By Kip Kreiling
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton is considered by many scholars and members of the general public to be one of the most influential men in human history. His theories reshaped our entire perspective on how the universe worked. He was so brilliant that his theories on the laws of physics stood unchallenged for 300 years, even during the industrial revolution! This guy was so smart that he had to invent a whole new field of mathematics, calculus, to help others see what he had learned to see. However, in his own words, Newton tells us that he was only scratching the surface of what the universe has to offer us.
In the summer of 2003, Dr. Simon Driver conducted a study at the Australian National University that confirms Newton’s perspective on the vastness of reality. Dr. Driver simply wanted to count the number of visible stars in the sky. Guess how many he found? Seventy sextillion – that’s a 7 with 22 zeros behind it – or 70 thousand million million million. Based on the 2003 telescope technology that Dr. Driver used, there are 10 times as many visible stars in the sky than grains of sand in the world’s deserts and beaches. And guess what we see every time we invent stronger telescope technology? More stars!
When we turn our focus to small things, like atoms, we find a similar astounding pattern. Try to guess how many atoms are in a teaspoon of water? One teaspoon of water has 3 times as many atoms as the Atlantic Ocean has teaspoons of water, about 200 sextillion (a 2 with 23 zeros behind it). There are nearly 3 times as many atoms in a teaspoon of water as there are visible stars in the sky. We also know that atoms consist of even smaller things, like protons and electrons, and that an atom is 99% empty space. Yet, when we split an atom, we release enough energy to destroy a city.
What do all these large numbers have to do with teaching the soul? In my recent book, The Imposter – How a Juvenile Criminal Succeeded in Business and Life, I introduce a principle I call Reality Slicing. Because reality is so large and complex, as individuals we can only integrate very small slices of that reality into our minds. Reality Slicing is the principle that we only comprehend small slivers of reality, like tiny slices of a huge pie. That chapter of my book focuses on our need to get help from others. Because none of us know very much, we should try to expand our slices of reality by getting help from those around us.
Today, I want to present another implication of the Reality Slicing principle. For every challenge you face, both personal and professional, there are often thousands of paths that will lead to positive outcomes. These paths are right in front of you; you just don’t see them yet. For those of us who are spiritual, including me, we will often pray for help when we face a challenge that we can not seem to overcome. When we get answers, it can feel like a new path was created in response to our petition. Now that I understand Reality Slicing, I am starting to notice that those new paths already existed; I just did not see it. The miracle is that I learned to see. By taking this perspective, the anxiety I feel when I am facing new, seemingly insurmountable challenges has nearly gone away.
Look out; this approach will shift the responsibility for resolving challenges to you. I am not suggesting that we are not dependent on higher powers. This approach can mean that those higher powers (God, for me) have already created the paths you need for happiness and it is now your job to see them.
Kip Kreiling is the author of The Imposter – How a Juvenile Criminal Succeeded in Business and Life
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
Albert Einstein