Early physicists divided the world into matter and thought, and later, matter and energy. Each member of those pairs was considered to be entirely separate from the other … but they’re not! Nevertheless, this mind/matter duality shaped our early worldview—that reality was essentially predetermined and that people could do little to change things through their own actions, let alone their thoughts.

Fast-forward to our current understanding—that we are part of a vast, invisible field of energy, which contains all possible realities and responds to our thoughts and our feelings. Just as today’s scientists are exploring the relationship between thought and matter, we are eager to do the same in our own lives. And so, we ask ourselves, Can I use my mind to create my reality? If so, is that a skill that we can learn and use to become who we want to be, and create the life we want to experience?

Let’s face it—none of us is perfect. Whether we’d like to make some change to our physical self, emotional self, or spiritual self, we all have the same desire: we want to live life as an idealized version of who we think and believe we can be. When we stand in front of the mirror and look at our love handles, we don’t just see that slightly too-pudgy vision reflected in the glass. We also see, depending on our mood that day, a slimmer, fitter version of ourselves or a heavier, chunkier version.

Which of our images is real?

When we lie in bed at night reviewing our day and our efforts to be a more tolerant, less reactive person, we don’t just see the parent who lashed out at our child for failing to quietly and quickly submit to a simple request. We envision either an angelic self whose patience was stretched like an innocent victim on the rack or a hideous ogre laying waste to a child’s self-esteem. Which of those images is real?

The answer is: all of them are real—and not just those extremes, but an infinite spectrum of images ranging from positive to negative. How can that be? For you to better understand why none of those versions of self is more or less real than the others, I’m going to have to shatter the outmoded understanding about the fundamental nature of reality and replace it with a new one.

Always, in order to change, we have to come to a new understanding of self and the world so that we can embrace new knowledge and have new experiences.

Your past shortfalls can be traced, at their root, to one major oversight: you haven’t committed yourself to living by the truth that your thoughts have consequences so great that they create your reality.

The fact is that we are all blessed; we all can reap the benefits of our constructive efforts. We don’t have to settle for our present reality; we can create a new one, whenever we choose to. We all have that ability, because for better or worse, our thoughts do influence our lives.

I’m sure you’ve heard that before, but I wonder whether most people really believe this statement on a gut level. If we truly embraced the notion that our thoughts produce tangible effects in our lives, wouldn’t we strive to never let one thought slip by us that we didn’t want to experience? And wouldn’t we focus our attention on what we want, instead of continually obsessing about our problems?

Think about it: if you really knew that this principle were true, would you ever miss a day in intentionally creating your desired destiny?

 

TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE, CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY

Until you break from the way you see your present reality, any change in your life will always be haphazard and transitory. You have to overhaul your thinking about why things happen in order to produce enduring and desired outcomes. To do that, you’ll need to be open to a new interpretation of what is real and true.

To help you shift into this mode of thought and begin to create a life of your choosing, I have to begin with a bit of cosmology (the study of the structure and dynamics of the universe). But don’t be alarmed—we’re merely going to skim through “The Nature of Reality 101” and how some of our views about it have evolved to reach our present understanding. All of this is to explain (of necessity, in a brief and simple way) how it is possible that your thoughts shape your destiny.

This information just might test your willingness to abandon ideas that have in a sense been programmed into you for many years on a conscious and subconscious level. Once you gain a new conception of the fundamental forces and elements that constitute reality, it won’t fit into that old perception in which the linear and the orderly rule the day. Be prepared to experience some fundamental shifts in understanding.

In fact, as you begin to embrace this new outlook, your very makeup as a human being will change. It is my wish that you will no longer be the same person you were when you began.

Obviously, I’m about to challenge you, but I want you to know that I’m entirely empathetic, because I too have had to let go of what I thought was true and leap into the unknown. To ease into this new way of thinking about the nature of our world, let’s see how our worldview was shaped by the early belief that mind and matter were separate things.

 

ALWAYS MATTER, NEVER MIND? ALWAYS MIND, NEVER MATTER?

Connecting the dots between the outer, physical world of the observable and the inner, mental world of thought has always presented quite a challenge to scientists and philosophers. To many of us, even today, the mind appears to have little or no measurable effects on the world of matter.

Although we’d probably agree that the world of matter creates consequences affecting our minds, how can our minds possibly produce any physical changes affecting the solid things in our lives? Mind and matter appear to be separate … that is, unless there’s a shift in our understanding about the way physical, solid things actually exist.

Well, there has been such a shift, and to trace its beginnings, we don’t have to go back very far. For much of what historians consider modern times, humanity believed that the nature of the universe was orderly, and thus predictable and explainable. Consider 17th-century mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, who developed many concepts that still have great relevance to mathematics and other fields (does I think, therefore I am ring any bells?). In retrospect, however, one of his theories ultimately did more harm than good. Descartes was a proponent of the mechanistic model of the universe—a view that the universe is controlled by predictable laws.

When it came to human thought, Descartes faced a real challenge—the human mind possessed too many variables to neatly fit into any laws. Since he couldn’t unify his understanding of the physical world with that of the mind, but he had to account for the presence of both, Descartes played a nifty mind game (pun intended). He said that the mind was not subject to laws of the objective, physical world, so it was completely outside the bounds of scientific inquiry. The study of matter was the jurisdiction of science (always matter, never mind)—whereas the mind was God’s instrument, so the study of it fell to religion (always mind, never matter).

