We’ve all heard of the placebo effect – in controlled environments practitioners will break up a group and give half of them simple sugar pills, which would have no impact on the illness in question, where the other half would receive the actual medicine that is designed to treat the illness. In as much as 60% of the cases, due to the patient’s own belief, the sugar pill improved their circumstance. This is just one example of how our minds and belief have a measurable impact.
If we delve a little deeper, we find another process called the observer effect in quantum physics. Physicists created a test where they would fire electrons into a wall that had two slits cut into it. Behind this wall, there was another solid wall intended to catch the particles as they were fired through the initial wall. They found that the particles, oddly, created a wave pattern on the opposite wall, hitting at various intervals that were not dictated by the slits in the initial wall. Intrigued, they setup another device to ‘watch’ the particles as they exited the first wall, and upon doing so, the particles behaved as logic would dictate – going through the slits and creating a corresponding pattern on the wall behind (no longer a wave, it reflected two slits now). The very act of observation caused the particles to adjust their behavior! This is just another example of how our attention to something is altering the reality in a very real way.
Another great case for this concept that the world isn’t as tangible as we make it out to be, comes from the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto. He created a series of tests where different feelings (love, hate, kindness, sadness, gratitude etc.) were projected into samples of water, and subsequently frozen. Under the microscope, it was found that the water which was given loving intentions reflected beautiful crystalline shapes. The water which was given negative intentions was malformed or disfigured. If we apply this logic further and reflect on how our bodies are made of up to 75% water, you can see the implications of how thoughts and feelings can have a direct impact on our health.
These are just a few examples of how reality isn’t as ‘fixed’ as we generally perceive it to be. It gives credence to the benefit of praying over and thanking your food before you ingest it. It goes on to show that what we believe will happen can come true simply as a result of our attention! If that’s not magic, what is?