A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
—Albert Einstein
If we accept the view that heaven is not a place but a state of consciousness, we can place our emphasis on realization—expanding our consciousness—instead of the pursuit of heaven. By doing the inner work and learning how to express the six heart virtues into our life to the benefit of all, we find our sense of interconnection with one another growing, and we discern the wholeness and unity in what formerly appeared to be separateness and isolation.
The habit of looking outward through the eyes of separation is changed through the application of the when-which-how practice because its signature strength is aligning the individual with a sense of service to humanity—not because humanity is broken or suffering in misery—but because it kindles the natural perception we have of our intrinsic interconnection with one another that we feel within our hearts.
One of the perennial truths that psychologists have uncovered is that the best determiner of happiness is the degree to which a person has meaningful relationships. Relationships that are truly meaningful have a foundation of emotional maturity that imbues genuineness to the relationship, by means of assisting others to flow through the density of everyday encounters with greater ease and understanding. This goes beyond trust. You can trust someone who is honest, but it doesn’t necessarily signify that the relationship is meaningful and authentic in service to a greater good.
There is a story in chaos theory that infinitesimally small actions can eventually cause major changes (i.e., the flutter of butterfly wings ultimately causing hurricanes on the other side of the globe). This story is a good metaphor for the intelligent communication that occurs from the smallest particles of existence spanning out to galactic scales. There is a vast interconnection, not only between humans, but between all particles of existence. And this interconnection is intelligent, communicative, and part of a Designing Force that we all exist within.
Emotional Coherence
Music is coherent sound, where rhythm, melody, tempo, and harmony unite to produce its coherence; without these imposing forces, we live in a random sound field of noises. Similarly, the six heart virtues take the emotional energy we are all imbued with and impose coherence, and in this coherence our emotional energy is transformed from a “noisy radiation” into a healing, directed and transformative force.
Imagine you are at the ocean and you’re watching a beautiful sunset. The light radiates in striking colors of pink, orange and red, glistening off of the turquoise water. The air itself seems to hold this radiating color field in some suspended, slow-motion dance. Now, from a scientific perspective, the light is incoherent. Despite its spectacular colors, the light photons are unaligned, fanning out in every imaginable direction.
For the sake of contrast, let’s imagine this same light were somehow made coherent like a laser beam of light, so that all of the light particles or photons were traveling in the same direction on the identical wavelength. The light is now transformed into a new functionality, one that can now be used for surgical applications or measuring the distance between the earth and moon with never-before-imagined accuracy—to name just two examples.
These different aspects of light are good metaphors to understand as they apply to emotions. Emotions, when incoherent, radiate in all directions as energy, creating an impression within the space or field of our senses. Sometimes this impression is beautiful like a shimmering sunset when the emotions are soft and light, and sometimes it is more akin to a furious storm when there is anger or depression. If our emotional energy can be aligned in coherence it can be transformed to a higher functionality like the laser, and its range goes well beyond the range of our senses, it can truly touch the outer edges of our world or delve deeply into the inner realms of soul.
The keystone of the when-which-how practice is coherence, the reason being that the expression of the six heart virtues builds coherence and the attendant ability to radiate your emotional energy to selected targets anywhere, and to any time. This is the outreach of soul—to heart to mind to heart to outflow—and in this cycle, the emotional energy becomes the connective ingredient that integrates the individual with the community of humankind, and even more generally, to all life forms.
There is growing awareness that humans are part of a vast ecology of energy that includes the sun and planets within our solar system, and perhaps even beyond. Our sun generates space weather that interacts with earth’s geomagnetic field and creates profound influences to our weather, mood, chemical balance, and even the fine-tuned senses of our intuition and psychic abilities. It is not a leap to say that the sun—ninety-three million miles away—influences our primary centers of the heart and brain in surprisingly vibrant ways.
Collective Human Energetic Field
The research of Halberg, Persinger, Braud, and dozens of others have shown that the sun’s geomagnetic field affects earth’s geomagnetic field which affects our personal electromagnetic field, including our critical heart and brain rhythms. In the near future, this will be shown to be a two-way street. That is to say, humans, on a collective level—energetically through their emotional radiation—can influence Earth and our broader solar system.
I will cite one example as evidence of this interaction. NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), in order to study and prepare for major weather anomalies like hurricanes, has several geosynchronous satellites that monitor a variety of weather influences, including geomagnetic fluctuations of the earth. Two of their Geosynchronous Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES 8 and 10), orbiting geosynchronously, produced in 2001 a provocative view into how collective human energetics can influence the earth’s geomagnetic field.
As the graph below shows, these two satellites, orbiting 60 degrees apart (Long. W75 and Long. W135) over the equator at an altitude of 22,300 miles, detected a significant spike in earth’s geomagnetic flux as the event of September 11, 2001 started and an increasing level of incoherence or flux continued to unfold five days after the event.
I am not trying to posit a scientific theory, but follow this logical progression if you will. Humans emanate an electromagnetic field—the heart being its most powerful source, radiating out in a toroidal, constantly fluxing pattern eight to fifteen feet from the body. This energetic pattern changes form constantly as we think different thoughts and feel different feelings. The feelings of our heart have the greatest effect on the signature pattern of our electromagnetic field.
When an event occurs as dramatic as the September 11, 2001 incident, the collective human electromagnetic field is affected more deeply than usual because it impacts on a much larger percentage of the overall population at an emotional level. To help you visualize this, imagine a fog of light that encircles the whole planet, representing the Collective Human Energetic Field (CHEF). It’s a matter of ratios, the more we as individuals add ingredients of stress, fear and uncertainty, the more the CHEF becomes incoherent and unstable, which in turn is instantly detected by earth and processed into its own geomagnetic field.
