Systems Theory and Energy

(the instructor didn't know our names so we had to create nametags)

Last week for my Interdisciplinary class we had a guest instructor. If you remember this is the class I told you about that uses the quantum physics textbook. Anyway, this instructor basically taught us about energy and how everyone and everything, including the earth, emits a certain energy wave that other living things pick up on.

She explained how, for example, if scientists all over the world are working to crack open some super hard code in health science, and finally somone in Japan figures it out then immediately someone in America will find a similar solution. The proposal is that the Japanese scientists emitted that energy out into the universe and the American scientists were open to it and picked up on it.

I suggested that this sounds something like the premise of Malcolm Gladwell's (one of my favorite authors! You have to read his books. all non-fiction) book, Blink. In this book, Gladwell discusses how mental processes work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information. It considers both the strengths of the adaptive unconscious, for example in expert judgement and its pitfalls such as stereotypes. (source: Wikipedia) In a nutshell, why is that when we meet someone we just don't like them. We can't explain what it is about them but we know that something is not right and they are not a good person. Or, how we just know a certain situation is just not right, we can't explain it but we know something about it is not right.

Our guest instructor proposed that what Gladwell is actually talking about is the energy that people emit. Of course, Gladwell didn't use those words or even suggest such a thing but that was her interpretation.

Finally, we performed an 'energy exercise' where we wrote down something we want in the next 6 months. We then had to write down 5 things we would experience from that want; she was careful to explain that it had to be experiences not emotions. For example, I chose that I wanted to go to Chile. My experiences were something like see occupational therapy there from my classmate's old job, relax and read on the beach, see the natural sights, and some other stuff I don't remember. But I could not say because it will make me feel good because that is an emotion.

We were then instructed to sit quietly with feet flat on the floor and close our eyes. We performed some deep breathing exercises. We then had to imagine a large pink bubble coming closer to us. The bubble had a door, in which we opened and placed our want. Then we shut the door and sent the bubble off. The instructor's instructions were 'don't think about it, just let it go. It will happen. '

The class was incredibly interesting, even though I disagreed with a lot of what she said. Even still, I'm interested in hearing more about it.