The Lovingkindness Project

This was sent to me in email form, and I am passing it along on this blog. To any assertions that it is corny, I plead guilty.

Lovingkindness: n., kindness or affectionate behavior resulting from or expressing love.

This is a seldom-used word and is usually not found in abridged dictionaries at all. It's a nice word, a poem unto itself. Find a quiet room, close your eyes, clear your mind, and take a few deep breaths. Say “lovingkindness” several times and see if you don’t feel calmer, more relaxed.

Then use the word in conversation and emails. The experiment, as I understand it, is to make it go viral. If words have power, this isn’t a bad one to have around. It really needs no definition.

Namaste

Pic: Public Domian

The Power of Love

Love cannot be seen or touched, and yet I believe it is the glue that holds this universe together. Dr. Bernie Siegal, pioneer in mind-body medicine (and author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles), defines God as intelligent, loving energy. But why loving? Because, Siegal explains, when he incises a patient during surgery, the incision heals just like any cut or scrape. Love, he believes, is built into the fabric of the universe.

As we grow up, we are taught that cuts heal and colds eventually go away. Serious illnesses, we are taught, require doctors. But what if the body is programmed to heal itself from even serious diseases? One could well say, “Then why doesn’t it happen?” The answer might be that the body implements the expectations it has been programmed with from birth—and our expectations are pretty low. It is a documented fact that people with a happy, positive outlook on life live longer and have lower mortality rates from various diseases.

But the power of love doesn’t stop there. Dr. Larry Dossey (and hundreds of others in his wake) has conducted experiments in which cardiac patients were prayed for anonymously. A control group not receiving prayer was used to verify the findings. (A real bummer if you’re in the control group!) The studies, conducted over the past two decades, suggest that patients receiving prayer—both traditional prayer as well as simple, loving thoughts aimed at a certain ward of a hospital—show a statistically higher (and faster) rate of recovery.

This is not meant to discourage anyone from going to a doctor, but perhaps the power of prayer—certainly a form of loving energy—can facilitate the healing process.

Yes, there will always be nay-sayers who regard this as New Age nonsense. But if love has no curative powers, billions of humans waste a lot of time every day craving the most valued emotion on the planet.

Why do “failure-to-thrive” babies die from neglect? Why do widows and widowers, on average, often die within two to five years of their departed spouses? Ultimately, the answers can’t be found in a laboratory or by experiment. The human heart finds its own way and makes its own determinations.

Picture (Democritus by Agostino Carracci): public domain

I Am the Walrus, and So Are You: Cosmic Consciousness

[The photograph shows the Antennae Galaxies in the process of merging.]

Here’s an interesting fact about holograms: take any section of a hologram, like a 3-D baseball card, and any piece of it, however small, will contain a picture of the entire baseball player when examined under a microscope. The same holds true for any hologram. The parts are contained in the whole, but the whole is also contained in the parts. The smaller the piece that is cut from the original holographic picture, the poorer the resolution of the whole, but it’s still there.

Physicist David Bohm and neurosurgeon Karl Pribram—heavyweights in the world of science—postulated that the entire universe is merely a hologram. If this is true, then you are naturally a part of the universe … but every part of the universe is also a part of you. (At this point, everyone can start singing George Harrison’s “Within You, Without You.”) But how is this possible? Research into quantum physics (too complicated for this humble post—film at eleven) indicates that the human brain is a holographic projector. Sound too weird? Go outside and look at the marvelous stars in the night sky. Their light enters your pupil, strikes your retina, and is then recognized and stored in your brain. So are the stars inside or outside of your brain?

This is intriguing—and disturbing. I do not want to be a part of my ex-wife, pro wrestlers, George Bush, the far right, rednecks, reality television, Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, bimbos, reruns of Gilligan’s Island, or my sadistic eighth grade teacher in the ill-named Sisters of Mercy. (And that’s the short list.)

World religions and philosophers have hinted at the same idea for millennia. Taoism (and eastern religion as a whole) emphasizes the connection of all consciousness. So does the Gospel of St. John, albeit in a different context. Jesuit theologian Teilhard de Chardin believed that the universe was evolving toward universal consciousness at the end of time, which he called the Omega Point. Mystics from the Middle Ages, as well as near-death experiencers, have reported a sense of being part of “everything” during their ethereal sojourns.

Like it or not, we may all be part of the same energy, the same universal tapestry. Some of us pervert divine energy, while some of us channel and balance it. I don’t think I’d mind sharing some of the essence of John Lennon. It would make up for any connection to Rush Limbaugh.

Goo-goo-ga-cho or Om. Apparently there’s no difference.

Picture: Public domain