created on.”  In other words, you can't fight fire with fire; you can't cure alcoholism with more alcohol or drugs — you have to go to a higher level — a spiritual or diplomatic solution. Or as George Carlin put it, “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”

            

But what does this overused word spiritual really mean? 

            

I began to wonder, what is this key that unlocks the door and enables someone to ‘let go?’ What is the metaphysics of surrender? I had to know how this spiritual concept worked.  I mean it’s not easy to just let go when you’re in the grip of pain, whether emotional or physical.

To experience magic and miracles you have to adopt a childlike sense of wonder at all the beauty around you. Seek it and you'll find it. Really look for beauty. Look for the good in other people. Whatever you focus on magnifies. When you decide to trust others, they become trustworthy. When you start to appreciate this beautiful universe, it will show off for you.  Act as if you believe in a power greater than yourself -- participate, conspire, and cooperate with the LOVE that surrounds all living things. 

Worfeus writes: "Life is what we focus on. Period. Just as with the Double-Slit experiment where matter literally changes from wave to particle depending on whether or not someone is observing it, life it seems really ends up being exactly what we focus on. Focus on the good and positive, and you'll find that's what dominates your life."

Scientists have discovered your brain activity produces waves that are measurable according to your level of serenity or agitation. Enthusiasm and courage actually change your brain waves. We radiate energy. Can these waves radiate outward, affecting our outer circumstance? Are thoughts really things? 

           

This means you can be attractive even if you’re not “good looking” because if you radiate love you attract people. This is a joke I wrote for a movie. 

            

I have often felt like I’m on a two-lane highway going in opposite directions. The theme of my life has been merging my lower nature with my higher nature into one divine track or unity. When I could no longer cope, I surrendered my will, my worries, and my fears.  And a miracle happened. 

To the mortal eye, these experiences are supernatural, spine tingling, like the best magic. But as Wayne Dyer said, you have to believe it in order to see it. You have to cooperate and conspire with this force in order to conjure it. The creative force that sustains the universe is interactive; it needs our participation. In fact, it can’t exist in our lives without our consent, belief, faith or interaction. It needs playmates. It needs to express itself through us. More and more I’m beginning to believe what Elizabeth Gilbert said about her new epiphany: that we are not doing this solo; there are no individual geniuses. We are all just transcribers of creative consciousness – we are taking down God’s thoughts. Some are expressing God through music, some through art, some through writing and poetry and movies, some through comedy, some through tragedy, some through cooking, planting and growing, some through design, building, teaching, science, discoveries. 

            

What is the point of gaining the whole world if you lose your soul?  After all the years of struggling to make it — to find true love, to be rich, to have a happy family with a lagoon pool and water-slides, to live my dreams in a hammock in Maui — I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one urgent need of mankind: to find God. But I’m not talking about the kind of god you may be thinking of — the kind that divides and judges. I thought I was too hip to believe in God and used to wonder if I find God will I still have a good sex life? Not that I have one now. I’m talking about unconditional love and an inner peace that is unshakable. 

I actually think we’re snowballing toward excess for a reason: to show us that there is no material thing that can make us really, permanently 'happy.' Matter is temporal. 

All this chaos in the world is happening to bring us closer to our spirit, our humanity. We have been snowballing toward excess, materialism, style over substance, violence, porn, for years. There is never enough blood, guts and sex and drugs to fill us up. There is only one way to go: toward healing, the kingdom which is within us. The more we focus on the good in others, even our enemies, the more the good increases. This is a law of the universe, and it's the only real way to pray.

 

The word God has become so political and dirty and misunderstood, I’m embarrassed to use it. I feel guilty about being embarrassed, and I’m not even Catholic. Or Jewish. All I know is, no human power was able to lift me out of my suicidal despair. The God I’m talking about has no religion attached – no rules, dogma, yarmulkes, pointy bishops hats, long velvet robes, crystals, coins, rosaries, bows toward Mecca or steps to the left. No long, memorized prayers or deciphering of archaic doctrines. Only redemption. I have had astonishing results from prayer. I know that prayer actually changes things in the physical universe. But the kind of prayer I’m talking about does not involve begging some anthropomorphic being who rules by fear and punishment. It involves letting go of your fears and worries and truly surrendering them to a loving higher power, whatever your own concept of this is. Substituting your worries with Divine Love, the power of the universe. God is love. It is really that simple. I had to get my intellect out of the way and surrender my doubts first. Then I quietly screamed HELP!