Essentially, Descartes started a belief system that imposed a duality between the concepts of mind and matter. For centuries, that division stood as the accepted understanding of the nature of reality.

Helping to perpetuate Descartes’s beliefs were the experiments and theories of Sir Isaac Newton. The English mathematician and scientist not only solidified the concept of the universe as a machine, but he produced a set of laws stating that human beings could precisely determine, calculate, and predict the orderly ways in which the physical world would operate.

According to the “classical” Newtonian physics model, all things were considered solid. For example, energy could be explained as a force to move objects or to change the physical state of matter. But as you will see, energy is much more than an outside force exerted on material things. Energy is the very fabric of all things material, and is responsive to mind.

By extension, the work of Descartes and Newton established a mind-set that if reality operated on mechanistic principles, then humanity had little influence on outcomes. All of reality was predetermined. Given that outlook, is it any wonder that human beings struggled with the idea that their actions mattered, let alone entertained the notion that their thoughts mattered or that free will played any part in the grand scheme of things? Don’t many of us still labor today (subconsciously or consciously) under the assumption that we humans are often little more than victims?

Considering that these cherished beliefs held sway for centuries, it took some revolutionary thought to counter Descartes and Newton.

 

EINSTEIN: NOT JUST ROCKING THE BOAT— ROCKING THE UNIVERSE

About 200 years after Newton, Albert Einstein produced his famous equation E = mc2, demonstrating that energy and matter are so fundamentally related that they are one and the same. Essentially, his work showed that matter and energy are completely interchangeable. This directly contradicted Newton and Descartes, and ushered in a new understanding of how the universe functions.

Einstein didn’t single-handedly crumble our previous view of the nature of reality. But he did undermine its foundation, and that eventually led to the collapse of some of our narrow, rigid ways of thinking. His theories set off an exploration of the puzzling behavior of light. Scientists then observed that light sometimes behaves like a wave (when it bends around a corner, for example), and at other times, it behaves like a particle. How could light be both a wave and a particle? According to the outlook of Descartes and Newton, it couldn’t—a phenomenon had to be either one or the other.

Quickly, it became clear that the dualistic Cartesian/Newtonian model was flawed at the most basic level of all: the subatomic. (Subatomic refers to the parts—electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on—that make up atoms, which are the building blocks of all things physical.) The most fundamental components of our so-called physical world are both waves (energy) and particles (physical matter), depending on the mind of the observer. To understand how the world works, we had to look to its tiniest components.

Thus, out of these particular experiments, a new field of science was born, called quantum physics.

THE SOLID GROUND WE STAND ON … ISN’T

This change was a complete reimagining of the world we’d thought we lived in, and it led to the proverbial rug being pulled out from under our feet—feet we used to think were planted on solid ground. How so? Think back to those old toothpick-and-Styrofoam-ball models of the atom. Before quantum physics came along, people believed that an atom was made of a relatively solid nucleus with smaller, less substantial objects either located in or around it. The very idea that with a powerful enough instrument we could measure (calculate the mass of) and count (number) the subatomic particles that made up an atom made them seem as inert as cows grazing in a pasture.

Atoms seemed to be made of solid stuff, right?

Figure 1A. The “old-school” classical Newtonian version of an atom. The focus is primarily on the material.

Nothing could be further from the truth as revealed by the quantum model. Atoms are mostly empty space; atoms are energy. Think about this: everything physical in your life is not solid matter—rather, it’s all fields of energy or frequency patterns of information. All matter is more “no thing” (energy) than “some thing” (particles).

Figure 1B. The “new-school” quantum version of an atom with an electron cloud. The atom is 99.99999 percent energy and .00001 percent matter. It’s just about nothing, materially.

Figure 1C. This is the most realistic model of any atom. It is “no thing” materially, but all things potentially.

ANOTHER PUZZLE: SUBATOMIC PARTICLES AND LARGER OBJECTS PLAY BY DIFFERENT RULES

But this alone wasn’t enough to explain the nature of reality. Einstein and others had another puzzle to solve—matter didn’t always seem to behave in the same ways. When physicists began observing and measuring the tiny world of the atom, they noticed that at the subatomic level the fundamental elements of the atom didn’t obey the laws of classical physics the way that larger objects did.

Events involving objects in the “large” world were predictable, reproducible, and consistent. When that legendary apple fell from a tree and moved toward the center of the earth until it collided with Newton’s head, its mass accelerated with a consistent force. But electrons, as particles, behaved in unpredictable, unusual ways. When they interacted with the nucleus of the atom and moved toward its center, they gained and lost energy, appeared and disappeared, and seemed to show up all over the place without regard to the boundaries of time and space.

Did the world of the small and the world of the large operate under very different sets of rules? Since subatomic particles like electrons were the building blocks of everything in nature, how could they be subject to one set of rules, and the things they made up behave according to another set of rules?

FROM MATTER TO ENERGY: PARTICLES PULL OFF THE ULTIMATE VANISHING ACT

At the level of electrons, scientists can measure energy-dependent characteristics such as wavelength, voltage potentials, and the like, but these particles have a mass that is so infinitesimally small and exists so temporarily as to be almost nonexistent.

