The Power of Love

Valentines Day is just a day away, so what better time than now to talk about the power of love? Research on people who have recently “fallen in love” show that the chemicals produced in their brains are similar to those nasty chemicals that drug users snort up their noses! Apparently, the same centers of the brain fire and produce dopamine levels that are in many ways similar to the high a cocaine user experiences. (They also discovered it’s similar to the thrill we get when eating chocolate.) Neurologists have also discovered that the portions of the brain associated with love are not the same portions of the brain that work on sexual feelings, or lust. However, they say, the two can become entangled, as increased dopamine levels produces more testosterone in both males and females. Romantic love is also more involved in the right hemisphere of the brain, while looking for visual attractiveness in a partner is geared more towards the left.

So is love strictly a mental thing coming from the recesses of the mind? Not at all. Love oftentimes affects other areas of the body, from stimulating the heart to producing butterflies in the gut. Additional studies indicate that falling in love is both a top-down and down-top process – that is, everything you are thinking and feeling while in love may be a combination of multiple processes going on at once, not just strictly located in the brain. A literal orchestra of thoughts, chemicals, and feelings are created throughout the body.

What an incredible spiritual event! From this scientific perspective, you might think it’s just a cavalcade of chemicals rushing out from the mind and body, but yet we must consider the impetus for such a reaction. In other words – why? Why would your body produce these chemicals while in the presence of one person – your true love – and not another?

Here’s where your soul comes in and reveals a bit of magic about our beings.

It is because you, the observer, connect with your partner in a way that is special and unique somewhere within the design and workings of your spirit. The recognition of this union defies time and space, and may even defy standard logic or reason, and is much broader than the normal “everyday” interactions with other “regular” people. It is this great well of romance that appears in the right brain, which doesn’t acknowledge linear time or space, isn’t concerned with logic or reason, and is much more aligned with abstract thinking, intuition, creativity, and inspiration. The right brain “feels” whereas the left “labels” and attempts to reduce reality into finite well-understood puzzle pieces.

Since we are spiritual first and physical second, when our souls encounter the source for our love, our energy fields vibrate, twinge, what-have-you. This energy then informs the physical body the types of chemicals to produce in order to have that feeling … the dopamine high. It is a wonderful, creative event!

Science would love to have us believe it is something so “simple” as chemicals, yet science doesn’t address the original impulse for their creation – you and your relationship with that special someone from a source outside the material mind and its blasting neurons.

Now, love studies have typically been done with people who are still in that “honeymoon phase” of the relationship. That is, they’ve only been together as a couple for about 5 to 7 months. Interestingly, after this time has passed is when a relationship moves into the next stage: attachment. And there’s been some scientific research in this area as well, having studied couples that have been together 20 to 30 years. Here’s that period when spiritual marriage occurs. Using the late Joseph Campbell’s view, marriage is the union of two spirits coming together to create a single unit. In other words, two whole people come together in spirit to create an identity that includes both of them, but is yet also a singular entity that has a force and power of its own as a result of the combination. What a beautiful thought! And believe it or not, we have some proof of this in the field of parapsychology.

For years, the PEAR group (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) did studies to see if people could affect the outcome of random number generators by mere intention alone. They discovered that the success of a bonded pair was four times greater in achieving positive results than a single individual. Four times! Does this mean love can move mountains? I don’t know about physically moving them, but certainly finding a way to traverse them!

Earlier, I mentioned that romantic love has its origins in the right hemisphere of the brain, that spot which isn’t concerned about time or space. This also helps to unlock some of love’s greatest mystical powers. My wife and I were born in different parts of the U.S., me here in Washington, and her in California. My family moved around quite a bit during my younger years; she went from California to Colorado. What are the odds the two of us in the course of our lives would move to the same geographical area, enter the bookstore where we met on that fateful night in October 2003 and then fall in love? We have so many things in common and were instantly at ease with each other that it is quite likely we also had many relationships in prior lives (if you believe in reincarnation). Some philosophers believe true love, or love at first sight, is a recognition of two departed souls reuniting once again. When you factor that possibility into the mix, you have expressed the right-brain’s reality in the reunion of the relationship: defying physical time and physical space.

