Adam’s Peace

What is the purpose of subjective reality?

Honestly, what is that paradigm’s purpose?

Does it open up a way to create a new reality?

If a firm understanding and practical application of subjective reality can, in fact, create a new objective reality, then what is the purpose of reality itself?

No, these aren’t the reader questions. They’re a lead-in for some philosophical musing… rhetorical questions, if you will.

If we can simply think of a new, “better” situation, and begin living in it at that moment, then what is the purpose in anything? When I imagine shaping the world around me, like some arbitrary deity, I don’t see endless possibility; I see a dramatically more limited set of possibilities. If I were handed the keys to heaven and earth, my fifth act would be to wipe my memory and hand the keys back. (My first four acts would be, in this order, to create a self-conscious, benevolent computer program; to institute public healthcare in all nations; to create a highly effective public education system in all nations; and to make my wife perfectly healthy.)

If I continued to be an all-powerful consciousness… Well, with my limited consciousness, I could only imagine myself either abusing my power, or quickly growing bored with all of existence.

Honestly, I don’t think that reality is purely subjective. I am certain that there is an objective reality out there, just beyond my senses.

I believe that there are other people who are just as conscious as I am. I believe that electrons, quarks, and other quantum packets make up the basic elementary particles and energy that give rise to all of existence, and that no amount of observing objects in different ways can truly change the way these quantum packets behave. In fact, it isn’t observing quantum states that causes them to collapse… it is being able to observe, whether they are observed or not, that collapses the quantum states.

I also believe that understanding our subjective reality is essential to understanding the objective universe… and just as quantum packets are both particles and waves, my entire universe contains ways for me to interact both objectively and subjectively.

People are extremely good at two things: observing how others react to them, and behaving as expected. People, in general, act on auto-pilot… During those periods of semi-consciousness, they behave exactly as they are expected to behave.

This leads me to a great and terrible conclusion: By changing my beliefs about people, I can change how they act around me.

Reality becomes partially subjective, and under my control.

Now, a lot of people expect me to be a good person… that is, if I gain power, I will either avoid it, or use it only for what I believe is the common good.

The Stan Lee Reference

Fortunately for everyone, I am well under the control of those around me. I am probably one of the most easily controlled people you’ll meet, cheerfully hopping from one person’s expectations to another. I will use my ‘power’—the knowledge of how to manage expectations—responsibly, because I believe that people expect me to behave responsibly. After all, with great power comes great responsibility.

Besides… this subliminal subjective management of people’s behavior doesn’t always work. It’s like hypnotism: you can only be made to do things that you want to do, even if you have to be convinced that you want to do something first.

New Expectations

Well, I have some new expectations from my readers. Don’t worry, these are good expectations.

I expect that people will leave comments when they have something to add, or when they want further clarification. I also expect that people will leave comments in order to be noticed by my other readers, perhaps to increase traffic on their own web site… I expect that the people leaving comments for their own publicity will engage in honest, open conversations, so that the value of everybody’s sites will increase.

I expect that people who leave me notes using my contact form will tell me a few specific things. If you are trying to get me to participate in an activity, or you have a product of some sort that you want me to mention, I expect that you will describe how it will benefit my existing readers. While bloggers always want new members in their audience, I am concerned about my existing members first. Regardless of why you are using my contact form, if you don’t hear back from me within two days, I expect you to send me another message to remind me to reply. This is because I expect people who care about me, my opinion, or my audience to, in turn, expect me to respond in a timely manner.

An Example of the power of Subliminal Subjective Expectations

Probably my biggest boost when I had quit smoking for those two weeks was the fact that people expected me to quit. Just as I gave in to social pressure to begin smoking in the first place, I gave in to social pressure when I quit. It just happened that as I was quitting, I was offered a new job, and I didn’t have the social pressure anymore, so I defaulted back to my destructive behaviors. I’m certain that other factors played a role… but I defeated my strongest cravings by thinking about how my co-workers would think of me. They created my subjective reality by believing in what I was capable of.

I have already talked about how my wife and I both create our interactions by how we expect each other to react… Look at your spouse and honestly ask yourself if they’re behaving exactly how you expect them to… then run an experiment by quietly expecting them to behave differently, and judge their reactions around you.

