“. . . the recent findings of science and the spiritual experiences of mankind are consonant. This augers well for the new millennium – a science which comes to terms with the spiritual nature of mankind may well outstrip the technological science of the immediate past in its contributions to human welfare.”
Karl Pribram (one of the world’s leading neuro-psychologists)
The Emerging Mind
An Exercise:
Before beginning this chapter take a deep breath that fills your lungs from the bottom to the top, fully inflating your entire torso . . . and as you now let that breath escape through your pursed lips feel your entire body, your entire being ... deflating ... and letting go.
Again, allow your entire body to inflate with a deep breath . . . and as it releases, allow yourself to experience every cell of your body absolutely letting go, as if each atom and each particle and field of each atom is exhaling the breath. Allow your bones and bone marrow to exhale, to release, to lighten . . . and with each releasing breath, allow your mind and heart. . . to absolutely release whatever they may have been unconsciously squeezing onto. [Repeat as many times as it feels good to.]
Through this book, when you encounter hard truths about life and our world, remember to breathe . . . and to let go. The mind will assimilate what it needs to. There is no need to squeeze this information. Breathe . . . loosen . . . relax into these words.
I was recently riding the automatic walkway through Denver International Airport’s state of the art gleaming white expanse, absorbing the breathtaking mountain scene pouring in through the vast windows that paralleled the smooth auto-walkway. When an announcement came through of a flight’s boarding call, while another electronic announcement warned of the approaching end of the walkway, and yet another announcement was being made concerning airport protocol. The result was an incoherent barrage of stress producing noise.
I realized that this airport “information overload” was a metaphor for modern society. All this information was important and helpful, but it was coming so loud and so fast and so simultaneously that I heard nothing, and was stressed by my inability to comprehend. This mirrors the way the exploding information age holds so much promise for us all to use this information to heal ourselves, our lives, and our world in many exciting ways. Yet, the deafening roar of information, however helpful, is becoming almost incoherent and is causing us massive stress disease in epidemic numbers.
The quote at the beginning of this chapter, by Dr. Pribram, explained that a science that can enable the human spirit to be a part of its equation for understanding the world, will likely be the most important discovery of humanity. This time we are living in, more than any other time, makes that true. For all of our vast scientific and technological promise, which is enormous at this exciting time of human progression, will fall so very very flat, if we cannot find a way for the human spirit to “open” to and be able to use this promise in a healthy and healing way. The challenge we face in opening to the promise of the modern world is the “stress” that it is causing. Yet, the stress that it is causing may also hold within it the seeds of our solution to modern problems, as the pressure of the stress directs us to fully utilize modern technology’s promise in more healthful ways. Like some cosmic burrito the problems, solutions, and expanding promise are again and again found to be all rolled up together. You will find this a very tasty way of looking at life as you clearly see the pattern and learn to allow it to happen with less and less resistence.
Therefore, this book must begin by dealing with the most important issue on the public’s mind today, which of course is – stress. Modern stress is responsible for approximately 70% of all illness by many estimates. Drawing on quotes from respected minds such as Forrester at MIT, and modern visionary and Sun Micro System’s Chief Scientist, Bill Joy, the reasons for our modern stress plague will be explained in following pages.
An Exercise:
You see how this begins to work. Now that you are mentally aware that 70% of all illness and most deaths are caused by stress, and that we are in the midst of a stress plague . . . that awareness causes you stress. Awareness of a problem causes stress, which can be a catalyst for change, or can simply cause us to become more and more stressed, if we clench our teeth and refuse to change. So, let’s change.
Begin, by taking in a deep breath. Let it out in a great releasing sigh, allowing all your muscles to sink and let go. Now, close your eyes and simply enjoy the sensation of your body breathing. Let go of all your urgent tasks and your past screw ups. Each time you draw in a long full breath, on the releasing exhale, think of your mind exhaling, and absolutely letting go of all of it’s ties and binds to the world outside you, as the cranial muscles and all your muscles continue to release their grip . . . to lighten up.