This is what makes the subatomic world unique. It possesses not just physical qualities, but also energetic qualities. In truth, matter on a subatomic level exists as a momentary phenomenon. It’s so elusive that it constantly appears and disappears, appearing into three dimensions and disappearing into nothing—into the quantum field, in no space, no time—transforming from particle (matter) to wave (energy), and vice versa. But where do particles go when they vanish into thin air?

Figure 1D. The electron exists as a wave of probability in one moment, and then in the next moment appears as a solid particle, then disappears into nothing, and then reappears at another location.

THE CREATION OF REALITY: ENERGY RESPONDS TO MINDFUL ATTENTION

Consider again that old-school toothpick-and-Styrofoam-ball model of how atoms were constructed. Back then, weren’t we led to believe that electrons orbited about the nucleus like planets around the sun? If so, we could pinpoint their location, couldn’t we? The answer is yes, in a manner of speaking, but the reason is not at all what we used to think.

What quantum physicists discovered was that the person observing (or measuring) the tiny particles that make up atoms affects the behavior of energy and matter. Quantum experiments demonstrated that electrons exist simultaneously in an infinite array of possibilities or probabilities in an invisible field of energy. But only when an observer focuses attention on any location of any one electron does that electron appear. In other words,a particle cannot manifest in reality—that is, ordinary space-time as we know it—until we observe it.

Quantum physics calls this phenomenon “collapse of the wave function” or the “observer effect.” We now know that the moment the observer looks for an electron, there is a specific point in time and space when all probabilities of the electron collapse into a physical event. With this discovery, mind and matter can no longer be considered separate; they are intrinsically related, because subjective mind produces measurable changes on the objective, physical world.

At the subatomic level, energy responds to your mindful attention and becomes matter. How would your life change if you learned to direct the observer effect and to collapse infinite waves of probability into the reality that you choose? Could you get better at observing the life you want?

AN INFINITE NUMBER OF POSSIBLE REALITIES AWAIT THE OBSERVER

So ponder this: Everything in the physical universe is made up of subatomic particles such as electrons. By their very nature, these particles, when they exist as pure potential, are in their wave state while they are not being observed. They are potentially “every thing” and “no thing” until they are observed. They exist everywhere and nowhere until they are observed.

Thus, everything in our physical reality exists as pure potential.

If subatomic particles can exist in an infinite number of possible places simultaneously, we are potentially capable of collapsing into existence an infinite number of possible realities. In other words, if you can imagine a future event in your life based on any one of your personal desires, that reality already exists as a possibility in the quantum field, waiting to be observed by you.

If your mind can influence the appearance of an electron, then theoretically it can influence the appearance of any possibility.

This means that the quantum field contains a reality in which you are healthy, wealthy, and happy, and possess all of the qualities and capabilities of the idealized self that you hold in your thoughts. Stay with me and you will see that with willful attention, sincere application of new knowledge, and repeated daily efforts, you can use your mind, as the observer, to collapse quantum particles and organize a vast number of subatomic waves of probability into a desired physical event called an experience in your life.

Like clay, the energy of infinite possibilities is shaped by consciousness: your mind. And if all matter is made of energy, it makes sense that consciousness (“mind,” in this case, as Newton and Descartes called it) and energy (“matter,” according to the quantum model) are so intimately related that they are one. Mind and matter are completely entangled. Your consciousness (mind) has effects on energy (matter) because your consciousness is energy and energy has consciousness. You are powerful enough to influence matter because at the most elementary level, you are energy with a consciousness. You are mindful matter.

In the quantum model, the physical universe is an immaterial, interconnected, unified field of information, potentially every thing but physically no thing. The quantum universe is just waiting for a conscious observer (you or me) to come along and influence energy in the form of potential matter by using the mind and consciousness (which are themselves energy) to make waves of energetic probabilities coalesce into physical matter. Just as the wave of possibility of the electron manifests as a particle within a specific momentary event, we observers cause a particle or groups of particles to manifest physical experiences in the form of events in our lives.

This is crucial to understanding how you can cause an effect or make a change in your life. When you learn how to sharpen your skills of observation to intentionally affect your destiny, you are well on your way toward living the ideal version of your life by becoming the idealized version of your self.

 

WE ARE CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING IN THE QUANTUM FIELD

Like everything else in the universe, we are, in a sense, connected to a sea of information in a dimension beyond physical space and time. We don’t need to be touching or even in close proximity to any physical elements in the quantum field to affect or be affected by them. The physical body is organized patterns of energy and information, which is unified with everything in the quantum field.

You, like all of us, broadcast a distinct energy pattern or signature. In fact, everything material is always emitting specific patterns of energy. And this energy carries information. Your fluctuating states of mind consciously or unconsciously change that signature on a moment-to-moment basis because you are more than just a physical body; you are a consciousness using a body and a brain to express different levels of mind.

Another way to look at how we humans and the quantum field are interconnected is through the concept of quantum entanglement, or quantum nonlocal connection. Essentially, once two particles can be initially linked in some way, they will always be bonded together beyond space and time. As a result, anything that is done to one will be done to the other even though they are spatially separated from one another. This means that since we too are made up of particles, we are all implicitly connected beyond space and time. What we do unto others, we do unto ourselves.

Think about the implications of this. If you can wrap your mind around this concept, then you’d have to agree that the “you” that exists in a probable future is already connected to the “you” in this now, in a dimension beyond this time and space. Stay tuned … by the end of this book, that idea just might seem normal to you!

WEIRD SCIENCE: CAN WE AFFECT THE PAST?