My wife expects me to slowly mature. I say, she should expect me to quickly mature and become more lively. I hope that she honestly expects me to do my part around the house, rather than simply hope that I do my part while privately expecting me to slip into my old habits. I hope that she will expect me to make a practical income independent of an employer, while expecting me to continue to earn a decent living as a productive employee until that time.

I don’t expect my wife to hold these expectations about me yet… but as I discuss things more openly and honestly with her, we can get our best expectations sorted out.

Participate, Dear Reader

So, here is the big reader question… What expectations do you have about me, and what expectations do you want me to live up to?

Also, what expectations do other people have about you, and what do you wish they’d expect from you instead?

Please note, I’m not trying to push the ‘blame’ off of anyone. As I said before, living up to people’s expectations is what we do when we’re not living consciously, and just like hypnotism, nobody can make us do what we are uncomfortable doing. We still have responsibility for our own lives… but now we also have a tool to help guide our paths during those moments when we’re not taking active responsibility.

Also, I have another distinction to make. We each live in our own minds. This means that we live up to the expectations that we know about. If you want to lead (others or yourself) through expectations, you must let others know what those expectations are. In person, this is usually done automatically through body language and subliminal changes in our tone of voice, but when attempting to lead people online, you must be clear as to what you honestly expect.

Finally, when you are all successful and people are begging for your autobiography, remember that I helped you out, and that I said “We each live up to the expectations that everyone holds about us. This especially includes ourselves and our own expectations. First, we much change our personal expectations, then we can change the world.”

Link Love

I would like to highlight the site which has given me the inspiration to spread ‘link love.’ That is, whenever I post, I will also find a site that would provide a lot of value to my few readers who haven’t discovered it yet.

Today’s link love goes to Albert of Urban Monk. No, he isn’t actually a monk, nor does he talk about urban topics much, but he is extremely insightful and has a firm grasp of emotional mastery topics.

Most notably, his most recent post, on The Value of Cooperation in Achieving Success, nicely parallels this post, and which covers a topic that I wish more people were informed about. In it, Albert reminds us that it is the illusion of competition which often causes a lot of unnecessary shortages of resources. We expect people in the same ‘business’ as ourselves to be our competition, and expect those other people to see us the same way, so we resist sharing resources and use underhanded practices and principles. These underhanded practices hurt us as much as they hurt the other people. Albert explains it much better in his post than I am explaining it, so please check out his site. In fact, subscribe to his feed; it is a rich mine of helpful, practical information that I would never want to compete against.

To repeat the reader question again: What are your (current, honest, even brutal) expectations of me, as well as the expectations that you want me to live up to? Also, what do you believe others (currently and honestly) expect out of you, and what do you want their expectations to be?

No, this post is not about the imperial era of the United States, where we believed that we were ordained by some deity to control the entire North American continent. This post is about Intention Manifestation in all of its forms, from the clinically sterile Placebo Effect to the pop-culture Law of Attraction and the venerable world of Magic.

This post comes after promptings from Slade after I wrote down my analogy in a comment on K-L’s blog. He even offered to host this article on his site with me being a guest blogger.

The reason why I created the analogy in the first place was because I needed a way to get a very simple point across to people. That point is that doing the work yourself is the single most effective way to manifest an intention. If you want a cup of coffee, first you form the intention, then you put energy into it by getting up and brewing it and pouring yourself a pot. A lot of people say that, since you actually did the work, the intention failed, as there isn’t anything ‘magical’ about doing the work yourself… I say, it worked amazingly well, since you have the exact results that you wanted.

A lot of people have noticed that, for an intention to manifest, it is extremely helpful to put energy into your intention. This can be done several ways, but first, I would like to explain why and how I-M works.

The placebo effect, law of attraction, and magic all work based on belief. In the case of a doctor or researchers giving a patient a placebo, either as part of a control group or in the hopes of saving the patient some money, if the patient knows that they received a placebo, then it doesn’t do any good. Even some cases where a patient has received the real drug, if they believe that all they are taking is a sugar pill, then the drug may not provide useful results. Yet, at the same time, a placebo can be just as effective, or even more effective, than the actual drug being tested. The key here is belief… Yes, the real drug does provide real results, and shouldn’t be discounted, but the placebo effect continues to amaze researchers and physicians alike.

