166. Edgar Mitchell's Universe: Insights from IONS and Dyadic Theory on Intuitive Leadership

[00:00:05] Episode 166 . Sound Bite is a shorter episode, which may be a bit more about a topic we've covered like our episode today or a quick inspiration. And I'm your host, Yolanda Canny.

[00:00:23] In our last episode with Claire Lachance, president and CEO of Research International, she mentioned her passion for noetic sciences, which is about the interplay between scientific knowledge and inner knowing.

[00:00:39] The word noetic means associated with or requiring the use of the mind. I just had to check it out when she mentioned it. I knew I knew nothing about it. And we've done several episodes on intuition and leading and thought you might like to know about noetic sciences too.

[00:01:02] So in the show notes, I'll have links to all my resources in case you'd like to do a bit of research on your own.

[00:01:09] Enjoy the listen. Here you go.

[00:01:11] One of the things that Claire mentioned in our interview was her time at the Institute of Noetic Science. And so that's where I started. I went to their website, noetic.org.

[00:01:25] And I found that it was inspired by a profound experience of personal discovery on Apollo 14 by astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, who created the Institute in 1973 to explore between scientific knowledge and inner knowing.

[00:01:44] They offer all kinds of events and they have the world's largest team of multidisciplinary scientists conducting research on frontier topics in consciousness and its impact in our lives.

[00:01:59] The goal of the Institute of Noetic Science or IONS is to build a more compassionate and more sustainable world.

[00:02:09] And their hypothesis is

[00:02:11] Everything is interconnected.

[00:02:14] By embodying an awareness of this interconnection, we can tap into information and energy not limited by space and time and profoundly amplify transformation innovation and well being.

[00:02:30] IONS has been testing this hypothesis through various experiments and peer reviewed papers and being pioneers of mindfulness research in the 1980s.

[00:02:43] And they continue to expand the field on the scientific understanding of integrative and complementary health and wellness practices.

[00:02:52] You may remember from our previous episode, Claire talked about wisdom leadership, which is leading with your intuition. IONS has been doing research which directly relates to intuitive leadership.

[00:03:08] They are able to illuminate the mechanisms of what is essentially too great to explain in words.

[00:03:15] In a way, they can make these experiences of awe, creativity, intuition, healing and more accessible and applicable.

[00:03:25] Some of their research findings have demonstrated the effects of mind body interaction and conducted studies on how love, gratitude and forgiveness can be used to help us understand our own world.

[00:03:40] And conducted studies on how love, gratitude and forgiveness affect our consciousness.

[00:03:49] Their team is composed of experts in quantum physics, molecular biology, computer science and psychology.

[00:03:58] I also found that Edgar Mitchell wrote a book called The Way of the Explorer, an Apollo astronaut's journey through the material and mystical worlds.

[00:04:11] So I had to give it a read.

[00:04:14] And when I ordered it from Amazon and received it, I found it was a signed revised edition, which was done in 2001.

[00:04:25] And so I dug in a little bit about Mitchell. He died at the age of 85 on February 4th, 2016.

[00:04:34] And not to be too woo-woo, I swear the book has his energy in it.

[00:04:41] When I see his signature, he signed it as the book to a fellow explorer. So cool.

[00:04:51] Here's what the jacket says about Dr. Mitchell's sense of universal connectedness.

[00:04:55] He intuitively sensed that his presence, that of his fellow astronauts and that of the planet in the window were all part of a deliberate universal process.

[00:05:11] And that the glittering cosmos itself was in some way conscious.

[00:05:18] The experience was so overwhelming, Mitchell knew his life would never be the same.

[00:05:23] It reminded me a bit of Amber's episode about the near death experiences and Mitchell's awakening was very similar.

[00:05:33] He was raised in a Southern Baptist family and went on to study the sciences of the day at MIT. And oh, for my Chi Omega friends that might be listening, Dr. Mitchell was a capricetic.

[00:05:48] At the heart of things, Mitchell felt that the need to reconcile what had always been thought of as separate in his life and in the Western mind, science and religion.

[00:06:03] Consequently, in the early 1970s he left NASA and he found ions.

[00:06:10] And I think what he looks at there is the mystery of human consciousness and the psychic events as well.

[00:06:20] And I guess a spiritualist refers to these as miracles and the scientists maybe dismisses altogether.

[00:06:27] His story culminates in a new didactic model of reality that brings consciousness into the equation of how our self aware universe works.

[00:06:38] Didactic means of or consisting of a dyad being a group of two pertaining to the number two.

[00:06:49] So rather than seeing things as separate or as so of events, he believed in connectedness.

[00:06:57] What he reveals through his model is that we live in a universe that is not predetermined by the laws of physics or preordained by deities or infinitely malleable.

[00:07:14] While human interactions are generally subject to the laws of physics, these laws are also influenced by mind.

[00:07:23] He states this in the first chapter. What I experienced during the three day trip home was nothing short of an overwhelming sense of universal connectedness.

[00:07:36] That has been described as an ecstasy of unity.

[00:07:42] It occurred to me that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens above me.

[00:07:55] And there was the sense that our presence as space travelers and the existence of the universe itself was not accidental, but there was an intelligent process at work.

[00:08:10] I perceive the universe as in some way a place where we can live.

[00:08:15] The thought was so large, it seemed at the time inexpressible and to a large degree it still is.

[00:08:22] But even in the midst of this epiphany, I did not attach mystical or otherworldly or additional to the idea of the universe itself.

[00:08:35] But even in the midst of this epiphany, I did not attach mystical or otherworldly origins to the phenomenon.

[00:08:47] Rather, I thought it curious and exciting that the brain could spontaneously reorganize information to produce such a fantastically strange experience.

[00:08:59] He goes on to say this.

[00:09:04] It has occurred to me that human destiny is still very uncertain and the veneer of civilization is yet exceedingly thin.

[00:09:17] Believing, as I do, that the universe is an intelligent system and understand the absurd and tragic fate that may await us,

[00:09:26] I have wondered whether or not we are prepared for our own survival, whether or not our own collective consciousness is yet highly enough evolved.

[00:09:39] Our universe seems to learn by the blunt process of trial and error.

[00:09:45] But I now understand that we have a certain degree of control over the evolutionary process and can influence our own course.

[00:09:57] But the only way to accomplish this is by bringing into question the very way we think about consciousness and the universe.

[00:10:07] By questioning many fundamental assumptions underlying civilization.

[00:10:15] Whoa, that was pretty heavy, but so insightful.

[00:10:25] And you know, I was going to go into a whole bunch of stuff about intuition and leadership, but I think I'm going to end the episode there.

[00:10:35] I think there was so much in those quotes from Dr. Mitchell that we don't need to go into more.

[00:10:44] So thanks for listening, and I sure hope that you enjoyed this episode. And if you did, please let us know. Leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcast.

[00:10:56] Tell a friend about us. Join our public Facebook group, Girl Take the Lead, or visit our website girltakedeleadpod.com.

[00:11:06] We also have a YouTube channel where your subscription would be appreciated once you're on YouTube search at Girl Take the Lead. And we've recently expanded to YouTube Music, where you can find a video of this episode.

[00:11:20] Our next episode will feature our guest, Heather McLeod Grant, social impact and philanthropy advisor, thought leader, and social entrepreneur with 30 plus years expertise in strategy, leadership, governance, networks, and leadership for social change.

[00:11:42] She is super passionate about working with women donors and leaders with the DEI and gender equity lens. I had the honor of meeting Heather and interviewing her during my own giving circle event.

[00:12:01] What is a giving circle, you might ask? Please join us for the next episode to find out.

[00:12:12] Talk to you soon. Bye.