Since we’re all interconnected across distance and time, does this suggest that our thoughts and feelings can influence events in our past as well as those we desire in our future?

Our thoughts and feelings, and our prayers not only affect our present or future, but they can actually affect our past as well.

Now, this leads to the question: if you were to pray (or focus on an intention) for a better life for yourself, could it affect your past, present, and future?

The quantum law says that all potentials exist simultaneously. Our thinking and our feelings affect all aspects of life, beyond both space and time.

OUR STATE OF BEING OR STATE OF MIND: WHEN MIND AND BODY ARE ONE

We could say that how you think and how you feel create a state of being. I want you to understand that when I use the terms state of being and state of mind, your physical body is a part of that state. In fact, as you will see later on, many people exist in a state in which the body has “become” the mind, when they are ruled almost exclusively by the body and how it feels. So when I talk about the observer having an effect, it is not just the brain that is at work influencing matter, but the body as well. It is your state of being (when mind and body are one), as an observer, which has effects on the external world.

THOUGHTS + FEELINGS PRODUCE TEST-TUBE RESULTS

We communicate with the quantum field primarily through our thoughts and feelings. Since our thoughts are themselves energy—as you know, the electrical impulses the brain generates can easily be measured by devices such as an EEG—they are one of the primary means by which we send out signals into the field.

Cellular biologist Glen Rein, Ph.D., conceived of a series of experiments to test healers’ ability to affect biological systems. Since DNA is more stable than substances such as cells or bacterial cultures, he decided to have healers hold test tubes containing DNA.

This study took place at the HeartMath Research Center in California. The folks there have conducted extraordinary research into the physiology of emotions, heart-brain interactions, and much more. Essentially, they and others have documented a specific link between our emotional states and our heart rhythms. When we have negative emotions (such as anger and fear), our heart rhythms become erratic and disorganized. In contrast, positive emotions (love and joy, for instance) produce highly ordered, coherent patterns that HeartMath researchers refer to as heart coherence.

In Dr. Rein’s experiment, he first studied a group of ten individuals who were well practiced in using techniques that HeartMath teaches to build heart-focused coherence. They applied the techniques to produce strong, elevated feelings such as love and appreciation, then for two minutes, they held vials containing DNA samples suspended in deionized water. When those samples were analyzed, no statistically significant changes had occurred.

A second group of trained participants did the same thing, but instead of just creating positive emotions (a feeling) of love and appreciation, they simultaneously held an intention (a thought) to either wind or unwind the strands of DNA. This group produced statistically significant changes in the conformation (shape) of the DNA samples. In some cases, the DNA was wound or unwound as much as 25 percent!

A third group of trained subjects held a clear intent to change the DNA, but they were instructed not to enter into a positive emotional state. In other words, they were only using thought (intention) to affect matter. The result? No changes to the DNA samples.

The positive emotional state that the first group entered did nothing by itself to the DNA. Another group’s clearly held intentional thought, unaccompanied by emotion, also had no impact. Only when subjects held both heightened emotions and clear objectives in alignment were they able to produce the intended effect.

An intentional thought needs an energizer, a catalyst—and that energy is an elevated emotion. Heart and mind working together. Feelings and thoughts unified into a state of being. If a state of being can wind and unwind strands of DNA in two minutes, what does this say about our ability to create reality?

What the HeartMath experiment demonstrates is that the quantum field doesn’t respond simply to our wishes—our emotional requests. It doesn’t just respond to our aims—our thoughts. It only responds when those two are aligned or coherent—that is, when they are broadcasting the same signal. When we combine an elevated emotion with an open heart and a conscious intention with clear thought, we signal the field to respond in amazing ways.

The quantum field responds not to what we want; it responds to who we are being.

THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS: BROADCASTING OUR ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNAL TO THE QUANTUM FIELD

Since every potential in the universe is a wave of probability that has an electromagnetic field and is energetic in nature, it makes sense that our thoughts and feelings are no exception.

I find it a useful model to think of thoughts as the electrical charge in the quantum field and feelings as the magnetic charge in the field. The thoughts we think send an electrical signal out into the field. The feelings we generate magnetically draw events back to us. Together, how we think and how we feel produces a state of being, which generates an electromagnetic signature that influences every atom in our world. This should prompt us to ask, What am I broadcasting (consciously or unconsciously) on a daily basis?

All potential experiences exist as electromagnetic signatures in the quantum field. There are an infinite number of potential electromagnetic signatures—for genius, for wealth, for freedom, for health—that already exist as a frequency pattern of energy. If you could create a new electromagnetic field by changing your state of being, which matches that potential in the quantum field of information, is it possible that your body would be drawn to that event or that event would find you?

Figure 1E. All potential experiences exist in the quantum field as a sea of infinite possibilities. When you change your electromagnetic signature to match one that already exists in the field, your body will be drawn to that event, you will move into a new line of time, or the event will find you in your new reality.

 

TO EXPERIENCE CHANGE, OBSERVE A NEW OUTCOME WITH A NEW MIND

Quite simply, our routine, known thoughts and feelings perpetuate the same state of being, which creates the same behaviors, and creates the same reality. So, if we want to change some aspect of our reality, we have to think, feel, and act in new ways; we have to “be” different in terms of our responses to experiences. We have to “become” someone else. We have to create a new state of mind … we need to observe a new outcome with that new mind.

