Thursday, December 4, 2008

Intentional Chocolate!?

Chocolate infused with intentional focus by meditators trained by the Dalai Lama! Dean Radin and a band of scientific experimenters in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study that was published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (October 2007) found that one ounce of Intentional Chocolate per day for three days increased subjects’ well-being, vigor and energy by an average of 67 percent and, in some cases, up to 1,000 percent, when compared to a control group. More information on this is available at intentionalchocolate.com or watch oneminuteshift.com/videos/dean_radin/intentional_chocolate

While this is all very interesting what does it have to do with botanical body products or the election or Grennaissance? I'm glad you asked. Here's how:

Let's begin to explore the idea of the Greenaissance. What is it? What are the defining characteristics of such a paradigm shift? When we look back over humankind's previous major paradigm shift, the Renaissance, we see that there were several major components involved that interacted with each other over a period of some 200-300 years to create the shift out of the dark ages and into the beginnings of the modern industrial age. During this time there were strong changes in the religious, philosophical and technological arenas which strongly affected the social, political, and economic and artistic realms.

One of the key fundamental shifts in the world view of that time was brought about by Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. His ideas about the word of God being taken out of the hands of the priests and the Pope and put into the hands of people was revolutionary on every level. It shifted the balance of power away from the Church. And it shifted the focus of control in life away from God and into the hands of humans. The technological advance of the printing press spread these ideas far and wide and opened up a whole new world in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Philosophically this shifted the focus of how the universe worked from a mysterious, unknowable God centered universe to one knowable by humans. This was taken up by the Natural Philosophers of the time such as Newton, Decartes, Galileo, and Copernicus with the ideas that the universe was knowable and could be reduced to mathematics and discernible laws and forces that govern matter which gave rise to rationalism, empiricism and the scientific method.

What does all this have to do with Intentional Chocolate you might ask? Good question. What I am proposing here is that we begin to see ourselves going through such a major epochal shift as the Renaissance and being aware of it while it is happening. So when we look at what is coming up in the different arenas such as religion/spirituality, science, philosophy we can begin to see the effects in the economic, political, and social arenas. Or let's even take it one step further that we can begin to choose how these new ideas affect the shape of our economic, social and political lives. One area of new ideas that keeps popping up is looking at how the mind, thought, consciousness affects the physical world of matter like putting intention into chocolate and finding measurable results.

Since one of the premises of the Greennaissance is that we are moving into an awareness of the universe as based in energy rather than matter and since science is showing us that thought - focused consciousness is a form of energy that can be directed Intentional Chocolate is a delicious example of what I am talking about here. More and more we are hearing about the power of manifestation. Information about this sort of thing has been coming out on both on the pop end of the scale, like The Secret, and on the scientific end of the scale with things like Shroedinger's cat and the double slit experiment. (For more information on these things see www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat).

Similar experiments on the power of prayer and meditation have been going on for some time. Research has shown that meditation can contribute to an individual's psychological and physiological well-being. Meditation brings the brainwave pattern into an alpha state, which is a level of consciousness that promotes the healing state. Other studies have shown that group meditation has measurably reduced crime and violence in places like Washington DC and Jerusalem. There are even groups who work through meditation and prayer to effect hurricanes to detour them from hitting land or to diminish their force so their impact is not so severe when they reach landfall. Just google around and you will find many websites and blogs about all of this. There are even sites like Event Temples (eventtemples.com) which have regularly scheduled times daily to send focused intentional energy out to where it is needed if you want to join in.

In my view this is one of the new paradigm ways we are and will be working more and more. Intentional Chocolate has now become a trademarked product! I'm sure it won't be the only one. More and more website are popping up to gather people together to direct their intentional focused energy on impacting events in the Middle East or decreasing violence in certain areas or helping seriously ill patients in hospitals. There are, of course, many other applications being marketed for more personal uses of this power such as for increasing wealth or attracting relationships into our lives. The power of prayer, the power of attraction, the idea that our thoughts create our experience, that our thoughts create things this is a whole new way of looking at the world, our lives, who we are as people, as individuals and as a species. Think about it.

And just in case you were wondering - yes indeed Greensong Botanicals are all made with intention. Every time I start to make anything I very consciously focus my attention and direct the intention of healing, joy, and love to go into the products I am making and that they serve the highest good for all those who come in contact with them. Does it make a difference? I don't know. You tell me. All I know is that it can't possibly hurt and I truly believe that it makes a powerful difference.

Stay tuned for the next installment which will focus on living systems based on the ideas of Elizabeth Sahtouris and Biomimicry.

Aloha and thanks for listening,

Lisa