Gah!
The reason I find quantum physics (at least, the elementary concepts I can understand from What the Bleep) so fascinating is that it explains the phenomenon of manifestation. For so many years of my life I was the biggest skeptic, an ardent atheist, a person who demanded that if it was to be believed there must be a proven and demonstratable logic. It was a very empty time. Believing in only what you can see before you–when what you see are a series of negative circumstances–makes for little vibrance.
I’m not totally sure what vibrance is in this context. Vibrancy, maybe? I won’t nitpick about all the things I believe that I can’t see, because that’s petty. But seriously, if the world as it is isn’t enough, you’re missing something. The world is full of amazing and wonderful things, and I don’t miss out on them because I’m an atheist. Yes, I have empty times: this is because I get depressed, and for various reasons, antidepressants do not work. It is not because I have a universe-shaped hole in my life.
I’m not really a physicist, but what I do know from quantum physics is that it doesn’t explain “manifestation”. If you want to believe it works, believe it works. If you want to figure out why, then study something, don’t read pop science books or watch movies and think that this explains stuff. I read The Celestine Prophecy, all about vibrations and energy levels and sure, they’re related, but not in the way that it makes us more or less evolved.
But I have learned to trust, after many years of things happening that cannot be waved away as happenstance. Finding out that quantum physics suggests a scientific basis for manifestation makes me positively giddy.
See, coincidence does happen. A lot. It’s not even surprising, when looked at from the big picture. Why does no one learn proper probability & statistics?
First, the book absolutely says that you create your own reality–good, bad, and in-between. “Most often people reject the ‘I Create Reality’ idea when something occurs in their life that they would absolutely never, ever create…That’s true; they–the personality–never would. But as all spiritual traditions maintain, there is more than one “you.” This divine schizophrenia goes by many labels: ego/true self, personality/divinity, son of man/son of god, mortal body/immortal soul, but in essence it says there are different levels from which you are creating” (p. 110).
See, I super duper secretly want bad stuff to happen. So do all of you who’ve had bad things happen, which is pretty much everyone in the world. I’ve complained about this before. If you think things happen to *you* for a reason, go right ahead and believe it. But don’t you tell me that it’s true for me.
“The dualistic model of karma says: I hit Bob, so someone will hit me. It’s a very cause / effect (a.k.a. Newtonian) way to deal view this phenomena. But from the non-dualistic, entangled [quantum] model, it’s different. It says that action or thought (which are the same “thing”) arises in a piece of my consciousness. There is a certain frequency or vibration associated with that. By taking the action, I endorse that reality so that I am not connected to the Universe by that frequency or vibration. Everything “out there” of the same frequency will respond to it, and they will then be reflected in your reality. By this notion, everything in your life–people, places, things, times and events–are nothing but reflections of your signature vibration” (p. 110-111).
Oh, it is just like the Celestine Prophecy. Magic Science Words are not truth.
“Perceiving one’s self as a victim is possibly the strongest rejection of ‘I create my reality.’ And it happens all of the time. The victim says: ‘This situation happened to me. It is unfair and unwarranted.’” [Um, that sounds like the tune I’ve been singing about my foot.] “The corollaries of this are: ‘Poor me. The Universe is unjust. Karma is a part-time, fickle operation.’ The upside of this attitude is: You get sympathy, get to feel good about yourself because it’s not you, and can blow off the experience and not deal with your part in it. The downside is: you just endorsed the idea that you don’t create your reality (and thus are disempowered to do so) and you will get the lesson again and again…It also is a fragmentation from reality. It removes the Creator from the Creation” (p. 111-112).”
Oh, that’s so harsh. But I love it. Let’s just be real: sure, it can be said that ’shit happens.’ But the only thing shittier than expecting that ’shit happens’ is when the shit does happen and then we throw up our hands and wallow in it instead of believing there is an empowered way to create a new reality.
There’s a balance, really. You don’t need to take *all* the responsibility for something or *none* of it. You can figure out what you did wrong and change that without figuring that it was all you trying to punish yourself or teach yourself some lesson. And even if you don’t have responsibility for something, you can always learn from it, because we are animals who learn, occasionally.
June 19th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
As a fellow athiest, this has raised some thoughts.
First off, I think people do create their own realities. Not by manifestation, but simply due to how they choose to interpret the world in their own minds. Ones realty is what is in someones mind, atleast thats how I see it in a simplified form.
But I think that might be beside the point I want to make. That point, or comment as it may be, is frequently people seem to have this desire to have all the questions of the world/universe/existence answered for them. And if there is not a clear answer they make something up (or let someone one else make one up for them). And in the case of what you were quoting, this person took some pseudo-science jargon and used it as some answer. I don’t see why people feel the need to *know* an answer to everything. I, personally, am perfectly content shrugging my shoulders and saying, “I don’t know.”
I feel no empty hole in me because of it.
…Assuming anything I wrote makes sense, or is even relevent to this…
June 19th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Quite honestly, I have no idea what the hell those quotes are trying to say. But then again, I walked out on What the Bleep, so what do I know?
June 19th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
I agree with you about that aspect of creating your own reality. I don’t agree that creating your own reality means “manifesting” things to happen to you. Though I think we’re agreed here.
I think you’ve nailed it, too. This weird insistence that Using Magic Science Words makes things Real, instead of saying “look, this works, I believe this works, I don’t know why” — which is funny, because of the beginning of the quote where the author was talking about no longer needing logical reasons.
June 19th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Sheepish, I think they’re trying to say that this kind of belief is better than regular religious belief cause it’s Scientific.
June 19th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Oh. Ok. It’s so far disconnected from science that I somehow failed to catch that their invocations of Newton and quantum mechanics were intended to be Science. Take away message: shit happens, and if it happens at your own personal frequency or vibration, then you’re going to get pretty messy.
June 19th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Oh I HATED that movie so much. It’s responsible for all the badness in the world. All of it. Well, most of it, anyway.
June 19th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Sheepish, it’s unrecognisable as science unless you’re attuned to the Science-as-Religion speak. It’s so annoying.
Styley, I never saw the movie. And now that I read your review I . . . sort of want to, so I can bitch about it more effectively. Damn you.
June 19th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
Bad science + weird religion == wow, intense.
Where did you find this??
June 19th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
I didn’t want to link cause I was being so nasty about what are essentially religious beliefs, but it’s from selftaughtgirl dot com.
June 20th, 2006 at 8:58 am
I haven’t seen the movie — and most likely I never will. I too have very little patience with this sort of thing. Quantum mechanics is a mathematical model that tries to explain and predict atomic and subatomic phenomena. Nothing more. This act of translation — of putting the math into English and applying it to things that it was never meant to be applied to — is just, like you said, gah! And a lot of physicists are guilty of this too, not just non-specialists.
I’m digressing. I guess what I wanted to say was that physics simply constructs models — it does not say anything about “reality,” whatever that nebulous thing is. A model works or it doesn’t work, and it is often replaced by subsequent models that work better — and by “work better” I mean they have more explanatory power. (A very Kuhnian way of looking at this issue, and surely this can be argued against, but there you have it). Even now, within mainstream physics, there are physicists who are trying to replace the quantum mechanics model. E.g. stochastic electrodynamics is one such contender, although it is still a rather marginal theory (though definitely mainstream, judging by the journals where these physicists publish their work).
Sorry for the long comment — I happen to be writing a paper on stochastic electrodynamics. Very interesting post, wolfa.