From a quantum standpoint, we have to create a different state of being as an observer and generate a new electromagnetic signature. When we do, we will match a potential reality in the field that exists only as an electromagnetic potential. Once that match exists between who we are being/what we are broadcasting and the electromagnetic potential in the field, we will be pulled toward that potential reality, or it will find us.

I know that it’s frustrating when life seems to produce an endless succession of minor variations on the same negative outcomes. But as long as you stay the same person, as long as your electromagnetic signature remains the same, you can’t expect a new outcome. To change your life is to change your energy—to make an elemental change in your mind and emotions.

If you want a new outcome, you will have to break the habit of being yourself, and reinvent a new self.

CHANGE REQUIRES COHERENCE: ALIGN YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS

What do your state of being and a laser have in common? I’ll make this connection to illustrate another thing you need to know if you want to change your life.

A laser is an example of a very coherent signal. When physicists talk about a coherent signal, they are referring to a signal made up of waves that are “in phase”—their troughs (low points) and crests (high points) are parallel. When those waves are coherent, they are much more powerful.

Figure 1F. When waves are in phase and rhythmic, they are more powerful than when they are out of phase.

Waves in a signal are either aligned or unaligned, coherent or incoherent. The same goes for your thoughts and feelings. How many times have you tried to create something, thinking in your mind that the end result was possible but feeling in your heart that it wasn’t? What was the result of that incoherent/out-of-phase signal that you were sending? Why is it that nothing manifested? As you just saw with the HeartMath study, quantum creating only works when your thoughts and feelings are aligned.

Just as the waves in a signal are much more powerful when they are coherent, the same is true of you when your thoughts and your feelings are aligned. When you hold clear, focused thoughts about your purpose, accompanied by your passionate emotional engagement, you broadcast a stronger electromagnetic signal that pulls you toward a potential reality that matches what you want.

I frequently talk to my workshop audiences about my grandmother, a woman I adored. She was old school Italian, as steeped in Catholic guilt as she was in the tradition of making tomato gravy to spoon on pasta. She prayed constantly for things and deliberately thought about a new life, but the guilt that had been instilled in her throughout her upbringing confused the signal she was sending. She only manifested more reasons to feel guilty.

If your intentions and desires haven’t produced consistent results, you’ve probably been sending an incoherent, mixed message into the field. You may want wealth, you may think “wealthy” thoughts, but if you feel poor, you aren’t going to attract financial abundance to yourself. Why not? Because thoughts are the language of the brain, and feelings are the language of the body. You’re thinking one way and feeling another way. And when the mind is in opposition to the body (or vice versa), the field won’t respond in any consistent way.

Instead, when mind and body are working together, when our thoughts and feelings are aligned, when we are in a new state of being, then we are sending a coherent signal on the airwaves of the invisible.

 

WHY QUANTUM OUTCOMES SHOULD COME AS A SURPRISE

Now let’s fill in another piece of the puzzle. To change our reality, those outcomes that we attract to ourselves have to surprise, even astonish, us in the way in which they come about. We should never be able to predict how our new creations will manifest; they must catch us off guard. They have to wake us up from the dream of the routine reality that we’ve grown accustomed to. These manifestations should leave us with no doubt that our consciousness made contact with the quantum field of intelligence, so we are inspired to do this again. That is the joy of the creative process.

Why should you want a quantum surprise? If you can predict an event, it is nothing new—it’s routine, automatic; and you have experienced it many times before. If you can predict it, the same you produced the same familiar outcome. In fact, if you’re trying to control how an outcome will occur, you just went “Newtonian.” Newtonian (classical) physics was about trying to anticipate and predict events; it was all about cause and effect.

What does “going Newtonian” mean when applied to your ability to create? It’s when the external environment is controlling your internal environment (thinking/feeling). That’s cause and effect.

Instead, change your internal environment—the way you think and feel—and then see how the external environment is altered by your efforts. Strive to create an unknown, new future experience. Then when an unforeseen event occurs in your favor, you will be pleasantly surprised. You just became a quantum creator. You just went from “cause and effect” to “causing an effect.”

Hold a clear intention of what you want, but leave the “how” details to the unpredictable quantum field. Let it orchestrate an event in your life in a way that is just right for you. If you’re going to expect anything, expect the unexpected. Surrender, trust, and let go of how a desired event will unfold.

This is the biggest hurdle for most to overcome, because we human beings always want to control a future reality by trying to re-create how it occurred in a past reality.

QUANTUM CREATING: GIVING THANKS BEFORE RECEIVING AN OUTCOME

I’ve just talked about aligning our thoughts and feelings to produce the result we want … yet in the process, letting go of the details surrounding how that event will come about. That’s a leap of faith, and it is necessary if we are to exchange a life of humdrum, predictable outcomes for a joyful life of new experiences and quantum surprises.

But we’ll need to make yet another leap of faith to bring what we want into reality.

Under what circumstances are you typically grateful? You may answer, I’m grateful for my family, the nice home I have, my friends, and my job. What those things have in common is that they’re already in your life.

Generally, we are grateful for something that already happened or is already present in our lives. You and I have been conditioned into believing that we need a reason for joy, a motivation to feel gratitude, grounds to be in a state of love. That’s relying on external reality to make us feel different internally; it’s Newton’s model.

The new model of reality challenges us, as quantum creators, to change something within us—in mind and body, in our thoughts and feelings—before we can experience the physical evidence with our senses.