Continue to breath, but as the muscles around your head, shoulders, and around your torso continue to let go of their unconscious grip on the bones beneath them . . . it becomes less and less as though you are trying to breathe full breaths, and more and more as though . . . you are beginning to be “breathed” by the breath. Allow your muscles and body to relax out of the way as the breath breathes “you.”
As you learn information in these pages that you notice causes your head or heart to tighten . . . breathe and let go. We are creating here a model that will enable you to see and enact a “new pattern” whereby you’ll face unpleasant realities, while breathing through the stress of it. This will foster positive change through learning what needs to change, while minimizing the stress of change. Breathe, let go, sink into your chair. Assimilate information, while releasing your grip on it.
We’ll go far beyond cataloguing the how and why of modern stress in these pages. The real premise of this book is one of elation and absolute hope for our unfolding future, as we taste the cosmic burrito again and again, with solutions enfolding in problems, and limitless promise expanding throughout like a cool and luscious combination oozing out onto our mind’s pallet flowing from the pressure of enfolding problems and solutions.
By learning how our intensifying modern stress may actually be the birthing pains of our emergence into a human renaissance of unimaginable proportions, we can be more soothed through this inevitable process. Just as we may have felt a pressure that we thought was killing us when we traversed the birth canal from our mother’s womb, we are now feeling a pressure that is carrying us into a new world, but here we have a chance to understand it better making it less traumatic.
The light we saw during our emergence from our mother was likely terrifying, just as this new world exploding around us has terrifying qualities as everything seems to be happening all at once, and so absolutely out of control. But remember that it is cataclysmic pressure that transforms coal into diamonds. All the dark gritty particles are pressed together so tightly that a transformation occurs that is both exquisitely beautiful and forever strong.
In a uniquely holistic and multidisciplinary way, we’ll explore how all aspects of human existence are being squeezed together by the intensity of the times we live in. To survive the future our economics will have to embrace our human compassion, and our human spirit will have to be woven into our sciences to lift us rather than crushing us with relentless development.
Just as this book weaves insights of art, physics, mathematics, and even economics, together to create this unified theory of hope, the mind/body sciences detailed in this book, only beginning to be known to mass society, may help us weave all aspects of human discovery and consciousness into our unfolding lives. These mind/body sciences that once were considered simply “spiritual” practices, may interweave modern science and personal discovery to lead us out of the wilderness of the overwhelming complexity of modern life, to a calming, simplifying way, to proceed into the future in a way that will usher in a higher level of order. A simplifying order that will bloom both in people and in the physical (scientific) world we create, as these ancient/cutting edge tools of transformation are taught through corporations, universities, hospitals, and even prisons worldwide.
A paradigm shift in human consciousness is expanding across the globe, in backyards, boardrooms, health care, government institutions, and society at all levels. This new science, once solely used by prophets and holy men and women for spiritual growth, is being taught globally, now being woven into the fabric of humanity, quietly, profoundly, and extremely quickly. Its rapid expanse is fueled by modern research that is validating the profound assertions of this ancient science, proving to a world desperately in need of what it offers, that it is not simply a “spiritual” art, but more an immense science of evolution.
The timing of this new science’s development and current availability may be one of a series of seeming miracles that can ease humanity through the intensifying vortex of stress that is the gateway to an unstoppable evolutionary future. We must walk through the gates of this modern stress to be enabled to handle the excoriating change and challenges the future holds. To handle the change of the future we may need to be changed on a cellular level, like coal to a diamond, to ascend to a new paradigm of discovering the simplicity of the eye of the storm while everything we know and hold to be true is redefined and expanded within and around us at the pace of a screaming futuristic hurricane intensifies.
An Exercise:
Now would be a good time to . . . breathe . . . and allow your mind and cranial muscles to let go of any panic that the image future change is causing. As you breathe . . . release any “perceived” responsibility for the future . . . for the future will happen to you like a roller coaster ride in an amusement park. You’ll either grit your teeth, clench your hands, and pray for it to all be over . . . or you’ll breathe and let go . . . and enjoy the ride. The more loosely you enjoy the ride, the more easily you’ll adapt, making you a positive force in our evolution toward the future. This coming super storm of change isn’t a “sentence” it is an “adventure.”