In other words, planets and stars affect us, and, we in turn, affect them. This is the interconnection of consciousness at the level of energy, or interwoven fields of energy that resonate, entangle and inform. It is like a symphony of sound and light waves that emanate from the CHEF, interacting with the symphony of sound and light waves emanating from earth’s Geomagnetic Field (EGF). The two—CHEF and EGF—dance together in a reciprocal energetic exchange and it is for this reason that what happens with CHEF can either facilitate or hinder the earth’s ability to shift and evolve gracefully.
Let me make this point more practical. We have seen the idea virus of global warming spread across the news media and enter our schools, governments, businesses, and even religious quarters. The world seems poised to make shifts that are in the best interest of our planet, symbolic of humanity’s role as stewards of earth. Humanity has become aware of how its ecological insensitivity has created dire conditions on the planet; conditions, that left unchecked, could create enormous catastrophes in weather, geology and social changes. So, we have the motivation and knowledge, but do we have agreement on the action plans and the inner commitment to implement them?
What will facilitate the transformation of this knowledge and facts to an agreed upon action plan and commitment to implementation? If we can become increasingly aware that humanity and earth dance together in the clear-headed realms of evolutionary expansion; that there is an interconnection and that this interconnection is mutually responsive and reinforcing; perhaps then we will turn the key. When we look upon the CHEF as vital to our well-being and the clarity of our connection to earth, we will not only turn the key, we will open the door and walk through to the next dimension… together.
Informing the CHEF
I realize that these concepts are very wide and deep, almost so much so that they seem unrelated to our personal lives, but if you examine them carefully, you will see how they bring a new meaning to your life. If you consider that you are emitting an energy field throughout your existence, regardless of what you believe your existence consists of in terms of space-time, the one thing you can be fully responsible for is the signature field that you radiate into the CHEF. Every human, every life form actually, contributes to the whole in this way, though with different intensities and effects.
This is why it is so important to understand the deeper perceptions of interconnection and raise your awareness of how you personally interconnect with the whole of life. It is a matter of taking responsibility for the emotional and mental energies that intertwine within your electromagnetic (energetic) field and contribute a living presence to the CHEF, and by association, to earth itself.
We each have a dynamic, ever-changing emotional fingerprint that we leave on the CHEF, and its effects can endure through time and space. In order to keep a complex subject relatively simple and straightforward, I will paint the differences with only a few colors, but bear in mind that the range is near endless in variation.
As depicted in the diagram on the next page, figure A shows that the Individual Human Energetic Field (IHEF) informs and contributes to the CHEF, and that the CHEF is comprised of thousands of facets (colors) each reflecting a point on the diamond-shaped object depicted in figure B. I am using the term viral in two distinct ways: On the left side of the diamond, on its horizontal (stable) axis, there is a negative viral effect; on the right side it is positive. The terms negative and positive refer to the IHEF and the qualitative nature of its contribution to the CHEF. The term viral indicates the degree to which an IHEF has the ability to influence other IHEF contributions to become more like itself simply through exposure to the viral IHEF.
For example, a single Viral Positive IHEF will be more potent than one thousand benign IHEFs. Thus, those individuals who operate in a stable positive or negative viral state have a significant and disproportional influence on the CHEF. Most people operate on or near the vertical axis (dynamic) where they fluctuate between the poles of the negative and positive IHEF, winding their way in a snake-like pattern between the positive and negative. In doing so, their IHEF contribution tends to lack potency, though because of the sheer numbers in this rank, they collectively set the normative values.
Detecting the CHEF
The key lesson in this is to realize that just as earth’s geomagnetic field detects the CHEF, so do we as individuals, even though we may not be conscious or understand how it is possible. There is also a magnetic attraction that plays an influential role here. When our IHEF evolves to a more stable, viral positive state, we detect the viral influences of those IHEF contributions from the most potent viral positive sources, and we are influenced in our behaviors and attitudes accordingly.
For most of us, this happens beneath our conscious “radar.” If you examine the Figure B diagram and assess where you believe your IHEF is positioned on any given day, consider how you can evolve it to the Most Desired State (small green triangle). The when-which-how practice is an accelerator that will move you in this direction or help you remain there.
I know this subject is complicated, and from my perspective, it is not easy to explain with words or static, two-dimensional diagrams. I would ask you to be patient and persevere in your understanding if you feel uncertain of the deeper meanings in this section related to Interconnection. These are important elements in your motivation and intent relative to the unfolding of your purpose and ability to practice the six heart virtues.
Remember that interconnection is attended with interaction and emotional resonance. While there are some who would downplay the significance of whether that interaction and resonance is anchored in positive or negative virtues, there is a difference of enormous consequence between the two poles—to you as an individual, to the collective of humanity and to the earth itself. At one level, there is no positive or negative in the sense of good and evil, but in the dimensions of time-space and the prevailing construct of evolution and ascension of consciousness, it matters a great deal.
The when-which-how practice is like a homing device that helps you navigate to the stable, viral positive place that enables your purpose to truly radiate and have impact within this world at this time. There is very little glamour associated with this practice as it leaves no historical footprint in the context of a material legacy. In the case of the when-which-how practice and the viral positive position, these are largely invisible as they are not made up of material things, but instead are an energetic transmission. Their potency is emotional energy aligned to specific behaviors which express themselves in our words and actions. You cannot bottle these up in material things, unless, purely for artistic purposes you want to convey their shadowy essence for others to acknowledge.
If you desire to achieve emotional self-mastery and contribute to the CHEF in a way that accelerates its evolution gracefully and naturally, then living from the heart is an excellent path to walk. I have suggested many times that patience plays a role because the path is not easy and has many, many layers of nuance and subtlety, but if your purpose has eluded you or you fear its tardiness is unending, this path and the practices described herein will guide you to reclaim your purpose and to live a meaningful life.