Can you give thanks and feel the elevated emotions associated with a desired event before it occurs? Can you imagine that reality so completely that you begin to be in that future life now?

In terms of quantum creating, can you give thanks for something that exists as a potential in the quantum field but has not yet happened in your reality? If so, you are moving from cause and effect (waiting for something outside of you to make a change inside of you) to causing an effect (changing something inside of you to produce an effect outside of you).

When you are in a state of gratitude, you transmit a signal into the field that an event has already occurred. Gratitude is more than an intellectual thought process. You have to feel as though whatever you want is in your reality at this very moment. Thus, your body (which only understands feelings) must be convinced that it has the emotional quotient of the future experience, happening to you now.

UNIVERSAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE QUANTUM FIELD

I hope by now you agree on some basic underlying concepts of the quantum model—that all physical reality is primarily energy existing in a vast web that is interconnected across space and time. That web, the quantum field, holds all probabilities, which we can collapse into reality through our thoughts (consciousness), observation, feelings, and state of being.

But is reality nothing but indifferent electromagnetic forces acting on and in response to one another? Is the animating spirit within us simply a function of biology and randomness? I’ve had conversations with people who hold this view. Ultimately the discussion leads to a dialogue that goes something like this:

Where does the intelligence that keeps our heart beating come from?

That’s a part of the autonomic nervous system.

Where is that system located?

The brain. The brain’s limbic system is part of the autonomic nervous system.

And within the brain, are there specific tissues that are responsible for keeping the heart beating?

Yes.

What are those tissues made up of?

Cells.

And what are those cells made up of?

Molecules.

What are those molecules made up of?

Atoms.

And what are those atoms made up of?

Subatomic particles.

And what are those subatomic particles primarily composed of?

Energy.

When we arrive at the conclusion that our physiological vehicle is made up of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, and these folks bump up against the notion that what animates the body is a form of energy—the same 99.99999 percent “nothing” that constitutes the physical universe—they either shrug and walk away or come to realize that there is something to this notion that a unifying principle pervades all of physical reality.

Isn’t it ironic, then, that we keep all of our attention on the 0.00001 percent of reality that is physical? Are we missing something?

If this nothing consists of energy waves that carry information, and this force organizes our physical structures and their functioning, then it certainly makes sense to refer to the quantum field as an invisible intelligence. And since energy is at the basis of all physical reality, that intelligence I’ve just described to you has organized itself into matter.

Think of the preceding conversation as a kind of template for how this intelligence has constructed reality. The quantum field is invisible potential energy that is able to organize itself from energy to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules, and on up the line to everything. From a physiological perspective, it organizes molecules into cells into tissues into organs into systems, and finally into the body as a whole. Put another way, this potential energy lowers itself as a frequency of wave patterns until it appears as solid.

It is this universal intelligence that gives life to that field and everything in it, including you and me. This power is the same universal mind that animates every aspect of the material universe. This intelligence keeps our hearts beating and our stomachs digesting food and oversees an incalculable number of chemical reactions per second that take place in every cell. Moreover, the same consciousness prompts trees to grow fruit and causes distant galaxies to form and collapse.

Because it exists in all places and times, and exerts its power within us and all around us, this intelligence is both personal and universal.

AS AN EXTENSION OF THIS INTELLIGENCE, WE CAN EMULATE IT

Understand that this universal intelligence possesses the same awareness that makes us individuals —consciousness or mindfulness. Even though this power is universal and objective, it does possess a consciousness—an awareness of self and its own ability to move and act within the material universe.

It is also completely mindful on all levels—not just of itself but of you and me. Because this consciousness notices everything, it observes and pays attention to us. It is aware of our thoughts, our dreams, our behaviors, and our desires. It “observes” everything into physical form.

How can a consciousness that has created all of life, that expends the energy and will to consistently regulate every function of our bodies to keep us alive, that has expressed such a deep and abiding interest in us, be anything but pure love?

We’ve talked about two aspects of consciousness: the objective consciousness/intelligence of the field; and the subjective consciousness that is a free-willed, self-aware individual. When we emulate the properties of this awareness, we are becoming creators. When we feel resonance with this loving intelligence, we become like it. This intelligence will orchestrate an event, an energetic response, to match whatever the subjective mind puts out into the quantum field. When our will matches its will, when our minds match its mind, when our love for life matches its love for life, we are enacting this universal consciousness. We become the elevated power that transcends the past, heals the present, and opens doors to the future.

 

WE GET BACK WHAT WE SEND OUT

Here’s how this orchestration of events works in our lives.

If we have experienced suffering, and within our minds and bodies we hold that suffering and express it through our thoughts and feelings, we broadcast that energetic signature into the field. The universal intelligence responds by sending into our lives another event that will reproduce the same intellectual and emotional response.

Our thoughts send the signal out (I am suffering), and our emotions (I am suffering) draw into our lives an event to match that emotional frequency—that is, a good reason to suffer. In a very real sense, we are asking for proof of the existence of universal intelligence at all times, and it sends us feedback in our external environment at all times. That is how powerful we are.

The question is this: Why don’t we send out a signal that will produce a positive outcome for us? How can we change so that the signal we send out matches what we intend to produce in our lives? We will change when we fully commit to the belief that by choosing the thought/signal we send out, we will produce an effect that is observable and unexpected.