            
If you ask my son’s Social Studies teacher what his religion is, he says, “Western Orthodox Baseball.” I think that’s a wise answer. Religion often gets in the way of God’s simple purpose: to love one another. Often it’s more about style — what tribe you belong to or what hat you wear — rather than substance. The Catch-22 is, by holding onto doubt and fear, we can’t experience the miracle because it takes our trust to activate it. 

We have been conditioned to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world. Quantum Physics says just the opposite: what’s happening on the inside determines what’s happening on the outside. Our world is shaped by our thoughts. So your loving attention to something, literally alters the physical universe. This is scientific, but it is not easily understood.

Scientists have discovered that there is no solid matter in the universe. Not a single speck of solid matter anywhere. Even the tiniest atom has no solid core. At the quantum level, it is empty space. 

Everything is energy. 

Everything exists in waves of infinite possibility, until we look at it, observe it and lock it in or "particularize" it with our judgment, viewpoint or opinion.  In my view, to "particularize" something is to make it into a particle locked in space and time. It appears to be solid once you have judged it and labeled it. 

That is why it's important not to judge others or make negative assumptions about them — for you get whatever you choose to see — and you can therefore experience negative events that were never objectively there before you "locked them in" (made them into a particle, which appears to be solid) with your weighted observation or judgment.  

The observer affects the object (wave) making it collapse into a particle at a certain moment in time. 

I have written a White Paper which proves that our loving attention to an object actually changes the object in the physical universe.

Energy consists of sub-atomic particles that in turn make up atoms and finally matter. This energy exists as waves spread out over space and time. They have discovered that down to the tiniest atom, there is only empty space. There is no solid matter. Everything is energy. Everything exists in waves of infinite possibility. Only when we focus our attention on an object does that object become a particle. We "particularize" an object by our attention to it.

So thoughts really are things. And 85% of all disease is caused by stress -- which means worry, fear or misplaced thoughts that become ingrained habits of negativity. There is now scientific proof that loving thoughts actually create a thicker brain cortex. Monks who meditate on love regularly have no disease.

Dr. Christine Northrup says "Hope is a biochemical state in the body that promotes healing."

Laughter heals. And we know that love heals everything. Love is the actual definition of God. (If only fundamentalist Christians understood this. But they seem to omit Christ's teachings form their form of Christianity. Very bizarre.

Love is an interactive force. The creative force of love that created all this beauty in the world — from peacocks to butterflies to chocolate to puppies to humans — needs playmates to interact with, and to show off for.   I call it 'god' but you can call it love or life or Buddha. This force  needs our cooperation and our BELIEF belief in order to show off for us. This "showing off" is manifests are miracles in our lives.  

Morongo Casino The Cooking Show

A Peacock I met at San Diego Zoo

Me, in Barbados with some surfers 

My sister Kathryn and me at Jeff Franklin's manse

A Swallowtail in my front yard. A Butterfly I met yesterday

To experience magic and miracles try to adopt a childlike sense of wonder at all the beauty around you. Seek it and you'll find it. Really look for beauty. Look for the good in other people. Whatever you focus on magnifies. When you decide to trust others, they become trustworthy. When you start to appreciate this beautiful universe, it will show off for you.  Act as if you believe in a power greater than yourself -- participate, conspire, and cooperate with the LOVE that surrounds all living things. 

By loving ourselves, we can then give love to others, and forgive them when they are not "perfect."  By this loving, selfless action, we create harmony and peace on earth. 

THE ONLY ANSWER TO HATRED IS LOVE ~ HEALING MIRACLES

This video changed my life.

 Please take 4 minutes to watch this and read the ideas below.  It is from CBS NEWS

This is not what you think Please watch this. It's under 5 minutes. Please watch the video before reading any further.

This is how the law of life works: when you give, you receive. And the more you give, the more you receive.

It is wonderful the way love created a full circle of gifts. The one thing in the world the cab driver wanted, he received — as a result of his kindness and generosity.

Here's what's interesting. The woman was obnoxious and bitchy to the cab driver. She presented herself as a bitter, unhappy woman who complained a lot.

What is amazing about this is that the cab driver did not REACT. He did not return hate for hate. He did not spew anger or bark back at the woman. 

He quietly persisted in trying to first understand her behavior. He tried to understand ("Seek first to understand, rather than to be understood," says the St. Francis prayer) -- and wondered why she was so bitchy and mean-spirited. "A soft answer turns away wrath."

Question: If the cab driver had angrily cursed at her or been equally rude to the woman — if he had retaliated in an "eye for an eye" way — would he have been the perfect donor match for this woman?

