Paradigm Shifts

You tend to remember the day your world-view changes dramatically enough to call it a paradigm shift. It happened to me on January 9, 1999 while taking a polarity-reflexology class at SWIHA (Southwest Institute for Healing Arts). I was completing my massage therapist training and this class fit my schedule. I did not expect it to profoundly shape my thinking.

I was more interested in the “reflexology” portion of the class as that had (as I considered it then), more of a basis in science and anatomy than the energetic field of “polarity.” The short version is I experienced the flow of energy of a client through my hands twice. The first time was almost electric with a surge of heat shooting up into my left hand, through my body and down out my right hand. The second was a similar but more controlled feeling of jolts at my fingertips.

At first I searched for all the “logical” explanations; I was feeling the client’s pulse, the room temperature suddenly increased, I was feeling my pulse, the client’s muscles were twitching and in spasm in perfect rhythm, I was imagining the entire thing.

I tried… I mean I really tried to find an “explanation” that fit into my worldview. And I found that I could not.

Paradigm shifts work that way. They are big. They are uncomfortable. They are confusing and even a little scary.

I spoke to the owner of the school, KC Miller, who happened to be teaching the class. I still remember saying, “I thought energy was supposed to be subtle…” And her response, “For you, George, subtle wouldn’t work. The universe had something else in mind…” I wound up leaving the class early and sitting in a park contemplating what had just happened. Like I said, when your entire world-view changes, there is some adjustment time required for it to sink in.

Earlier today, I had a client experience a paradigm shift of her own. We had completed, or so we thought, the work we needed to do. Her outlook had dramatically improved and she was experiencing what we had defined as her goals for the work. All was well until she had a very disturbing experience while doing some meditation.

She had an image of being pulled into an old memory and was filled with terror — not fear – terror. She also felt pain and had a sensation of death. Not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. My response to that was that this was perfect. Her unconscious mind clearly wants her to resolve something that we did not get. It would only present it if she was now ready to handle it and learn from it. So we set an appointment to deal with this object of terror in her mind.

Now, as a matter of important information, this is a client who does not (or at least thought she did not) believe in the eternity of the soul, “spirit”, past lives, etc. She was and is a scientist. She looks for evidence and proof. And this is where it gets fun.

Often times people who are “scientifically minded” (and I am, so I speak with confidence here), are looking for proof. “If it can’t be measured, it can not exist” is the common thread of rationality that defines reality.

There are several problems with this line of thinking. First, science may not have caught up to reality yet. In other words it is possible and likely that there are many things we do not know about simply because we have not yet developed the technology for discovery. The easy argument here is quantum physics. We recently discovered this field – yet it existed long before the discovery did it not? It must have since physicists use the quantum field to explain the Big Bang!

Think about the radiation from the sun. Ever since there has been a sun and life on earth to absorb the sun’s rays, life has been bombarded with radiation. Yet science only discovered the wavelengths of the sun recently. Consider the plague that killed millions in Europe in the 15th century. A flea of a common rat transmitted the bacteria that caused the destruction. Too bad penicillin was several hundred years away in its discovery. So, just because science can not find it, measure it, and quantify it, does not mean it does not exist. The very argument is contrary to scientific discovery.

The other major hole in the thinking that if it can’t be measured scientifically it does not exist is this; that statement presupposes that science has reached its apex. The assumption is that all there is to be discovered has already been discovered and that we know all there is to know. Hogwash! New discoveries are being made daily in fields as abstract as quantum physics and as concrete as new species right here on planet Earth!

That thinking is absolutely contrary to the inquisitive mind of a scientist. Real science thrives on the question “what if?” does it not?

What if past lives are real? What if the spirit in you is eternal and has played this game many, many times? What if your world-view was about to shatter… would you be a little scared?

My client was scared. Reasonably so. Her experience was so real and so profound that it shook her to her very core. Even discussing it in the safety of my office brought on visible signs of discomfort and trepidation. When we started the Time Line Therapy(TM) for the intervention, her mind took her back to an event two life times ago. I want to point out – I did not guide her to past-life regression. That is not part of my work. Her mind took her back two lifetimes, I simply facilitated the trip. Most importantly, after the work, her problem disappeared.

Yes, she was scared. “If you are not scared you probably aren’t investing enough” is what I learned in my training. And she was confused. Confusion always precedes higher understanding. So she was in the perfect place to trust her mind to resolve her problem.

She is now curious. She is curious about past lives. She is curious about the “what if there is something to this?” And curiosity is what drives science and discovery. Properly handled, the fear, trepidation, confusion, and stubbornness of a paradigm shift leads to curiosity about what is on the other side of the boundary that previously defined thinking.

Did she really have an experience of a past life or did her mind symbolically code the trauma as a past life experience so she could more easily deal with it? Can we prove or disprove it one way or the other? Another interesting question here is this, if her mind created the past life version of a traumatic event; why did it choose to create an interpretation that is outside her world-view? Would it not be much more reasonable to assume her mind would more efficiently create some “fantasy” that may have occurred as a child? Why past life? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Have you had such a shift? Do you feel fear and react defensively with logic-based yet highly emotionally charged responses when your paradigm is questioned? Understand that the defense is simply a response of fear. More on this later – for now just consider how you respond when your paradigm is challenged.

And if you are not scared… you probably aren’t investing enough (in the change).

Now, go think for a change.