Changing My Mind

[NOTE: These posts are an ongoing presentation, meant to be read beginning with the earliest and ending with the most recent. If not read in that order, there is a potential loss for the reader in an overall understanding of what is being presented. You have been warned.]

Okay, we left off with the opening statement that “God is all there is.” Next, I claim that God is all good. Now, that’s a toughie for many folks. After all, what about evil? Well, let’s take this one step at a time. First, let me explain what I mean when I say that God is all good, and then we’ll deal with evil and its cousin, sin.

If we step back and think about the vast universe that comprises all of the “is” that God is, through observation we can begin to discover patterns or reoccurring consistencies. These recognized patterns can be reduced to simple principles, or universal laws. Now, in the scientific study of these principles, the language that is used for defining these laws is mathematics. Yes, mathematics is a language. It is a language of numbers and of balance. And in order for it to maintain its balance, it, too, has its own set of laws. For example, 1 + 1 = 2. It doesn’t matter if you put the first 1 first or you put it second, the result is always 2. It is always 2. And the reverse is always true. 2 is always 1 + 1.

When we replace numbers with symbols that represent numbers and combinations of numbers we need to be more cautious in our analysis of what the symbols mean. The truth is that when we create a mathematical equation, a mathematical description of a principle or a principled process, that equation must then always be true if elements and circumstances are the same. That’s what the scientific process does so well. It is able to prove through replication, basic principles of the universe. Now, in this process of identifying the principles that are at the core of the structure of the entire universe, there never is a distinction between whether a principle is either good or bad. Dig on that. For everything that we have discovered regarding the functioning of the universe, nowhere can we discover “good” or “bad.”

So, if there is no good or bad then it all simply is. And that’s good. Just so you’ll understand what I’m saying here, have you ever heard the statement, “nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so?” That’s the way the universe is. That’s the way God is. It is, of itself, neither good nor bad. Good or bad arise from thinking, from incorrect thinking (I’ll explain that shortly). I like what Biff Rose said on the liner notes of his album “The Thorn In Mrs. Rose’s Side:” “Being good implies being bad; being myself is beyond either good or bad.” Or, there’s Deepak Chopra’s book “Creating Affluence,” in which he quotes the poet Rumi: “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field; I’ll meet you there.”

God is not the source of good and bad. So if that’s true, then where do good and bad come from if God is all there is? Well, before answering that, we need to put one more piece in place. Here, I must tip my hat to Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, for it was he who set me off into realms of thinking that have radically transformed my perspectives. Some of the latest thinking in the field of quantum physics (quantum mechanics) states that in order for the laws of quantum physics to work (remember, these are mathematical equations) all possibilities must exist. They don’t say that all possibilities can possibly exist. The claim is that they do exist. And if they all exist, then that must mean that all time, past, present, and future, coexists. And, in order for all of that to be possible, there must, therefore, be an infinite number of parallel universes. And where are those parallel universes? Well, they are right here. We just can’t see them, for we only have the ability to see the universe that we are currently consciously in.

Don’t buy that? Can’t understand how there can be other universes right here, right now? Well, think about this. If you turn on a radio, where do the sounds come from? Well, they are coming from radio waves that are all around you. You only know that they are there when you turn on the radio. The radio gives us the ability to be aware of what normally would appear to be non-existent and allows us to experience them through audio perception. There are a large number of radio station waves available for us to experience, both AM and FM, if we have a proper receiving device that gives us access to them. And with another receiving device we can tap into the shortwave radio transmissions that are also all around us.

And then (at least until February, 2009) we’re surrounded by television wave transmissions. All of the “stations” that it is possible for a television receiver to pickup (both VHF and UHF) are surrounding you right now. And then there are cell phone transmissions and wireless internet transmissions and infrared and ultraviolet and X-rays and gamma rays that are all bombarding the earth from the sun and the rest of space. These are all part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And speaking of space, what about the immediate space around you. Stop right now and look at an object across the room. The very air between you and that object is filled with billions of atoms; oxygen atoms and hydrogen atoms and nitrogen atoms and carbon atoms and many others in the universe’s toolbox of 92 self-regenerative atomic elements. Some of those atoms exist on their own while others are connected with additional atoms, thereby forming molecules. There are molecules of water, thus giving us humidity; there are molecules of carbon dioxide, many of which have just been expelled from our own lungs. Think of the dust that’s in the air. The air around you is alive and vibrant with stuff.

So there’s all of this incredible amount of “stuff” all around you, yet because your usual senses don’t perceive it, for you, it might as well not be there. It’s the same with parallel universes. Just because you are not aware of their presence doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. And it doesn’t mean that they can not exist right here, right now.

One day, while contemplating this concept of infinite parallel universes I was wondering if it were possible, and what it would take, for me to get out of the universe that I was in and into one of the other universes where I would be happier, more successful, and more attractive to women. “And then” to quote Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now!” “I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. ….. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.” The secret to “making that leap” from one universe to another is to “change our mind.” In truth, we are moving from universe to universe with every decision that we make, with every choice that we choose. Every choice we make alters who we are. If we make the same choices over and over again then the universe of our awareness is boringly predictable. But new choices alter our direction, thereby altering the possibilities available to us, and our universe appears to change. But it’s not the universe that has changed. We’re the ones who have changed and that change moves us to a new universe of possibility.

Eric Butterworth once said that in a conversation that he had with Charles Fillmore, the cofounder of the Unity movement, that Charles said, “You know, I have people come to me all of the time asking for my help, asking for me to pray with them that something will change in their lives. They want me to pray that their spouse will change, or that their kids will change, or that their parents will change, or that their job will change, or that where they live will change. But the one thing that nobody ever asks me to pray with them to change is their mind, and that’s the only thing that you can change.”

Have you ever looked back on your life to a time when you might have experienced an extremely down time, a time when all hope seemed lost? What happened to get you out of that hopeless experience? It usually is not some great event taking place that rescues us from the abyss. In my own life, I’ve realized that I was able to climb out of the pit each time that I fell into it when I changed my mind, when I turned my attention away from the pit and the failure that I felt and instead concentrated on something else. That’s right, it was as simple as “changing my mind,” though we all know how difficult that can be.

Well now, with all of that in mind, we’re ready to consider the origin of evil and the true nature of sin.