I don't think so, but we would never know anyway, because an angry person would never have gone to the clinic to get the blood work done to see if his kidney was the match for a total stranger. And an angry stranger at that! 

Interesting question: did his loving attitude CREATE the match? Did his act of being loving and generous and compassionate and going against the grain of retaliating and "fighting fire with fire" actually foment a healthy breeding ground for miracles and create the synchronicty of the highest order -- love, healing, life? After all, love and love making actually unite people in creating babies -- LIFE! 

Obviously he would not have been open-hearted enough to even offer his kidney — but let's take it a step further. If he were a miserly, hateful, angry person — would he have had the right chemistry, the correct DNA, or even have a healthy kidney to give her?  Would he have been the perfect match if his nature had been reactive, volatile, resentful, negative, withholding, conservative (fear based) or "quick to anger?" 

What do you think? Did the cab driver's generous, loving compassion — his peaceful, non-reactive attitude — actually CREATE the right match for her kidney? Or was it all predestined? 

Quantum physics says that the observer affects the object (wave) making it collapse into a particle at a certain moment in time. 

Quantum Physics says that everything exists in waves of infinite possibility, until we turn around and lock it in or "particularize" it with our "judgment, observation or opinion." (This is why it's important not to make negative assumptions about people or to judge them, for you get whatever you choose to see -- and you can therefore experience negative events that were never objectively there before you "locked them in" with your weighted observation or judgment.  

I believe his open-hearted attitude toward the rude woman — and his gentle persistence in trying to understand her pain — was the compassion that created the donor match. Anyone can be loving to someone who is loving to them first, but when we are loving to those who hate us and persecute us, we disarm them. We conquer our enemies. (By the way, that is the mark of a true Christian; the one who turns the other cheek and loves his enemies and his neighbor as himself.

Love is creative. It creates life. The cab driver's loving compassion actually made his kidney the right donor match.

Love in the face of hatred is the law of attraction. Like attracts like; hence, the kidney match. I know this may sound difficult to wrap your mind around, but with an understanding of Quantum Physics, it is simple to understand.

If the cab driver had returned hate for hate -- if he had been her equal in jerkiness -- which is so easy and common, in fact most of us behave very badly on a daily basis with others. Most of us take the easy, lazy way out and we don't extend ourselves beyond our own nose -- we have no interest in experiencing life from another's point of view, especially a bitchy old woman. Maybe a sad person will elicit some sympathy but how often do we actually stop to consider WHY someone is so ornery or mean? Not very often, which makes me think this cabbie was a very special human being to be able to "turn the other cheek and quest for anwers inside this woman's crotchety old soul.  

It's so ordinary and easy and common for us in everyday life to instantly react with hurt pride or to lash out when insulted or attacked. It seems to be the way of the world - tit for tat, you insult me, I insult you back. In our American TV shows and comedies we are so snarky and sarcastic and mean to each other. We get annoyed and resentful so easily. 

But if this cab driver had been as much a jerk as his passenger was to him, there would not have been a healing. There would have been no story, no gift, no miracle. 

There would have just been two hollow, hateful people passing like ships in the night. Maybe the cabbie would have had to learn his lesson in another way.

But two jerks usually cancel each other out. So it's our job, each of us, to go out into the world and do what we can to make someone happy. Here's how simple it is: Love creates life. When we express love, no matter how someone else is behaving, everyone involved in an argument is healed.

I don't mean to repeat myself but this is an important point, and a major discovery. Love heals. it is a creative force. Hate is a destructive force; it does not create life — it kills life. Just as darkness is the absence of light, and coldness is the absence of warmth, hatred is the absence of love. Hatred, darkness and cold have no power of their own. They are not self-starters.

This man took a bad situation and shined love on it. By his generosity, he enabled his kidney to be the right one as a donor match.

How is this possible?

In Quantum physics, scientists have proven that our loving attention to an object actually changes the object in the physical universe.

We have been conditioned to believe that the external world is more real than the internal world. Quantum Physics says just the opposite: what’s happening on the inside determines what’s happening on the outside. Our world is shaped by our thoughts. So your loving attention to something, literally alters the physical universe. This is scientific, but it is not easily understood.

Energy consists of sub-atomic particles that in turn make up atoms and finally matter. This energy exists as waves spread out over space and time. They have discovered that down to the tiniest atom, there is only empty space. There is no solid matter. Everything is energy. Everything exists in waves of infinite possibility. Only when we focus our attention on an object does that object become a particle. We "particularize" an object by our attention to it.