The Law of Attraction specifically states that belief is central to it working… I have no idea just how many times I’ve heard people tell someone else that the reason why their intentions didn’t manifest was because they didn’t believe hard enough… yet I’m certain that if I had an extra dollar for each time, I’d be able to pay my rent this month.

Magic, in terms of the native European religions, requires faith and belief as well. Instead of simply saying that the belief is necessary and leaving the practitioners to figure out how to build that belief on their own, as science and the Law of Attraction are facing now, magic has rituals that confirm the belief before the practitioner sends out the intention. Would you walk around your house with a handful of burning sage if you didn’t already believe that it would protect your house?

So, since belief is necessary for I-M, it is a very short logical leap to say that disbelief and doubt hurt the chances of manifesting your intentions, or at least delay it and weaken the effects. A lot of people have found ways to overcome this disbelief, and I maintain that doing the work yourself is the most effective way to overcome that disbelief. How can you doubt something that you are experiencing, except through carefully trained skepticism?

Here is my analogy. Imagine that your intention is to move a large, thin board. Your doubt and disbelief all manifest themselves as friction and weight holding that board in place. Do you have that idea firmly planted in your mind? Good.

There are several ways to move that board. You can stand on top of it and shift your weight creatively, allowing your own momentum to move it along. You can stand next to the board and kick or push it. You can lift an edge of the board and pull it along. You can also lift the board off of the ground and carry it to where you want it to be.

The first of these options is similar to how the Law of Attraction is described in the faux-cumentary The Secret. The Secret says that all you have to do is think that an event has happened, or is happening, and it will happen. Well, yes, that could work, but just like standing on top of a board and moving it with your momentum, you are adding to the board’s weight and friction by standing on top of it. With your intention, you are preventing it from working because you aren’t actually changing your beliefs, only your surface thoughts.

You can think about moving your arm, and you can actually move your arm… Both thoughts are similar, but with the surface thought of moving, you don’t get results. You can also think about changing your beliefs, and you can actually change your beliefs. Since most people haven’t consciously changed their beliefs in the past, it is very hard to learn how, and is similar in difficulty to learning how to wiggle your ears… some people just never quite learn how.

The second option, of getting off and pushing or kicking the edge of the board, is similar to putting strong emotion into your intention. The board’s own weight and surface area works against you, and all of your energy comes in sudden bursts, but you don’t have to fight your own weight as well. This is also where rituals help, although I would say that ritual also creates a path of sand, further decreasing the friction of disbelief.

The third method, lifting an edge, is a hybrid between the first two methods and the last method. Since I haven’t described the last method yet, I’ll come back.

The last method is to do the work yourself. Yes, all lot of LoA newbies will insist that this isn’t actually what The Secret is talking about… but it has all of the requirements for manifesting an intention. First, you have a desire, such as drinking a cup of coffee. Next, you put out energy, in this case, in the form of brewing it or going to a cafe. Finally, the intention manifests, and you have a cup of coffee to drink. It ’sounds’ like cheating, but what can be more simple? All of your disbelief is gone, because you are actually experiencing the events first hand. You may doubt your ability to brew coffee, but at least, at the end, you’ll have a cup of brown liquid with caffeine in it, no matter how poor you are at working the coffee maker. Without the disbelief, it is like moving an object without any friction, or actually lifting that object up so that it doesn’t touch the ground.

Back to the third method of lifting one edge of the board. This is the most appropriate method to use when you simply can not do all of the work yourself. Intentions of this nature include getting a new job, gaining more readers on a website, and anything else that requires other people to do some of the work. To do this, you must do as much of the work as you can, remembering that it is your job to reduce the friction of disbelief as much as possible. Then, you can either pull or push on that board.

Pushing on the board would be like gaining readers on a blog without going out and marketing it. Your own actions are to create the content, but then, you are simply waiting for people to show up. If you run into an obstacle, then all of your progress stops, sort of like pushing a board past uneven ground. In fact, you are adding the weight of your own disbelief onto the intention whenever you hit an obstacle.

