Mystics and sages have long believed that an interconnecting cosmic field—a web of energy—exists at the roots of all reality, and this energy both conserves and conveys information. Ever since Einstein asserted that at the most basic level everything is energy, scientists, philosophers, and theorists have been evolving the idea that everything in the universe vibrates and that everything that vibrates imparts or impacts information. The simplest definition of an energy field is information that vibrates.
Classically, a field is an area in which a force exerts an influence at every point. When “information that vibrates” forms an association around a particular subject or object, an energy field is formed that vibrates with this information. This vibrating information exerts an influence.[1] Energy fields emanate from every living source, including human cells, organs, and bodies, as well as plants and animals and even our thoughts. Various scientists and researchers have hypothesized several types of energy fields.
Cell biologist Rupert Sheldrake was the first to identify morphogenetic or morphic fields. According to Sheldrake, a morphogenetic field is a subtle field of information that operates autonomously, a database of information extending in space and continuing in time, which informs people with the programs within that particular field. For example, a cardiac field becomes a heart. All living organisms from cells to people that belong to a certain group tune into the morphic field and through morphic resonance develop according to the programs within that field. These fields serve as a database as well as a mental form.
Sheldrake posits that a morphic field can be set up by the repetition of similar acts or thoughts, and therefore explains why members of a family pass down certain behaviors and even emotions. A mother’s anxiety might then be carried to son or daughter via morphic fields rather than DNA. Morphic fields, being subtle in nature, are not limited to time or space. Sheldrake’s philosophy also holds that past life memories could pass lifetime to lifetime through a soul’s morphic field. The organizing fields of animal and human behavior, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity, can all be regarded as morphic fields that contain inherent memory. These memories would be nonlocal in nature and therefore not anchored in the brain or a particular life.[2]
Ervin Laszlo, Hungarian philosopher and systems theorist—drawing from anomalies and advances in cosmology, quantum physics, biology, and consciousness studies—shows how the discovery in physics of the zero-point energy field (ZPE) is also the discovery of a universal information field known as the Akashic Field or A-Field. According to Laszlo, the A-Field is not only the original source of all things that arise in time and space. It is also the constant and enduring memory of the universe and holds the record of all that has ever happened in life, on earth, and in the cosmos—and relates it to all that is yet to happen. Laszlo suggests that the Akashic field is like a hologram that is imprinted with all that has been or ever will be. It is essentially what helps a universe know how to become a universe, how plants know how to be plants, and so forth. It conveys all the information of life itself.[3]
Will Taegel identifies an eco-field. According to Taegel, an eco-field is a region or space configuration of nonmaterial influence vibrating with information and meaning underlying a specific location. It is a region of influence that underlies a given ecology.[4] Various eco-fields emerge out of a more profound field, itself emergent from the primordial mind. The difference between Sheldrake’s morphic fields and Taegel’s eco-fields is that eco-fields relate to specific physical locations whereas morphic fields relate to collectives of organisms. But they both hold memory of the past and literally inform the present and future.[5]
Carl Jung identified an archetypal field. According to Jung, archetypes are the essential building blocks in the psychic structure,[6] and are not just inactive forms, but real forces charged with specific energy.[7]
Edward Whitmont talks of the “personal shell” and the “archetypal core” of a complex. This shell can always be traced to one’s personal past and explained in terms of cause and effect of one’s personal history. The energetic charge of the complex—which accounts for its continuing disturbing effect even after the personal material has been understood, interpreted, and integrated—comes from the core of the complex, from the archetypal field. This is the energetic field that vibrates with the information of emotions, behaviors, and images that continue to attract those experiences that match its energy, bringing us under its spell.[8] We can no longer think in terms of human behavior as being shaped only by the individual or family, but must take seriously the reality of archetypal fields and their interactive dynamics and influences.
Psychologist and anthropologist Alberto Villoldo speaks of the Luminous Energy Field (LEF), an aura of energy and light that surrounds and informs our physical body. According to this construct, this field contains an archive of all of our personal and ancestral memories, all early life trauma, and even painful wounds from former lifetimes that, when activated, function like a blueprint containing instructions that compel us toward behaviors, relationships, and other experiences that mirror our emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounds.[9]
How do all these theories relate to my shamanic work? Over the years, I came to realize that the images in my paintings, the images in my dreams and meditations, were more than manifestations of unconscious psychic content, more than metaphors or symbols of unconscious forces within me, more than projections of the unconscious. While they can certainly be understood as that, they were also actual energy fields that existed in the spirit world of non-ordinary reality. They were manifestations of the energies within me that were connected to that particular energy as it existed in the energetic or spirit worlds. These images that appeared represented my relationship with these actual energetic beings, whether that be an animal, human, plant, or rock. They were real manifestations of subtle energy, pure formless energy that was malleable to human intention and flowed out into the world and affected other energy systems. This relationship with the subtle energy—as the forms in my dreams, visions, and paintings—might and have in fact served as my guides and helpers and as avenues of healing.
