in the best way possible.
Timothy Jennings4, in his book, The Seven Levels of Moral Development, explains how, for centuries humans have misunderstood the Divine as a God who makes demands, and takes offence when we disobey. He then responds with angry vengeance to execute the disobedient to satisfy his outrage (Old Testament); until Jesus steps between God and man to become humanity’s substitute. Thus, instead of killing man, God kills his Son in our place and is now satisfied that his honour and justice are preserved (New Testament). The concept of an angry vengeful God leads to an understanding of how many have thrown God out with the bathwater of religion. I prefer to understand the Divine as the role-model of unconditional love, who when the chips were down, and the planet was about to be lost to evil; Christ stepped in, taking human form yet as part of the Divine demonstrated that love. Knowing it would lead to his death; this is what moves me with awe and grace to accept that I can consciously participate in this unconditional universal loving.
My profession also seemed challenged by this new understanding of Physics and Energy, where healing is as much a creative art as a science. Newtonian physics added to the Cartesian understanding by influencing our world view with specific laws of separateness; he described a material world in which individual particles of matter followed specific laws of motion through space and time – the universe as machine. As Lynne McTaggert3 suggests - with a few deft moves, Newton and Descartes plucked God and life from the world of matter, and us and our consciousness from the centre of our world. Our self-image grew even bleaker in her assessment, with the work of Charles Darwin whose theory of evolution – tweaked slightly now by the neo-Darwinists, is that of a life that is random, predatory, purposeless and solitary. Be the best or don’t survive! You are no more than an evolutionary accident. The variations of the biological heritage of our ancestors are stripped down to one central facet, that of survival. As in our current business, education and justice systems; the essence of your humanity is a genetic terrorist, efficiently disposing of weaker links. Life is not about sharing and interdependence. Life is about winning, getting there first. And if you do manage to survive, you are on your own at the top of the evolutionary tree.
These paradigms – the world as a machine, man as a survival machine; have led to some technological mastery of the universe, but little real knowledge of any central importance to us. On a spiritual and metaphysical level, they have led to the most desperate and brutal sense of isolation.
Adding to this isolation, according to Charles Eisenstein5, is separation from each other and nature, which is evidenced in every aspect of our civilisation. It is not sustainable and generates a crisis that, if we choose, will move us into a new era; hopefully one of Reunion.
The mechanistic view of human existence has got us no closer to understanding the most fundamental mysteries of our being: how we think; how life begins; why we get ill; how a single cell turns into a fully formed person, and even what happens to human consciousness when we die. Religion seems to offer for many of us a community of purpose, a refuge from what we see as the harsh and nihilistic fact of our existence, but, through a view of the world that contradicts the view espoused by science. In seeking a spiritual life, like many others, I have had to confront these opposing world views and attempt to reconcile the two.
I have wrestled long and hard to make practical sense of this dichotomy for myself. As well as in my search for meaning, fulfilment and possible ways to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for ex-combatants, I completed courses in Non-Violent Communication; Matrix Re-imprinting; Be Free (a health-promoting lifestyle) and Quantum Energy Coaching. Each brought more light and energy to my thinking and experience. One of the most challenging aspects has been to reconcile my work with the Lyndi Fourie Foundation and my husband’s view that I am playing God and trying to fix the world. Time and again he asked me to give up the Foundation and stop meeting with our daughter’s killers and return to a ‘normal’ life. In response I have asked for the understanding that I need to ‘follow my heart’, explaining I cannot be hedged into life before ‘my awareness’ of the possible cause and effect, or meaning of Lyndi’s death.
So, what does ‘follow your heart’ mean?
As the conviction dawned that my belief in God and Quantum Physics were not mutually exclusive; as I explored and verified to my satisfaction the principles of each, I was able to marry them into a meaningful whole which I will try to document, particularly for my grandchildren’s sake. The father of Quantum Physics, Max Planck6, shocked the scientific world in 1944, a year before I was born, by saying,
“There is a Matrix of energy that provides the blueprint for our physical world”. He named it the Universal Energy field or Divine Matrix. In this place of pure energy, everything begins, from the birth of stars and DNA to our most profound relationships - peace between nations to personal healing.
In contrast, is Stephen Hawkings’7 ‘big bang theory’. Hawkings’ opinion about God is purely scientific,
“Since the laws of physics can explain the creation of the universe, there is no need to have a Supreme Being to create it. We do not need a God who is outside space-time and whom Himself was created from nothing, to create the universe. God is superfluous.”
Maybe the Creator is the Master of Physics? I found I had to choose one or the other of these great physicists; I could not hold both views at once. Much like Albert Einstein8 and Niels Bohr who could not agree on the theory of ‘reality’. Yet Einstein was able to say to Bohr,
“…not often in life has a human being caused me such joy by his mere presence as you did”.
I accept that there are different paradigms in science and spirituality and it is my choice as to which makes sense from my experience and knowledge base. A reminder of six blind men feeling different parts of an elephant and disagreeing on how it appears as a whole!
Gregg Bradon9 maintains that this Universal energy field plays the role of container and mirror for our beliefs, it is holographic; every part intrinsically connected to every other part,
“Ultimately, our survival as a species may be directly linked to our understanding of the unified quantum field!” He understands that by observing, we change reality and become participants in our universe; the artists as well as the art. Also, the cell biologist Bruce Lipton10 discovered that each cell has an antenna-like projection which picks up the surrounding environmental energy and transmits it to receptors in the cell which communicate with the rest of the body. In this way our energy field and human physiology are interconnected.
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The Heart Math Institute in California11 in exploring energy fields of separate organs has confirmed that the heart (fourth Chakra1) has the most significant energy field of all our organs, in fact it is measurable in metres and may extend out to infinity. The human brain has an energy field of half a metre! So, following my heart is putting trust in the connection between my heart and mind (seventh Chakra is the connection with the Divine), my energy field and the Universal Energy field (Zero-point field, also known as the Divine Matrix / God). I believe that the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit being our guide and mentor is through inviting Holy Spirit or Great Spirit (Indigenous peoples’ understanding of the divine) to influence our sixth chakra which is intuition. Great Spirit needs an invitation, to honour our power of choice and avoid even a smattering of the use of force or coercion. Our freedom of choice is a fundamental value in unconditional love. This inviting may be the role of prayer and meditation in that connection.
The words ‘omniscient’, ‘omnipresent’
