A Playing of Energy

“Watch, listen, and then act, they told us. This is the way to live.”

– Kent Nerburn

Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

Please play the Allan Watts video below. However, please do so while alone and undisturbed… no distractions. Notifications silent. Use headphones.

If you are watching this on your cell phone while on the move, you are missing the point. Your life is at stake. My mother used to tell me; “Do the right thing the right way.” It is now the culture for all of my businesses.
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This clip is from the Allan Watts lecture “You are it.” It is a good ‘pick me up’ when needed. On this journey we need them from time to time. When we set an awe-inspiring Intention, which you’ll get to do later, and then allow ‘life’ to fill in the details, ‘life’ has a little unraveling to do in order to prepare you for the fun ahead. At times it can feel a bit discombobulated. At those times it is comforting to listen to Allan Watts.

I use the word ‘life’ because we all have a different definition of the source of the lifeforce that compels us. Using the word ‘life’ is a bit generic, but I do so to avoid offending those who like to label things as chi, or God, or something else.

You are where you are now as a result of your thoughts and words you have emitted since you came into this world. Thoughts and words are energy and they have formed your outer energy field. That field can contain a lot of personal ‘knots’ or blocks that need to be undone by ‘life’ before you can gain momentum. So, as you start on this journey there can be times when you feel as if it is one step forward, two steps back. that is okay. Go with it and play this video to remind yourself of who you are and where you are heading.
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The visual I use for this experience is the scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation in which dad dumps the biggest knot of Christmas lights into his sons hands and says ‘unravel that.’ Some people have spent decades building their quicksand like that and then when they get on an experience like this they want results fast. ‘Life’ has to first undo a lot of your knots. A little patience goes a long way.

The process takes time and during that experience I find it helps to have the comforting and affirming voice of someone like Allan Watts. I recommend playing this video and others of his lectures frequently. Many of his lectures are available for free on the web.

I don’t want to make this easy for you by providing a link, but I am not being a jerk. You’ll learn in a little while all about a tricky group of neurons in your brain stem called the Reticular Activation System (RAS). I’m not going to explain it here, but suffice to say that it usually needs reprogramming. That does not happen by being passively spoon-fed information. It requires a deliberate act of seeking out that which we want. The RAS notes what we pay attention to and starts to get us more of what it thinks we now want. Search engines can be a brilliantly simple way of reprogramming the RAS. Intriguing, eh? More on that later.

If you like Allan Watts… go seek him out. Your RAS will note it… and then he’ll pop up in your life all over the place.

We start our journey of transformation by understanding first of what we are made. Most people let energy play with them, which results in random outcomes. When we understand the make up of our world we are able to remove the randomness by taking charge of the game. We choose how to play with energy. Being aware that our thoughts and words are part of that game allows us to observe their effects. Then we can pause and choose alternatives.

We can also simply choose a different and more beneficial reaction to any harmful thoughts and words we just had. In effect, we learn to play with energy and all of life is simply a playing of energy.

Simple? Yes. It just takes practice and discipline.

Realizing that everything is energy and that the three-dimensional physical world is a kind of illusion we create ourselves to experience that energy, are surprising facts to some people. That knowledge, however, when allowed to sink in, provides us with the awesome power to control our life experiences with simple and small conscious decisions.

Immediately, this starts to sound metaphysical. Today, thanks to exciting new discoveries in the fields of quantum and particle physics, the barrier between science and metaphysics has disappeared. What the ancients have always said is now preached afresh by evangelical particle physicists. Yet, the metaphysical perspective here from Alan Watts was delivered decades ago when quantum physics was less mainstream than it is today. He uses great phrases that now have scientific evidence for support…

‘One suchness.’

‘It comes and goes. On and off. Here you are, here you aren’t.’

‘All life is a magnificent illusion, a playing of energy.’

Allan Watts derived this insight from studying the ancient texts of both western and eastern sages. Science, however, now concurs. I am sure the sages are delighted that the scientists have finally caught up.

On and Off – Our energies flicker in and out of existence 10^84 a second. Our particles flicker, but too fast for the brain to perceive it, much like an old movie reel with each still frame running so fast it fools the brain into thinking it is all movement when actually it is all stillness. Of course they don’t all flicker on and off at the same time like the Christmas tree lights, but it would be mind-boggling if they did.
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Added together though it means that in every second of your life you are here and not here, physical and non-existent. You flicker at a rate of 10000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 times a second. Of course not every particle flickers at exactly the same time. If they did, we would literally disappear and reappear.

“That in this universe, there is one great energy, and we have no name for it… but according to Buddhist philosophy, all this universe is one ‘dadada.’ That means ‘ten thousand functions, ten thousand things, one suchness,’ and we’re all one suchness.”

That is one of my favorite metaphysical descriptions for what we are made of. As you will soon discover from the scientific perspective he is spot on. Everything is made of the same ‘suchness.’ Scientists call it energy and it is a correct statement to say everything is made of energy.

Energy, however, doesn’t actually exist. It is a concept we have assigned a label to. The concept is that everything is in a constant state of change. When we observe change in a system… a system being something like a car, a company, or indeed human life itself… we’ve developed this concept called energy to account for the amount of change.

For example, the amount of energy in the fuel or battery of your car determines how far you can drive. That is the chemical potential energy.

Money is energy. How much you have determines how you live.

Thoughts are energy. How much power they have is perhaps determined by your emotion. You control the jiggling frequency which means you can choose how to play with that energy.

In physics we say there are three concepts: Forces, momentum, and energy.

Forces cause change in a system. Momentum is the property that change creates. Energy describes how much change takes place.

On the face of it this might seem of minor importance, but it is essential knowledge for how we construct tools to play with energy differently. By playing in a different way we enact changes that create momentum (what I often refer to as flow) and the amount of flow determines the size, shape and content of the outcome.
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Whether you knew it already, or have learned for the first time, that everything is energy, which means in a constant state of change, and that everything is all one suchness, one dadada, it is a profound thing to contemplate. Many people write to me to describe how this one fact completely changes the way they view their world. They can no longer kill that spider. They describe feeling less separate and suddenly drawn to nature and other ‘living’ things.

Some describe how other creatures seem calmer and more confident around them. Is it because by contemplating ourselves being all one suchness we change our frequency from the one associated with separation, alone-ness, or fear to one associated with being more loving, accepting and open? It is smart at this point to spend some time contemplating this. perhaps you have a cosy chair in a quiet corner where you can spend thirty minutes considering your place in the universe if everything really is one suchness.

How does it make you feel to be part of one great dadada?

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