If you think about it, the way you are reading this post is pretty much beyond comprehension and makes no sense.
There is a piece of plastic on my desk, I hit some keys on it with letters on, it is not attached to anything at all, and the words appear on a screen in front of me. Then I hit enter, and they appear on a device, again not attached to anything, that you are holding in your hand. That you can also pick up and speak to people on anywhere in the world. You can see moving images, and hear people talk. Like how does that even happen…? (And the desk, well did you know there is more empty space in that desk than solid matter?)
Science says so, so you don’t question it. But the reality is science doesn’t understand it either, we’ve just learnt how to use it to our advantage.
There is a quote by Richard Feynman that says “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” And having studied it as part of my degree, I can confirm that to be true! No-one really understands it, it doesn’t make logical sense.
So if science doesn’t even really understand it, why are we so comfortable with it? Because you can see it, feel it, touch it… so you believe it to be true. You don’t need to understand it, you can see the tangible result. So that is good enough. Stick some popcorn in the microwave… boom, magic happens!
Where am I going with this… stay with me.
Over the last 3 years, mainly thanks to going online over covid, my world has expanded to include some lovely people who, I am going to describe as woo. They themselves would say they are all the way woo. Old me would have actively avoided them, not for me thank you. But situations and events conspired for us to cross paths, and a chance for me to learn and see what it is all about.
When we don’t understand something we can often label it ‘weird’ and I fell into that category. I did a Physics Degree, I look at life through a very logical lens, through science. So me? Most definitely not woo.
However, by spending time with people who have a different perspective to me I have come to realise, that actually I kind of am, at least a little bit. I just didn’t know it.
Once I started to understand what being woo meant, what all the terms mean, it’s not really that weird. Most of it is just a different language, a different way of explaining things, different terminology. And a faith in not needing to be able to explain everything logically and tangibly.
The very thing that I thought made me anti woo – my science back ground – is now making me think some of it is no weirder than you reading this post on your phone.
Take crystals for example… healing, energy work through crystals, or reiki.
Most of you will have heard of a quartz watch. Do you know how that works? Quartz is piezoelectric, meaning it can transform energy from one form to another. The watch uses the properties of the crystal to create an electric pulse that keeps time.
We know that the human body generates its own electromagnetic field, virtually every single process which is keeping you alive can be traced back to an electric field that some component of your body is creating. The heart generates the biggest. Bigger than the brain.
If you start thinking about energy, all the different types, Kinetic, potential, chemical…, the laws of thermodynamics – it will probably make your head explode – but everything is energy of some kind or another, and cannot be either created, nor destroyed, merely changed into a different state.
If a crystal can make a watch work, through use of energy and magnetism, is it such a stretch to think that it can interact with the energy and magnetism of the human body? Or that one person’s electromagnetic field and energy can influence another’s?
Why is that any more weird than a caterpillar going into a chrysalis, turning into a pile of goo, literally digesting itself to return to base molecules, rearranging all those molecules and emerging as a butterfly.
Or the moon having an effect on your body any weirder than the fact it makes the tides go in and out every day…
I am not declaring I’m now all the way woo by any means… or that I understand it anymore than I understand all of the science behind technology. (it’s been 23 years since I did science). But what I am starting to realise, is just because I can’t tangibly see it, doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t true.
There will always be con artists and charlatans in all industries, but for some reason it seems to be that in the spiritual world everyone is tared with the same brush, it all must be a con! (Which I find ironic in a world where religion is so widely accepted, religion is the very definition of believing in something you can’t explain)
But why is that…why does a whole industry get labelled a con, by so many?
The internet likes to divide us, to take sides, and stick our stake in the ground and declare our position. I’ve seen so many posts actively slating anything ‘woo’ by people who then go on to talk about using their intuition, believing in the universe, everything happens for a reason etc, (All woo terms).
So my invitation to you is to consider… is it possible woo isn’t so weird after all? It’s just science hasn’t caught up yet. 200 years ago the science we have now would not have been believed, and would be thought of as ‘magic’.
I am still deciding, but I am not going to declare it ISN’T true, and start slating an entire industry, because I have no idea if it is true or not. (No more idea than if Schrodinger’s cat is indeed alive or dead). Instead, I will continue to be curious, and open minded, but with a small side of scepticism, just in case.
