Butterfly Effect

What are you experiencing right now? are you aware of the ‘conversation’ that is always occurring between your mind and body? When you allow the experience of any emotion to dominate your attention field it is a choice you make, either consciously or unconsciously, it is still your choice. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of building up the muscle of awareness, so you are able to recognize thoughts and emotions as they arise. In that recognition you discover you have choice over what you allow to dominate your attention field. You can notice as thoughts and emotions arise and disappear, as they would naturally if you did not attach your attention and follow. Mindfulness points you to the practice of not resisting and not embracing – simply noticing, allowing and letting go.

This is mindful awareness. It is an evolutionary, and perhaps a truly revolutionary, act. As we choose, we actually change our brains, this is the physical evidence that scientific research reports. Further, through our conscious choice we are contributing to the collective consciousness we all share. What do I mean by this? We are all broadcasters and receivers of thoughts and emotions. Some thoughts and emotions we pick up from others and other thoughts and emotions arise from within. As a result the thoughts and emotions we choose to follow in our moment to moment awareness are in turn being broadcast out to others. In this way, through our conscious (or unconscious) choice, we impact the collective consciousness and the evolutionary process of our species.

It is evident in the contagion of a simple smile from a stranger – notice how you feel. Remember a time when you smiled at a stranger and how their response made you feel. The choice you make impacts not only your own experience but also the experience of others. As you make conscious choices you overcome the inertia of habitual thought and emotional patterns.

You have the power in every moment to create any feeling. Like the Butterfly Effect [The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location.] each of us has the capacity to generate an impact right here, right now, choosing the next thought. Becoming conscious of this mind body conversation and making a choice about how you want to experience this, and the next, moment is an act of conscious creation. Be curious. The choice is yours.

A simple choice

What if you focused on something beautiful? Look for beauty in this moment. Just stop and look either within yourself or outside, using any sense you choose to perceive it. What is beautiful right now? Is it the sound of birds chirping? The way the light is reflected through the leaves of a tree, the laughter of children playing in the park, the smell of coffee freshly brewed? What if this became a habit? What if you couldn’t help yourself from finding beauty in every moment? Can you imagine how different your life would be? I am not talking about the external circumstances of your life that you may or may not have any control over…I am talking about the experience of your life that only you can determine. This is the choice I am pointing to. This is the invitation.

We are human beings with a physical body. If we look closely we recognize we are more than bones and tissue and blood. There is that which enlivens this substance we call consciousness or awareness. We can use this capacity of awareness to direct our attention within and become curious about what is here, what is arising in this awareness from moment to moment. Without needing to know anything, just notice. This is the beginning.

We may feel hopeless or overwhelmed from time to time. It is usually because we are focused on things external to ourselves competing for our attention. When flooded by all the stimulation, it is easy to become overwhelmed or even paralyzed by it all. The truth is we have a choice. Each of us has the capacity to choose where we rest our attention from moment to moment – and that will make all the difference.

This capacity to become aware of what we are focusing on is like developing a muscle, the muscle of awareness. When not exercised then any old thing that comes along can trap your attention (you are caught unaware) and before you know it you are plunged into an emotional state. This could be a happy thing when you are surprised by a loved one with an unexpected gift or it could be a distressing thing when you are blindsided by a physical, emotional or mental attack that plunges you into a state of pain and suffering.

We can’t control whether we experience pain but we can control whether we suffer.

In the beginning, as we practice becoming aware of what arises in our attention, we realize that what we identify with we become. So if we identify with pain then we become immersed in it. Suffering occurs because we can’t distinguish between our awareness and the pain that arises in our awareness. There seems to be no separation. But if you stop to notice you can recognize there is a difference. There were other moments that were not full of pain. There have been moments of laughter, joy and happiness, too. All of these feelings arise in your awareness. With practice, you can choose what to follow, what to identify with, what to allow to dominate your attention. More importantly you become aware of the source of all of these feeling, thoughts and emotions. You become aware of awareness itself. In that moment a (r)evolution has begun.

Patty

The Evolution of Humanity

Transform your mind transform the world. If you want to transform you life in profound and significant ways, it is essential that you access the capacity to activate the transformation mechanism itself.

