The Power of Eight, Lynne McTaggart’s new book

Lynne explains the power of your mind in her book on Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to heal others, your life, and the world. To learn more about Lynne visit her website at www.LynneMcTaggart.com.If you would like to learn more about Carole Dean and From the Heart Productions please visit www.FromtheHeartProductions.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Block Talk Radio.

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Capan. Along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding, Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. Award-winning journalist and international best-selling author Lynn McTaggart of The Field, The Intention Experiment, and the Bond has spent many years exploring the nature of human thought and intention and their relationship to health and wellness. In her new book, The Power of Eight, Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to Heal Others, Your Life, and the World, Lynn details her own journey to make sense of all the miracles she's witnessed. She dives into the larger context of the science behind this phenomenon, drawing on esoteric and historical religious practices, studies of prayer and altruism, and finally organizes a major independent university study of Power of Eight Groups to explain how and why sending thoughts of healing to those other than yourself in a group setting is a fast track to the miraculous for participants. It is also the story of her own transformation, from hard-nosed journalist and skeptic to reluctant apostle of the extraordinary transformational power of small groups, particularly the healing power of focusing on the well-being of others. And Carol, I know that you have Lynn's book, The Field, as required reading in your intern in intentional filmmaking class. I always want to say international because it is an international group. The name is intentional filmmaking class.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Yes, Claire, that's right. We have people all over the world in that class. And the field and living the field has a lot both books, both uh information have tons of uh benefits for filmmakers who have to fund their own films and create their own reality, and they need to know the power of their minds. So thank you very much for joining us, Lynn.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Oh, it's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Thank you. Well, I want to cover a lot of things today. I'd like to start with your brilliant book, The Field, and then go into your exceptional book, The Power of Eight, and cover some of the information from your global intentional experiments and especially the miraculous benefits of a small groups to heal others and their own lives. So let's start with the purpose of the book, the field, and some of your findings.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, the field, um, I really started researching that because I was curious about why spiritual healing works. I run an international magazine called What Doctors Don't Tell You. And um, in the course of our research, we look at the science of what works and what doesn't work in conventional and alternative medicine. I kept coming across really good studies of spiritual healing. And I kept thinking to myself, well, if that's true, if you could take a thought and send it to someone else and make them better, that undermines everything we think about how the universe works. So I decided to go on a quest to try to figure out what was behind all of this. Um do we have human energy fields? What was it? And so I began to speak to a number of pioneering scientists in consciousness research, and I soon realized that each of them had made a small discovery that was revolutionary in its impact and its implications, and together compounded to a completely new view of the world, a totally alternate view of reality, where we are not separate entities, as we've been told. We are not these kind of little billiard balls, just kind of independently operating according to fixed laws in time and space, but we are one giant connected entity thanks to a thing called the zero point field. And the zero point field is essentially a quantum energy field that unites us all in its invisible web. But some of the other things they discovered are kind of an outgrowth of that too, that our minds may not be locked inside our heads, but be out there in the field, that we are very interconnected with everything, that we have an enormous and vast human potential for extending well beyond our five our five senses. And also the thing that tickled me the most, that thoughts are an actual something with the capacity to change physical matter. You know, I started out life as an investigative reporter. My first work when I was in my twenties was busting a baby selling ring ring with, you know, by going undercover and using, you know, um hidden microphones and tape recorders and things like that. So I, despite the segue into this kind of work and consciousness work, I'm still at my heart, an investigative reporter, very interested in fact-finding and evidence. And so the reporter in me was sort of saying, Well, are we just talking about shifting a quantum particle, or are we talking about curing cancer with our thoughts? How far can we take this? And also, what happens when lots of people are thinking the same thought at the same time? And that shifted me to creating the intention experiment. But it was really that kind of leftover question. It was an itch I needed to scratch left over from the field that propelled me on to my other work. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