Pulling on the board, on the other hand, is turning yourself around so that, instead of hitting every obstacle with the full force of your intention, you let your intention glide over the obstacles smoothly. There are several ways to do this… First, do not be attached to the methods. If you send out an intention to gain a large chunk of money, and the only activity that you participate in is to buy lottery tickets, then your chances are still pretty low, simply because you are requiring the money to come along only one path. Open up as many paths as possible by getting a part time job, inventing, doing freelance work, buying lottery tickets, advertising on your website, using the AGLOCO toolbar (aff), or anything else that you can think of that would open up many paths to gaining money.

Another way to ‘pull the board’ is to put more energy into the intention. Here, I’ll explain a bit of Steve Pavlina’s polarity, since that has often been unclear in the past. When Steve has been talking about dark and light polarity, he was speaking about sending and receiving. Here’s the key… You have to send in order to receive, and if you receive, you must send as well. Now, whichever part you do not concentrate on will take care of itself. If you concentrate on receiving, then your bills will get larger and larger. If you concentrate on giving, then your pay checks will get larger and larger… It balances out, in the end, and it is important to note that it is the speed of the flow that is important, not how much you can accumulate. Polarizing your intentions with either a giving or receiving attitude is probably the easiest way to add energy to an intention.

Now, putting this hybrid method of intention-manifestation together, we have a pretty clear outline of what to do. Let’s get a practical example real quick, to show how the entire process works.

Let’s say that my intention is to gain more readers on my blog. It is pretty hard to believe that people will want to read blank pages, so my first direct action is to create content. Since it is easier to believe that people like regularly updated content, I also work on additional articles as time goes by. Now, it is also hard to believe that people will appear from nowhere to read the articles, so I work on search engine optimization, and I head off to comment on other people’s blogs, build a relationship with the writers, and leech their readers… um… I mean… share our readers between us.

Now that I’ve done the work that I can do myself, it is time to reduce the friction on the other end. Since people tend to go where energy is flowing, I set about making the articles useful for them, giving of my own value. At the same time, I also have a donate button at the bottom of the page and an ad at the top so that money can also flow in. (Hopefully, by the time my server is up for renewal, I’ll have earned enough to pay for another two years. ) I also concentrate on giving value, which is, ironically, the very reason why my posting schedule has gone down dramatically… I need to be at peace in order to help other people to be at peace, so the majority of my time is spent in bringing myself joy and learning new ways to bring peace into my life.

Some other things that I can do is to form symbolic rituals which will increase my emotional investment and will help to focus my attention… If I’m very stuck, I can go ask a very grounded person to shift the earth a little.

Now, with all of this, is the very basic first method still appropriate? In some cases, yes. If you can’t find a way to do any of the work yourself, and you can’t get yourself emotionally attached to an idea, then you can use the basic intentions without feeling guilty that you aren’t doing more… there simply is no way that you can do more. A great example of this is concentrating on world peace. It is a very large topic, and even with peace being my life purpose, I can do very little about it. Most people in this world are not directly affected by war, and in fact, are rather numb to it from watching stories about it in the news. War just seems to be an ever-present fact of life, deeply entrenched into our concept of reality. There is very little that people are willing to do directly, and the disbelief of world peace being possible holds war firmly in place… In this case, a simple, basic intention does do some good.

Before I get to the meat of this post, I’d like to make a couple of announcements.

First, I would like to point out that I have an addictive personality. That is, I become obsessed with certain activities to the point where they interfere with other areas of my life. Namely, the time that I spend on blog related tasks has been hurting my relationship with my wife and has cost me some financial opportunities. Since I’m currently earning an average of $0.50 per month with this blog, I can’t justify the amount of time that I have been spending, so I’m cutting back the time that I’ll spend writing and responding to the people in this community.

For a little while, don’t expect more than one post per week, unless I can fit several posts into one writing session and schedule them to appear throughout the week.