Many of the images that appeared in my paintings and dreams were animals. David Richo in The Power of Coincidence says that animals will appear in both waking and dream life to serve as guides or as triggers to transformation.[10] Jung points out that when we become more spiritual, an animal appears. Animals may appear in life experience and in dreams, at synchronous times, to accompany or even escort us along our path.[11] Joseph Campbell says that animals are the great shamans and teachers—messengers and personal guardians that come to bestow their warning and protection.[12] Animals will appear synchronously when we need information about our path.[13]
Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe what he called the “acausal connecting principle” that links mind and matter. He said this underlying connectedness manifests itself through meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Jung described three types: the coinciding of a thought or feeling with an outside event, a dream, vision or premonition of something that then happens in the future, and a dream or vision that coincides with an event occurring at a distance.[14]
Synchronicities are bridges between matter and mind, manifestations of the unknown ground that underlies them both, the underlying dynamics that are common to both. The meaningful patterns found in synchronicities arise not so much from the external events but through the unfolding of their own internal significance.[15]
The synchronistic experience occurs where two kinds of reality such as inner and outer, spirit and matter, mind and body intersect and provide a deeper meaning than their separate realities provide. These events cluster together into meaningful patterns without recourse to the normal pushes and pulls of causality.[16]
Such curious events indicate that a mutual process is unfolding out of a common ground that lies beyond the individual consciousness. The formation of patterns within the unconscious mind is accompanied by physical patterns in the outer world. These synchronistic events act as an intimation of the meaning that lies hidden within a particular life, relationship, or historical moment.[17] They open up a new approach, one that shows how mind and matter are not distinct, separate aspects of nature but arise in a deeper order of reality. Synchronicities suggest that we can renew our contact with that creative and unconditioned source that is the origin, not only of ourselves, but all of reality.[18]
For example, I paint a horse coming out of the sea. My eye catches the word Mercurius in Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis and I have a “feeling” there is some connection. Reading, I find Jung’s reference to “the steed that is in the water is risen up” as the union of spirit and matter. A black jaguar is killed in a dream so that I have space to attend a university and years later I find myself in a weekend training on shamanic healing, and a black jaguar returns to me on a shamanic journey. I stare into the background of a painting and see a man holding a bowl with a feather as if bringing me a gift of a feather; in meditation a hand extends an owl feather to me; months later I walk out of a building at a training on shamanic healing and am met by a man holding an owl feather. He extends it to me saying “It is yours.” I paint a painting of hands over a male figure with an eagle looking on and weeks later find myself going for my first shamanic healing session in Sedona, Arizona, where I am greeted by an eagle at the gate. The healer uses his hands over me, working in my energy field. Years later I find myself taking training in energy medicine where hands are used to move energy.
Is to place meaning on these experiences and events as confirmation or guidance for my journey superstition and magical thinking, regression to some prerational stage of development, or some transpersonal, transrational reality—a union of spirit and matter?
The psyche seeks its goals independently of external factors or the ego’s desire, a process that provides a path to self-discovery, healing, personal growth and even one’s destiny. The symbolic meanings of sexual dreams, fantasies and attractions may represent the soul’s desire to bring alive some other part of us.
Behind any problem is formless energy that is malleable to human intention. We have the capacity to shape energy into forms. How? When we are unable to express a thought or a feeling, the body may create a symptom to express it for us. The symptom becomes the symbol. Seeing something as a symbol allows us to get in touch with something that cannot be known in any other way.
Images in our dreams or images that we create with our intentions are connected to that particular energy as it exists in the energy or spirit worlds. Our relationships with this subtle energy as the forms in our dreams and creations may serve as guides and helpers or avenues for healing.
Synchronicity occurs when a thought or feeling coincides with an outside event, when a dream, vision or premonition of something that then happens in the future and when a dream or vision coincides with an event occurring at a distance.
The energy fields of our dreams or of the images that we create with our intentions act upon us and we act upon them. It is a reciprocal relationship. In this relationship synchronicities occur and the miraculous happens.