I I just uh I think the field is one of my favorite books. Um you have a marvelous way of explaining complicated concepts to us in layman or laywoman terms so that we all get it, and I sincerely thank you for this. Um I really enjoyed uh when you uh the information about how Putov and the zero point field, and you introduced us to that, uh, and then you brought us to ideas that it might be that consciousness can manipulate this field and create structure out of it. And that's when I set up and took notice and thought, wow, filmmakers can use this because they get so depressed going out to raise money for films. Uh and they if they believe in what they're doing and can uh take take it instead of looking for the full amount of the budget or something, take a bite-sized amount and visualize and focus on that and get their intention straight and move forward with it, it could benefit them. And I do see that happening. Um I see them creating positive results, uh, and I think a lot of it comes from their belief from s listening to what you have to say, how that we are more than just uh receptive here, we are creating things at the same time, don't right?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Mm-hmm. We're creating all the time. I mean one of the things that came out of my research is the idea that thoughts are trespassers. I mean they are a thought isn't just a thing. A thought is a thing that affects other things. And it's affecting all of the time. It's trespassing into other people and things and changing them. So we are co-creators essentially every moment. This is brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

We are co-creators. Um and I love the part uh about how you taught us how what cohesive uh light was, and then you took us into is it pop? Do you pronounce P-O-P-P-Pop?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yes, yes, Fritz Albert Pop.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Yes, and uh tell us about his uh uh discovery of light inside the body.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

The amazing Fritz Albert Pop, the late Fritz Albert Pop, he he died a ye a couple of years ago. Um he was absolutely brilliant. He discovered accidentally, um when looking for a cure for cancer, that there is a very subtle current of light that's emanating from all living things. And moreover, that other living things are are beaming back synchronicitously. He found that this light was a communication communication system inside the body, so if something was going on in one place, it would simultaneously let the rest of the body know what was going on. But it was coming out of DNA, but also it was communicating with the outside, and the outside was having a conversation back. And so that is a huge, huge thing, and may account to some degree for why thoughts affect us outside, why they're affecting other things outside of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Right. It's also exciting. Okay. Well now um you say a good reporter is a disruptor of the social order. Her weaponry, the meticulous recording of observable phenomenon, and you start with what is known and build on it. So tell us how you did this with your global intention experiments and about the experiments with the barley seed. I thought that was wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

That was an amazing experiment. Um I started the intention experiments because I was essentially a 21st century doubting Thomas. I had a lot of inconvenient questions about this whole idea of thoughts affecting reality. I mean, at the time the law of attraction was coming through and the secret was um being made, and you know, a lot of people saying a lot of stuff that had no supportive evidence. And so I really wanted to know, you know, are we really, you know, can we heal the world? If this is so powerful, why are we using it to manifest parking spaces? Why aren't we using it to cure cancer? And also, what happens when lots of people are thinking the same thought at the same time? Does it magnify the effect? So I decided to put this to the ultimate test. At the time, the you know, the field was in 30 languages, and I knew a lot of scientists in consciousness re research, and I figured if I just put them together, I would have the largest global laboratory in the world. And so I did. I would have one of the scientists I knew from the University of Arizona, you know, all prestigious universities, University of California, Penn State University, St. Petersburg Technical University, um, set up a controlled experiment. And then I would invite my readers around the globe to come onto my website or an actual audience, if I was speaking somewhere, to send intention to that well-controlled target. Now, so far we've run 30 experiments. We just ran the 31st last week, but we don't have the results back yet. But of the 30 we've ran and we have results of, 26 have shown measurable, positive, mostly significant change. You know, there's no drug out there uh that has that kind of consistent track record. So one of my favorite was your the barley seed experiment you talked about. We decided, you know, we started small with things like seeds and leaves, trying to affect those light emissions of leaves and then moving on to seeds. Then we thought, let's try to make seeds grow faster. So the scientists, this time at the University of Arizona, would set up four sets of seeds, of 30 seeds each, labeling them A, B, C, or D. They would send me the photograph of the four sets. Me and my audience would randomly choose one of the sets to focus our intention on. The scientists wouldn't know which ones were chosen. We would send intention to those seeds. The scientists would then uh we'd tell them we were finished, they would plant the seeds, five days later they would measure them, and at that point, after they'd finished, I would unblind the study and say, well, it was set D or set A or whatever it was. And every time we ran that experiment, we ran it six times, the seeds sent intention grew significantly higher than controls. And one of the amazing things about it was just thinking, you know, just sit back and unpack this for a second. So the first time I did this, I was in Sydney, Australia. The seeds were in Tucson, Arizona. My audience was in Sydney. We sent intention not to the seeds, we sent it to a photographic representation of those seeds. Nevertheless, the those seeds that were 8,000 miles away got affected by this intention. So it just is, you know, pretty remarkable. Um when you think about the psychic internet that can get created with thoughts, focused thoughts on a target.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

