The Great Experiment 2.1: Proving or Disproving God By Falsifying Enlightenment

I've decided to change the format of how I conduct this experiment. I've decided to be more transparent with my thoughts and details of what I do and why as I do it as opposed to explaining only after the experiment is concluded. All of my theories are verified by scientific principles, are rigorously tested using myself and my experiences as the primary subject, and are frequently modified and discarded depending on the results. I've decided that my previous conclusion, that my theory on achieving enlightenment by means of emotional maturity and development through the elimination of fear, was incorrect. It was preemptive and short-sighted based on insights I've had since writing it. The level of healing this project requires is absolute and I am not there yet unfortunately, a sobering perspective yet again on myself and my imperfections. I didn't have ideas of what to do in order to continue my fundamental theory that ridding oneself of fear is the path to enlightenment as explained in my post on The Great Experiment 2.0, but now I do.

Experiment 2.1

I'm going to be synthesizing a lot of different ideas here and I think a numbered format would be easiest for people to understand succinctly, and it's also how I think so it's how I would present it regardless:

1. Most of these ideas stemmed from a specific book called Power vs. Force by David Hawkins. In the book he muscle tests emotions to see which of them has the strongest degree of power, a sliding scale of sorts between 0-1,000 units of energetic power on a logarithmic scale. Muscle testing is technically pseudoscience but before discarding muscle testing as an invalid source of knowledge consider a couple of things.

   
   

   

   
   

   First, the author of the book didn't start testing emotional power levels, he started by testing mundane objects to see if there was a difference in muscle strength with unaware participants. One test that stands out to me was one in which he held up one organic apple and muscle tested a group and then did the same with an inorganic apple. The subjects had no idea what was being tested. The test reliably showed that all subject's muscles were weaker when the inorganic apple was presented. This is only one of the tests conducted by David Hawkins with similar scientific methods before he chose to focus on using muscle testing on emotions. Since this is regarded as pseudoscience, here is a video on why it's pseudoscience including discrediting David Hawkins doctorate.

   
   
   
   

   The person who made this video has many great points, I just disagree with his conclusions of what that information means. History is littered with ideas being rejected by the general populace because they didn't fit the general zeitgeist at the time only to be universally recognized as truth later. Even if Hawkins didn't get a doctorate that doesn't mean that he can't have a great idea. Off-handedly rejecting an idea before considering it is foolish and unscientific as well as judging it off of whether or not someone had the credentials to "make them smart enough." The video creator came to his informed opinion thoughtfully, which I respect and understand as he has good reasons for his conclusions, and I believe that everyone should undergo the same research and decision making process themselves. Lastly, NAET, an effective allergy treatment that uses muscle testing as its base principles has worked for many of my family members to rid themselves of allergies and I've met other people who've experienced the same results. Although NAET is also considered a pseudoscience, I know of objective changes from NAET from a good sample size of people including family and clients, objective results being things like not breaking out in hives when around cats anymore, an impossible thing to fake. It's pseudoscience with results. Something is working involving muscle testing.

   
   
   
   

2. There is a lot of science around the body storing trauma physically, one of the most famous books being The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. I believe this extends beyond just trauma to all emotions. All emotional reactions are accompanied by physical reactions, whether or not you are aware of those reactions is a different question. A simple example is thinking about how anxiety brings about a different physical reaction than peace does. Some of the best therapies in the world are solely about controlling physical responses including Stress Innoculation Therapy and Exposure Therapy which are both in the top 5 trauma therapies in the world, or at least they were when I wrote my master's thesis on the top 5 trauma therapies back in 2017. Suffice to say that the body is a wealth of information if you pay attention to it. In fact, it's the absolute best way to know yourself with changes in thoughts and then changes in behavior as the three primary ways of becoming aware of your emotional state. I'll write a blog post on that soon. The body, and its reactions, do contain information even if muscle testing is bogus, but that's why I think there is more to it than people may recognize. In fact, the most effective healing theory I've found to date is one that connects people to their body and their mind simultaneously, my own theory called Mind-Body Release which you can learn how to do for yourself here. I have helped people overcome deep grief in as little as one session among other profound results. The body is a very effective source of information and healing.

   
   

3. It is my perspective that emotions are the basis of human behavior. Emotions being a large contributor to functioning is a scientific fact that you can read about from the National Institute of Medicine here which discusses multiple theories on emotion, the physiology involved in the brain, and its role in functioning if interested. In my work I've found that cognitive processes are a result of emotions and true psychological change only occurs when negative emotions are neutralized. The neutralization of negative emotion changes cognition. This principle is why I've been so successful in my practice. Due to what I've seen as a professional therapist and how emotional change is required for general change, I believe the emotions are at the core of all processes and are the driving force behind human emotion, thought, and behavior.