Breathe deeply . . . let all the muscles continually release their grip on the bones, as if the deepest skeletal muscles, and in fact the bones themselves exhale . . . and release . . . being massaged on a subtle cellular level by the simple rhythm of your breathing.
As modern science and technology meet with ancient wisdom this perfect storm may be navigable as we find our center, our simplicity, in an age of bone wrenching complexity. And this ability to alter our very being and consciousness to accommodate the limitless expanse of the future may prove to be the single most important scientific discovery of humanity. The blinding speed of change occurring now is only a glimmer of what will be. We will soon see computers that will use the fields of an atom as their hard drive, and will be hundreds and thousands of times faster than current computers.
An Exercise:
Take a few moments to sit back and simply become aware of your breath. Notice how the body begins to be breathed by the breath, and how the torso muscles begin to let go of their grip on the ribs and back, neck and head.
As you continue to breathe, and let go of the muscles . . . begin to let go of your grip on the day, on the week. Let go of any plans you may have later.
As you continue to breathe, and to let go, with each deep sighing releasing breath, your awareness begins to fall a little deeper, and a little deeper, into the center of where you are right here and right now. Simply be . . . not a human doing, or thinking, or rushing . . . but rather, a “human being,” . . . breathing . . . in the center of right here, and right now. There is nowhere to rush to. You are in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time . . . doing exactly the right thing . . . breathing.
Excerpts from The Miracle of Stress - Thriving in the New Millennium, by Bill Douglas. All rights are reserved, reprint or use of any of the below text is forbidden without express written consent from the author. Contact us at wtcqd2000@aol.com with queries.
Therefore, the purpose of this book, and the new mind/body evolutionary science itself, is to create a fundamental shift in thinking, to simplify our world, even in an age of accelerating complexity. Humanity is suffering tremendous difficulty evolving into the growing complexity of modern life, and paradoxically millions are turning to this “simplifying” technology as a way to embrace, and thrive within, the intensifying complexity of a new age.
Excerpts from The Miracle of Stress - Thriving in the New Millennium, by Bill Douglas. All rights are reserved, reprint or use of any of the below text is forbidden without express written consent from the author. Contact us at wtcqd2000@aol.com with queries.
According to J.W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “the changes occurring in our generation have been as great as those in the previous 2,000 generations [combined]. . . man’s intellectual powers are quite inadequate for unraveling the finely tangled net of interrelationships in our modern social system. The evolutionary process has failed to provide us with the mental powers needed for correct interpretation of the systems to which we ourselves belong, and for the time being all attempts to plan mankind’s future with any degree of accuracy are useless.”
To Hear the Angels Sing – Dorothy Maclean (Findhorn Press)
Following pages explain how this new human science simplifies the myriad of human problems by showing how the human central nervous system is the source of all human creation (and problems), and therefore by simply learning to cleanse and heal our individual central nervous systems, we may shift our world toward a coherence and clarity that’s achievement has remained just beyond modern society’s nervous grasp even in an age of seemingly limitless information.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simplified.
Henry David Thoreau
My first book on this subject, a nuts and bolts “how to”, quickly became the best selling book of it’s kind, because it lovingly encouraged readers to be “with” their feelings, and use the tools the book introduced to become enabled and challenged by the changes rushing at them, rather than unwitting victims of that change. Frank Putnam, M.D. and Karen Shanor, Ph.D., in their groundbreaking book The Emerging Mind, explain how past trauma actually physiologically changes the mind and body to respond in survival mode, which can leave our personal growth and social development retarded. Again, my first book, now used worldwide, taught “how” ancient mind/body tools can be effectively used by everyone to help us “re-form” on a cellular level. So that we could let go of generations of fear based “survival mode” responses to challenge, response patterns that are literally “imprinted” on our cellular structure, and that are killing most of us with stress disease, and holding back the world’s much needed social evolution to meet the demands of the future. This cleansing of the source, the central nervous system, vastly simplifies the challenge of modern life, by going to the very root of our problem.
