How can I learn preemptive forgiveness?

There are a few things I keep in mind to achieve the poise of pre-emptive forgiveness in the turmoil of life...

1. Humility - "[W]hat you know for sure that just ain't so," makes up about 60% of what we think we know. That's science.

2. Honesty - Before you say or do anything that impacts another, do diligence. Research what you think you know. Interview the people who were there. When we take time to study it out, we can achieve about 85% accuracy in our understanding and judgment (at best). ... In the process of doing this, our emotions have a chance to calm down and our instant judgments disappear.

3. Grace - Realize that everybody is doing the best they know how. In 1940s New Mexico, there were two escaped convicts in a shack surrounded by police. As they reloaded their pistols, the murderer said, "Why are people always picking on me?" The answer is, he was brought up in a way that, he just never learned how to get along in this world. But he was doing the best he knew how. Everybody is doing the best they know how. Nobody really knows how. Those who seem to know what they're doing, are faking it. "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."

4. I forgive myself preemptively. Any outburst, emotional or rational reaction is a normal human thing, so I forgive myself. How can I not forgive others? "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Of course, it's always an imperfect process ... but really, isn't that the point?

A Christian friend feels cut off from family

A friend asked, “I have been divided off from the rest of you due to my beliefs. What do you think of this?”

I think you can believe whatever you want to believe. I think that everyone is doing the best they know how. That’s good enough for me.

The difference between me and most Christians today is that they use scripture to determine what love means, but I use love to determine what scripture means.

Jesus taught that we should love God, and our neighbor as our self; and that all the Law and the Prophets depend on that. The Law and the Prophets (and Psalms) were all of the authorized scriptures of Jesus’ day. By extension, the same thing applies to all the authorized scriptures of today – including the Bible. Understanding it depends on love. Love is the key to understanding.

The English version of Deuteronomy 6:4 usually leaves out a word included in the original Hebrew: “Hear you, Israel, Yahweh Elohim-of-us, Yaweh [is] one, AND-you-love Yaweh ….” In the original message from God, the phrase “God is one” is integrally connected with the command “love God.”

In John 17:3, Jesus makes a formula statement: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God ….” For the rest of the chapter, he expands on that, praying that we be one with him. He culminates in the ecstatic statement in verse 23, that “they may be brought to complete unity (or perfect oneness).”

So, I think that Jesus teaches love and unity. Out of that core message, he warns of divisions or denominations.

It seems obvious that people want to feel the world is safe and their lives are stable. Anything that doesn’t fit with their nice, neat worldview meets with strong objections and defensiveness, even violence. “Indeed, a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.” Matt 10:36  

In fact, when someone starts speaking about something that isn’t nice and neat, most people will ignore him, turn their backs on him, avoid him, interrupt him, and even rescue others from a sensitive topic by talking loudly over the top of the speaker. We can’t have a civil argument, because people are so fragile and defensive, even actively seeking to misunderstand. Vigilant defensiveness. Divisiveness. Resisting knowing more and even anything different.

But divisiveness is not Jesus’ message. Division is the reaction against Jesus’ message.

So, what do I think? I think people use scripture to justify what they are doing. 

Instead, I accept preemptive forgiveness. I use love to guide what I am doing. I seek first to understand. Then I seek to be understood. And, if someone wants to be my “enemy,” they can do it without my participation. - Christopher

Racism: Root cause and a key solution

I’ll cut to the chase: Here is the root cause and the answer you are looking for…

“It falls on all of us, … to work together to create a ‘new normal’ in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions and our hearts.” – Barack Obama

WE KNOW HOW TO DO THAT:

Bias in any form is never okay and should be avoided.

How can you recognize if you're being biased? And how can you practice avoiding bias?

How to recognize your own bias: Any time you FEEL STRONGLY in agreement or in disagreement about anything, that is a bright red flag that you are holding tightly to some preconceived notion that is preventing you from truly understanding. That is bias.

