10 Billion Reasons to Catch the Beat
10 Billion Beats is a Global Intention Experiment
By Carlisle Bergquist, Personal Growth Author
 

• Recently as I walked down the National Mall in Washington D.C., I heard the ancient rhythm of a ceremonial drum ricochet through the stalwart canyons of Government buildings and careen from the marble and limestone walls of our nation’s memories.

• Outside the vast sprawl of Såo Paulo, Brazil, I listened in a small, unassuming temple, to three great bass congas bellow a charismatic beat that melded the room filled with eager devotees into an entranced frenzy.

• Atop my hill in Central Kansas, I can still hear in my imagination, the medicine drums calling tribes to council and the thundering cadence of bison hooves moving in mass across the valley below.

Everywhere, sound, vibration, frequency moves me as it has moved cultures for millennia.  It is an avenue for outward creation, and a pathway in to the deep reaches of our being.

First, with a banjo on my knee, I discovered the creative power of sound through music.  Later with a guitar on my hip, and a band at my back, it connected the feelings of my heart with those of the audience.  Then, in a small theater group, I discovered drumming.  That was my early path to becoming a different drummer.  Now, I use drumming in workshops and therapy groups to help people gain insight, and access their inner creativity.  Stretching these experiences much further in my doctoral research, I developed an auditory driver, a meditation product sold today as Vantage Quest.  Sound has taken me wonderful places and taught me to catch the downbeat.  So, being the different drummer, I invite you to a very special event that has blossomed from what sound has taught me: 10 Billion Beats.

10 Billion Beats is a Global Intention Experiment that will use drumming to send a wave of positive intention around the world with the time zones on Sept 18, 2009.  This project is for everyone who is crazy enough to think they can change the world and everyone else for whom they want to change it.  That includes you.  The idea is admittedly huge.  This is a grassroots movement–it is not a commercial event–it will only work if people like you get excited, if people like you participate, and if people like you tell others about it.  Find out all about the project and register at:  http://www.10billionbeats.com

This is not a new idea.  People have used drums to communicate and interconnect since the beginning of recorded history.  Traditions around the globe even embrace sound as causative in their creation stories.  Modern physicists have peered deeper into the subatomic realms and have been surprised that there is...no “thing” there.  Instead, in this tiniest of worlds at the borders of creation, what they thought were particles are instead, “interference patterns of various sound frequencies” called “nodes of resonance.”

You might call 10 Billion Beats a “node of resonance” in a larger world, a pattern formed by the interaction of my work with sound, Peter Russell’s book “The Global Brain,” and Lynn McTagert’s book “The Intention Experiment.” 

Why 10 billion you may ask?  Russell suggests that during the development of life on this planet, distinct shifts in form and function occurred each time the predominant unit at the time reached a population density of about 10 billion.  The most recent such change was the development of reflexive consciousness when our brains developed about 10 billion cells.  The next shift may be when the Earth’s human population reaches the same critical mass.  McTagert illustrated the effect clear focused positive thought had on the healing of illness, even at great distances.  I propose it seems reasonable to use sound at this critical mass, with focused intention as we approach this population threshold to help in a creative way.  While it’s unreasonable to think we originate the universe, we are required to be co-creators during our stay in it.

We live in an extraordinary time.  On one hand, we see a rise of hope in the world that offers the promise of bonding us together and overcoming a hard time.  In contrast, we see that divisions between nations, political parties, and religious extremists seem unphased.  Some prophesy that we have come to the end of our days while others say we are about to advance.  10 Billion Beats is a response to this current paradox.  Without doctrine or dogma, it has a simple agenda: to foster goodwill within the entire living family on the planet in which we live, and move, and have our being.  I know it does not solve all the problems, but as a family relationship therapist with several years of experience, I’ve seen division before.  I’ve learned that before a family can find solutions, they have to find a common place from which to start.

You and I may hear, and even play, different drums.  That is as it should be, but for a short period on one day this fall, perhaps we can find a common beat.  The Sufi Mystic Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1983) said: “All things being derived from and formed of vibration have sound hidden within them, as fire is hidden in flint, and each atom of the universe confesses by its tone, "My sole origin is sound."