   
   

4. I remember watching a video as a young adult on authenticity and how it was the strongest emotion scientifically, but I couldn't find it today despite a long search. Authenticity is recognized as a large factor in emotional health though, that is a fact. Authenticity lies at the core of my theory. I believe that your overall happiness is directly correlated with how authentic you are and moreover, if enlightenment is possible, you bet your ass it requires authenticity. We would be made the way we are for a reason under the base assumption that there is a God and he/she/it has a perfect plan. Here is a good Tedx Talk on authenticity as a substitute for the video I watched. It doesn't talk about the science though which is annoying, there doesn't seem to be science on what I remember watching. It is engaging and thought provoking though.

   
   
   
   

   Anyway, higher frequencies are equivalent to higher degrees of energy according to Plank's theory, one of the fundamental theories involved in quantum physics which you can read more about here. Emotions bring energy with them and the lack thereof. Consider a depressed person versus a joyful one. Energy does translate well as a concept of frequency, just maybe not how it's been talked about thus far. Regardless, the idea that emotions aren't energy, that personal energetic differences based on emotion isn't reality, is objectively incorrect based on the energetic differences between a depressed and joyful person. At worst we can conclude that there isn't enough evidence to draw a sound conclusion or that results are mixed, but I don't think the idea of frequency and its relationship to emotion can just be thrown out offhandedly. I'm happy to think otherwise and I will read suggested books that paint a different picture. I'm looking for truth, not to be right.

   
   

5. Quantum physics - I LOVE quantum physics because it challenges everything we think we know; traditional physics is all bullshit at a subatomic level. Here is a very short video by Sean Carroll, a leading quantum physicist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, explaining what I'm about to elaborate on.

   
   
   
   

   By the way, Sean Carroll made a 12 hour VERY DRY (but informative) lecture series on quantum physics called The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics which I fully watched. I also watched the science documentary Everything and Nothing in which quantum physics and fun science discoveries are presented engagingly making it way more entertaining to watch than Sean Carroll (sorry Sean). I highly recommend watching it, the first episode alone is pretty mind blowing if I remember correctly.

   
   

   So, now to explain how quantum mechanics relates to the concept of frequency. As stated in the video, particles operate in a wave function until the act of observation causes the wave function to collapse into a measurable particle state, a process called decoherence. At a subatomic level, every particle is a wave until observed. Frequency is a measurement of waves. At a subatomic level, since the particle is by nature in a wave state, there has to be a frequency attached to it. Simple science. The question isn't whether or not frequency is a part of everything we know, because we are all made of atoms which operate in its natural state as a wave, it's whether or not we have the capability of measuring the wave function of a non-decohered particle, which we don't because observed particles instantaneously decohere when observed, one of the current quandaries within the field of quantum mechanics.

   
   

6. Emotions do verifiably impact particles bigger than just quantum particles shown through simple science experiments with water and plants. Here is a five minute video on the impact of focusing on love or hate and its impact on the crystallization of water molecules.

   
   
   
   

   The video is pretty wild, I'd take the time to watch it. Here is a similar two minute experiment with plants that you can very easily replicate about how plants grow better or worse based on if they are verbally talked to with love, hate, or not at all.

   
   
   
   

   The results are crazy!!! This proves that emotions do actually have tangible impacts on larger scales than solely quantum particles. These experiments have a lot of important implications.

Quick recap. Emotions are information stored physically in the body, one purported method of measuring it being muscle testing. The main problem with muscle testing is a lack of evidence that it works, although at least some evidence is out there. Regardless of evidence we can all see that different emotions impact our energy differently with the ones at the highest part of the frequency pyramid being undoubtably better than the lower ones in terms of personal energy/mood experienced during that state. I think we can universally agree that attaining a state of joy and peace is preferable to feeling shame and grief all the time. Emotions do carry energy and Plank's theory says that higher frequency means higher energy. Since particles in their natural state behave as a wave and frequency is one way to measure waves, everything should have a frequency, the problem is that we would have to not observe what we are attempting to observe in order to measure what we need to measure. We can't measure something that is literally unmeasurable because the act of measuring it instantaneously changes it to make it unmeasurable, at least as a wave. Kind of a problem.

But we do know that emotions have a measurable impact on water and plants! So despite the measurement problem overall, there is another way to reliably measure the impact of emotions and their frequency. Plus Plank's Theory says that higher energy is a result of higher frequency which means that depression would be at a low energetic state and frequency and joy at a high energetic state and frequency.

