To get a feel for the spatial relationship between the nucleus and the electron, imagine a basketball sitting in the middle of a football stadium. Now imagine an object the size of a golf ball orbiting the basketball at several thousand miles per hour and describing a circle with a diameter as large as the stadium. This gives us a rough picture of the kind of size difference we are talking about between an electron and a nucleus, and the immense space between them.
From this, we can say that an atom is composed of somewhere around 99.99 percent space. Since matter is composed entirely of atoms, matter must be composed of 99.99 percent space. Thus, the aforementioned metal beam is 99.99 percent space. You are 99.99 percent space as well.
The beam looks dense for the same reason that an electric fan when running looks solid. When such a fan is not rotating you can see the spaces between the blades, and you can put your hand through those spaces. When the blades spin very fast, you can no longer see the spaces. And if you try to put your hand between the blades, they will feel like an impenetrable wall. Like a fan’s blades, any piece of physical material is made up of a mass of electrons spinning so fast that they appear solid to our senses.
If the electrons in the beam holding up the building were to stop spinning, the beam would disappear in an instant. If all the other electrons around it stopped spinning too, we could imagine the whole building disappearing. No debris would be left, no dust, nothing. To a viewer, it would appear that the building had simply evaporated.
Matter is simply vibration—nothing more, nothing less. Our senses are tuned to these vibrations, and our minds convert them into matter. Sounds weird, but it’s true.
Assumption: We have subtle bodies as well as physical bodies. The physical body vibrates at the frequency of matter (the World of Humanity), while the highest two of the five subtle bodies vibrate closer to the frequency of the soul (the World of Divine Truth).
Besides the flesh and bone of our physical bodies, we consist of other energy patterns we cannot see or measure. These are called our subtle bodies or subtle fields. They vibrate at frequencies an octave or two higher than those bodies condensed as matter and are beyond the range of our senses and most detection instrumentation. These are:
The Etheric Body
The etheric body carries the energetic template of the body. It ensures the continuation of the patterns, harmonies, and disharmonies within the body while the body constantly renews itself. Your body is not the same as it was a year ago, for not one cell exists in your body that is more than one year old.
The etheric body interacts with your genetic code and holds the memory of who you are, the shape of your nose, your height, what prejudices you hold, what you like to eat, your strengths, your weakness, your illness patterns, and so on.
The Emotional Body
The emotional body vibrates one octave above the etheric field. Also known as the astral body, it suffuses the etheric field and the bioenergetic fields of the physical body and manifests in the body as feelings.
An emotion constitutes a thought attached to a feeling that usually results in a physical response or action. When energy flows freely from the emotional field through the etheric field and the physical body, everything works together beautifully.
When we restrict our emotional energy through suppression or repression, we create energy blocks in both our etheric and emotional fields as well as in our physical body.
The perceptual shift required for forgiveness cannot happen while anger and resentment are maintained in the emotional body. Any energy stuck in the emotional body must be cleared first.
The Mental Body
This field governs our intellectual functioning and is responsible for memory, rational thinking, concrete thought, and so on. Of course, there are scientists who still maintain that thinking and other mental processing can be explained in terms of brain biochemistry. Suffice it to say that the scientists who follow the logic of quantum physics believe that the mind goes beyond the brain, beyond even the body. They believe that brain and mind interact holographically and that each cell contains a blueprint of the whole. Many researchers believe that memory resides in holographic form in an energetic field that exists beyond the body.
Proof of this is continually showing up as a byproduct of organ replacement surgery. One celebrated story concerns a person who received a liver transplant. Some months after the operation, he began having a recurring dream that did not make sense to him. After some investigation, he discovered that the person who had donated the liver had dreamed the same dream for many years. The memory of that dream was apparently embedded in the cellular structure of the liver.
The Causal Body or Intuitional Field
At the next octave up lies the body we might call our soul, our Higher Self, or our connection to the World of Divine Truth. Also called the causal body, this one provides our bridge to the spiritual realm. Whereas the mental field deals with ideas and thought forms at the concrete level, this field deals with them at the conceptual, abstract, iconic, and symbolic level. It deals with essence, intuition, and “direct knowing.” The causal body extends beyond the individual and penetrates the collective mind—or what Jung called the collective unconscious, a single mind to which we all individually connect and have access.
The idea of subtle bodies rising in harmonics is by no means new; it has been included in many great spiritual traditions throughout the whole world, especially those of the East.
Assumption: Universal energy as life force and consciousness is brought into our body via the chakra system. The first three chakras are aligned with the World of Humanity while the fourth through eighth align more closely with the World of Divine Truth.
In addition to the ocean of energy containing our differently vibrating subtle bodies, we human beings possess a system of energy centers that align vertically in our bodies. These are known as chakras—“wheel” in Sanskrit, because they are like vortices of spinning energy.