So thoughts really are things. And 85% of all disease is caused by stress -- which means worry, fear or misplaced thoughts that become ingrained habits of negativity. There is now scientific proof that loving thoughts actually create a thicker brain cortex. Monks who meditate on love regularly have no disease.

Dr. Christine Northrup says "Hope is a biochemical state in the body that promotes healing."

Laughter heals. And we know that love heals everything. Love is the actual definition of God. (If only the hateful Christian and Muslim fundamentalists knew that; they seem to omit Christ's teachings form their form of Christianity. Very bizarre.

Love is an interactive force. The Creator needs playmates to show off for. God needs our cooperation and belief in order to manifest miracles in our lives.  

To experience magic, miracles and wonder, we need to adopt a childlike wonder at all the beauty around us. We need to appreciate it, so it can show off for us. We need to "act as if" we believe in a power greater than ourselves -- participate, conspire, and cooperate with the LOVE (which is God and Goodness (they all mean the same thing.) 

By our loving, selfless action, we create harmony and goodwill. By being loving and giving, this man became the perfect match.

In this case, the Universe kept putting the cabbie and the woman together because the woman needed to be "driven" into submission by the cab driver's gentleness. This is the method used by the Great Peacemaker when he healed so-called "sinners."  He leaned on Divine Love with revolutionary softness. Christ didn't condemn the adulterer or the thief; his unconditional love made them want to walk in the light, and transformed their hearts. Whether you believe the healing miracles or not, loving your enemies actually works. "A soft answer turns away wrath."

In any case, fate/the universe/God or whatever you call your higher power — kept putting the cab driver and the bitch together because they each had a missing piece that created the whole; the full circle.

It is wonderful the way love created a full circle of gifts. The one thing in the world the cab driver wanted, he received — as a result of his generosity. The antidote to poverty and depression is generosity. This cab driver acted exactly as the Great Peacemaker would; he gave freely without thought of self. And he received everything.

And what was the catalyst? Returning love for hate. The cab driver persisted in being loving to his enemy.

~ Love, Lydia 

UPPERDOG vs. UNDERDOG

We are pleased to have CATHERINE CRIER from COURT TV on our show Saturday, May 19

SATURDAY MORNINGS TUNE IN LIVE FROM LAS VEGAS and LOS ANGELES to our show BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK
from 9 - 10 a.m. We broadcast live -- or go to our website and click on the link to hear the entire show in the archives.

"Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." That's what good preachers, and good journalists, do. It makes sense that comics, who sometimes preach and sometimes report the news, would follow this motto as well.

Imus "broke the power equation," Rogers says. He afflicted the afflicted, which made him a bully instead of a comic. That's not funny.

This happens a lot, not just with comics, but with journalists and preachers too. They get the motto backwards, they break the power equation. The journalists cozy up to the powerful, the preachers become bullying scolds. Both start to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It's nothing new, Jesus described the same thing thousands of years ago, "They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."

The tricky thing -- whether you're a journalist, preacher or comic -- is that "the comfortable" and "the afflicted" are not immutable categories. Anyone, at some point, might be in either category. White House spokesman Tony Snow, for example, has had a lucrative career as a dishonest and thoroughly unprincipled apologist for power. That made him fair game for exposure, for jokes and jeremiads. But Snow now has cancer in his liver and the prognosis is not good. And jokes at the expense of a cancer victim just aren't funny. Kicking a man when he is down is the work of a bully.

This is, again, what I think Orwell was getting at in that essay on Charles Dickens I've taken to quoting a bit too often: Orwell on Dickens
Where [Dickens] is Christian is in his quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressed against the oppressors. As a matter of course he is on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere. To carry this to its logical conclusion one has got to change sides when the underdog becomes an upperdog, and in fact Dickens does tend to do so.

Which underscores Rogers' point, that context matters. The transgressive humor of the underdog is funny. The transgressive "humor" of the upperdog is merely bullying. And that's not funny. (It's not even really transgressive, since the upperdogs make and enforce the rules.)

The dynamic at work here is, of course, justice. Comedy doesn't so much "steal" power as reclaim it. Undermining injustice is funny. Enforcing it is not. This is as true for preachers and journalists as it is for comics.

Posted by Fred Clark SLACKTIVIST

Fred Clark is a religious scholar and minister. Slacktivist is a wonderful website devoted to debunking the sinister and hilarious "Left Behind" novels by LaHaye-Jenkins.

Cartoon by Stephen Pitt: Rove-Gonzales-Abu Grahib