Because You Imagine, Part 1: Me, me, meme…

BY ROYCE CHRISTYN

When I was a child, most of my friends would spend at least some of their time outside of public school going to a different kind of “extra” school. In my case, most of my friends were evenly split between going to Hebrew School or Sunday School. My childhood school, however, was slightly different… and weird (by most people’s standards). My family, led by my mom, spent at least some time every weekend teaching me the principles of positive thinking, meditation, and New Thought. I loved every minute of my special “school” — and the processes taught to me by my mom are tools I still use in my life to this day.

I can remember learning about the principles behind what is now called the “law of attraction” well over a decade before the film The Secret popularized the term. My mom taught me the power of focus and meditation, as well as the importance of visualizing goals and reciting affirmations. I have used these methods to help in almost every area of my life.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have some wonderful successes, both personal and professional, using these methods. From having roles on television shows to finding my soulmate, I’ve been blessed with many things that most people never get to experience. I truly believe that many of the wonderful things that have happened in my life were due to, at least in part, my ability to use the tools of New Thought described above.

When I moved out on my own to Los Angeles when I was sixteen, I kept up my “schooling”, devouring as many books as I could on every imaginable topic related to New Thought, spirituality, religion, and meditation. My other passion was science, and I evenly split every free moment reading books on everything from life after death to books on neuroscience and biology. I’m not a scientist, obviously, but the world of science is just as fascinating to me as any fantasy novel.

Researching has always been a weird passion of mine – I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I began studying acting around the time I turned five years old. In acting, we are taught to study and research not only people to help understand characters better, but also to study places, environments, habits, culture, and how things work. Many friends of mine who are actors and also began studying at an early age like me are also what I call “default researchers” — we often begin researching, studying, and take deep dives into topics without even realizing that we have started – everything is open to study and understand. The act of researching itself is sort of “built-in” to the fabric of our beings.

One thing you do as an actor is work to find any missing pieces or “holes” in a character or story, and attempt to use your skills to fill in the blanks. Great actors like Meryl Streep or Al Pacino do this effortlessly, which is why we pay money to watch them. They look at words typed onto a sheet of paper, ask themselves the right questions, and do the research (or “work”) to bring those words off the page and breathe incredible life into them. The thing that I appreciate so much now about my strange combination of having being taught as a child both the principles of positive thinking/New Thought and also acting is that it cultivated an almost automatic response to ask more questions. I also appreciate that my mom didn’t tell me that meditating and thinking positively would cure all of my ailments, either. She was honest when she didn’t know why bad things happened to good people, and I am so grateful for that.

One major issue I’ve had with the so-called “spiritual” community who teach and preach New Thought methods is the seeming gleeful willingness to either: 1.) victim blame (“oh, all of those people died in that stampede because they weren’t vibrating a high enough frequency”) and/or 2.) tell people that they can heal all that ails them by meditating and thinking happy thoughts.

It is dangerous when lofty teachers of positive thinking tell someone that they are imagining their depression or that their friend’s neighbor’s child died tragically because either the child or parents (or both) weren’t on the “right frequency”. I hate to break it to everyone, but their isn’t an exact science that backs up frequencies and vibrations as they might pertain to the events of our lives. What does exist, study-wise, is shaky at best, and cherry-picked to fit into the New Thought movement’s ideology or non-existent at worst. But, don’t let this dismay or upset you, like it did to me when I began “researching the research” many years ago.

The problem is, as I explain in my upcoming book Suddenly Right, is that the poor old wheel of New Thought has been re-invented so many damn times, it is more like a pile of dust and rubble than a shiny new wheel. Teachers of New Thought, New Age, and Spirituality tend to regurgitate the same old crap over and over again without fact checking it for themselves— and it pisses me off. It should piss you off, too, frequencies be damned. Aren’t you tired of not getting what you want in life? Aren’t you tired of feeling guilty when something goes bad or not-so-well for you? We can do better. All of us. New Thought as a movement needs to evolve and update, and soon, or face extinction.  

Some of the only voices, in my opinion, that are actually daring to push New Thought into the future are Kate Jegende, Harv Bishop, and my friend and mentor, Mitch Horowitz. Mitch says in his book The Miracle Club that New Thought doesn’t have a theology for suffering – and he’s right. Mental health is something that most teachers like to stay away from because it is pretty much ignored completely in the world of positive thinking. I’ve struggled with debilitating anxiety my whole life, and it has been the doctors and medicine that have helped me stabilize.