This is very impressive. Um and uh also you did say in your book, uh Power of Eight that some yeah, that your most impressive results came from people who were practiced in sending focused thoughts like meditators.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Um yes, in one instance, the seeds sent intention by from a group of healing touch practitioners resulted in seeds that were high s high uh plants that were twice as high as controls. So that was really amazing to me. That was suggesting that experience somehow counts because these were all experience intenders essentially. Um but they were also um, you know, they were also one size group, and I found when I was doing these six studies that size didn't really matter, that we got the same effect whether it was a group of a hundred or a group of thousands over the internet, and they didn't have to be in the same room, they could be scattered around the globe just sending intention through my internet site.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

That's incredible. That that uh to recognize the power of our minds and the power we have as beings to support and nurture our fellow beings. Uh so this this is opening so many new avenues and doors for all of us. Um now in the book The Power of Aid it says that we've repeatedly demonstrated the human mind has the ability to operate non-locally, move through walls overseas, and change matter thousands of miles away. So i tell us more uh about this and the observer effect. Let's get into that a bit too.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Well, I mean, I was able to make certain conclusions based on what we were seeing repeatedly. Um what the scientists talked about and had made discoveries of um with and I reported on in the field was this whole idea that we affect as we observe. I mean, this is not news to quantum physicists. They've realized that at the subatomic level a thing isn't a thing yet. It's only a potential of a thing. Um if you imagine a subatomic particle, think about an auditorium full of seats. Well, that subatomic particle, let's say he represents one seat, but in his potential state, he's every seat in the entire stadium all at the same time. The only thing that collapses this particle down to a single entity is when it gets observed or measured by a scientist. At what point at which point this pure potential, everything all at the same time, all potential selves at the same time, collapses down to a single state. So that suggests that that pure potential exists out there for lots of different scenarios, and that we in our focused attention and intention, we collapse down that realm of all possibilities to something singular.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

So this gives us the ability to uh intend our future, to intend on what we want, uh and um and achieve miraculous results with ourselves as well as with our uh fellow man. It's not o it's not only for healing each other, but it's also for improving lives, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Could be used in that. That's what I was playing that's what I was playing around with with my intention experiments. Can we heal things? I mean, all of the intention experiments we did had a they were symbolic of trying to heal some ill in society. So after our first initial ones, we were trying to make food grow faster and more plentiful and healthier. We wanted to try to purify water. We we actually shifted polluted water up an entire pH toward alc more alkalinity, which would be purer water. Um we were trying to lower violence in war-torn areas, and we also tried to heal someone, somebody with PTSD. And as I say, most of these experiments had very compelling results that suggested we were we were successful. So yes, we do, but probably the thing that turned it on its head the most for me was the experience with small and large groups when I found that there was an amazing rebound effect, that the senders, the people who were sending out to help something else, were getting amazing rebound effects on themselves. And particularly when people got off of themselves in small groups, they were experiencing uh all kinds of abundance in their lives, healing, all sorts of things like that.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

By focusing on healing other people, that same energy uh they were enveloped in that same energy and they as they healed they became healed, would you say something like that happened?

