"What the Bleep Do We Know!?": I can know my thoughts
Shirley Schwaller - from Spirituality.Com

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How often do you hear in a movie, “Our mind creates our body,” or “Matter is actually a thought manifested”? If you are a reader of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, as I am, these would not be entirely new ideas—but even I was surprised to hear these comments in a movie.

        What the Bleep Do We Know!?, the documentary that launched in a single theater last February and spread rapidly by word of mouth, is part quantum physics, part neuroscience and part spirituality. It’s not a film for all audiences, with a rating of NR (or “no rating”). And it has received polarized reviews—critics rate it either very high or very low. Nevertheless, it made me think more deeply than any movie I’ve seen.

        Many of the movie’s fans are seeing it multiple times, with one fan purportedly having seen the film thirty times. I’ve seen it twice, and it encouraged me to dig even deeper into my own exploration of how my thoughts influence my life experience and the experience of those around me.

        The film presents a fictional narrative of a woman trying to recover from a disastrous marital breakup interwoven with comments from a number of physicists, biologists, physicians, mystics and theologians on some of the latest thinking in their fields. Blend in some colorful and fun animation of the subatomic and neural worlds, and, voila, a new genre of documentary. The result is an intriguing illustration of concepts about the nature of consciousness.

Loving thoughts create beauty.
        It was the ideas, however, not the creative presentation that moved me. Basically, this movie puts forth the idea that our thoughts create what we consider our normal, waking reality. It suggests that matter is thought manifested, not objective solid anything. And that loving thoughts create beauty and hateful thoughts create ugliness in a person’s experience. The movie goes to great lengths to put forth varied (and to some viewers, vague) theses about why this is so.

        This reminded me of a statement by Mary Baker Eddy in her work, Science and Health, “A material body only expresses a material and mortal mind,” and further on, she explains, “You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness.”

        While watching the movie I was struck by a particularly graphic example of this. A Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, used high-speed photography and a very powerful microscope to take pictures of newly formed crystals of frozen water. The water prayed over with love by a Buddhist monk formed into beautiful snowflake crystals. The same water that was purposely sent ugly, violent thoughts became a muddy splotch of chaos.

        “What do our thoughts say about us?” asks one character in the film. This documentary reminded me that every thought I have is important. And that I have a choice about what I think, which in turn affects the consequences—in essence, the beauty of my life is in direct proportion to the beauty of my thoughts. This was not a new idea for me. Mary Baker Eddy said in her book, Science and Health, “Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionally to their occupancy of your thoughts.” And on days when I actually practice this, bad days are turned around.

This time, I chose not to get angry.
        After seeing the movie, I remembered an example from my own life that demonstrated a major point of the film. One day I was angry because my husband failed to follow through on a household chore he had agreed to do. Typically, in a situation like this I would say something to my husband in an irritated voice. Then he would usually follow with a protest, saying he was going to do the chore later. From past experience, I knew he wouldn’t ever get to the job, so my irritation would grow.

        Earlier that day, I had read the above statement by Eddy, about holding my thought firmly to good. So, this time, I chose not to get angry. I just did the chore myself, and instead of fuming while I did it, I thought about all the good my husband expresses. A few minutes later he left to run a few errands and when he returned, he came bearing a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. “I love you,” he said as he presented them to me. Wow! This would have been a very different experience if I had chosen to be angry with him.

This movie breaks through a major paradigm about reality
        Sure, it’s a minor incident, but larger consequences come from the same process. As the movie portrays, even the state of one’s health is influenced by the thoughts that people keep in mind.

        This movie challenges a major paradigm about reality and what we can realize through a truer sense of that reality. Mary Baker Eddy blew past this limiting paradigm over a century ago. This movie helped me to see that I need to stop and think about old models of behavior I might express in my life. Am I falling prey to discouragement rather than seeing infinite possibilities? Do I think my “middle-agedness” impacts my choices of work? Do I think I am plump because I don’t fit into single-digit dress sizes? None of these examples, according to this movie, have anything to do with reality.

        I like thinking, and this movie made me think. I like creativity, and this movie inspired me to think creatively about what more I might bring to life here on earth. This movie inspires me to think about what I think.