January/February 2001 Spirituality
Stirring the Subatomic Soup
by Kambiz Naficy
Question: Kambiz, your name is certainly not a typical one;
can you tell us a little about yourself
Kambiz: My name is Persian. I was born in Teheran, Iran,
and left my country during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Since then,
I have worked as a Wall-Street banker, operated my own computer
firm, and later, left business life to surrender to two forces that
keep tugging at me—writing and uncovering my truest Self.
Question: How did you get into healing work?
Kambiz: Like many others, my soul-search began at a painful
junction where I realized that the two dimensional, material world
was too hollow to explain my own existence, let alone all of creation.
My soul was thirsty and as the saying goes, when the student is
ready, the teacher appears. My best friend’s wife introduced
me to Yoga, and one day while practicing I had my first taste of
going home—to inner-silence. A couple of months later, another
friend introduced me to Transcendental Meditation ™. I spent
three years studying at Maharishi International University, in Fairfield,
Iowa, practicing Yoga and meditation and writing poetry in deep
silence. There is a lot of Shakti swirling around Fairfield and
other spiritual communities.
Question: What is Shakti?
Kambiz: In India, Shakti literally means power. My spiritual
teachers in India describe Shakti as the subatomic God-Force that
streams through all of us and through every element in the universe.
When I studied the Vedantas (ancient Indian scriptures that include
the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads), I found repeated references
to God as vibrational energy, a self-aware energy of consciousness
throbbing in the background of all creation— beyond the smallest
of particles. At this time, I was writing articles and teaching
workshops in America and Iran. I realized that many of my American
students better related to this knowledge when I combined mysticism
with rational, scientific explanations of the God-Force. Also, they
wanted to know how to apply ancient Vedic wisdom to everyday life
in the U.S. I searched for parallels between science and mysticism,
and my search, led me to particle physics.
In books like, The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami and
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, I learned about experiments
in atomic physics where atoms are broken down further and further,
until, all that remains is the luminous energy of consciousness
(Shakti or the God-Force). Many of these experiments also show that
our subtle thoughts and intentions influence the creative energy
of consciousness. In other words, we manifest our physical reality
from inside out, by stirring the subatomic soup with our subtle
thoughts and intentions.
Question: So are you offering some “recipes” in
your workshops?
Kambiz: I designed the three-part series by examining the
dysfunctional parts of my own life, also the lives of others around
me. I realized most of us are strapped to a merry-go-round; I call
it the cycle of illusion. Here is how she spins:
- An external or internal event acts as a trigger.
- That trigger (event) causes you to have a thought.
- Every thought then leads to one or more emotions.
- Your emotions affect your breathing and physical body. In fact,
our breathing patterns are a direct reflection of our emotional
state. We also feel our emotions as physical sensations-racing
heart, sweaty palms, shaky voice, etc…
- Our physical sensations mobilize us to take outward action.
- Nature then returns each of our actions with an equal reaction
(charged with the same energy). i.e. anger begets anger, a chaotic
person attracts chaos, violence erupts into more violence.
This cycle propagates itself until we learn to mindfully manage
our mind, emotions, and breathing instead of reacting without awareness.
Question: So, what is the first step toward managing our
inner-world?
Kambiz: The first and easiest place to begin is with breathing.
Use slow, smooth, deep, and rhythmic breaths to energize and center
yourself. Employing ancient Vedic techniques, we can relocate our
breath from the chest to the abdomen, circulate breath through the
chakras, and change the qualities of our breathing. Many of the
Vedic breathing techniques are portable; you can even practice them
in a traffic jam. These breathing techniques and meditations immediately
calm the emotions and clear the mind.
Question: What’s next?
Kambiz: Then comes the art of witnessing emotions, facilitating
their flow, and transforming negative emotional energy into positive
energy. Everything is energy, including our emotions. In fact, emotions
are nothing but fluid energy in motion. We can learn to transform
negative emotions into positive energy, but we cannot repress or
hold on to fluid emotional energy.
Question: How can we transform negative thoughts and quiet
the mind?
Kambiz: When we witness our random thoughts without identifying
with them, the mind chatter fades into the background. We can use
breathing, visualization, and meditation to slip into the gap between
two thoughts— there, in that momentary silence, we can disengage
from the mind-chatter.
The mind is not a physical organ like the brain. The Mind-Field
is an electromagnetic field hovering above our body. This is how
psychics and enlightened masters decipher and read our minds. The
Mind-Field transcends time and space—you think of a loved one
miles away and out of nowhere, she calls. The Mind-Field doesn’t
die when our body dies; the Mind-Field carries all our memories
to the next body. That’s why we experience Déjà vu. There is
only one Universal Mind-Field, and we can all access it as we calm
our brain activity using meditation and breathing techniques.
Most of us concoct a personality out of our random thoughts, believing
that we are our thoughts. In fact, ninety percent of our random
thoughts are useless and have nothing to do with who we really are.
Thoughts are merely fizzling bubbles of energy arising within the
Mind-Field. For peace of mind, it is best to go to the Source of
thought—the silence between thoughts. There, we can experience
our unchanging Self and stir the creative field of consciousness
with our intentions.
** Many of the above notions originally put forth
by the ancient Yogis are now upheld by scientists like Valerie Hunt,
author of The Infinite Mind , and Nobel prize-winner Stephen
Hawking.
Kambiz Naficy is a counselor, meditation teacher, and author.
He conducts the Mind Workshop series and lectures on emotional energy
and Vedic breathing techniques at Nature’s and New Renaissance
Bookstore. You can reach Kambiz at (503) 241-7247, or via e-mail:
knaficy@hotmail.com