Consciousness has an impact.

If you are sitting on an inflated raft in the ocean, and a wave comes, all members in the raft are aware of the movement. If there is no wave, and one individual moves, it can be recognized by others just through the feel of what the raft is doing. There is a kind of ripple of energy that is communicated. There is a consciousness that is collective in its nature.

You are all one. Every individual of whom you are aware is an extension of yourself. The other is not a mirror image but an extension, and there is a big difference between the two. Therefore, it should be less difficult to understand in principle the interaction that is shared by thoughts, the communication that is shared just through being aware.

Through physics we know that merely observing something has an infinitesimal effect on what is happening. If you are observing subatomic particles, the minutest items of existence, that observation has an impact on what those particles do. You’re not breathing on them. You’re not illuminating them. You’re not changing their temperature. You have no perceptible connection that binds your consciousness of them to the actual particles, and yet the energy of looking is transmitted. You are conscious of those particles, and therefore the particles respond.

This is a truth that is most difficult to comprehend, but nevertheless, a truth. Being conscious of anything has a direct impact on that thing. There is a communication that takes place between you and the smallest particle that exists. If such a communication can exist, then it certainly follows that your awareness of anything at all, large or small, has an impact. Your thoughts are energies that have an impact.

So consciousness is really about an openness to recognizing that everyone on that inflated raft is communicating with everyone else. You communicate through spirit. You communicate with others whom you have never seen. When you pray for those in conflict whom you have never met, you are aware of their existence, and merely the act of being aware has an impact upon those for whom you pray.

You ask God to intervene when there is strife, but what is it, who is it, that is that God presence? It is precisely the energy that belongs to that consciousness that is exercised through prayer. God does not wait to act until you request it. Even your thoughts about those who suffer become an act of God that is comforting, strength-giving, affirming, for in truth, God acts because of your collective and individual awareness or consciousness.