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it was extraordinary to me, and I I found this when I started playing around with small groups of eight. This was just a happy accident. I mean, I was uh a year into the intention experiments, and I was trying to figure out how to do a workshop, but being a reporter by training, I'd never run those things. I'd only, you know, I'd only witnessed certain workshops. I wasn't sure how to do this. And I was also trying to figure out how do I show people what intention can manifest over a weekend. I'd just been experimenting with it. I didn't like to speculate, I didn't like to do a lot of woo-woo. So I'm kicking around this with my husband one day, and I say to him, I know, I'll just put them in groups of eight or something, and I'll have them send a healing intention to a member of the group with a health challenge. And my husband turns to me, he's such a great head run headline writer, and he goes, Yeah, the power of eight. I like that. And that was kind of how it started. Uh, we ran our first workshop in Chicago in 2008, and I put people into small groups, I told them to hold hands or put the person in the center with everybody putting his hand on her or his or her hand on the person, like the spokes of a wheel. And all formulate the same intention statement. I mean, I am totally making this up as I go along. I have no idea what's going to work and what isn't. So I'm telling them to do all of this. I figure it's going to feel very relaxing, a little bit like a facial or a massage, and that's a bit that's about it. So I had them do this, and then they chose somebody within their group who had some sort of health challenge. They sent intention to that person, and then I asked them to come back the next day and report on how they all felt. So the next day they come back, they line up, I give them a mic, and each of them in turn starts saying things like this. I've had migraines my entire life and they're gone. I've had terrible IBS and I feel completely normal. Um I've had so much pain because of arthritis in my knee and it's completely gone. And, you know, on and on and on for over an hour. And I was quite shocked by this. So I really put it down to placebo effect, you know, projection, something like that. And I dismissed it. Um, but I kept coming back to it in every workshop I tried it out, and everywhere I did, all over the world, whenever people were sent into healing intention in a small group, there were extraordinary healings. We had a woman with MS who showed up the next day without her crutches. We had a woman with cerebral arthritis who had trouble walking just down the stairs. She walked normally the next day. We had a woman with cataract said she was 80% better, scoliosis healed so much that she wrote me afterward to say she had to change the rear view mirror of her car because her back had changed so much, you know, and on and on and on and on and on. And so this really, really shocked me, and it upset me to some degree when it first started happening because it was like this unwanted side effect, because I'm trying to do serious scientific studies to demonstrate the power of intention, and all of these weird woo-woo healings are going on around me. So I dismissed it, and it's why for a very long time I didn't write this book, because I wasn't really sure what I was looking at. I didn't trust it, I didn't believe it.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