There was a point in my late teens and early twenties where my physical reality was at an odds with my successes using New Thought practices: I was very good at creating my reality and “manifesting” things I wanted into my life, but I knew this was only the case because I wasn’t having anxiety attacks 3-4 times a day, like I had been having before a great doctor helped me find a great medicine for panic and anxiety attacks. This trend was constant throughout my life: months or even longer periods of no anxiety followed by periods of paralyzing anxiety. It took until a few months before my 30th birthday to finally find the right doctor with the right medicine to finally curb my anxiety once and for all – I started treatment when I was fifteen years old, and there are people who have it way worse than me, so I am lucky (and grateful) it only took literally half of my life to find something that worked.

Many powerful creators are often unable to get into the right mental space to even start thinking about using the tools of New Thought because their brains are racing a million miles an hour, depressed, or unable to think clearly. I’m not saying there haven’t been people that have used principles of New Thought, meditation, etc to help with their anxiety, depression, or fill-in-the-blank ailment – but, from the thousands of people I’ve met over my life who practice New Thought and struggle with illness, mental or otherwise, these cases are few and far between.

But, even when you take into consideration people who are wonderful manifestors who also use traditional medicine as therapy for their ailments, there has always been something that bothered me to my core: why don’t the principles and tools taught in New Thought work all the time? Why does one process seem to work for years on end, then seem to suddenly have no impact?

One of my biggest questions that I had as I approached my late twenties was why did no one seem to have a reasonable answer to my question of why, when I would use the tools of New Thought to manifest one or many wonderful things, did sometimes some really bad stuff appear in my reality as well? I knew I wasn’t alone, and I almost felt dirty asking the question, but I wanted to know.

One thing was clear to my inner researcher: despite what everyone in the world of New Thought, New Age, etc liked to say, the cold, hard truth was that they didn’t have all the answers. I realize it’s silly to think any single belief system has “all the answers”, I know that is not realistic. But, teachers of things like New Thought, the Law of Attraction, and all of its offspring claim -quite often- to have just that: all of the answers. Over the past twenty years, New Thought teachers have tried to incorporate quantum mechanics into their teachings as a “scientific” way to back up what is happening when we create in our reality. In Part 2, we will take a deep dive into where this series is headed: cherry-picking quantum physics findings are not leading us anywhere, butthere is some mind-blowing information that severely impacts the future of New Thought that exists at the intersection of Neuroscience, Physics, Artificial Intelligence, and technology.

So, there is some awesome science out there that is starting to explain what might actually be happening when we use the tools of New Thought to create in our reality. But, before we can dive head-first into this wild and incredible world of “New” New Thought, we must first understand something so crucial, so important to the world of New Thought that the fact that it’s been missing from texts and teaching for so long is terrifying: the science of memetics and memes. Yes, memes.

When memetics was put forth as a scientific realm of study, one of the most shocking things that researchers discovered was that our thoughts don’t always come from us. That is definitely something that should make even the most casual student of positive thinking take a step back and think for a minute. If our thoughts create our reality, that is great… but what if all of our thoughts aren’t even developing inside of our own minds?

Memetics is the study, understanding, and (for our purposes) the harnessing, creation, and use of memes. It is the third, and, until now, very mis-understood source of creation for all humans throughout history. Memetics study how memes replicate, interact with other memes, and evolve.

Yes, you read that correctly. Memes (which rhymes with “genes”) are, in a sense, alive. Memes are often referred to as “mind viruses” – that is because  scientists have discovered memes are contagious. Unlike a physical virus spread through the air or physical means, memes are spread easily through communication and culture. There are other ways memes and mind viruses spread, which we will discuss further in this series.

Memetics  itself is a very new science that began as an official combination of  psychology, biology, and cognitive science. It has evolved to encompass aspects of quantum physics and even spiritual studies. As I have discovered, it also fills in many previously “missing pieces” in the practices of deliberate creation.

So, what the heck is a meme? In the last few years, we have been conditioned to believe that a meme is an online picture with some funny words overlaid onto an image. While those images are really both the result of memes and can be memes themselves, defining them as only having to do with this (a picture with words) is highly misleading. It is also helpful to have a society of people who believe that this is the only definition for a meme, when this describes less than 1% of what memes are.