Don’t worry, the blog is not disappearing any time soon. It is spring in the northern hemisphere, a time of indulgence and rapid growth. I am, however, very much under the influence of the Taurus ways, fixed and lasting, despite my Gemini ascendant which gives me my gift with words and the incessant need to have multiple projects. Because of my Taurean sun, I like to do certain tasks differently than seems prudent in the interests of setting up a firm foundation before seeking to reach for the sky. This season of growth seems to me to be a better time for strengthening my foundation, to set down roots, as it were, rather than to stretch out my limbs to the sky. The sun will be here again when this season comes again, so as I’m living in the now, my actions now are to plan for the future and ensure that I’m healthy enough to meet it. In the interest of helping more people in the future, I am seeking inner peace more fully now. I will still be posting regularly, but rather than posting ideas as they come to me, I’ll be working on the ideas throughout the week. For those who enjoy reading shorter posts, I am sorry, but this means that I’ll be writing some very long essays. Fortunately, these essays will be more thought out than what I’ve written in the past, and none will contain paragraphs as complex and ungainly as this one.

Now, on to the subject at hand.

Vera Nadine has asked me a very subjective question. There is simply no way that I can answer this objectively/scientifically. I wouldn’t even be presumptuous enough to say that my answer is in any way definitive, except that it is what I personally believe, based on my own observations.

Vera asked:

Is there such a thing as a soul MATE?

Aren’t we just solitary expressions of the ALL?

Do we manifest in soul pairs or soul groups or is this spiritual “other” just a way of distracting ourselves from the real work at hand?

If there is such a thing as a soul mate will we DEFINITELY meet them in each lifetime? Do we HAVE to meet them in order to fill our life’s goals?

What if we don’t meet them?

I’m going to re-organize the questions just a little bit… The first question that I’d like to address, which will answer the first two, is, “do we manifest in soul pairs or soul groups or is this spiritual ‘other’ just a way of distracting ourselves from the real work at hand?”

Well, thinking along the lines of the Law of Attraction, taken to its logical extreme with the Subjective Reality model, I would say that, yes, we do manifest in soul groups. This seems like a real contradiction, because the Subjective Reality model says that you are the only consciousness. It isn’t, though, because the “I” which we usually use and the “I” of Subjective Reality are two different things. What we experience from a singular point of view is seen through the lens of the ego, which likes to call itself “I,” just as the Super-Consciousness of Subjective Reality is called the “I.” Because the Super-Consciousness can create anything, it stands to reason that there are many different egos, each calling themselves “I,” and being just as justified in calling themselves “I” as any other ego.

Is this a distraction from the work at hand? Well, it depends entirely on what that work is. I believe that the purpose of the universe is to learn of itself. In that case, there is very little that can be distracting, except to remain in ignorance. Even that ignorance helps other egos to learn, though, which makes it very difficult to be truly distracted.

Now, why do I believe that the Super-Consciousness would choose to use reincarnation, which allows for soul groups? Well, part of why I believe this is the ego’s fear of annihilation. The other part is that an eternal paradise or torture for souls would serve absolutely no purpose for a singular consciousness. If both annihilation and a single eternal afterlife are out of the question, then that leaves reincarnation. Each ego comes back freshly washed of its memories ready to learn more about the universe than it learned before. Since I enjoy my relationship with my wife, family, and friends, and each ego has the same creative powers of the Super-Consciousness, I choose to return with the same group time and time again.

The second set of questions is,

• If there is such a thing as a soul mate will we DEFINITELY meet them in each lifetime?
• Do we HAVE to meet them in order to fill our life’s goals?
• What if we don’t meet them?

Will we definitely meet them? No… Perhaps our main ‘lesson’ for this lifetime is how to deal with life without a built-in support system. This means that we don’t have to meet them either… The last question, though, leaves an interesting answer…

Assuming that our lessons for our lifetime includes meeting our life mate(s), what happens if we don’t meet them?

Well, some lessons will be missed. The good news, though, is that there are many, many more lessons to be learned. If one person or another isn’t ready, then there will be plenty of time for them to be ready. Just as friendships drift apart within mortal lifetimes, it is possible for a soul friendship to drift apart as well. Fortunately, we’re also able to create new friendships. New romances form and old ones fizzle. The way of life is through change. That’s how we learn.

And, to the unasked question (or perhaps just my own rant from personal experience), you have met old friends and made new ones this lifetime. If you don’t feel like you have met your soul mate yet, well, perhaps you’re looking too hard. Many times, what you’re really looking for is in plain sight and can only be found when you’re not trying to look.