I used to believe that.  My father is an engineer, my mother is a mathematician, my brother is a computer engineer and scientist with a specialty in artificial intelligence, and my best friend from childhood is a seismic geologist.  And don’t get me wrong, I have great respect and admiration for science, its learnings and processes, and the gains we’ve made from them.  But I’m also mindful of two important principles: people vary (expressed so succinctly by Havi Brooks over at fluentself.com) and all experience is data (for the grammar mavens: all experiences are data.)

What makes a geek get into energy work and take magic from the fantasy books to the real world?

Experience.

When I have an experience that supports something I was previously skeptical about, I have to rethink it.  That’s the geeky scientist child-of-an-engineer in me.  When I was SURE there was no higher power, and then I started to have the felt experience of connection to earth and trees and water…I started to pay attention.

And now there’s research showing that plants are aware when they’re being eaten (http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/study-plants-can-tell-when-theyre-being-eaten/).  There are kinds of awareness that we don’t know about yet; things we’re still learning.  Since my sense of a higher power involves a kind of interconnection of awareness of all things, this supports my experience.

When I was highly skeptical about reiki, I had really bad menstrual cramps that nothing but reiki would help.  So I got trained and then I felt the energy in myself.  I had to rethink my skepticism.  When I don’t think something is hot, and then I put my hand on it and I experience it as hot, I don’t wonder if my experience is real.  I pull my hand away to avoid being burned.  To me, these experiences are as real as that one.

My most recent experiment has been one of the most surprising for me.  Despite all this, I was still very resistant to things like tarot.  It seemed too far from my experience, too close to the edge of impossible.

But I kept thinking about it.  So finally I bought myself a deck and started drawing cards every day.

There are 78 cards in a standard tarot deck.  Drawing three to five cards a day and very careful about being random, over the first month I drew about 12 cards over and over and over, and when they changed, they progressed in a logical manner based on the card meanings.  (From the 8 of swords to the 9 and then the 10, for example.)

There may be an explanation for this, but I can’t think of one.

I don’t have to be an expert in calculus or statistics to know that that’s highly unlikely to happen randomly.

I don’t think everything works for everybody.  But I do thing my experiences are influencing my thinking and my future choices.  That’s how science works.  More on that next time

PS: Embodiment for Brainiacs!  Marcia and I are going to hang out and jam on how we make intuition go with geekery.  We’re both geeks with a huge body component to our work, and we’re going to talk about how exactly that makes sense.  Signup page here: embodiment for brainiacs.  Join us!

Who am I?

My name is Leela Sinha.  I’m trained right across the board.  My first job after college was in computer tech support.  I’ve also taken a boatload of programming classes.  I have a BA in American Studies and an M. Div. (Masters of Divinity) and ordination AND coaching training from CTI and sex ed training through the UUA and and a massage therapy license.  Biology and theology and the neuroscience of change and pleasure…I am a huge believer in research and learning and study.  And I’ve got my Level III reiki (Shinpiden) training and training in energy clearing.