Within your body is a boundless natural capacity, focused mindfulness, to transcend the neurological limitations of your own fixed cultural, emotional, and psychological experiences of the past and present.

By practicing to activate this, always present, natural force within your mind-body and practicing mindful exercises with sincere conviction, you activate and cultivate powerful natural trans-formative neurochemical processes. The potential for these to transform your life is infinite. Evolution is possible.

Further

Ken Kesey author of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest lead the Merry Pranksters on a literal, if not symbolic, journey aboard a psychedelic school bus called ‘Further’ that impacted not only one generation with flower power and the summer of love but our entire collective consciousness.

Regardless if you were aware of Ken Kesey, Woodstock or the Grateful Dead you were influenced, in the same way we were influenced by the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and MLK, Vietnam, the women’s and the civil rights movements. Regardless of your economic, political, philosophical or sexual persuasion simply being part of this culture, our collective consciousness was influenced and irrevocably changed.

I believe that we are all at a similar, if not more powerful, intersection in the evolution of ourselves as individuals and of our entire species. There is an evolutionary consciousness emerging that must be enlivened by our individual recognition. This evolutionary process is occurring not only in the collective consciousness but also, and essentially, within all of us individually. Neuroscientific research has validated what the ancients always knew about the nature of the power of the mind body ‘conversation’. Each of us can participate, in our moment to moment awareness, by discovering our capacity to choose thoughts and emotions that support our well being over embedded habitual thoughts and emotions that dominate our attention through unconscious choice.

The thoughts and emotions we allow into our field of awareness, give rise to our reality. With each moment of choice we impact the collective choice, giving rise to the reality we all share on this planet. With so much external stimuli bombarding us most of us don’t realize there is a choice. Media and advertising exploit our body’s powerful response to threat. Our body cannot distinguish between a real threat, the memory of threat or the anticipation of threat – it all shows up the same – as a biochemical response that releases hormones into our system that generate stress. So when we are subjected daily to images and stories about violence, disease and poverty or idealized images that remind us of what we lack – our bodies respond biochemically. We often feel overwhelmed by our helplessness in the face of suffering or lack, even if it isn’t true in our present moment experience, our body’s respond as if it were happening now. By allowing ourselves to be swept up by all of this external stimulation, we suffer, and in turn contribute to the suffering that is occurring.

It is essential to recognize there is something each of us can do. It is so simple and direct that it is usually overlooked or even when it is pointed out it is dismissed. We can choose how to feel. We can choose what thoughts dominate our attention. We can choose what we focus on.

What you focus on you become.

Alpha-i meditation is a simple yet powerful practice that strengthens our muscle of awareness so that we can make conscious choices that are in alignment with what is healthy for us individually. As we create these new habits of attention we are contributing to the overall health and evolution of the collective consciousness of all humanity. Your choice really does make a difference.

The journey inside – Waking up.

Approximately 3,500 years ago, the ancient cultures were first in recording their experiences of their internal “spiritual” journeys. To describe their experiences to others, to share them, they developed a number of ways to access and express the experiences of their interior journeys. Rituals appeared first, dance, art, poetry and music soon followed. Physical practices such as Yoga, and mental disciplines such as Zen enabled repeatable and predictable spiritual results. Religions emerged throughout the world.
In these early days, in this experience of waking up, they didn’t know that they were accessing a natural ability to interrupt the flow of information coming from the human limbic system, the emotional center of the human brain. Freedom from the unconsciousness of the reptilian brain was indeed a much sought after spiritual endeavor for those who wanted to wake up. Today neuro psychology, neuroscience are pointing to the natural capacity of every human being to participate in this experience of waking up. Freeing themselves from the prison of the ancient emotional brain – this was then and is now, truly, an evolutionary process of the highest importance.

In modern times, waking up is no longer a mysterious process. The physiology of ‘waking up’ is now well understood. The challenge is to find the ways to tell as many people as possible that they have a natural capacity to free themselves of their ancient reptilian brain. Then give them modern spiritual technologies to actively participate in their own transformation.

Alpha-i, is committed to empower anyone that is open to begin this journey of self-discovery.- Eric