I can imagine you were shocked with results like that. That's incredible. Now tell us uh about your website and how we can get involved with any of your future experiments, uh, the lectures you're giving, when you're coming back to the states, anything like that you can share.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Wonderful. Well, um I will be back in the States probably in December and definitely in in February. Um the events will be up on my website, lynnmctaggart.com. Um, also, for people who want to set up Power of Eight groups, virtual Power of Eight groups, we have a community site that's going live later this week that will enable people to just set up their own virtual Power of Eight groups. Um we just finished running a giant American peace intention experiment. But on November 9th, we're going to be running a Middle Eastern peace intention experiment that people can get involved with, and they just need to sign up to my community at LynnMcTaggart.com and sign up for my newsletter and they'll get information about how to participate. And I really encourage them because the interesting thing about the big experiments as well as the PowerVate groups is that there are enormous mirror effects. That when people send intention for peace, their lives become more peaceful, their relationships improve. It's really extraordinary. And I found this out with our first peace intention experiment in 2008 when we did this with uh Sri Lanka, which was undergoing a 25-year war with no end in sight. And we sent intention and it seemed like we had a a positive, interesting effect. Um, not long after the well, during the week of our intention, the government of Sri Lanka, who which was losing, won a few decisive battles that turned around the entire course of the war. They took back the north within a few months, and a few months after that, this totally intractable war ended in a bloody finish, but it ended. So that was interesting. It ended. Oh yeah, it ended, you know, and um that was amazing. It's a totally peaceful country now. So that was amazing. You know, we thought, wow, did we do this? Well, short answer, who knows? Because there are a lot of variables. Maybe it was coincidence, although the statistician, Jess Dr. Jessica Otz, who was measuring our effect, you know, was fascinated by the maybe coincidental, maybe not, fact that the very week of our intention proved to be probably the most pivotal in the entire course of the war. So that was really interesting, but it's not the point of my story. The point of my story really is what happened to the participants because I surveyed them afterward basically just to see if they could had been able to get onto the internet, and I got back amazing answers like this in the thousands. I felt like I was wired up to a higher network. I had tingles and goosebumps all over my arms and legs. I was crying uncontrollably. I felt like I was the tractor beam in Star Trek. Um, you know, uh all kinds of things like that. I felt like I had an intense altered state. Um, I was in a different dimension, you know, on and on and on like this. And also, they reported things like um, all of my relationships have improved. I've made up with my mother, we haven't spoken for years. Um, I'm getting along with my not so nice boss. Um I'm in love with everyone I come in contact with. That forty percent of people said that. I'm in love with every I am hugging strangers, etcetera. So there was some amazing rebound effect that happened as a as a out as sort of an outgrowth of working on this kind of altruistic group effort that was totally transformational. And, you know, I've looked at what mystical states comprise, you know, what what are the pieces of it as m measured by people like Abraham Maslow, and they found essentially five different elements of it. One is an unbelievable ecstatic feeling of oneness, second is this big physical change, like the goosebumps or whatever, feeling very different. Um three is just feeling uh this immense sense of connection with other people who are part of this. Four is this kind of blinding epiphany of meaning, like suddenly the universe makes sense and I understand the universe and my place within it in a way I never have before. And finally, rejuvenation. Like I've never felt this wonderful, you know, the grass looks greener, the flowers smell more beautiful. I'm just transported into something new. My life has really begun over again. And my people had um experienced all of those five characteristics. They were all reporting all of that. And so to me it was like they'd entered into some sort of interesting, strange, mystical state, just through the power of this collective thought.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

That's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. All of the the changes that are being affected are so powerful. It's all positive. No matter what is going on, it it's positive for everyone that's involved, it seems like. Well, in in your book, The Power of Eight, I love the information about the apostles being of one accord and going out with power and authority to cure diseases. And and you have a word in there that I can't find anywhere, so I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it or not right, but it's homophumidum.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

That's how you pronounce it, and that is the original Hellenic Greek in the Bible. Now remember it was written in the Hellenic Greek, and when the I found a a little known sermon by a um a Reverend at the early part of the Christian Reverend at the early part of the 20th century, Charles Spurgeon, who was talking about how the apostles prayed. And he said that there'd been a slight mistranslation in the Bible. You know, whenever they talked about how the apostles were taught to pray and how they prayed, and when they were first setting up the church in the Acts, you know, the section of the Gospels is the Acts. And when they talk about that, there's about twelve references to how they prayed, and they're always translated in the King James Version as with one accord, which is kind of a very you know, it's a real anemic phrase for the original. The original was homothomodon, which is an adverb that means passionately of one voice. Like think of a Beethoven symphony and all of those inst instruments coming together for some amazing, passionate collective sound. Well, that's what they were talking about. And it also indicates in the Acts that Jesus told them, you know, you when you pray, you pray together, and you will be healed, and they will be healed. And that to me was the most unbelievable antecedent for all of this because I had been really searching. I knew somebody had thought of this before me, this was just something I stumbled on. But a lot of the indigenous cultures and even mystical Christianity, I could find a lot of healing circles, I could find a lot of prayer circles, but nobody was talking about all praying the same prayer at the same time, and nobody was talking about rebound effects from that, so that the senders and the receivers were all getting healed until this little section with Jesus. And that made a lot of sense to me, you know, because the apostles went out and performed miracles and etcetera, etcetera. Maybe it was this whole praying together thing, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Who knows? But it it I love this passionately of one voice. That that just shows again how powerful we are as groups. And as you pray, uh you will receive uh that is that's gotta be the most powerful thing I've heard in ages. So uh now let's go to chapter eight in your book, The Holy Instant, where the participants entered into what was called a state of uniomisteria.

