Elle Dailies

Elle’s Epiphany

I was riding the bus on my way to work this morning and listening to my iPod.  On it I have various recordings; all types of music as well as some personal development CDs.  One of the personal development CD’s is a recording by Bob Proctor called “The Secret Science of Getting Rich”.  The wonderful thing about this CD is that it’s not only about getting rich, it’s really about increasing life in general.

This particular subject was about “The Law of Cause and Effect”.  This law states that for every cause, there is an effect and for every effect there is a cause.  All of a sudden, after hearing that, I tuned out and started thinking.

I thought, nothing happens without a cause and this is why we’ve created stories.  Stories are all about the reasons why things happen.  We are always looking for meaning.  How many times has something happened to you and you said to yourself or to a friend: “What does it mean?”

The reason why we look for meaning is so we can either stop something from happening again in the future or to cause it to happen again in the future.  Some people might say that it’s also because we want to understand why something happened because we want to fix it.  But then I would say, if you want to fix it, it’s because you don’t want it to happen again, right?

So basically, we are meaning making machines.  Although in simpler times, when we weren’t so advanced, the meaning would have been extremely useful so that we wouldn’t eat berries that would make us sick and so on.  However, nowadays, with our advanced and complicated modern lives, meaning can get quite complex.  Not only can the meaning get quite complex, but we can also get the meaning wrong.  Let me give you a very concrete and scientifically proven example that goes against our senses.

Quite a few years ago, in my scientific and scholastic days, I was taking a science course in which we were learning about fluid mechanics; how fluids flow and behave in the world.  The interesting thing is that fluid mechanics explains why planes fly.

Now contrary to my intuition, and I suspect most everyone else intuition, planes don’t fly because the air pushes the planes up when it goes at a certain speed.  In fact the way the wings of an airplane are made is that there is a curb on the top of the wing which causes the air to flow faster over the wing than it does under the wing.  And because the air flows faster over the wing, it causes suction.  Now, without going through the details of fluid mechanics, a plane flies because it is sucked up not because it is pushed up.  It is a scientifically proven fact and even though my intuition still says that it is pushed up by the air, the fact remains the same that it is sucked up.

So the reason I brought up this scientific fact, is that although you may believe something to be true as a cause to a certain effect, you may be wrong.  In fact, most people are wrong.

Now, this is where I had my epiphany.  There is a story in the bible where the apostle Thomas doubted the resurrection of Jesus and demanded to feel Jesus’ wounds before being convinced.  Although he came to see and believe, Jesus’ preference was for faith over skepticism.  He said “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”.

I am not bringing this story up to be religious, only because of the importance of believing over seeing.

First believe and then you will see.

There is this great story that I heard once about Walt Disney.  During the opening of the Epcot center, at which time Walt Disney had already passed away, a woman approached Walt’s brother and said: “It’s too bad Walt wasn’t here to see this.”  To which his brother replied: “He saw it first, that’s why you’re seeing it now.”

The reason I bring up both stories of Walt and of Thomas is that I’d like to propose a new way of approaching life.  Instead of letting things happen (cause and effect) and then finding meaning (creating a story or a belief) I propose that we create in our minds (create a belief), as Jesus prescribes and as Walt did, in order to make things happen.  Even quantum physics proves this to be true.

Peace and love,
Elle