Ripple Effect
Full Canoe
An example of this was eloquently put by my teacher, the late Native American leader Robert Gopher (Listening Thunder). In our years together, Robert and I spent a great deal of time in ceremony, but an equal amount of time sitting and drinking coffee together. He use to tell me, "People are always sending empty canoes. I'd rather have one full canoe than 10,000 empty canoes." This was his way of saying, that now days, communication is generally empty of weight and personal meaning. This image is brilliant in many ways. An empty canoe is light and floats high in the water. The ripples that travel away in its wake are small and have little impact upon the shore. However, if a canoe is loaded with goods, it sits deep in the water and creates large ripples in its wake which can noticeably effect the shore. The full canoe is what Robert considered real communication and anything less simply had no impact upon him.
I remember one time in Boulder Colorado, we had arranged an interview with a local news paper to aid in our efforts to rally against large gold mining companies which were polluting and poisoning some native communities water supply up in Montana. The interviewer had arrived and we were seated around a coffee table. As the interview began, it became obvious that the man had no real interest in the actual topic he was asking about and Robert remained silent each time the guy asked a question. It wasn't even as if Robert was ignoring him, it was more a sense of, nothing happened to respond to. As the interviewer got more and more confused, I realized what was happening and asked him to come with me into the kitchen to make some coffee. I explained to him that Robert was in no way disrespecting his questions. And what he really responds to are questions that one truly has an interest in. So we returned to the living room without his list of questions from the paper and started again, asking questions he personally had about Robert, Native American spirituality and eventually the fight against the mining companies. It worked like a charm and I also learned things from that interview that I hadn't known before. (By the way, we did win the battle and shut down the mining operations)
Impact
Everything in our environment is influencing us whether we know it or not. As I am so fond of saying, "EVERYTHING IS VIBRATION" and by its very existence is producing vibration. Where there is vibration there are ripples which cause an impact on the environment. It is difficult to imagine how much energy is packed into a single atom. When unstable or broken, an explosion of energy bursts forth, i.e. Atomic Bomb. Yet when stable, atoms hold form and function in such a way that we are unaware of the awesome energy hidden away within so small a thing.
In this relatively stable world, energies of small effect and sometimes of incredible effect are moving towards us, through us, away from us creating the vibratory universe we live in.
??? As Albert Einstein pointed out, the only reason physical form appears solid, is because at the point of creation, the vibration is so intense, it produces a field which is capable of producing...
Rippling away from the clusters of atoms which make up physical form, and interacting with those vibrations of all other forms present.
In our workshops, we begin to learn to experience the world as made of vibration which includes the people around us as well as ourselves. When we are far away from another person, the only vibration that seems to be perceivable is light (sight) or sound (hearing). As we move closer we pick up on more and more vibration (radiation) such as warmth, smell and eventually touch. But obviously, there is much more happening around us in a world where vibration is the anchor of our perception. We will talk about this very important topic further in the articles soon to come.
Intention
As in a carrier wave (radio waves), vibration can carry a great amount of information within it. There is the pure wave of energy from the existence of an object, and then there is more information about that object in the accompanying carrier waves. Since everything is made of vibration (nothing is solid at an atomic level), then what happens around an object obviously permeates that object to varying degrees, making an impact. In the Tibetan tradition it is a phenomenon called "drala" and means the extra energy (memory) an object carries because of it's experiences (history). In physics and technology research this same phenomenon is known as the observer effect. This refers to the fact that any experiment or process is automatically effected or changed in some way by the very presence of an observer. Simply put, their presence naturally creates vibration and those vibrations impact the process.
This becomes more interesting when you are dealing with electrical impulses in living creatures including humans, animals and plants. Since the emotional reactions governing survival, reproduction, pleasure and pain are actually the release and mixing of chemicals within the body and these chemicals are themselves fundamentally created and built of vibration, then our thoughts, feelings and instincts are effected by vibrations in our environment and also themselves create an impact on the environment, as subtle as that may be. So the chemical/emotional bonding between people, animals and even plants can begin to make sense. Some such studies have been conducted which are discussed further in the following link. Interestingly, some of these experiments have shown that the bonding process can establish vibratory connections which defy time and space as we generally think about them. More information on these studies here.
Once we begin to understand that without any history at all, any object in existence molds and effects the environment with ripples of energy, then we have a chance to understand the added impact of history (drala), and ultimately intention. More on this topic soon!
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