Presently, I’m in the midst of collating more information about our recent Water into Wine Intention Experiment, including what happened to our participants. Each time, a small miracle happens — a miracle I continue to try to understand.
As you know, our ongoing Intention Experiment runs on two levels. We both conduct our large-scale well-controlled scientific experiments and also informal intentions within our community or during my workshops for people with health or financial challenges.
The power of eight
One of the most powerful aspects of this phenomenon is what I like to call the ‘power of eight’. Growing evidence in The Intention Experiment community demonstrates the extraordinary power and life-enhancing experience of creating a small ‘tribe’ of eight to twelve likeminded individuals to replace the largely competitive or anonymous relationship we experience in our usual modern neighborhoods.
For a number of years, I have supported the creation of micro communities of eight or more on my Intention Experiment website, who correspond solely through the website but nevertheless develop close and supportive relationships.
After regularly communicating and forming strong, cohesive bonds, these small groups have demonstrated effects that are nothing short of miraculous: accident victims heal far faster than their doctors predicted and even lost causes get saved.
Instant bonding
This type of powerful bonding can occur in a single day. When I have taken my intention experiments on the road, and asked groups of complete strangers to send healing intention for each other in during my workshops, we’ve witnessed, quite literally overnight, that people’s lifelong illnesses have started to clear.
During our Living with Intention weekend workshops, we divide the audience of attendees into small groups of eight, teach them techniques of group intention and have them practice healing intention on members of their group with health challenges.
On the final day of the workshop, we ask both healers and healees to share any physical or psychological changes, for better or worse, that they’ve experienced over the weekend. Once again, we are witness to stories of seemingly miraculous healings.
During my last workshop in Amsterdam on February 5-7, I filmed some of the recipients of intention, because their stories were so remarkable. We’ve made two videos, and here’s the second one – You’ll see Wayne, who suffered from a phobia against women, experience a real shift of his fear, and two other women with physical problems experience pain relief. You can see and hear their stories here:
http://www.youtube.com/intentionexperiment
Healing the healers
We also hear extraordinary stories of the healers themselves enjoying physical and psychological improvements. Healing intention in a group appears to profoundly affect the healers as well.
In Amsterdam, when sending intention, many members of the audience also began to experience and share the thoughts of the recipients. One woman with a spinal problem imagined having surgery during the intention and two members of her group saw the same scene in their minds’ eyes. Heddy, a woman with osteoarthritis, had such a powerful effect that she began to shake during the intention – as did all the people in her group sending her intention.
When it was over, a number of people approached me to say they’d felt something extraordinary in the room that still lingered on in them.
In our large on-line experiments we have many reports of ecstatic experiences – a sense of oneness with the group and even with the sample of water. With our Water into Wine Experiment, many of our readers reported feeling at one with the water, or even experiencing a profound sensation of tasting the wine.
Sense of oneness
As always, I’m fascinated by this experience and how each of us, in our separate computers dotted all over the world, can simply come on the website and feel a palpable sense of connection with other people sharing an experience thousands of miles away.
But perhaps the interesting is the longer-term effect upon participants; the early results of our Water into Wine survey is no exception. A good per cent of our participants noticed changes in their relationships with others during the experiment, notably between parents and children, in-laws of every variety or siblings.
Many, if not most, either felt more love for their loved ones or for people they normally dislike or argue with.
Nevertheless, each time, the biggest change – usually affecting a majority or the most substantial minority, had to do with the number of people who now feel more love for anyone with whom they come into contact. Most of these people say are now getting along better with perfect strangers.
In fact, when asked with whom relationships most improved, the largest group said they noticed the biggest change in their relationships with strangers. The experience of working together with thousands of strangers give many people the ability to be more accepting of people they don’t personally know.
Staying with the body
So, what is ‘it’ — this feeling of oneness everyone claims to be feeling? It is, I believe, the wagon-train effect. Joan Didion, in her essay ‘On Morality’ in her book Slouching Toward Bethlehem, makes the point that the most fundamental promise we make to one another, the most basic of our social contracts, is that we will maintain our basic loyalties — we will, in effect, stay with the sick or the dead until help arrives.
We’ll protect each other from the naked elements, we’ll stay with a dead body, we’ll support each other through adversity, we keep the promises we make to each other.
There is the basic sense, all but forgotten in modern society, that we will support each other through thick and thin. So powerful is the essential nature of the social contract – and our all-but-forgotten sense of belonging and being loved within a group — that it can act as one of our most potent healers.
It reminds us of the most fundamental promise we make to one another: we won’t abandon each other to the wolves, in which ever guise they come.
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Thich Nhat Hanh calls are fundamental oneness "interbeing".
Anytime we may forget it all we have to do is to come back to our breath.
For the air we breath reminds us of this connection.
It is the quiet reminder of oneness.
Ian
It is ok.
Great piece! there is a process of life going on underneath any social human level. A simple tangible knowing that we are all one. If we are all one there is no 'other' to leave to the wolves, only the one.