As will be explained in detail later, some modern physicists now believe that there may be up to 25 dimensions curled up tightly within the 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension we consider finite reality. This supports theories that within each of us there are deeper realities of the past or delusional fears of the future, such as prejudices, etc. that limit our ability to evolve into the demands of the future. The tools discussed in this book were created over centuries of research to shake up and break up the rigidity collected in the cells of our body, and the atomic fields of our consciousness, by elevating their vibratory rate. This enables these internal prisons of the past held within our very structure to begin to evaporate out, however in order for them to evaporate out of us their vapor must pass through our consciousness and perception. Herein lies the problem society faces, because we are currently geared to “run away” from discomfort, rather than “being with it.”
Later chapters will explain how pain medication abuse, mood altering drug abuse, and obsessive consumerism are all leading us farther and farther away from our feelings. Again, the tools this book discusses are designed to do just the opposite, to bring us back to the center of our realness, our authenticity. This includes absolute joy, but that cannot be had without the rest, which is being with our fear and pain. Only by “being with” these feelings, can we allow them to escape from their imprisonment in the cellular structure of our body. But, beyond this hurdle lies such splendor for us all.
An Exercise:
Sit back and open to the full effortless rhythm of your breath, allowing the atoms of your being to absolutely let go with each sighing exhale, as if every particle of every atom in your being could absolutely let go of the breath and everything else.
As you continue to breath and release, allow the cranial muscles, the neck and jaw muscles to let go of their unconscious grip on the head, neck, and jaw. The muscles around and in your ears begin to let go. Breathe . . . and let go . . . allowing yourself to be . . . breathed by the breath.
Continue to sit back and breath with your eyes closed. Observe the thoughts and feelings that begin to surface in your awareness, or sensations or perceptions in your body. If you begin to experience restlessness, or angst, realize that this exercise is not producing it . . . but it is the beginning of a release of those issues, now unlocking from your being and evaporating through your awareness as you continue to breathe and to . . . let go.
Each time you feel tension or angst, discomfort, or disease . . . realize that it is not you . . . it is a feeling passing through you . . . being released a bit more deeply with each releasing breath. As you exhale, realize that a lightness of release can exhale from the very center of that point of blockage or resistance . . . but as you let go of each breath, you don’t “try” to let go of blocks . . . you simply let go, and the lightness and openness begins to effortlessly permeate those tight areas with a silken energy and lightness . . . effortless . . . lighten . . . release . . .
. . . breathe . . . breathe . . . feel . . . and let go . .
In this book we’ll take the promise of the mind/body tools taught in my first book and expand the possibility those tools offer to limitless realms for ourselves and our society. By actually “using” the tools or exercises in this and in my first “how to” book, your neurological, physiological, and psychological structures are expanded and enabled to handle increasing complexity through a “simplifying” technology. So, this book takes the next step from not only “how to” but to “where to.” This emerging human science was created to support our evolution of consciousness toward the horizon line of a constantly recreating future, and is itself evolving at an accelerated rate as it helps to propel humanity’s evolution forward.
The impending crisis and solution enfolded within it, is a solution that’s import could affect each of our lives and humanity’s future, perhaps as much as the splitting of the atom has. It’s essence is simplicity and elegance. Therein lies a problem. This human science/solution is so elegant and beautiful that it is often dismissed as only a beautiful art form, and therefore passed by by millions of people who could benefit from it profoundly. Yet, beyond its beauty and profound health benefits, it also offers an internal compass to chart our way through the frontier of the future which shifts before us like a hazy vanishing point continually re-forming as we dream it. In this unstable ever-changing world, we need an internal reference, a touchstone, which can give us a lifeline to authenticity and purpose even as the world around us liquefies into bone-jarring ceaseless transformation. In fact the elegant physical beauty of this mind/body health art may be a mirror image of how it fosters an elegance of consciousness in the practitioner that is sorely needed in these raw tumultuous times.