SPEAKER_05 32:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Well that really is what happened to my people when they were doing their giant e well, both the big experiments and the small. The state of this altered state, and that was when I started looking up, you know, what an altered state looks like, and my people really fit the definition with all of those five experiences they had. They were in some sort of altered place, essentially. And because of that, they came back. I mean, think of a near-death experience. You know, people come back from that and their lives are changed. They are changed, and that's what my people were reporting. You know, we just had this big intention experiment for America. We sent intention to the most violent city in America, which has been recorded as St. Louis, Missouri, um, last week. And I did this with people around the world. It was on Gaia TV. They they broadcast it um every day for six days and totally for free. It was wonderful. Um, and I will now survey those people to see what happened to them.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Oh, wonderful. That'll be great to find out. Um you in the chapter called Mystical Brains, you talk about experiencing a loss of self and a oneness. Um and there's something about Newberg talking about using a tomography tool and mapping the brain. Um tell us about that and what he found.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Well, that was so interesting because Newberg has studied m people who are in mystical states, like Buddhist monks in e ecstatic prayer and Sufi masters, and even nuns in ecstatic prayer. And he's found that there is a global quieting of certain portions of the brain, like the parietal lobes, which distinguish us from things that are not ourself. They help us to navigate through space, but they also s make us feel separate. And the same thing with the frontal lobes of the brain, the executive portion that makes the big decision maker, but or at least it's involved in decision making. Um and but it also has the sections are involved with things like worry, doubt, negativity. And he found that stuff was turned down. And here's the interesting thing. I uh ran a study of our power of eight groups because I finally wanted to figure out how these things are working. So I ran a study with Life University, which is the largest chiropractic university in the world. They offered to put their psychology department at my disposal. And so we're running a series of experiments. And the first one we did was an experiment measuring brain waves of people while they're in a power of eight group through a QEG that measures different kinds of brain waves. And we found the exact same signature in our Power of Eight group members as we did with Andrew Noburg's Sufi masters and Buddhist monks. But here was the interesting part of it because, you know, with all of those other disciplines, you need years of discipline practice and denial and meditation, and also hours of priming to get into that state. All of the people, all of the people in these power of eight groups that we were studying were just student volunteers. They had never done power of eight groups before. Most of them had never even meditated, and all they had in terms of instructions was a little 13-minute video I did explaining how to do it. And that was it. And by doing this kind of circle intention for someone in the group, they were instantly transported into an altered state. So for me, there was just no other conclusion that you know, small group intention is a you know, isn't it's a fast track to the miraculous.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

That's incredible. And it just keeps being proved over and over. Um now tell us about these power of eight circles you created and when you started, what did you really uh set out to do? What was your original intention? Um we know what's happened, but w did you did you ever think that this was going to be your results? What was it what you originally started with?

