“Magic’s just science that we don’t understand yet.” – Arthur C. Clarke
by Astara
As is the case with any bold essay on health, please remember — content in this blog and on our site is for informational or educational purposes only and does not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals.
Historically our world has been graced with the brave ones – scientists, artists, architects, engineers, environmentalists, and inventors – those that have been helping turn the tide of business as usual in multiple arenas and helping us embrace entirely new realities. I offer an invitation to expand your definition of science and reality. Welcome as many new ways of thinking about the world as you can muster; it is what the world needs most right now.
Science is a Process
Many of us treat science as if it is a noun, or even an adjective. We like it either fixed or descriptive. Science is a verb. Science is not fixed evidence; it is an ever-evolving process. The truth is that brave scientists swim in mystery every day. Discovery after discovery reveal insights that could topple our most treasured realities.
The scientific method is a process for experimentation. It is used to explore observations and answer questions. Do all scientists follow exactly this process? They do not. Some areas can be more easily tested than others. Scientists studying stars longevity or dinosaurs’ digestion cannot fast-forward a star’s life or run medical exams on dinosaurs to test hypotheses. When direct experimentation is not possible, scientists modify the scientific method.
There are as many versions of the scientific method as there are scientists. In all this, the goal remains the same: to discover cause and effect relationships by asking good questions, carefully gathering and examining the evidence, and seeing if all the available information can be combined into a logical answer.
Even though we think of the scientific method as a series of steps, new information or thinking might cause a scientist to back up and repeat steps at any point during the process. Such backing up and repeating is called an iterative process.
We learn, create, measure, relate, and live in an iterative process. We treat most science as fixed truth when it is not. We do our best to measure and create good outcomes that can help society heal and evolve, and we have made incredible leaps and bounds thanks to current science.
Our science is as smart as we are, or as evolved. The problem is that we forget the limitations of science. We measure at the level of our consciousness or the working state of our soul. What we measure and call truth can be quite limited and sometimes flat out wrong. It is time for us to get real about what science is and isn’t and to be open to the slippery nature of reality.
Build a New Model of Reality
We are in a time of immense and accelerated change. During such a global shift inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are knee deep in the discomfort and stress of so many unknowns all at once. We are all experiencing accelerated social and economic shifts across the planet in the course of only a few years.
During this virus outbreak, for better or worse, business as usual first halted in many ways. There are so many pivots that we are blossoming a new normal every day. Amidst such unprecedented, accelerated change, we have the opportunity to reveal gold amidst the rubble.
What better time than now to redefine our accepted definitions? What better time than now to envision a new world for your greater good? When so many are forced to pivot their livelihoods, it helps shake up the old patterns and has the potential to unstick any stuckness.
Borrowing Buckminster Fuller’s wisdom, we cannot change things by fighting the existing reality. We build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
To build a new model, we must first wake up to two big ideas:
- The reality we see is not the only reality available to us. To create the new world we want, we must hang out long enough in the dreaded unknown to shed our fear and see more possibilities.
- Be willing to see an ally inside any difficulty, including this virus. Be open to the bigger picture. This is how we expand our narrow definitions of reality. Become friends with the unknown.
Internal Support for Innovation
Seeing the illusion of our current reality is necessary for us to be creative enough to build a new model of reality. Yet, given the barrage of fearful news reports and theories, tapping into innovation right now may be easier said than done. To successfully build a new reality we need internal support for innovation. If we are in a state of deep stress and overwhelm, innovation is impossible.
Our advice?
- Compassionately assess the state you are currently in.
- Down-regulate any stress response state.
- Reconnect to the world.
When we create out of a state of fear, we create more fear. Return to a state of calm and coherence and create from there. Our awareness expands and we are available to see so much more.
“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” – Albert Szent-Györgyi
Science Stretch Marks
We are in an exciting era where well-loved traditions and institutions are being challenged and re-imagined, from medicine to science, to religion, to psychology, to agriculture, to architecture, to education, to government, to justice systems, and even to entertainment.
Systemic intolerance is no stranger to many of us, as George Bernard Shaw famously wrote in his play Annajanska (1919), “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
When a scientist is bold enough to share a new discovery that puts mainstream science in question, it is often met with ridicule or outright rejection by the scientific community. This is because it challenges the status quo, including careers and livelihoods that are built out of the former science. There is a well-known phrase that science progresses funeral by funeral.
History is filled with those courageous enough to follow their dreams, listen to their intuitive knowing before the culture agreed, and then share the breakthrough. Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Gregor Mendel, and the list goes on. In the last decade, TED banned a talk Rupert Sheldrake gave called The Science Delusion which reflects scientific resistance in contemporary society.
Arthur Schopenhauer understood that an innovative idea ‘must endure a hostile reception before it is accepted’ in the scientific community. He said, “First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” It seems that no one institution is exempt from this issue, because the human condition itself is woven with prejudice, bias, and frailty.
Even now, many of the assumptions you and I have about science and reality are wrong. There was a time when we thought reality dictated that the Earth is flat, and that the sun moves around the earth. Now we know the opposite is true. The physicist Carlo Rovelli dedicated his life to exploring time; he discovered time does not exist as we know it. We swim in mystery every day, and yet we do not realize it.
Reality is a Joint Venture
You and I live in a quantum holofractographic universe. As a hologram inside a hologram, I am just a small reflection of the whole. From this vantage point I am the whole world. And so are you.
A fancy to say it: we are an integral part of a self-organizing framework that is fractally and holographically present throughout the universe, with similar patterns and geometries found at all scales.
A simpler way to say it: we are all connected and everything we do sends ripples out into the world and beyond.
Each individual reality exists at the same time. There is room for us all in our differing vantage points and perceptions. Diversity is a given; it’s nature’s rule. It may take us lifetimes, but we are all here to learn how to meet diversity with compassion.
When I say that I have the power to influence the world, I do. And so do you.