How to avoid bias: When you notice that red flag of bias (strong feelings), first, remember that there's a whole science behind this. Our initial understanding of any other person is only about 34% accurate. We fill in the other 66% with our preconceived ideas. This is Phase I Understanding (superficial, automatic, grossly inaccurate). (Research cited in No One Understands You and What to Do About It, by Heidi Grant Halvorson PhD, Harvard Business Review Press)

When you notice the red flag, stop and start LISTENing. Patiently seek out the rest of the story. Start trying to figure out why that person is acting or talking that way. SEEK UNDERSTANDING. This is Phase II Understanding (studied, takes work, still imperfect). You will never exceed 85% understanding, even after 40 years of knowing someone. Truth!

So, be humble: Realize that you do not know everything; and, in fact, you know very little. Other people are always weird, but they can describe a good reason for their words and behaviors if given the chance. Give them that chance.

Everyone must be trained in this skill once a year. By itself, this will change the world.

Can it be that easy?! Yes. And no: It takes practice. 

And BTW … We know how to bring Heaven to Earth in this generation. – Christopher

Shambala Warrior Prophecy

When the world is about to destroy itself and all life is threatened, the Shambala Warrior appears and destroys the weapons of war and violence. And the kingdom of Shambala appears. It is not a place, but it is a way of being.

They train in the use of two weapons:

1. Compassion
2. Insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena

Don’t be afraid of the powers and their weapons, for they too are part of all that is.

We do not know the outcome. It may appear too great a change for it to appear, but ignore that.

Just be in compassion and insight. Share the compassion and insight.

https://vimeo.com/191169785

Scientists discover how the universe was created, millennia after Moses said the same thing

“Ripples in space-time could explain the mystery of why the universe exists,” according to Jeff Dror, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and physics researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  https://www.space.com/phase-transition-allowed-neutrinos-shuffle-matter.html

Funny thing … Moses said that thousands of years ago.

- Genesis 1:2 literally says, at the beginning of creation, "The spirit of Elohim vibrating over the surface of the waters." - https://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlin…/OTpdf/gen1.pdf 

Why no one understands and what to do about it

These days, there are huge powers creating chaos. They are so huge that people cannot grasp how big they are, even when it’s carefully explained to them. It’s impossible to imagine how much power just a few people have.

How much is a billion dollars? A trillion? Just as an example, I’ve seen Jeff Bezos’ $116 billion illustrated this way: Take one grain of rice as a representation of $100,000, an amount any of us would love to earn in a year. At that scale, ten grains of rice would be a million dollars. One thousand grains = one-hundred million dollars. One-hundred thousand grains of rice would be ten billion dollars. Bezos has 11.6 times that much: 1,160,000 grains of rice at $100,000 each. There are about 29,000 grains of rice in a pound; so, Jeff Bezos has about 40 pounds of rice, each grain representing $100,000. I don’t blame Bezos.

Bezos is not the problem. The problem is that, because people don’t understand, none of my knowledge or experience matters. Nobody’s expertise matters. No credentials, or decades of research, or carefully cultivated credibility matters. Even the well-established facts don’t matter. All facts and researchers can all be dismissed in an instant with a sneer and a turn of the back. Because people don’t take time to think, and they especially don’t want to be reminded that they don’t think.

It’s much easier to wave a hand and blot out all facts. Shake the head and claim credible media sources report fake news.

People make a quick, shallow assessment of a situation, a person or a national issue – and then fill in the blanks to support their hipshot assessment. This is called Phase I judgment. Phase I judgment achieves only 33% accuracy, at best. But 95% of every story we tell ourselves is based on Phase I judgment.

Phase II judgment happens when someone starts questioning their first impression and starts digging for more accurate information in a search for the truth. But even when we take time for a second look and carefully dig out the facts, science has discovered that we can only achieve – at best – about 67% accuracy in our understanding of other people and situations, even after we’ve lived with a person for 40 years. (For a better understanding, of Phase I & II judgments, see No One Understands You and What to Do About It, by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Associate Professor of Motivation Science Center, Columbia Business School.)

But our understanding of each other is worse than that. Because we operate on Phase I judgment in 95% of our daily doings, and it is only 33% accurate, we just automatically fill in the rest of the story with information we picked up in a similar situation. We judge people and situations based on 67% fabricated information. We make up a story to explain things and to make ourselves comfortable that there is order in the universe … in the world … in the country.