My favorite definition of meme comes from Richard Brodie’s groundbreaking 1996 classic “Virus of the Mind”, he says: “The meme, which rhymes with ‘beam’, is the basic building block of culture in the same way the gene is the basic building block of life. Memes are not only the building blocks of culture on a large scale – making up cultures, languages, and religions – but also on a small scale: memes are the building blocks of your mind, the programming of your mental ‘computer’.”

Re-read that last line, because it is something you must understand on a fundamental level:

“Memes are the building blocks of your mind, the programming of your mental ‘computer’”

I would amend that statement slightly and replace the word “programming” with “programmer”. People who understand memes will have an advantage in life that billions of other people currently do not possess. What is fascinating to me is that Brodie’s book was written just before the global explosion of the internet. This global shift has made memes and memetics even more prevalent and powerful in our world.

Why? Because memetics itself (as a science) has proven that mind viruses exist. These viruses have existed since we were living in caves and painting on rocks, and they are in a constant state of change. Memes are viral units or pieces of culture that spread rapidly through a society: this can be anything from trends like bell bottoms or microwave dinners. Memes, however, have a poisonous side and include cycles of inner-city poverty, millions of families that only eat at unhealthy fast food chains, and even terrorism “copy cat” attacks. When you look out into the world and see most of the people around you fitting in, staring at screens, doing what they can to keep up, you aren’t watching zombies – you are watching people “infected” with hundreds of memes.

If memes are the building blocks and programmers of your mind’s “computer”, and you understand that your mind (which form the thoughts that form emotions that bring your desires into physical form) is the starting point from creating whatever it is you want in your life – then you can understand how incredibly important mastering, curating, and filtering memes is if you want to bring your wishes to fruition.

You see, when memes are positive pieces of culture that are non-harmful and we enjoy – there isn’t a problem. But, when memes are negative and act as harmful viruses of the mind, they can cause us to act in destructive ways that can hurt not just ourselves, but others. For those of you who are students of New Thought, where we are taught that you can’t create in another’s experience, understanding memetics is going to most likely shift your opinion on that commonly taught “rule”. These meme “mind viruses” succeed by programming our brains to believe that the meme must remain alive, regardless of what it means to our own personal health, happiness, and well-being. That includes making others behave and do things that they might not normally be compelled to do in their normal lives.

When memetics was put forth as a scientific realm of study, one of the most shocking things that researchers discovered was that our thoughts don’t always come from us. Brodie states:

“Your thoughts are not always your own original ideas. You catch thoughts – you get infected with them, both directly from other people and indirectly from viruses of the mind. People don’t seem to like the idea that they aren’t in control of their thoughts. The reluctance of people to even consider this notion is probably the main reason the scientific work done so far is not better known.”

The implications of this are staggering.  Thoughts create the emotions that create and draw things into our lives. If we are manipulated, via memes, into thinking thoughts that are NOT our own, and we can’t recognize this, it becomes clear that we may not always be in charge of what manifests in our lives.  

The tenants of the Law of Attraction state that we cannot create in another’s reality, but that is not completely true if we are being manipulated by memes to think thoughts that we cannot even distinguish from our own.  This explains why, in probably more cases than we can ever truly know, bad things can and do happen in life.  

Understanding memetics and how it has affected the abilities of people who want to create the life of their dreams requires changing the way we think about manifesting, science, spirituality, and life in general. It may sound complicated, but it’s not – and anyone can do what is needed to shift their belief system for the better. You see, science has discovered that memes and mind viruses appear in the following ways:

1.) They can come into existence spontaneously

2.) They can be spread and appear through communication

3.) They can be created intentionally

The word “meme” is a derivative of the Greek word “mimeme”, which means “imitated thing”, and was first put into the public sphere by controversial English evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins in his classic 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. The idea of memes became a meme and went viral beginning in the 1970’s and 80’s. World governments even have entire texts regarding the topic of “memetic warfare” (yes, that is a real thing, yes, we will talk about it in this series of articles, and – yes, it is very scary in some cases.)

As people began studying memes, the term “memetics” was popularized by researchers such as Susan Blackmore. In the early 2000’s, the words “meme” and “memetics” evolved once again and moved into the internet space.

Memetics in its original form was a heavily debated theory of evolution that paralleled Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. The idea behind memes is simple: through imitation of things like movements (such as shaking hands or kissing) and sounds (like yelling if there is danger, words, language, etc), humanity has a cultural “evolution”. This continues to this day, and explains why our culture evolves and moves forward via imitation.

