Tag Archives: peace

What’s on Your To-Do List for the Next President?

PARADE, the magazine-like Sunday insert in the L.A. Times, put out this query, with answers to be delivered to the president after the election:

What’s on your to-do list for the next president? Click here to tell us, and we’ll send your advice to the White House!  

Here’s what I wrote:

Try to harness the power of collective thought, where the winner of the election asks everyone to spend a minute in silence, at a designated time each day, to focus on the world being peaceful.

Here are two instances that speak to there being real power for the good in such focusing of collective thought.

 1. During World War II, “the idea of a daily moment of united prayer and silence was born, now known as the Silent Minute, and signaled by the chiming and striking of Bib Ben at nine each evening,” when people “were asked to devote one minute of their time  to pray for peace and to create a channel between the visible and the invisible worlds through which divine help and inspiration could be received.” “Soon after the end of hostilities in Europe, in 1945, a British Intelligence Officer, whilst interrogating high Nazi officials, asked one of them why he thought Germany had lost the war. This was the reply. ‘During the war you had a secret weapon for which we could find no counter-measure and which we did not understand, but it was very powerful…I believe you called it the Silent Minute.’” The idea, widely held at the time, was that this practice had prevented the invasion of Britain. (From a booklet about the man responsible for this silent minute, entitled, WELLESLEY TUDOR POLE: Appreciation & Valuation.)

2. There are scientific studies that attest to the power of collective thought. See this project, based on the idea that “the healing intention of one person can have a positive effect on another who is at a distance,” from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by astronaut and 6th man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell: . “Over the past thirty years, significant scientific research has been conducted on the potential effectiveness and value of distant healing practices. The practice of distant healing is drawing increased attention as an important component of integral medicine models that blend a range of approaches to health and healing. Many leading health professionals and spiritual leaders believe distant healing practices may significantly expand the capacity to facilitate healing.” “Scientific research projects have studied the effect of distant healing on a numerous disease states, including heart disease, AIDS, cancer, bacterial infections and recovery from surgery…does enhance the healing process across a broad range of disease states.”

One of the speculations of historians is that thought and perhaps sound gave us the pyramids. Our mechanistic culture has cut us off from what is in the ethers, if you will, beyond what can be put under a microscope. Why not try what perhaps our ancestors knew that we have forgotten? Worse that can happen is nothing, while the positive effects could not only achieve specific desired results, but could establish a whole new human capacity.

Ah Sweet Mysteries of Life…

Here’s one of the loveliest comments about the nature of reality that I frequently pass back to people in response to something they’ve said. I swoon for Swimme, whose audio comments I recently posted: Exploding Your Head
Brian Swimme is a wondrous being, who I think has the best perspective on who we are and what we are doing here. His seminal book, The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story is a must-read for any friend of mine. Click on the title to buy it through Amazon, or get a good deal from me — through PayPal just send $9.00 to suzanne@mightycompanions.org and I’ll send you a copy.

“Albert Einstein once remarked that for the human there is no more powerful feeling than that of the ‘mysterious.’ In fact, he was convinced this feeling for the mysterious was the cradle for all works of science, art, and religion. In light of Einstein’s conviction, one might ask: ‘What is the opposite of a feeling for the mysterious?’ The opposite would be the sense that one understands it all. The opposite would be the feeling that one is in possession of a system that explains all the phenomena in the universe. For such a person, the universe loses its appeal for it becomes something we don’t really need to pay attention to. The universe becomes an exemplification of a theory that one has already understood. No real surprises are possible, only the working out of a logical system through time. When a feeling for the mysterious is lost, one become s vulnerable to the various fundamentalisms plaguing our planet, each one with its passionate certainty that it has all the answers while every other system is just superstition.

“In moments of stress and breakdown, there is a powerful drive in us to acquire answers and explanations. Certainly in our own time when we are dismantling ecosystems around the planet and deconstructing the stable climate upon which our civilization is based, we feel a deep need to know what is real and what is good and how to proceed. This need can become so great we are liable to latch onto one of these simplistic pseudo-explanations just to quell the feelings of fear and doom surfacing in us. What on Earth? does not provide any such simplistic explanations. This restraint is one of its greatest achievements. By insisting that the Crop Circles are beyond any easy explanation, What on Earth? enables us to make peace with living in the ambiguity of not knowing. This ability to live with ambiguity is related to a sense for the mysterious and together these two may be the most important factors for deep creativity to take place. At the very least, we need to realize that an embrace of ambiguity is a form of humility when confronted by the magnificent complexity of nature.

“One of the great benefits of viewing What on Earth? is the feeling one can get of wading into the mysterious. Through its balanced and wide-open approach to the phenomena of Crop Circles, the film has the power to ease us out of some of the prior certainties we might have had. What on Earth? explores and celebrates the fact of the existence of these designs. And as we are guided into this reflection, we find ourselves considering new ideas about the nature of our universe. We begin to imagine that things might be different than we thought. We might even begin to release ourselves from some of the tired explanations lodged into our minds by the media. But most important of all, as we view the film we might even begin to feel stunned by the simple fact that here we are in the midst of this overwhelming mystery, the universe.”
Brian Swimme, mathematical cosmologist specializing in the evolution of the universe