What Impact Do Our Intentions Have On Reality? Part 2
Even if well practiced, are there various factors that may influence our ability influence physical reality with our consciousness?
Set Your Pulse: Take a breath. Turn your attention to your body and release any tension. Breathe slowly into the area of your heart for 60 seconds, focusing on feeling a sense of ease. Stay connected to your body as you read. Click here to learn why we suggest this.
In part 1 of this essay, I explored some science behind the idea that consciousness and our intentions have an impact on reality. I suggested that science upends the existing materialist paradigm and that refining is needed to understand the true nature of our reality.
I explored some of the real world implications of consciousness affecting reality, and how the more complexity there is in what we are trying to impact, create or manifest, the ‘harder’ it becomes. For example, trying to manifest the removal of a challenging health outcome in yourself with just the mind vs. trying to manifest a material item like a lavish house is different in terms of moving parts of complexity. One involves you and yourself, the other involves land, other people, materials etc. The idea here is, that perhaps manifesting ‘out there’ is more complex as many more individual consciousnesses are involved.
Research into the science behind this subject can go on for a long time as there are many fascinating studies to explore the various nuances of how our consciousness impacts reality, time, our past, our future, etc. The challenge is, that science as we use it today is likely limited to understanding the mysteries of consciousness, especially as it relates to things spiritual/philosophical in nature. Hence the need to explore other avenues of knowing.
In this part, I’d like to expand on what I feel might be some influential factors that govern, for lack of a better word, potential effect sizes when it comes to consciousness impacting reality.
Firstly…
If you consider that consciousness is what we hold in our minds, beliefs, worldviews, cultures etc. and that it informs our actions, then our consciousness is always creating and impacting our reality. But in that case, it’s our consciousness aligned with our physical actions. Together, they create a matrix of experience where our minds hold in place what is possible while our actions reinforce it in an interplay.
But consciousness experiments open up a slightly different question. How much do thoughts alone, with no action added, impact our reality? Can our intentions heal cancers, manifest objects, change or bend matter etc? Can this scale-up be applied to how our society is designed?
Influential Factors
Although at some level we see the incredible effects of consciousness affecting our reality, we see that effect sizes are either small, sometimes rare, or hard to reproduce - nonetheless, they exist.
Here’s some of what I’ve pondered about this mysterious hard question related to intention alone impacting our reality.
I want to remind readers that there is a difference between how the quality of our consciousness affects the lens through which we see the world, and the discussion of just our consciousness changing matter.
1. The Journey of Our Soul
I believe as souls we reincarnate. I feel that way not only because I’ve had very strong memories of some of my past lives since I was a kid, but because science has given us a great deal to think about on that subject as well. I believe our universe is driven by evolution. Consciousness is always tending toward growth and evolution. Given that, I feel we incarnate to have experiences that continually tend us toward evolution. Thus, our soul is exposed to different experiences to gather experience and grow from it.
Imagine if our soul had an unfoldment it was looking to experience for growth, like levelling up in a video game if you will. It could perhaps be the case that what we consciously intend to create would interrupt that lesson, and thus perhaps the soul’s journey governs part of our conscious intention.
2. Collective Consciousness - Collective Evolution
Beyond individual soul growth, there is also the collective game being played, which is held for the collective to evolve as a whole. If our collective soul is on an evolutionary path that requires specific unfoldments to occur to evolve the general masses, then certain individual creations may be limited by the game of the whole. I won’t say some things become impossible, more so that they may become less likely.
In that sense, our reality is co-created and it may be worthwhile to consider if our individual manifestations may be limited by the consciousness of the collective. Also, even a group’s consciousness may be limited by the collective. In this sense, we co-create our reality, the idea that only YOU as an individual creating your reality, is likely limited.
Think of the famous experiment where a group of meditators in Washington DC lowered crime rates in their city by 25%. The crime rates went back up after, why? Why was the effect not permanent? Is it a battle of collective consciousnesses? Is it that the effect wears out as the physical world built will tend back to the results its design incentivizes?
Collective Consciousness - Competing Consciousness’
Another worthwhile thought experiment is to consider that many people consciously try to create a similar outcome, yet these things cannot work out for everyone at the same time based on our worldly. How often do we hear of people trying to use their consciousness to create some sort of wealth or job promotion, yet we rarely consider who else has to ‘lose’ in the process?
Imagine 10 different employees with a meditation practice and vision board for becoming the next department head. All trying to use their manifestation and consciousness powers to get the top job. But only one can have it. How would this work? We don’t know, but it does point to the fact that our reality is co-created and this is part of having the human experience. This is not often considered in the realm of manifestation.
In this sense, the very design of our material society is a container in which consciousness is limited based on how it has become collectively defined, and there are competing interests.
Collective Consciousness - The Old Story
Why is it that the first thing most spiritual manifestors say we should create are things that come from our societal story of what it means to be successful? Sure, not all push this, but it’s often the case.
