CHAPTER 02

A QUANTUM LEAP

We are above the river looking down at the world’s most dangerous and turbulent rapids. Say one of us could be plunged into the middle of the rapids in a protective bubble that allows us to stand at the bottom of the river impervious to the force and rush of the water around us. Now increase the speed of the water to velocities well beyond light speed. Our bubble not only allows us to stand and observe, but to freeze the molecules of water in place in any direction we turn.

That’s pretty much what Quantum Physicists say happens to us every second of every day. Except instead of water flowing around us, it is a rush of ultra high-speed energy swooshing and whirling wildly. They maintain that the only way we can make order amid this chaos is to somehow freeze the energetic matrix of molecules around us into the familiar objects of our world, thus creating our reality. In the Amplitude section we spoke of changing limiting beliefs. So let’s open our minds here.

If that scenario is fact, then everything we know to be true is all just an illusion we are creating amid this rapid rush of energy. Time is non-linear. It is solely a convenient construct for us. Space is adaptive and varying. All information, every thought that anyone ever had is carried and passed on wave interference patterns, accessible when needed. Life that is yet to be born is among us now. We have always been here, and those who are no longer alive are still with us and always will be. Energy never dies, it only transforms.

This paragraph describes with utter certainty the beliefs of the oldest on-going culture on earth. Australia’s Aborigines have lived in the harsh outback for over 50,000 years in bare feet and loincloths. If ever a society is in touch with the natural rhythms of the Earth, it is theirs. This is the quantum leap we are asking you to entertain, for if any of this is remotely accurate as physicists now believe, then we have more power and more responsibility than any of us ever dreamed possible. Quantum Physics seeks to understand the nature of the universe not by looking in telescopes but by examining the smallest particles in all existence.

Our western science always seeks to set immutable laws and quantify in complicated formulas. Ironically, Quantum Physics was first discovered in the early 1900s by scientists like Max Planck, who was seeking to understand troubling inconsistencies in radiated light and heat. What they ended up discovering was closer to the teachings of ancient Eastern philosophies, such as the Buddhist Sutras, the Indian Upanishads or beliefs of innumerable native cultures such as Australia’s Aborigines. These teachings and beliefs all maintain that the ultimate reality cannot be described with the vocabulary of our current reality or quantified in the language of mathematics. No statement about the world is ultimately valid, they say.

So how does quantum theory affect your individual personal development? To comprehend ourselves it is essential to feel the connection to our surroundings.

Imagine you are a doctor. Your patient is the Earth. You examine the melting rate of the polar ice caps, note the oil spills in the ocean, get a count on the dozens of daily animal species going extinct, shake your head at the exploding population in its midsection, prescribe a solution for the thinning rainforests. By the time tests come back on depleted resources and smoky atmosphere you’d probably issue a stern warning to your patient, “if you don’t make some lifestyle changes soon, your overall health will diminish rapidly.”

Unlike the other pristine rocks orbiting in space, the Earth has an unhealthy cough, internal bleeding, a chronic fever, a rash and major case of parasites. Those parasites happen to be us. We are causing the rash, spreading out and propagating, hungry and itching and digging and drilling and passing disease, and perpetrating crime. We are the Earth’s problem and as we’ll see in this next section, we are its solution.

You see we don’t need to be parasites. It is all in our mindset. So much of the Earth’s fragile health issues are a direct result of money, power and control. These are all human constructs that on a planetary scale mean nothing.

Native cultures all over the world have taken a much different approach to living. When they took, they thanked. And then replenished. Their cultures communed with the Earth. Their impact was more like a nourishing balm on the Earth’s surface, helping to keep the globe healthy and strong.

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
— Chief Seattle Suquamish Native American

From Native Americans to African tribesmen, native cultures around the world understood the universal connection. Uneducated and blissfully unaware of mathematical formulas that explain energy transformation, they instead used their instincts and intrinsic knowledge to value the universal energy that runs through us all.

Of course we humans are also responsible for an amazing amount of good in this world. We just need to open our minds and our hearts to understand that everything we do is a direct reflection of what the Earth is. If it is sickly, so are we. It is not a commodity we can ravage and control, it is us. If the Earth goes away, so do we.

This is a research project. You can use a bookstore, library, television or the internet. Familiarize yourself with at least one native culture and their approach to nature. It could be the Lakotas, a Native American tribe, Kalahari Bushmen of Africa, or the Aborigines of Australia’s outback. Find a culture that fascinates you and study their interaction with the Earth. If we can rediscover the wisdom and knowledge culled from those who lived close to the land for thousands of years, then perhaps we can recapture some of the compassion we had for our planet. Please write about your findings and any revelations they bring. Search inside for your resonance with the basic connection to nature we all possess.