Two souls from previous incarnations coming together is the realization of love defying the boundaries of time. Two souls coming together despite being born hundreds of miles apart (and in some cases thousands) and moving throughout the country and yet still finding each other defies space.

This kind of action and union cannot be defined by chemicals in the brain. It transcends that by degrees we can’t begin to calculate. It even suggests that those relationships which do not always last and end in tragedy may also have a hidden meaning behind them that is backed by some form of love; a love that is meant to teach a lesson through the nature of the experience, to help grow and learn through the trials of existence. Though the relationship may have ended in a bad way or with negative results, that two people were still able to overcome insurmountable odds to get together in the first place suggests a loving design behind the tragic end. Perhaps the tragedy is just a façade for something greater with love as the ultimate impetus for the heartbreak?

I know I couldn’t have found the love of my life without going through some intense pain from a previous relationship. Yet my previous relationship had its purpose in the relevance of my present joy. I needed that darkness in order to perceive the light when Heidi walked into my existence. It’s always darkest before the dawn, they say. However, when factoring in the odds against chance, the coincidences, the radical events that bring two people together, it does reveal that Love is the greatest force in the universe.

Love All,

Jeffrey

Dimensional Traveling, Part 2

Okay, so last week I took you into the first half of a very unusual meditation. Now, if you thought that was weird, this week you're going to wonder if I should be shipped off to the funny farm! Like I said in the previous blog, it was one of the wildest rides I've ever had in meditation, and it reminded me of stories from people who have had out of body experiences. It was incredibly vivid with lots of details ... And rather startling and certainly mind-expansive. I haven't had a meditation quite like it since! Enjoy!

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My consciousness suddenly expanded. Literally. It felt as though my whole Self was being stretched across the cosmos. And indeed, there was a sense of movement. You know this sense of movement just by moving your arm away from your body -- you can feel the air surround your limb and your hand stretching away from your center. Similar, too, was the sensation of myself being stretched. I could feel every electron of my Being extending across the universe. There was no space I did not occupy; there was no time in history where I was not present. I felt like the liquid filling a cup. Everything (and I literally mean everything) rushed through me, and I through it. All I had to do was make a minor shift in concentration to hone in to various portions of this vast universe. Again, there was this sense of motion, like being on the fastest rollercoaster every made, zipping through the cosmos. I could sense, and at times even see, brilliant dots of energy erupting all about me.

I decided to find out what they were. I simply concentrated on “what’s the dot.”

The dot immediately opened up and sucked me into it (or rather, I shot myself into it like a bullet). It was a doorway to another dimension. I found myself literally on a three dimensional plain, surrounded by other people, and foliage. I distinctly remember a woman with long brown hair staring at me as I came out from the vastness of space. It was as if that little electron, that little orb, contained the vastness of a whole universe and I had landed on one of its planets. What was so astounding was that the reality I had stepped into had even more permanence, more sense of three dimensions than even the garden that my guides and I travel to. It was as if I had opened my eyes right there in the chair (though I hadn’t) and discovered the vastness of the room gone and replaced with this new location. Standing there, only briefly in front of this woman, I could see and sense the distance between myself and her, between her and the trees behind her, between myself and the ground I was standing on, the other people, and the other trees. There was pure dimensionality. Pure reality. I was astounded.