With this objective intelligence, we are not punished for our sins (that is, our thoughts, feelings, and actions), but by them. When we project into the field a signal based on the thoughts and feelings (such as suffering) produced by some undesirable experience(s) in our past, is it any wonder that the field responds in the same negative way?

How many times have you uttered these words, or very similar ones: “I can’t believe it … why does this always happen to me?”

Based on your new understanding of the nature of reality, do you now see that those statements reflect your acceptance of the Newtonian/Cartesian model in which you are a victim of cause and effect? Do you see that you are fully capable of causing an effect yourself? Do you see that instead of responding in the manner above, you could be asking yourself: How can I think, feel, and behave differently to produce the effect/result that I want?

Our mission, then, is to willfully move into the state of consciousness that allows us to connect to universal intelligence, make direct contact with the field of possibilities, and send out a clear signal that we truly expect to change and to see the results that we want—in the form of feedback—produced in our lives.

ASK FOR QUANTUM FEEDBACK

When you do create purposefully, request a sign from the quantum consciousness that you have made contact with it. Dare to ask for synchronicities related to your specific desired outcomes. When you do, you are being bold enough to want to know that this consciousness is real and that it is aware of your efforts. Once you accept this, then you can create in a state of joy and inspiration.

This principle asks us to lay down what we think we know, surrender to the unknown, then observe the effects in the form of feedback in our lives. And that is the best way we learn. When we get positive indications (when we see our external circumstances shift in a favorable direction), we know that whatever we did inside of us was right. Naturally, we’ll remember what we did so we can do it again.

So, when feedback begins to occur in your life, you can choose to be like a scientist in a process of discovery. Why not monitor any changes, to see that the universe is favourable to your efforts and prove to yourself that you are that powerful?

So how can we connect with that state of consciousness?

 

QUANTUM PHYSICS IS “NON-SENSE”

Newtonian physics postulated that there is always a linear series of interactions that are predictable and repeatable. You know: if A + B = C, then C + D + E = F. But in the wacky world of the quantum model of reality, everything is intercommunicating within a higher-dimensional field of information that is holistically entangled beyond space and time as we know it. Whew!

One reason why quantum physics is so elusive is that for years we have been accustomed to thinking based on our senses. If we measure and reaffirm reality with our senses, we are stuck in the Newtonian paradigm.

Instead, the quantum model demands that our understanding of reality not be based on our senses (quantum physics is non-sense). In the process of creating future reality via the quantum model, our senses should be the last to experience what the mind has created. The very last thing we experience is sensory feedback. Why?

The quantum is a multidimensional reality that exists beyond your senses, in a realm where there is no body, no thing, no time. Thus, to move into that domain and create from that paradigm, you’ll need to forget about your body for a little while. You’ll also have to temporarily shift your awareness away from your external environment—all those things that you identify with in your life. Your spouse, your kids, your possessions, and your problems are all part of your identity; through them, you identify with the outer world. And finally, you will have to lose track of linear time. That is, in the moment when you are intentionally observing a potential future experience, you will have to be so present that your mind no longer vacillates between memories of the past and expectations of a “same as usual” future.

Isn’t it ironic that to influence your reality (environment), heal your body, or change some event in your future (time), you have to completely let go of your external world (no thing), you have to release your awareness of your body (no body) … you have to lose track of time (no time)—in effect, you have to become pure consciousness.

Do that, and you have dominion over the environment, your body, and time. (I affectionately call these the Big Three.) And since the subatomic world of the field is made purely of consciousness, you cannot enter any other way than via pure consciousness yourself. You cannot walk through the door into the quantum field as a “somebody”; you must enter as a “no body.”

Your brain has the innate ability to harness this skill (stay tuned for more). When you understand that you are fully equipped to do all this, leave this world behind, and enter a new reality beyond space and time, you will be naturally inspired to apply it in your life.

GOING BEYOND SPACE AND TIME

What does it mean to be beyond space and time? These are constructs that humans created to explain physical phenomena involving location and our sense of the temporal. When we talk about a glass sitting on a table, we reference it in terms of location (where it is in space) and how long it has occupied that location. As humans we’re obsessed with these two conceptions: Where we are. How long we’ve been there. How long we will remain. Where we’ll go next. Even though time is not something that we can actually sense, we feel it passing in much the same way that we sense our location in space: we “feel” the seconds, minutes, and hours passing by, just as we feel our bodies pressed against our chairs and our feet planted on the ground.

In the quantum field, the infinite probabilities for materializing reality are beyond time and space, because a potential doesn’t yet exist. If it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t have a location or occupy a position temporally. Anything that doesn’t have material existence—that hasn’t had its waves of probability collapsed into particle reality—exists beyond space and time.

Since the quantum field is nothing but immaterial probability, it is outside of space and time. As soon as we observe one of those infinite probabilities and give it material reality, it acquires those two characteristics.

TO ENTER THE FIELD, ENTER A SIMILAR STATE

Great—we have the power to make material a reality of our own choosing by selecting it from the quantum field. But we have to somehow access that field. We’re always connected to it, but how do we get the field to respond to us? If we’re constantly emitting energy, and therefore sending information to the field and receiving information from it, how do we communicate more effectively with it?

In upcoming chapters I will talk at length about how to enter the field. For now, what you need to know is that to enter the field, which exists beyond space and time, you have to enter a similar state.