So now to explain why I decided that experiment 2.0 was incorrect and need to be updated. In the last post I said I was happier than I've ever been. That wasn't entirely true in retrospect even though I meant it at the time. What really occurred was that I reached a point of mellow acceptance that was more akin to neutrality and peace than anything else. I have achieved a level of non-reactivity I've been surprised I've been able to reach but it didn't translate to joy or a high level of happiness like I'd like and have experienced before. On Saturday I helped two of my best friends throw an event we call Adult Field Day for the fifth year in a row where we play field day games as a kid with a lot of inflatables, a lot of alcohol, and a lot more ridiculousness.

What I realized from this event is that in my quest to find truth, which included a two year deep dive into spirituality to see if it held weight which is where all of this is stemming from, I sacrificed the fun aspects of myself that would routinely host gatherings like Adult Field Day. I lost a part of myself in dedicating myself to recalling another aspect of who I am, a lifelong learner. As a kid I read all the time, including while walking down the school hallways. I was as nerdy as they come but then was chartered out to a middle school filled with gangs and drugs where I learned that reading wasn't cool. Naturally I started sagging my pants, wore my backpack with only one strap on my shoulder priming me for future scoliosis, and stopped reading except for school assignments until this past year when I read over 120 books in a year (50,000 pages), listened to 200 podcast episodes on philosophy (Philosophize This. Best. Podcast. Ever.), and otherwise engaged in a knowledge binge. I rediscovered my love of learning by dedicating myself to it entirely. I also learned that apparently I'm a spiritual human being, deriving joy from spirituality, which was a surprise. I am very glad I recovered those lost aspects of myself and am deeply grateful for it, but recovering those parts of myself led to neglecting other parts of myself which deprived me of my own joy. So that is this next experiment. I stopped my passions so I am going to get back into them in an attempt to make joy my stable emotional state instead of a sense of bland peace. My new found involvement in my passions includes (if you want to know):

1. Reading and learning more. Obviously.

2. Saxophone lessons. I love the saxophone! I think it's the most expressive instrument on the planet and I want to learn it.

3. Choir. Not even sure this is possible but I'm going to try and find a choir to join. I sang all throughout high school and college so it would be great to get back into it.

4. Learning languages on Duolingo, specifically Spanish which I know but have forgot, and Italian which is the most beautiful language out of Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, and Portugeuse which I studied in college for fun. I forgot how much I enjoy learning languages.

5. Writing more. I love to write and synthesize ideas. It's a lot of fun for me.

6. Experimenting. I am currently experimenting with how substances can be used to accelerate spiritual growth, a part of my personal belief system (when used for that purpose). Substances are incredibly misunderstood by our society in terms of their spiritual potential, something most cultures historically have recognized, a fact you can read about more in my posts on the books Chasing The Scream and The Immortality Key. More to come in a post on that in the future. Many of the most beautiful experiences in my life have involved substances. More than anything they allow me to see myself in a way I otherwise wouldn't have, a process that can be highly informative. Plus they are amazing because they help you see the world in a different light, often with a beauty you won't find elsewhere.

7. Friends. I'd like to hang out with them more and with more of them.

8. Teaching. I love teaching but I didn't want to put in the work to get a doctorate because I didn't want to do research (jokes on me since I'm constantly conducting experiments...but I still don't want a doctorate). My training in conducting experiments in my three year master's program will have to do. So I guess this is the way I'm teaching for now.

9. Creativity. I love creating. I am about to start working on creating a feedback system for my healing practice to help me know what works and what I need to continue to improve on. I don't currently get feedback so how am I supposed to improve?!

10. Watching and analyzing shows. Right now I'm watching and analyzing Parks and Rec, my favorite show, and The Office. Parks and Rec does an incredible job at presenting quirky and witty, genuine, and lovable characters who are generally emotionally healthy in terms of how they treat each other. The other thing I love is seeing the characters develop and outgrow their insecurities and flaws throughout the course of the show. It's really beautiful to me. The office is similar in that way as well although I like Parks and Rec more. I think that's why they are two of the most beloved shows in existence. Yes, I even analyze for fun when relaxing. I already called myself out for being a nerd.

    
    

There are more than just those but those will suffice. I've infrequently left my house for the past year so this is quite a major and sudden transition, but how could I possibly feel consistent joy without engaging in what I'm passionate about... so I gotta make a change.

In summary this experiment is to see if I can get myself to a state of stable, authentic joy incorporating all aspects of myself and see if that does anything. This experiment is nothing crazy, it's actually really basic, it's just about being authentic to who I am again which brings joy. Again, there is no losing in this experiment. God or not, living an authentic, joyful life is a goal worthy of my time and I'd argue yours as well.