Don’t get me wrong. Telling stories is an ancient survival skill. There is so much going on in the real world that we construct a vastly simplified mental model of the world. This mental model becomes second nature: An automatic, unconscious response to 95% of the day’s doings. The only time we wake up is when something doesn’t match our mental model. Then, we wake up for about five seconds. (Scientists measured it.) Most of the time, when we wake up, we only check to see if there is an immediate threat. Then, we go back to default mode, dismiss the new situation, and go back to unconscious autopilot. This all happens in about five seconds. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss it. And we miss it frequently.

Scientists call the process we use to build stories “motivated reasoning.” People get a feeling, make up a story to support that feeling, and then watch for facts to support their story. It’s a very human tendency that we apply to all kinds of facts about the environment, god, economic history, and current events. We make up stories about each other, and the story is only one-third accurate … at best. But we live by our stories. (See the book, The Truth About Denial, by Adrian Bardon, Professor at Wake Forest University.)

All of this is to say that, it behooves us to be constantly aware of our own fragility. To realize that we don’t really understand … ever. That others don’t understand us … ever. And with that realization, we need to try to enter Phase II judgment – to think twice, so we can begin to approach halfway understanding. Then we can be more patient, more tolerant, more curious about what’s really going on, and take time to listen carefully, ask questions, and maybe learn something. It could change the world.

No inner stillness

It occurs to me that inner stillness is not.

The water in my jar splashes about with its own turbulence and turbidity.

My molecules of thought rise up out of nothing, pause – long enough to be noticed if I’m paying attention, and fade back into the nothingness.

But if I set my jar down, the H2O settles and becomes mostly still. Yet, the molecules continue to move unseen. Vibrations of the passing truck or distant airplane are reflected in them. Heat from the sun moves them. Even the normally unnoticed shifts in gravity give them a stir.

The universal field flows around and through my molecules, undetectable as long as my water is splashing. But if I set myself down, momentarily, my awareness will settle down through the coarse waves of the crowd, the buzz of mills; down through the whisper of winds and the rush rush of my blood; down to the electromagnetic fields of the sun and of the earth’s resonant field; and I become one with the universe.

And I realize that my inner movement never ceases, but only splashes about to a different influence, that finer ebb and flow of the universal field. And there, at the least point, is the present moment where I finally sense the substantial light of the expanse shifting to and fro, the flow stretching thin to virtual nothingness and the vortices attracting and concentrating matter into being.

Into this ocean I set my calm jar and release my molecules – the form of my single-minded thought – into nothingness which is everything everywhere. A little while, and my molecules begin to swirl, to attract others, to concentrate force and substance, until I am surprised by my jar leaping back out of the ocean and – along with it comes my thought form in full physical manifestation to dance with me.

So, it seems that there is no inner stillness. There is only a matching of the wave’s droplet back into the ocean; and the ocean spits it back upon the shore – with its driftwood – for a while, to be taken anew another day.

Does the Law of Attraction really work?

Of course, it does. And everybody is always using it whether they realize it or not. But how can you make it work for you? That can be a challenge. Yet a little study and a little practice, and you can do it.

For example, everybody has experienced that, when they buy a car, they start noticing the same make, model and color on the road everywhere. That’s the Law of Attraction working on a very fundamental level. This basic instance is simply your mind being focused on – pleased with – your new purchase. So, your eyes become vigilant to see what you are meditating on. Yes, you are meditating: You are thinking and feeling positive about this object. So, you see it everywhere.

The same thing happens when you apply the Law of Attraction consciously. You think about some object or circumstance, and you feel the wonder of it as though it already exists; and pretty quickly you start noticing little instances of that object or circumstance. That can grow into the reality of it appearing into your life.

Fundamentals

How does that work? It’s the story of physics. (Not the math and science of physics. The story of physics.) Once you understand this, you’ll understand how to make the Law of Attraction work for you.

The universe is filled with energy: The universal energy field. It’s everywhere, in everything; and even exists in the emptiest parts of outer space. Energy is always vibrating, waving, flowing, spiraling, and spinning in vortexes. These vortexes naturally pair up in double helixes (the shape of DNA). The forces inside the double helix sucks energy down its middle and concentrates it. Concentrated energy becomes matter. Now, that’s simplistic, but it’s a story of explanation, not science.

