Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Purple Feathers

In one of my courses on Kauai I emphasized the flexible nature of reality with an exercise I sometimes use to demonstrate this. On the beach at Hanalei Bay, under tall ironwood trees moving gently in the soft sea breeze, we gathered in a passive kind of meditation known as "nalu." The idea was to pick something fairly unusual to meditate on. The object of our focus, chosen at random from the group of fourteen people, was a purple feather. That is, we each conjured up a feeling/image of a purple feather in our minds and held that concept in our awareness without judgement or expectation for several minutes. And that was it.

The purpose, as I explained to the class, was to see whether, and how, a purple feather might appear in someone's experience over the next three days. I told them that they might see a real one, a picture of one, or they might just read or hear about one. Then we dropped the matter and went on to something else.

The first time I came across this kind of experiment was in a book by Richard Bach, in which the object to be focused on was a blue rose. At the time, in the seventies, I did the focus, not expecting much from it. The next day my first client at my office in Marina del Rey came in wearing a dress with blue roses on it. It happened to be my mother's birthday, and when she came in to visit me that afternoon I gave her a birthday card with red roses on it. Then, without knowing anything about my focus experiment, she mentioned that my father had always given her a blue rose on her birthday, something I had never heard before.

Now, I was already quite familiar with ideas about the possibility of changing reality from Huna, Hawaiian shamanism, and other studies, but it's one thing to know it as a theory or even a gradual process, and quite another to experience it so directly, so quickly, and so simply.

Of course, the first reaction from most people would be to call it coincidence. What possible connection could there be between a simple, unemotional thought and an experience in the outside world? Well, one time could be coincidence; two times maybe; three times possibly. But how about a hundred times? Over the years I've done this experiment myself and with others well over a hundred times with the same result. Think of something, anything, clearly and with a minimum of tension, and it will appear in your environment within about three days, in some form or another.

That last part is significant. "In some form or another" means that your thought doesn't necessarily appear as an object. In fact, the way in which it appears may be quite varied. It could be an object, or a picture, or a drawing, or you could read about it, or you could hear someone talking about it. Yes, I know there is an objection that you might just be noticing something that might be around anyway, but remember the number of times this has happened consistently, and the fact that the experiments have involved purposely unusual objects.

I am not trying to say that the thoughts bring the experiences into existence. That's only one theory of how it could happen. Perhaps we are shifted into an alternate reality where the experiences exist. Or maybe our thoughts merely attract existing experiences to us, or us to them. At this point I really don't know. There are many possible explanations, but coincidence isn't one of them. The main point is that reality isn't what we've been taught it is. Reality isn't just "out there," something separate from what we think and feel. There's a very intimate connection between "in here" and "out there." One of the greatest adventures of life is exploring that connection.

But back to the purple feathers. The very first result came the night of the experiment, when the class was having dinner together. It really wasn't much. One of the students sitting next to me showed me a piece of orchid that had fallen from her lei which had the color and shape of a purple feather. The next result came the next day when my colleague Susan went to dinner with her mother at the Marriott Hotel. As she told me, when they reached the bottom of the escalator taking them down to the lobby she noticed that two "kahilis" or feather standards formerly used by Hawaiian royalty which stood on each side of the escalator were made of purple feathers, not typical of the ones used during the monarchy. A student from Paris reported: "Just to let you know that, on Saturday, after our last day of the class, I noticed that the fabric of the bedspreads in my hotel room had a design with purple feathers in it - I think this counts!" A student from Germany wrote: "We had a good journey back home to Germany and in my apartment on Monday I found a purple feather on the floor." And the student from Paris added: "My daughter and I both collect feathers. She arrived back in Paris from the U.S. on Monday and, with no knowledge of our purple feather story, presented me with a purple feather." By Tuesday, a little longer than three days, all the students of that class had been told about the purple feather findings of the others, and so everyone had a purple feather experience of some kind.

Believe in coincidence if you like, but I think you'll get more out of life if you pay extra attention to the relationship between your thoughts and your experience. It just might give you an edge on making your dreams come true. As another student put it after hearing about all the purple feather experiences: "What a great lesson in awareness and being in the moment. It made me realize that sometimes when I am intensely preoccupied I wouldn't notice a purple feather (or whatever else I might need) if it dropped down and draped itself around me. "

5 comments:

Mahalo. Always fun to hear from others experiencing life the same way as I ha e even for a while. I find there is resonance similar energy patterns, and then they cross paths. The interesting part is how the unconscious world, the parts of uour past traveling on our DNA, also have residence in our lives. I have been guided to work with my mentoring clients cleansing and purifying the unconscious patterns but continue to run until they are brought into consciousness through our awareness. It's quite amazing to bear witness as people begin to wake up to patterns they had no idea we're running quietly on the inside and showing up in the outer world. Thank you for sharing your insights. Love and light Susan

Mahalo. Always fun to hear from others experiencing life the same way as I ha e even for a while. I find there is resonance similar energy patterns, and then they cross paths. The interesting part is how the unconscious world, the parts of uour past traveling on our DNA, also have residence in our lives. I have been guided to work with my mentoring clients cleansing and purifying the unconscious patterns but continue to run until they are brought into consciousness through our awareness. It's quite amazing to bear witness as people begin to wake up to patterns they had no idea we're running quietly on the inside and showing up in the outer world. Thank you for sharing your insights. Love and light Susan

Hi Serge, I had a wonderful first experience of this, thanks to your teachings (which I came across via Pohaku several years ago now).

I chose to imagine a peacock feather for a few minutes and then let it go. Within one hour I saw a peacock feather in the hat of a character on a children's television programme which my young daughter was watching. It made me smile and I though that was it. But, no.

Later that day, when shopping for a new outfit to wear for a special event the following night, I walked into a clothes store and the first thing my eyes fell on was a beautiful necklace with a single peacock feather hanging from it. I bought it of course.

The following night, at a spectacular riverside event, wearing my peacock feather necklace, I was strolling by the waterfront with a friend, laughing and drinking. And there, strolling towards us, was a theatre performer dressed in an incredible Victorian frock, walking several realistic peacock puppets on leashes with their feathers all displayed. Just beautiful!

I had this experience the first time I did a workshop with Serge at Omega in New York in the late 90's. I was so impressed with Serge's teachings that I approached him and said that I wanted to study more with him. Serge said that he wasn't planning anymore trips to the main land and I would have to travel to Hawaii. I said that I couldn't afford the trip to Hawaii but Serge had taught me that "world is what you think it is" so I started to simply think of myself as someone who traveled easily and effortlessly to Hawaii. I just lightly held the focus in my consciousness. After about a year, circumstances unfolded in which I was able to travel to Kauai with my husband and stay with a friend who had just moved there. We found cheaper tickets flying out of Canada. Since then I've been back about twelve times. I don't know exactly how this works either, but I a agree that it's not coincidence. One factor of it is selective perception, I think. It has been demonstrated that we tend to see (perceive) what we expect to see. So if we intentionally set our perception to focus on "ways to travel to Hawaii". we will begin to select out ways to make that happen. I love this tool. And I love traveling back and forth to Hawaii! Thank you Serge! Katherine