Nigel
Having just completed the Avatar course in Florida, many of us noticed deep loving connections with source that felt like being in the bliss of drunken love.(Rumi)
Ben
Here's a wonderful verse from the Tao Te Ching as translated directly into English from the oral tradition by John Bright-Fey:
the force of heaven flowing with ease
appears spontaneous while
acting according to a divine plan
I think, in these incredible times, we are being drawn from so many directions into the essential realization of Oneness and its unconditional love. Bravo, Lynne for all your work, and bravo to all of us who are responding in our unique ways.
Elizabeth
....Intention organizes its own fulfillment......
Lynn, your work is Love itself.....thank you.
P.S. Lovely firends out there, I would love to be part of a "group of 8." Is there a way to set this up and connect with one another?
Thank you,
Audrey
ecologybydesign@dslextreme.com
Los Angeles, CA
ecologybydesign@dslextreme.com
I like Fibonacci Numbers. They are somehow "organic"; see their origin in Fibonacci'
s original example with hypothetical animal reproduction. Eight is a Fibonacci Number, and I'm intrigued by the suggestion that up to twelve people could form an intention tribe. Have you tried orchestrating thirteen people, or three or five if you could not get eight?
I love this article. It just underscores what I'm studying in Religious Science. It also underscores what Lynne wrote about in "The Field," that consciousness and feeling are emitted from the minutest particles of matter and sent to the farthest reaches of the Universe. Our feelings for and about each other stem from that.
For myself - its a deep feeling of whatever I am you are also, sometimes thats not easy to speak about because for me its beyond words. About 20 years ago I had a very interesting experience,I was in a whirlwind (thats how I feel it) surrounding my body and the words came I AM YOU - YOU ARE ME - WE ARE ONE , it has never left me in fact it seems to be expanding - love from Perth Australia::::::://
Lynn,
how does intention work? It must work like sound waves going through the ethers. When you have loud music coming from the speakers, the windows rattle from the sound waves.
Someone playing a violin can cause a chandelier to shake.
Intention must produce wave particles that is pulled directly to the intended target like a magnet.
When you think positive thoughts you are producing positive wave particles from your body affecting all living things around you.
When you think negative thoughts you are producing negative wave particles affecting all living things around you.
In the 12 step fellowships (AA, NA, GA etc) the power of the group changes lives dramatically. 'I can't, we can' is said and at times there is a tangible loving energy in the room. Numbers don't seem to matter - just the love and the intention to support each other. I am 24 years clean and sober through this process.
As I was reading through, and appreciating all these comments, I realised that, in the very act of reading, I was a part of a group of ten. It felt good, it felt supportive and enlightening. Intention to unity flowed from the computer. Thank you.
Through the entire collective human process of examining the nature of conditionally manifested existence (including the scientific examination of the development of life-forms on Earth, the origin and evolution of the universe, and so on), a single great
principle is made evident: All manifestation is arising from a Prior and Intrinsically Indivisible Unity. Everything that appears is developed from What is already there, inherently and potentially. That Prior Unity is fundamental to the Nature of Reality. Therefore, it is false philosophy to presume (or even insist) that Reality Itself is reducible to the observable “facts” of the presumed-to-be-separate human structure and its functioning.
This must be understood: The human psycho-physical structure is (irreducibly) part of the Prior and Universal Unity. Reality Itself Is Non-separate, Indivisible, and (Ultimately) One—Beyond all appearances. The human psycho-physical structure is the “equipment”
that is to be used by human beings for the sake of (Ultimately, Most Perfect) Divine Self-Realization—and that structure arises within the Universal Unity. This is the ancient esoteric “Knowledge” – From The Aletheon b the great sage Adi Da Samraj
Like Pauline, I have been involved in 12 step programs for some time -- 33 years next month. Oddly, many of our group sessions involve 6 to 10 people and 8 is a very common number. It is amazing the oneness that I always feel with others in recovery. And, though it sounds strange, it has slowly been leading me toward more of a feeling of oneness with the whole world. We are all "children of the Universe."
The concept of proto-consciousness assumes that every living thing is a part of this larger consciousness. So maybe two, or in this case eight, minds are better than one?
I've done some research on the mystical power of nine, so maybe a group of eight led by one is the best optimization of mental energy?
The 'stickiness' of the experience is interesting. I have found that after changing my life through a process of intense self-analysis detailed in my upcoming book, that the revere is also true.
If, after spending a period of time feeling good, when I do fall off my high horse, and allow myself to get angry or stressed, I can feel the effects of the stress and anger for days afterward.
So both positive and negative energy can stick with us...I know which one I prefer!
Perhaps the huge popularity in social media web sites is testimony to this idea of 'oneness'. Its amazing the connections that are being made with this new form of communication. Its not about reading what a handful of experts say, but about becoming part of a conversation and a community. This blog is a perfect example.
What a beautiful article-so interesting and moving! It's interesting that the effects that you report on the people conducting the intentions are all positive.
Great thing to follow up after experiencing the communication through the heart and spirit. A continuing community could be really powerful.
Good to feel all these positive reactions.
How do we start such a group [involved in the intention experiments] in our local area?
Just interested in seeing what i can contribute