To activate such a relationship between the images that appear in our dreams, paintings, and meditations and their connections to that particular energy in the spirit world, here is an activity.
Recall a dream. It can be a recent dream or a dream that you remember from a long time ago. Write the dream out in as much detail as you can. Read the dream several times.
Create a collage that represents the dream. Look through magazines and newspapers or search the web for images to represent your dream. Choose pictures, images, even words that attract you. These pictures may or may not be the literal images of the dream. In fact, most often they are not, because the images in your dream are symbols, symbols that represent something else. Notice what you are drawn to, what grabs your attention, what wants to go into the collage. Use them even if they don’t make logical sense to you. These pictures, images, and words become your associations to your dream; the hidden meanings in the dream. Your collage may not look anything like your dream. But the collage will represent the energy in you that is hidden in the dream.
If you prefer, you can create your collage by drawings, scribbles, doodling, painting images and shapes, and/or using various colors and textures. Read the dream, place your intention on giving form to the energy of the dream and see what shows up. See what form you give the dream in your collage. This is the hidden meaning in the dream.
Hang your collage where you can see it daily. Meditate on the collage and notice what begins to show up in your life. Maybe you find yourself having insights or thinking things you never thought before. Maybe a solution to a problem comes to you. Maybe synchronicities start happening. Patience is important. Sometimes it takes days, weeks, even months for the energies captured in the creation to show up in our lives.
As the mystics, sages and shaman know, we are all part of an interconnected cosmic field of unlimited possibilities. The images that arise in our dreams, in our creative projects and in our meditations can connect us to the unified field through our sacred intentions. If you choose to make a collage, select images that call to you. Breathe into them your associations, desires, and intentions and see what shows up.
[1] Dale, Subtle Body, 3
[2] Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, 155.240, 258. 383
[3] Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field, 72-77, 80, 105, 131
[4] Taegel, Mother Tongue,228
[5] Ibid.
[6] Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, 161.
[7] Ibid, 352.
[8] Whitmont, Symbolic Quest, 66-67.
[9] Villoldo, Shaman, Healer, Sage, 46-67.
[10] Richo, The Power of Coincidence, 137-138.
[11] Ibid., 138.
[12] Quoted in Richo, The Power of Coincidence, 138.
[13] Richo, The Power of Coincidence, 138.
[14] Lundstrom, “A Wink from the Cosmos.”
[15] Peat, Synchronicity, 8-10.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
Share your experiences in the chat.
Disclaimer:
The content provided in this newsletter and any accompanying blogs or articles, including ideas, suggestions, techniques, and other materials, is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any condition or disease. The content is provided only as general information and is not medical or psychological advice. You understand that this newsletter is not intended as a substitute for consultation with a licensed professional. Please consult with your own physician, mental health specialist, or spiritual advisor for matters related to emotional health, mental health, or spiritual concerns.
Any information, stories, examples, or testimonials presented in this newsletter or in the comments or chats do not constitute a warranty, guarantee, or prediction regarding the outcome of an individual using such material contained herein for any particular purpose or issue. While all materials and links and other resources are posted in good faith, the accuracy, validity, effectiveness, completeness, or usefulness of any information herein, as with any publication, cannot be guaranteed. The use of this newsletter implies your acceptance of this disclaimer.
Thank you Sheldon.
As a visual learner, I am often drawn to movies or stories which depict what you are describing.
There is currently a series on Netflix called All the light we cannot see which seems to draw one deeper into what is actually being seen by the human eye. As a matter of fact the girl in this is blind. A theme which is manifested in this series is....everything has a voice...it is up to us whether we hear it.
The beautiful synchronicity of this series has captivated me and I was thinking others might find this helpful as well.
Thank you again! Susan
Thank you Sheldon. Two other researchers who are making great progress in describing the bioelectrical field that connects us to all things are Michael Levin at Tufts and Bruce Lipton. Dr. Levine is amazingly able to toe the line between staunch academia and metaphysics to demonstrate that the electrical field of cells is the higher order controlling force that shapes life. Dr. Lipton left academia years ago and has been relegated to "the fringe", as has Rupert Sheldrake. Dr. Lipton's major thesis is that our beliefs control the functional properties of DNA.
It will be interesting to watch developments over the next few years as Dr. Levin's theories, which are based on sound science, become more broadly recognized. We may some day after understand at a molecular level the basis of energy medicine and develop widely available methods to affect good health.