Is Energy Real?Some people have trouble accepting the concept of energy. Western culture is still so caught up in the matter-based, mechanistic world view that arose from Newtonian physics, that most of us are skeptical of things that can’t be seen and touched. We’re still steeped in the doctrine of materialism, which basically holds that nothing except matter exists. But our culture’s materialist, mechanistic version of reality is not only in conflict with how people have viewed the world for most of recorded history. It is also in conflict with the views of most scientists today—AND it’s also in conflict with reality as most of us experience it. If we stop and think about it, our own experience tells us that there is so much more to reality than what we can see and touch. For example, I can’t imagine anyone denying that love (or any strong emotion) is real—but we can neither see nor touch nor smell nor taste nor hear love itself (although we can certainly experience its effects). The same with thoughts. They can’t be directly perceived by any of our senses—yet who would deny that thoughts are real? So our own experience directly refutes the world view of materialism. And if thoughts and emotions are real, it seems reasonable that energy might well be real, too--even though we can't prove it scientifically yet. Modern medicine, embracing the Newtonian world-view, at least until recently thought of and treated the body primarily as a machine. They simply ignored the life force (or consciousness or energy) animating our bodies, thoughts, and emotions. But in our hearts, we know that we are more than fancy machines or complicated computers. We know—because we experience it every minute of the day—that there is more to the world, and more to us humans [and other life forms], than what we can see and touch. If we can’t see this in ourselves, then we can definitely see it in the ones we love. So is energy real? I guess it depends on the internal mental rules--often sub-conscious--by which we separate our experience into "real" and "not real." My internal rules say that unseen things like emotions, thoughts, and energy are real.
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