With the appearance of humanity, evolution stopped being biological and became cultural. Cultural evolution could proceed one thousand times faster than biological evolution. In turn technological evolution has exponentially surpassed the speed of social evolution. Technological evolution is doubling every eighteen months. Animals and plants are becoming extinct, many may soon only be found in zoos or botanical gardens. These biological entities, only progressing at the speed of biological evolution, are left behind by social and technological evolution. Will the speed of technological evolution leave humanity behind as its speed of evolutionary change doubles every 18 months, much faster than human beings can change?
Bill Joy, Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems
Mathematician and physicist, Brian Greene, in his profound book The Elegant Universe, states, “Some decisions made by theoretical physicists are founded upon an aesthetic sense – a sense of which theories have an elegance and beauty of structure.” Increasingly the state of our world depends on the state of our consciousness. Our modern world is filled with technological miracles, yet it lacks elegance. Modern life doesn’t feel right. Which is illustrated by the United Nation’s World Health Organization’s warning of a rapid increase in the incidence of stress induced depression in coming years. The raw acceleration of everything all the time, feels like cosmic nails scratching across the chalkboard of our souls, as we struggle to “keep up” and die in epidemic numbers from stress disease, and stress related ailments. Einstein once said that with modern man's dilemma, "Everything has changed, save our way of thinking."
“When I saw people doing it in China . . . The slow elegance of it . . . it felt so right, I knew I needed it . . .”
A New Student at Shawnee Mission Medical Center near Kansas City
The stress crisis is a gift, if it spurs us to change the way we think. The great philosopher, Jesuit Priest, and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, suggested to a great degree our physical world is a product of our consciousness.
Many visionaries have been observing the approach of a paradigm shift in consciousness, and feel our world will be massively changed by it. Marilyn Ferguson, author of the groundbreaking book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, suggests that the next evolutionary leap will be, not a physical evolution, but a shift in human consciousness. Needed at this time of exploding technological advances carrying us headlong to an uncharted future, meaning we can no longer just rely on rampant technological development and assume “everything will turn out fine.” In the past, this “religion of unbridled development” has often been the “end all and be all” of progress, and it has put us in danger. For example, the world has tons of extremely toxic nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, with not a clue as to how to eliminate it, or to even store it safely for the tens of thousands of years it takes to degrade.
“FIREBALL SWEEPS NEAR NUCLEAR SITE! Wildfire could spread radioactive matter. One of the largest fires in state history swept across the Hanford nuclear reservation Thursday, approaching a nuclear power plant and a massive dumping ground of radioactive waste.”
Kansas City Star front-page headline, 6/30/2000
So, it is imperative as the technological revolution accelerates with breakthroughs in genetic bio-engineering, weapons, communications, etc., we must increasingly turn to an internal awareness of what is “elegant” and feels “beautiful” within, as we develop our technology. The sheer weight of information available is staggering and drives us to attune to an internal “sense” of what is important to focus on. We are approaching a point population and technology wise, where we will be less and less able to afford to make thoughtless errors as we develop. Contemplation will become a greater strength than rabid action.
What do we do about this . . . seeking truth and ultimate knowledge? . . . Shall we just step on the gas and hope technology can save us? Let’s stop and think about these things.
Bill Joy, Chief Scientist for Sun Microsystems
Between 1961 and 1981 more information was recorded than throughout humankind’s entire history! Imagine how much has been recorded since 1981! And it will only expand and accelerate throughout our future. Therefore, using our internal sense of “elegance” is no longer poetic metaphor reserved for frivolous cocktail conversation or to be pulled out only at art museums or concerts. In our increasingly frenetic world, the search for elegance becomes our only compass to creating a livable world, that we can enjoy living in. We are beginning to understand that the mantra of ever increasing productivity simply does not guarantee survival or happiness. We are in dire need of a technology that can facilitate an
. . . ascent of consciousness.