Then I shot back out into space again, roaring through the cosmos. Again, I could feel myself going to all areas of this inner universe, touching all space and all time. That sense of movement unmistakable, spinning the energy of my consciousness in a turbine as I went warping through the darkness (though this darkness was always lit up by the sparkles of electrons). Feeling exhilarated from stepping into that other reality, I focused again on another portion of this inner universe. Instantly, another electron opened up and I was standing in yet another dimensional reality. This time I was in a stone building, accompanied by a couple other people; though I had the sense they were not aware of my presence there. I felt the “location” of this place as being completely foreign to me, as if I actually were somewhere completely across the universe billions of light-years away from earth – though I cannot say that this other reality exists in the physical outer universe, but rather is a reality that exists within the greater inner universe separate from our own universal dimension. Again, the perception of three dimensions, space between objects, and the energy of the occupants themselves, filled me. I knew I had stepped into yet another world.

I wondered if I could try it again.

Bling! I left the reality for only a brief second, again recognizing the vastness of the inner universe within my consciousness and traveling through it. It could only have been half a second, however. And then I was in another realm. Over 13 hours have passed since this meditation and I do not recall the nature of this other reality, only that I was there for a brief moment. But again, I could perceive its dimensions; I could feel its inhabitants and sense its vastness.

The overriding feeling in each one of these realities is what has stayed with me and enlightened me: Each place had its own sense of purpose, and its own nature of being. That is, each entity, whether it be the thinking “human” or the living plants, had their focus in that sphere of reality and dimension, completely oblivious or out-of-focus (and hence out-of-mind) from my own. These places were universes unto themselves. Distinct. Separate. Yet fully functioning and self-sustaining. Out in the inner universe, everything is vast, energetic; a huge gestalt of energy just waiting to be used. These realities had focused that energy to create a unique, distinctive universal framework for spiritual, consciousness experience. Each thing had a life there, like we do here, going through experiences, fleshing themselves out. But yet it was not here. It was not this universe that we exist in.

This is completely acceptable in the scientific world of quantum physics, as all electrons exist in all possible states – superposition and multiple probabilities. There has been speculation by scientists of the possibility of probable universes separate and distinct from our own, and even parallel worlds as a result of this quantum mystery. Indeed, there are, and I have visited at least three of them.

The other declaration from quantum physics is that once two electrons have come together, once they have been separated they can still communicate with one another over vast distances (even light-years). This, too, is the case with separate realities, for although I am not in those other realities right now, I can feel their “energetic signature” within my consciousness. As if I have been on vacation in a foreign country, sucked up the energy of that land and its people, and now it is within me and a part of me.

It is one thing to know that other realities exist (or even potentially exist), it is a much greater feeling of having experienced them. I now have experiential knowledge of other dimensions that are just as real as the one I am sitting in right now typing this report. It’s rather comforting. There are so many doorways for life to go through and experience itself. One can always imagine what it’s like; daydream if you will. It’s another to actually experience those realms, even if for only a few seconds. And that they’re similar to ours, with a sense of isolation, individuality, and yet designed for the purpose of living expression in some kind of form.

And being stretched across the inner universe going in all directions, there was also this distinct sensation of my own purpose -- as if my Being had a purpose for its existence in all space and time, connected to all things. I could sense myself being a stitch in the fabric of the universe that without me (and everyone else, too) the whole tapestry would fall apart. None of us may consciously know our purpose, or that we truly belong at such a fundamental level, but alas this is certainly the sensation and sense of belonging that one feels when being stretched across the universal tapestry. This wasn’t the first time I had been stretched like that, feeling like I was existing from one point in the universe to the other (in all points, actually), but it was the first time of going into other realities. Why? You might ask … At some point you do have to let go of your own identity. As you’re being stretched across the fabric of the universe, there is a natural sense of wonder if you are going to lose yourself – your identity. You wonder “Will I simply be smeared (and that’s the feeling – smeared) out of existence?” I took a chance last night that my consciousness, being a part of the universe, would remain intact. I discovered something amazing and startling.

Where will I go next? Not sure.

But I’m even more confident than when death finally licks at my heels, I will dive away from here in a giddy flight of blissful adventure into another realm.