unknown 37:19

No.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

No, I didn't. And actually I wasn't thinking about writing about it or anything. My husband had to bully me into writing this book to be done, to tell you the truth. I was really terrified about these results. You know, what if we hurt somebody? I don't understand what this is, and I would apologize for it a lot of times, you know, just saying, hey, I'm learning with you. Um but what I wanted to do was understand it. So I started looking at antecedents, which led me to the whole thing with the Acts and Jesus and the Apostles. And um I started looking at other other traditions to see if they'd used anything like this. Um I looked at the brainwave science. I looked at the science of altruism too, and then I set up my own intention um groups where I invited people to be part of a year-long master class. This was going to be my own petri dish. So I got about 250 people and I put them into small groups of eight after doing training with them for about seven weeks. I put them into these small groups and I monitored them month on month on month for the rest of the year. And I was looking at their health, their relationships, the state of their career, and their life's purpose. And they would report on them every month and sometimes more. And it was really interesting. About 150 of those people met regularly. They stayed and met regularly, week on week with their group. And of that 150, pretty much 100% of them had major life transformations. Like one woman with 15-year-old chronic fatigue was healed and is now lifting weights. Uh, a guy who had had lifelong depression, and this was really embarrassing because he's a clinical psychologist, was completely healed. Um, we had a woman who regained her most of her hearing, we had another one who whose vitaligo got was repigmented. But aside from the healings, and there were many more, we also had loads of people who got their dream jobs, you know, were in play a place career-wise they didn't like or there was no steady income, and suddenly that was flowing in. Then we had people who were getting windfalls just at the right time. Um we had people who decided to leave their work-a-day jobs and set up new enterprises, or housewives who decided to finally, you know, set up, go ahead and and create the enterprise they'd been dreaming about, and so on and so on and so on. A hundred percent. So for me, it was like, well, what are the odds against chance of 100% of my participants having these major life changes as some inevitable progression of events over time? You know, and I I I say to myself, well, I don't ask that question anymore because I've seen this over and over again too many times not to recognize some sort of miraculous element in it.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Absolutely. Well, I i I was so thrilled uh getting to the uh end of your book, uh there it was exactly what I was saying, oh my gosh, how do we do this? What's and there it was, the gathering of a chapter where you give us a complete outline of how to create your own circle. This is so kind of you. So just tell the audience about this chapter. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Well, it's so simple, and that's the important thing, and they you know, there's a lot of information on my website too about how to do these circles, and again, setting up a virtual group of your own. If you don't have a group, an actual group of people around you in your book group or work group or um church or uh neighborhood to set up, you can do it virtually on my website. But um basically it's real simple. You just gather together seven other people, you nominate somebody in the group with a health challenge, or it can be somebody outside the group with a health challenge, you find out enough about that person's health challenge so you can be very specific, you frame an intention as our intention is uh that Jane Doe be free of the pain in her left hip and be healthy and well in every way, so that you are focused on specifics, you're very specific, maybe throw in the healthy and well in every way, and when you're doing the intention, you are going to imagine with your five senses that person being healthy and well in every way. And essentially, you hold hands, you take a few deep breaths together, you bring the intention statement, you think of it, you bring it down into your heart, you imagine that person healthy and well, you send out your intention gently, like it's unfurling, the unfurling of a plant toward that person, and the person just opened up their heart to receive. And there are more things involved, um, which I discuss in my book, The Power of Eight, but that's essentially what you're doing. And you're holding it for about ten minutes. And that's the incredible thing about it. As I say, um the interesting thing for me was you don't need, you know, years of discipline practice or you know, drugs to alter your state, like I uh you know, ayahuasca, or you don't need sweat lodges, you don't need all of this deprivation or putting your head between your knees. You just need a small group to be transported to the miraculous.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