Do you ever have any experiences when time and space seem to disappear? Think of those moments when you’re driving and your thoughts are focused on some concern you have. When that happens, you forget about your body (you are no longer aware of how you feel in space), you forget about the environment (the external world disappears), and you forget about time (you have no idea how long you are “tranced out”).

At moments like these, you’ve been at the threshold of the door that allows you to enter the quantum field and gain access to working with universal intelligence. In essence, you’ve already made thought more real than anything else.

 

CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE

I’ve led you from the notion that mind and matter are fully separable to the quantum model, which states that they are inseparable. Mind is matter, and matter is mind.

So, all those times in the past when you tried to change, maybe your thinking was fundamentally limited. You likely believed that it was always circumstances outside of you that needed to change: If I didn’t have so many other commitments, I could lose the excess weight, and then I’d be happy. We’ve all stated some variation on that theme. If this, then that. Cause and effect.

What if you could change your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, and your way of being, outside the bounds of time and space? What if you could change ahead of time and see the effects of those “internal” changes in your “external” world?

You can.

What has profoundly and positively changed my life, and the lives of so many others, is the understanding that changing one’s mind—and thereby having new experiences and gaining new insights—is simply a matter of breaking the habit of being oneself. When you overcome your senses, when you understand that you are not bound by the chains of your past—when you live a life that is greater than your body, your environment, and time—all things are possible. The universal intelligence that animates the existence of all things will both surprise and delight you. It wants nothing more than to provide you with access to all you want.

In short, when you change your mind, you change your life.

 

AND A CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM

Before we move on, I’d like to share a story that illustrates just how powerful and effective being in contact with the greater intelligence can be in making change an integral part of your life.

My children, now young adults, have used meditations. As a result of practicing these techniques, they’ve manifested some remarkable adventures. Since their childhood, we’ve had an agreement that they work on creating material things or events that they want to experience. However, our rule is that I don’t interfere or assist with producing the outcome. They have to create intended realities on their own, using their minds and interacting with the quantum field.

My 20-something daughter studies art in college. It was springtime, and I asked what she wanted to manifest during an upcoming summer break. She had a laundry list! Instead of the typical college student-home-for-the-summer job, she wanted to work in Italy, learn and experience new things, visit at least six Italian cities, and spend one week in Florence, since she had friends there. She wanted to work for the first six weeks of the summer, making a decent wage, then spend the rest of the break at home.

I commended my daughter for her clear vision of what she wanted, and reminded her that universal intelligence would orchestrate the way her dream summer would manifest. She would take care of the “what”; a greater consciousness would handle the “how.

Since my daughter is practiced in the art of thinking and feeling ahead of the actual experience, I merely reminded her to not only set an intention every day with regard to what that summer would look like—what people she would see, what events would transpire, what places she would visit—but also to feel what it would be like to experience these things. I asked her to create the vision in her mind until it was so clear and real that the thought she was thinking became the experience, and her brain’s synapses began to wire that information as if it was a reality.

If she was still “being” the young woman in the dorm room with a dream of going to Italy, then she was still the same person living the same reality. So while it was still March, she had to begin “being” that young woman who’d been in Italy for half the summer.

“No problem,” she said. She’d had experiences like this before, when she wanted to be in a music video and when she wanted to experience an unlimited shopping spree. Both of these transpired in perfect elegance.

I then reminded my daughter, “You can’t get up from your mental creation of this experience as the same person you were when you sat down. You have to get up from your seat as if you just had the most amazing summer of your life.”

“I got it,” she said. She understood my reminder that each day, she had to change to a new state of being. And after every mental creation, she was to go about her day living in the elevated mood of gratitude generated by having had that experience.

My daughter called a few weeks later. “Dad, the university is offering an art history summer course in Italy. I can get the cost of the program and all expenses down from $7,000 to $4,000. Can you help pay for that?”

Well, it’s not that I’m an unsupportive parent, but this didn’t strike me as what she had originally stated as her target. She was trying to control the outcome of this possible destiny instead of allowing the quantum field to orchestrate the events. I advised her to really inhabit that Italian trip and to think, feel, speak, and dream “in Italian” until she got lost in the experience.

A few weeks later when she called again, her excitement was palpable. She had been in the library, chatting with her art history teacher, and they eventually slipped into speaking Italian; both spoke the language fluently. At that point her teacher said, “I just remembered. One of my colleagues needs someone to teach Level I Italian to some American students who will be studying in Italy this summer.”

Of course, my daughter was hired. Get this: not only would she be paid to teach (all expenses covered), but she would be in six different cities in Italy for six weeks, spend the last week in Florence, and be able to be home for the second half of the summer. She manifested her dream job and every aspect of her original vision.

This wasn’t a case of a young woman pursuing this opportunity with the traditional dogged determination to find a program—searching the Internet, hounding professors, and so forth. Instead of following cause and effect, my daughter changed her state of being to the extent that she was causing an effect. She was living by the quantum law.

As she electromagnetically connected to an intended destiny that existed in the quantum, her body was then drawn to the future event. The experience found her. The outcome was unpredictable, it came in a way that she in no way expected, it was synchronistic, and there was no doubt that it was the result of her internal efforts.

Think about that for a moment. What opportunities are out there waiting to find you? Who are you being in this moment … and every other moment? Is your being that way going to attract to you all that you desire?

Can you change your state of being? And once you inhabit a new mind, can you observe a new destiny? The answers are what the rest of this book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself”.