Excerpts from The Miracle of Stress - Thriving in the New Millennium, by Bill Douglas. All rights are reserved, reprint or use of any of the below text is forbidden without express written consent from the author. Contact us at wtcqd2000@aol.com with queries.
In coming years humanity will wield the power of God’s. But the big question is will we develop the wisdom of Solomon needed to handle such power.
-- Michio Kaku, Physicist & Author of Hyperspace:
A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes,
Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension
nancynelsonphotography.com/
The technology to ascend consciousness exists, an elegant human science that was quietly developed with very little fanfare for centuries in China. It was subtle, and did not enable men to destroy cities, made no one rich, and therefore would not really become fully appreciated for thousands of years. Yet, in our modern world, with all its issues, it may now become the most powerful tool modern man/woman has, to deal with the onslaught of the future. This ancient science’s goal was to enable it’s practitioners to become aware of discord at the most subtle levels of consciousness, so that that disharmony could be felt, dealt with and released, allowing one to re-attune with an effortless elegance of being. Its foundation is that the most elemental aspect of our being and the entire universe is a harmonic elegance, and that elegance could be experienced through the receiver/transmitter of human consciousness. It was learned that “feelings” within us had purpose, and were there to be “listened” to. Growing medical and psychological research shows the absolute brilliance of the ancient creators of this art (or science), as a host of maladies are relieved or even eliminated as practitioners learn to “listen” to what their internal awareness tells them about their physical health or their external lives. Although this book offers dozens of pages of collected medical and scientific research that validates the power of these tools, far beyond their health applications the technology offers humanity ways to help us attune to the ethereal elegance that permeates existence, if we can but “listen,” thereby leading our technological development in humane directions.
It has become appallingly clear that our technology
has surpassed our humanity.
Albert Einstein
nancynelsonphotography.com/
These ancient sciences of “self-consciousness” are T’ai Chi and Qigong (pronounced Tie-chee and Chee-kung). I’ve waited until now to name them, because they are too often dismissed by the media and others who have not truly experienced their potential deeply. They have been widely misunderstood as only a martial art, or just another exercise, while the breadth of possibility these tools portend is largely ignored, even by some who practice and teach the tools.
For the understanding of the tools themselves are evolving at an accelerated rate, just as society is. Though they have been evolving over millennia, something new, profound, and extremely exciting is occurring. With the explosion of the information age and rapid global travel, during the last two decades T’ai Chi & Qigong have rapidly spread around the globe, and been embraced by millions in need of re-discovering their essential nature of harmonic elegance, or in other words “managing their stress.” This rapid expansion has seen this ancient “Chinese science” of consciousness evolved rapidly into a “world science,” being studied in medical universities worldwide. There are other valuable and effective mind/body sciences contributing to this exciting shift in human consciousness. Among them are Yoga, Transcendental Meditation, and other mind/body sciences, however, T’ai Chi & Qigong are the focus of this book because of my own background with them, and for other reasons that will become apparent as you read on.
As T’ai Chi & Qigong expand into hospitals, schools, corporations, prisons and scientific laboratories throughout the world, a “new science of consciousness” is being created -- an American, German, Brazilian, Israeli, French, Australian, etc. etc. science. Furthermore, as scientists, physicians, psychologists, and sociologists worldwide continue to rapidly embrace these powerful tools as root therapies in their practices, they evolve the tools and their potential into something even greater. They are evolving a template for modern men and women to use to survive the tidal wave of the future coming with a force unlike humanity has ever seen.
As described at the beginning of this book, the Chinese character for “crisis” is actually made from two other characters, “danger” and “opportunity.” Our technological age has enabled us to develop ways, opportunities, to end hunger, clean our environment, and create a world we could once only envision. But instead of living the vision of our potential that technology makes possible, modern change is crushing us as a stress disease crisis reaches epidemic proportions. The stress is from knowing the answers exist, but are not being realized. We all know on some deep level that opportunity, vast and limitless, exists just on the tip of our consciousness like an old song tune we just can’t quite get a hold of . . .
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