This is wonderful. And how often do you recommend that they do these uh prayer intentions?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Well, I think that what's really important is to gather together your group and to be working with them. And to take, you know, people make this big mistake with intention. They think it's all about me and I have to just send my own intention, and they focus on me, me, me, me, me. And the, you know, the self-help movement is kind of to blame for that because they really do get us to focus on the self. But the interesting thing that I came up against, probably the most interesting research of all, was the research on p altruism. And it showed that altruism is like a bulletproof vest. You know, people who give rather than receiving usually do better in every regard. They're healthier, they're happier, they're more content. You know, even if they have an illness and they're helping somebody else with the same illness, they get better. And it just, you know, I even saw a study of prayer looking at people with depression. Dividing the group of four hundred volunteers into two, one half was going to get the prayer, the other half were going to do the praying. And when they measured how the outcomes afterward, the people who got the prayer did well, but the people who were doing the praying did really well. They were so much better. So this is the thing that's so important about these groups is you're getting off of yourself and there is some amazing rebound effect that occurs. So it's not like the group can't intend for you. Of course they should. But if the act of being part of that and intending for other people that works that muscle all the time that gets you off of it, it's some one of my people said it's like a watch pot never boiling. You get off of the watched pot and it starts boiling.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Exactly. What a great uh description. I can actually see that. That's wonderful. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for all of this. Now tell us again how people can find you, uh, the address of your website and uh and your book where we can buy that.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Okay, well, the website is lynnmactag.com. The power of eight is available now through all online and bookstores. Uh, you know, everything from Barnes Noble to Books a Million and Amazon, of course. And I have a special offer on too as a little thank you for people who buy my book now through October 17th. They can participate in a free teleseminar I'm doing, and they will experience for themselves the power of eight because I will be putting people into groups and letting them experience that. Oh, that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 45:46

Lynn, thank you for all the work you're doing because you're raising the consciousness of the planet and taking all of us up there with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Well, this was just a such a fabulous, happy accident, and it continues to amaze me too. But it's also, I think, very hopeful because it really talks about the power of connection in a really visceral way that people can experience for themselves in a very simple process.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Exactly. And as you give, you will receive. That's a g that's what the bottom line is giving and receiving. Yeah. And and back to the people Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

I was just gonna say I think we're back to what we came here for. I think we came here to support and nurture our fellow man and we got lost in this world of competition.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

I agree. And I've you know, all of the work I've done has demonstrated the power of connection and how we were meant to be connected and not competing. Um we just lost our way with a lot of you know, uh we are told how to be, essentially from science. And the science of the Newtonian view of us being these lonely little objects in a lonely universe, and the Darwinian view of there being not enough, and so we've gotta you know, we've gotta beat each other to the finish line to survive, have done us a lot of damage, I think. And this is really just coming back home to who we really are and experiencing the miracle of connection.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Thank you. Thank you so much. We Claire and I, thank you very much for giving us this time and for sharing your information with all of our audience and filmmakers around the world. And best of luck to you.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Thank you so much. Um, it's been a real pleasure talking with you.

SPEAKER_02 47:41

I appreciate that. Okay, thank you, Claire.

SPEAKER_04 47:45

Oh, you're welcome, and thank you, Lynn. Um more to uh more to work with here on all that you shared. So very grateful. I think that this is going to be very useful for our filmmakers and for people in their own individual lives and and families. It it it's just one of those types of things that um is all-encompassing, really.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Bye for now.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

Bye-bye. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 48:17

Bye. Bye. Now, in its second edition, Carol Dean's popular book, The Art of Film Funding, has 12 new chapters to cover all areas of film financing and how to avoid expensive pitfalls. Learn how to start with an idea and end with a trailer. How to make an ask for money. Create your story structure and your trailer, legal advice, fair use, successful crowdfunding, how to ask for music rights, and what insurance you can't shoot without. Available on Amazon under Carol Dean and at FromTheHeartProductions.com. I want to remind our listeners that David Raiklan is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra. David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story, please contact him at Davidrakeland.com. That's david r-a-i-k-l-e-n.com. And Carol and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Art of Film Funding. Please visit our website at FromTheHartproductions.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films, everyone.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

When you're part of a military family, you understand sacrifice and support. So at American Public University, we honor your dedication by extending our military tourists and savings to your extended family, parents, spouses, legal partners, extended,