Many of these manifestations come at the expense of other people's suffering. Think of material possessions made by slave workers for example. Think of lavish cars people want to manifest that rape the earth of minerals in unsustainable ways.
Similar to the journey of our collective evolution, perhaps we are being pushed to step out of the story of hyperindividualism and into a more holistic view of living. That seems to be our collective evolutionary journey right now. Thus a regulating factor on our consciousness may be that the game of separation and hyperindividualism is dying and will be less supported by our collective consciousness. In essence, evolution may not be feeding the old ‘wants.’
How often do you hear people consider how their goals and conscious manifestations cost others? I can tell you as someone who has been prominent in this field for 15 years and who’s made friends with many in high places, many of the conscious gurus, authors, and business owners out there are just as cutthroat as any greedy business person. It’s rare to find integrity.
3. The Human Experience IS The Point
I proposed this to my good friend Adam Curry who worked with IONS and the PEAR lab on the study of consciousness, and we had a great conversation about it.
It’s essentially the idea that although we may be able to peer into the underpinnings of the fabric of our reality and see its workings to some extent, perhaps the point is still that we are here to have a slower, physical manifesting experience, one that is co-created and tending toward evolution at the pace the collective creates together.
Just because we can see that everything is consciousness and that simply viewing something shows our intentions has an impact on it, doesn’t mean there aren’t co-created confines to the human experience that make the experience what it is for a reason.
After all, if the fabric of our entire reality is consciousness, why create a lived physical existence? Consciousness may want to experience something different.
When I recall many experiences I’ve had of non-duality or even being deeply connected to all that is, there is a sense of everything all at once. A deep peace, connectedness and limitless feeling, but also an ineffable feeling of wanting to create, experience, and evolve.
It’s hard to put into words. It’s like being in this incredibly peaceful and loving place yet feeling that being in that space ‘all the time’ isn’t the point. That creating, experiencing and evolving is.
Just these words may bring about so many preconceived notions of what I’m saying, but really, this experience can’t easily be put into words.
Thus, the regulating factor here is simply that earth was designed within the limitlessness of our reality to be a physical experience limited, to some degree, in how our consciousness impacts that reality. Manifesting an apple into your hand simply because you feel like you and want to eat may not be the point of this realm. Tending to, caring for, and growing the apple over a season may be.
All Of This Points to Engagement
Part of our collective challenge is learning to listen to one another, understand one another, respect one another and unlock a level of collaboration we haven’t seen due to our paradigm of separation and individualness.
As stated in part one, consciousness science suggests we must be on the same page to have our consciousness effectively impact reality. If we cannot get on the same page as to what we want to create in our world, how can we create it? How do we know if we have a similar vision for a future society?
This points to the need to act on various elements of ourselves. Our spirit, minds, hands, and hearts - all to explore what needs to unfold in ourselves to collaborate and get on the same page. Hence the need to make sense of our world together, and explore philosophies, stories and ideas. It all matters.
The question of consciousness creating our reality is a big one that has many layers to consider. While this concept has been largely oversimplified by many teachers, authors, speakers, it’s important to consider how we play with a concept that I’ve seen create so much suffering in people.
I’ve watched as friends have died from illnesses because they dedicated only their consciousness to getting rid of it. I’ve watched as people have waited around for years, even decades, trying to manifest a better life with their thoughts, while doing very little with their actions to create it. Perhaps this is the experience people were meant to have, or perhaps this is a society not yet wise with its understanding of quantum concepts.
It’s my feeling that life is meant to be lived, to be felt, to be experienced. If I’m being honest, through my past life memory of a much less physical world, I have a deep appreciation for the physical experience here on earth. So much of our modern world is geared towards overwhelming our eyes and ears with stimulation, we often forget to sense, touch, and feel inward. It is part of the beauty of being a sensorial creature. Touching things and feeling things. Not all realms have that experience, and yet to some degree, I see many humans trying to escape it.
I promised to discuss increasing effect sizes when it comes to consciousness impacting reality, but this essay is long enough as it is. All I will say is that I believe the effect size of our consciousness impacting reality can increase with practice and with a new collective paradigm, but I sense there is still a welcomed and designed limitation within this experience we call the human one.
Thank you for stating what I have been thinking for a while. For a couple years I was extremely ill and western medicine could not find out why. I meditated, visualized, affirmed, prayed and tried numerous self-healing methods. Finally, a friend got me an appointment with an alternative healer; I began to improve and am now in good health. And I got some snide remarks about not being able to heal myself. My thought is that my prayers were answered. We are here as a collective, and although we are individuated from one whole, we are not necessarily intended to go it alone. I asked for healing and I got it! People came into my life and facilitated that experience. That's what it's about. I AM SO GRATEFUL.
still thinking about this. Sometimes I remember, that everything comes us through other people. Someone designed and made the chair I am sitting on. Some one made the computer I am typing on. When I remember I have graditude for all the people I will never meet who facilitate the good in my life. The list is endless. So when I have intentions for something to occur in my life I can think of all those unseen people involved.