The chakras act like transformers. They take the energy or life force (prana, chi, Christ energy) that comes to us from the universe and step it down to frequencies that can be used by the biomolecular and cellular processes of the physical body. The chakras also represent the locations where each of the subtle bodies link to the physical body, thus bringing different levels of consciousness into our being. They process our daily experiences, thoughts, and feelings while also carrying long-term data relating to personal and tribal history, long-established thought patterns, and archetypes. (FIGURE 13)
FIGURE 13: The Human Chakra System
The first three chakras possess levels of consciousness vibrating at the lower frequencies of the existential chain and rooted in the World of Humanity. They carry the energy of the victim archetype. Traditional forgiveness is the only type of forgiveness possible with the consciousness of the first three chakras. The consciousness that comes through the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth chakras is more likely to align with energies from the World of Divine Truth, while the fourth, the heart chakra, provides the link between the World of Humanity and the World of Divine Truth.
In addition, each chakra is associated with an endocrine gland and corresponds to a particular nerve nexus in the same area. Each also has a color and sound associated with it, and each nourishes a particular part of the body. Chakras also serve as information databanks and processors associated with the parts of the body to which they are attached and the functions they serve.
• The first (root) chakra carries data relating to being grounded to Mother Earth and issues of basic trust, security, and the will to live. This chakra runs on tribal/social consciousness.
• The second (sacral) chakra carries data relating to creativity, sexual energy, money, and guilt. This chakra, like the first, runs on tribal/social consciousness.
• The third (solar plexus) chakra carries data relating to power and control, social and familial relationships, betrayal, and anger. This chakra is also directed by tribal/
social consciousness.
• The fourth (heart) chakra carries data about matters of the heart, relationships, love, nurturing, and compassion. This is the first chakra to energize individuality and self-determination independent of social group consciousness.
• The fifth (throat) chakra carries data about things expressed or withheld in matters of personal power, individual will, and creative expression. It is directed by individual as opposed to group consciousness.
• The sixth (third eye) chakra carries data relative to intuitive knowledge, clairvoyance, and the will to know the truth. In this case, truth refers to knowing not defined by group consciousness, but directly from individual experience of cosmic consciousness.
• The seventh (crown) chakra carries data about spiritual awareness and connection to Source.
• The eighth chakra, which lies above the head, represents our contract or agreement for incarnation and contains our life’s mission.
Though central to Eastern medical traditions, the chakra system gets zero attention from Western medical science, and there generally exists very little recognition in the West of its central importance to our health, spiritual well-being, and vibratory rate.
In truth, the chakras are crucial. When these energy centers become out of balance—as they do when we become emotionally upset or traumatized, for instance—they reverse rotation, become very erratic, and in some cases close down almost entirely. Anger, resentment, and hurt will tend to close the heart and throat chakras, guilt and lack of trust will weaken the sacral chakra, and so on. The effects of such energy imbalances will be felt as lethargy, a general malaise, low sex drive, inability to speak our truth, and a whole host of symptoms for which a medical cause cannot be found. If the chakras remain out of balance for a long time, it is inevitable that an effect will indeed, sooner or later, manifest as disease in the physical body. As we noted with the subtle bodies, disease almost always begins in the energy fields—which include the chakras—and moves into the physical body, appearing finally as physical breakdown.
Fortunately, chakras can be restored to balance quite easily. There are practitioners who are sensitive enough to feel the energy of each chakra and have techniques for rebalancing them. Most forms of energy medicine such as acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, and many others act directly on the chakras and bring them into balance.[4]
part four
Tools for Radical Forgiveness
16
A Spiritual Technology
In writing the first edition of this book, I had two objectives in mind. First, I wanted to explain the concept of Radical Forgiveness as simply as I could in order to make it accessible to as many people as possible. Second, I wanted to make it as practical as I could so that people could use it in their everyday lives. That meant including tools that were not only effective but quick and easy to use.
As I write this edition, I confess that the extent to which the tools in this book have proven effective more than surprises me. I find myself in awe of how extraordinarily powerful they have proven to be in helping people heal their lives.
I have also come to realize that they work in a way not dissimilar to how homeopathic remedies work. That is to say they work holo-energetically (using the energy of the whole).
In a holographic universe, each minute part of the universe is not only connected energetically to the whole, but contains the whole. Therefore, from an energetic standpoint, you cannot change one part without affecting the whole.
Homeopathy uses this principle by making remedies that affect the energy system of the organism in exactly this way. The tiniest part of an active ingredient is put into water and is then diluted many thousands of times to the point where there is no physical trace of the substance left. What does remain, however, is the energetic imprint of the substance, and therein lies the power to heal. When the person takes the remedy, the subtle body registers the imprint and becomes stimulated to move energy in whatever way it needs to in order to heal at all levels.
The same thing happens with these Radical Forgiveness tools. Just as someone might look at the homeopathic remedy and, seeing only water, find great difficulty in imagining that it has the power to heal, so might someone looking at a forgiveness worksheet, for example, be thoroughly skeptical about its ability to change her life.
Yet it works. Thousands of people have used the Radical Forgiveness worksheet (see section entitled “The Radical Forgiveness Worksheet”) or listened to the Radical Forgiveness CD (see section entitled “TELLING THE STORY”) or walked the circle in the Radical Forgiveness ceremony (see Further Resources section) and experienced miracles in their lives.
These tools work because each of them is simply the delivery system for the secret ingredient: the energetic imprint of Radical Forgiveness, i.e., the willingness to be open to the idea that there is nothing to forgive.
The process is very subtle. Mind control or making things happen at the gross level through affirmations, visualization techniques, or hypnosis has little relevance to Radical Forgiveness. It does not require a high level of belief or faith, nor do you need to be in a meditative or altered state. All you must do is use a simple tool that asks little of you in the way of intelligence, discipline, or skill. It asks only that you express a tiny amount of willingness—that’s all. In this edition of the book, I have even simplified the worksheet so that in some places you only have to check boxes in answer to a few questions. It still works.
Since forgiveness is always a “fake it ‘til you make it” proposition, we are indeed fortunate that it needs only that small amount. If you had to wait until you had 100 percent willingness to believe that the situation was perfect, you would never begin the process.
The following story is an example of how this transformation can occur in an instant using one of the Radical Forgiveness tools—interestingly enough, the quickest and simplest of them all: the 13 Steps to Radical Forgiveness.
DEBI AND THE 13 STEPS
Debi was a studio singer, which means she sang jingles, commercials, radio IDs, and things like that. She was considered to be among the best in the business. In 1999, she came to study with me to become a Radical Forgiveness coach.
At one point during the training, I wanted to teach her how to facilitate the 13 Steps to Radical Forgiveness. It takes no more than seven minutes and involves responding in the affirmative to thirteen very simple questions.
The thirteen questions all relate to our willingness (the secret ingredient) to see the perfection in the situation whether we understand it or not. The answer to each question is yes.
I asked Debi if she had a situation to work with for this process. She thought for a while and then said: “Yes, here’s something I’ve been upset about for a while. I’d almost forgotten. About thirteen years ago, I was in a studio and in came a guy whom I knew reasonably well but was not real close to. We chatted for a while, and eventually he came out with what was really on his mind. He said, ‘Debi, I have this great product that’s just perfect to market on the radio, and I need you to do an ad for me. The problem is, I don’t have money right now, but will you do it as a big favor to me?’
“Well, I finally gave in and agreed to do for seventy-five dollars what I normally charge a lot of money for. I did the ad, and what do you know, it made him a multimillionaire overnight.
“Some time later, when I ran into him, I suggested he might want to send just a little bit of that my way in appreciation of what I had done for him. His response was, ‘Debi, we’re not in the business of giving money away!’”
This was perfect. She was obviously into her feelings about it—even after thirteen years! This was understandable given the fact that every time she had turned the radio on over the last thirteen years, there was that ad. As you might imagine, it had all the ingredients of a victim story—betrayal, insult, manipulation, withholding, ingratitude, and so on.
So I immediately proceeded to take her through the process. It took
no more than the seven minutes, and as always after doing a process like that, we went on to something else without any further discussion. (Talking about it would destroy the energy field created in the process.)
She went out that evening and returned to her hotel at around 11p.m. She called me at 11:05 in a state of great excitement. She had checked her voicemail messages, and one was from the studio producer who had helped her do that very ad.
The message went like this: “Debi, that commercial you recorded for Mr. X has come up again, and it needs to be re-recorded. But the copyright has expired, so you would earn all the royalties on it this time. Are you interested?”
Well, as you might imagine, I started jumping up and down yelling, “Hey, this stuff really works!” Then Debi said, “But there’s more. When we did the 13 Steps, I happened to glance at the clock on the wall, and for some reason I registered the time quite clearly in my mind. It was 3:01p.m. That message came in at 3:02! One minute later—and I hadn’t spoken with him for months!”
Debi’s victim story about how she was used, cheated, dishonored, insulted, and rejected had kept the energy stuck for thirteen years. It was not until she was invited to express a minute amount of willingness to see that she had created that story out of her own perception of the situation—and, during the 13 Steps process, reframed it in a way that reflected spiritual truth—that the energy field collapsed. At no point did we “work” on her story. That would only have given it more power and reinforced it. Instead we used the holo-energetic technology of Radical Forgiveness to transform the energy.
Radical Forgiveness Page 13