Now, let’s shift perspective from the fantastically vast to the inconceivably small. Scientists have been teasing out and identifying the tiniest particles, called quantum particles. These are the particles that make up the protons, neutrons and electrons in an atom. Quantum particles are so small that, if one was the size of your index finger, the energy field surrounding it would extend all the way out past Jupiter. It takes three of these particles to make a proton, and three more to make a neutron. These things are tiny!

But more to the point, they take up vast amounts of space by virtue of their energy fields, which are empty of matter except for the miniscule particle. That’s a lot of space. You probably heard your teacher talk about how an atom is mostly space. When we touch a table or chair, it is actually just the energy fields resisting each other. They’ll tell you that we don’t really exist, because we’re more than 99.99999% space. But I want you to realize that all that space is filled with energy.

The entire universe is full of energy, including the energy that makes you. And the energy is always moving. You were expecting certainty? There is no certainty. Everything changes all the time.

Now, that brings us to meditation. We do meditation to help us recognize that there is no certainty. The point is that, we create mental constructs about what we think is real, so that we can have something firm to understand. But that is all illusion. We are energy beings, and energy is always flowing through us and around us and between us.

Some masters will tell you that nothing is real. This is why they say that. At its most fundamental, the physical part of reality is virtually non-existent. Reality is a vast amount of space filled with energy. You need to contemplate this for the next nine months to just get a clue as to how fluid and uncertain reality is. Just give up all your expectations and thoughts and feelings about thoughts. Empty yourself of all mental constructs and illusions. Vacate the lie that the universe is physical. The physical part is insignificant compared to how much energy there is.

So, that’s the first part of this: Belief. You can believe in a physical universe, or you can learn to work with the Law of Attraction, which is all about energy. Energy moves to create circumstances. Energy condenses to become matter. Matter is energy. E = mc².  

Next Step

Once we are empty of preconceptions, expectations, thoughts and emotional junk – once we are empty – then we need to understand the nature of our energy being.

For more than 300 years now, our culture has formed around Isaac Newton’s version of a physical world, where objects are separate from each other and bounce off of each other like billiard balls. With the advent of quantum physics, we now realize that everything is made out of vibrating energy. As the famous theoretical physicist Richard Feynman said, “Everything jiggles.”

Energy condenses to create matter, but it is still basically vibrating energy. Since all matter is vibrating within a universal energy field, it is sending out waves into the field. Our bodies are doing the same thing, and even our brains and hearts are sending waves into the aether around us. The HeartMath Institute in California has done research that shows the brain and the heart each produce a certain amount of energy in the form of an electromagnetic field.

“The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body,” according to HeartMath Institute Director of Research Rollin McCraty. “The electrical field as measured in an electrocardiogram (ECG) is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain waves recorded in an electroencephalogram (EEG).”

The heart, like the brain, generates a powerful electromagnetic field, according to McCraty. HeartMath studies show this powerful electromagnetic field can be detected and measured several feet away from a person's body and between two individuals in close proximity.

You may have noticed this when you’ve been alone in a room, and suddenly, you realize – without seeing or hearing anything – that another person has entered the room. The human body generates an electromagnetic field that interacts with others. That human field is energy extending feet beyond the skin. You extend beyond your skin.

In meditation, we can calm our brain and heart down to the point where we can sense this energy flowing through and around us. However, this high state of sensitive awareness is not the most astounding thing.

By synchronizing our brain and heart energies in meditation, our electromagnetic field changes. Not only that, in meditation, our DNA changes. Since we can consciously change our personal fields, we can send a new kind of wave into the universe.

In fact, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas refers to this single-mindedness of unifying the brain and heart:

“Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, … a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom. (verse 22) " Also, see verses 48 and 106.

The idea behind the Law of Attraction is that, by bringing the heart and brain – feelings and thoughts – into a singular energy, human beings can broadcast energy waves that interact with the universal energy field. This creates a form or a coherent pattern for whatever we desire. That consciously held, coherent pattern then naturally draws the object or circumstance of matching energy frequency into our life.

You have experienced this unifying of brain and heart when you have “connected” with a person across the room. Human beings have been doing this unconsciously from ancient times without really realizing what we were doing. Now, we do so consciously with practice, with a pretty good idea of how we form our life – our circumstances – by holding our singular desire, by interacting with each other to magnify the energy, and painting that pattern in the universal energy. Amazing! 

– Christopher Aune