Memetics helps us understand, as a starting theory, why we enjoy things that are not necessary to our survival, like going to a Broadway show, building and riding a ferris wheel, or visiting a museum. While those things may be great fun, from an evolutionary standpoint, they don’t help us eat, survive, and/or procreate to keep the species alive. All animals have very simple biological needs, which, in a nutshell are: to breathe, procreate, and eat. Why the hell do we enjoy going to the opera? That certainly doesn’t help us do any of the necessary things all other animals do to survive.

When you start to understand memes and memetics, which says that from our earliest ancestors painting on cave walls all the way to us painting pictures on our phone apps today, we have had not only genes dictating to our bodies, but also memes dictating our behaviors.

Dawkins’ original explanation of a meme is as follows: “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, and ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it onto his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.”

Dawkins goes on to explain: “Memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically, but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of the host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking-the meme for, say, ‘belief in life after death’ is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over”

Now, Dawkins is famous for many things – one of which is being an atheist – something I am not. His usage of “life after death” as an example of a meme is not an accident. Incidentally, Dawkins has backed away from memes and memetics quite dramatically. One wonders if he wasn’t comfortable with the emerging spiritual implications.

The study of memetics evolved drastically in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. With theinternet and the personal computer enabling humanity to share information at speeds never before imagined, memes began appearing at unthinkable rates. Almost anything can be a meme, but the strong ones survive. Think about anything viral or long lasting –from a catchy song to vaping- and you are staring down a meme. Memes behave like zombie viruses: they have one mission, which is to survive and replicate. The internet really made a massive impact on our culture and the spread of memes.

Humanity was suddenly not only instantly connected across the globe, but we were able to transmit culture, ideas, art, etc instantly. Therefore, with the internet and the general technological and communication revolution of the new millennium, came a flood of memes. Billions of memes began popping up everywhere, and a meme has only one purpose: to replicate/survive. The problem? Memes, like viruses, need hosts: humans, or, more accurately, the human mind. The world and the human mind is very crowded with successful memes already, and therefore, not all memes survive. What does something do when its sole purpose is to survive, but it is dying? It evolves, adapts, or goes extinct. So, memes evolved and adapted without many people noticing… at first.

This is when some really strange things began to happen. Memetics and memes were noticed by some underground researchers who studied things like spiritual movements, New Thought methods, and the Law of Attraction. They realized that memetics didn’t just apply to a very scientific theory – it applied to creation. One of my favorite books on the subject of memetics, called The Art of Memetics by Edward Wilson and Wes Unruh, which was released in 2008.

Their book was a small, but significant turning point. Then, as with now, memetics as a study was not a widely understood phenomenon. However, these authors knew “something else” (not purely scientific) was happening when it came to memes and memetics. They had a powerful realization: by combining theories of memetics with mastermind groups (the same kind Napoleon Hill talked about 100+ years earlier), and cybernetics you could achieve your goals. How? Through the design and spread of memes across many layers of different networks – including your own, self-contained “meme network”. Their experiments and newly created methods were producing some powerful and fast results.

This was a huge discovery, and they weren’t the only people who saw something really exciting was happening: memetics had officially crossed over into the spiritual realm.

One thing that the authors discuss is that successful memes must have strong “signals” – they must be able to be “picked up” by the receivers (people) in society and culture. Wilson and Unruh explain in their book:

“If the significance of a [meme] signal is both attractive and sufficiently different from the surrounding signals, it will garner enough attention to give the meme a greater probability of spreading.

Old memes reframed in new ways are just as likely as entirely new memes to be picked up, but for the transition from exposure to infection to occur the meme must address itself to the needs and priorities of its potential host.”

It’s important to understand that many things in our world can be a meme. In Robert Aunger’s 2002 book The Electric Meme, he asks: “Where are memes to be found? Are memes in behavior, in brains, in artifacts (physical things), or some combination of the three?”

Alright, so where can a meme be found “in the wild”? Susan Blackmore often explains a great example of a meme using toilet paper. Seriously.

Walk into any hotel in Europe, and, in many of them, you will find something that everyone, for the most part, accepts as normal. In that bathroom, in middle of London, Madrid, or Paris – you will see something that you probably take for granted and never ever thought much about in the past. What is this amazing, unbelievable, mostly-looked-over, but ever-present item of curiosity?

That “thing” you see is this:

Now, if you get on a plane to Buenos Aries, go to many hotels and you will find something like this: