Feel Connected

See Cynthia Sue Larson summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube!

Feel Connected

"The human being is part of the whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein 

The biggest difference between my most enjoyable and least enjoyable memories has to do with whether or not I was feeling connected to others and the world around me at the time. When I feel a sense of belonging, I feel relaxed instead of stressed. When I feel empathy with others, I feel love instead of fear.

While much of our feelings of being connected are subconscious, recent studies demonstrate surprising physically observable ways these connections manifest. Scientists reported this month that fire-walkers' heart rates are synchronized to friends and family observing; it seems evident that we gain physical and emotional support when in the company of those who feel connected to us.

In her marvelous book, The Bond, journalist Lynne McTaggart describes a number of ways humans are collaborative beings, whose needs to give, share, belong and network are at least as powerful as the drive to compete. I'm in agreement with McTaggart that finding ways to connect, interact and relate to the highest sense of good in others will be the key to mankind's future success. I love the big idea in The Bond that attaining a state of shared respect for more than one view of reality allows us to feel bonds of connection of tremendous depth... bridging differences of politics, religion, gender, species, and all aspects of personal identity.

Coming from a contrasting yet supportive perspective, Simon Baron-Cohen asks us to consider the true root of terrorism, gang violence, and crime. Baron-Cohen proposes these social ills have one common cause, and while we might initially view them as evil, he asks us to ditch the word "evil" in favor of "empathy erosion" -- a pernicious state of mind in which we lack any feelings for others and treat them as objects of our will. You can take his Cambridge University EQSQ Empathy Test to gain insights into whether your mind tends to empathize or systemize. 

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on YouTube? Feel free to take a few minutes to watch this video, as well as video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. And remember to keep asking, "How good can it get?" in every situation, no matter how good... or how "empathy eroded" it may be.

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com 

Look Back on Your Past with Love

See Cynthia Sue Larson summarize this ezine on YouTube video!

Look Back on Your
Past with Love


"Nothing changes more consistently than
the past;
... the past that influences our lives is not what actually happened
but what we believe happened."
- Gerald W. Johnson


The provocative statement, "History is written by the victors," draws attention to natural human bias that reframes events according to current views and pesrpectives. We can feel strengthened by the way we mentally review our past, and as simple an idea as reflecting upon how much better things are now than they might have turned out can tremendously improve our ability to prosper through a heightened sense of confidence and commitment, as one study reports this month how looking back is key to moving forward. A book I read this month, The Imposter, is written from precisesly this kind of counterfactual reflection, telling the story of how a young man who ran away from home as a youth mastered some important life lessons that helped him overcame drug addictions and a variety of other negative life situations.

Sometimes we can look back at reality shifts we have experienced in our lives and see how things turned out better because of the shift. While I was writing this July 2010 newsletter, I took a break to make dinner while alone in the house. I had just put a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven, when I noticed the front door was wide open, inviting sunshine and a fresh breeze but I had left it closed and locked. I could hear voices of my daughter and her friend outside. I said, "Hello!" to them, and turned away from the front door to wash my hands. When I turned back around, I saw the front door was closed and locked... so I opened it and looked outside, but
saw no sign of anyone. I wondered to myself, "Where did they go?" as my telephone rang, and I received a call from a friend wondering if I had time to talk. I replied "Yes," marveling quietly that I had just finished making dinner, and was still alone in the house. My friend and I talked for about twenty minutes, until my daughter arrived, which turned out to be just long enough for me to hear all about the wonderful book on angels my friend has just written. I asked my daughter and her friend if they had arrived home about twenty minutes earlier and opened the front door, and they said they had not been anywhere near the house at that time. The thought occurred to me that I had experienced a reality shift in which I caught a glimpse of another possible reality that showed itself to me like a truncated branch on a tree of possibilities. I had heard my daughter arrive home twenty minutes earlier... but then it was clear she had not arrived yet, and I had a chance to talk with my friend on the phone before my daughter actually appeared.

Observation of reality shifts is necessarily an exercise in noting changes in the past. If we didn't remember things being very different, we would not notice reality shifts at all. We would not be surprised, for example, if suddenly our keys were in a place they had not been before, because we wouldn't remember them being in any other place. There is a possibility in some reality shift experiences that our ability to reframe our memory of what or where something was can greatly influence physical reality. The important question thus becomes: Do we literally change our past, simply by changing our memories? When I encounter this kind of reality shift, I find myself wondering, What if all possibilities exist together simultaneously in many parallel worlds, all being tried at once by our consciousness which selects the one path which is agreed to have the most value? I sense at such times that there seems to be an organizing force afoot!

Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud noted how suggestible people can be to envisioning entirely different pasts in psychotherapy sessions, and now, many decades later, psychologists observe that on average, about 25% of a randomly selected group of adults will readily change their view of the past without consciously being aware they are doing so after having been provided with prompts suggesting possible early childhood memories. The field of advertising benefits from fond imagined memories when it attempts to remind us of happy moments in our past that we previously had never remembered, and such ads can occasionally be seen in TV and print ads.

There is a striking similarity between imagining something and remembering something, since similar parts of our brains operate in both cases. Studies have shown that people who practice something only using mental visualization and imagination can improve as much as those who physically practice, as the connection between our imaginations and our physical bodies is very strong. Asking yourself what part of your past could benefit from beomg reviewed more positively, with a view to recognizing ways you grew into being a better person, can greatly enhance your prosperity and well-being. There is healing possible to you now, in the form of simply asking this question.

Looking back on your past with love can be a form of time travel... a way to reinforce your own personal story in ways that strengthen those attributes you most care to develop. Simply imagining that you are being guided by your best possible future self, or high self, can immediately inspire you to imagine possibilities that otherwise might never have occurred to you, and help you to see your life from a position of more strength, courage, compassion and appreciation than you have ever felt before. You can learn a whole lot more about time travel at a conference dedicated to exploring it this year: the 12th Annual
International Language of Spirit Conference happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico August 15th through the 17th. Discover what linguists, physicists and indigenous scholars have to say about time travel. I am honored to be part of this year's dialogue, and will be giving a talk there on Listening to Future Selves, Reviewing Our Pasts. I look forward to seeing you there!

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary
of this ezine on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as other video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. Thanks so very much for being you, and for remembering to ask in every situation, "How good it can get?"



Love always,

Cynthia Sue Larson

email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com