You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
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| doesn’t feel right, I’m uncomfortable, or I don’t feel so good. The moment they accept that thought, or autosuggestion (and become suggestible to their own thoughts, they will unconsciously make the same old choices again that will lead to the progression of the same habitual behaviors to create the same experiences that automatically endorse the same emotions and feelings. And then they say to themselves, This feels right. But what they really mean is that it feels familiar. Once we understand that crossing the river of change and feeling that discomfort is actually the biological, neurological, chemical, and even genetic death of the old self, we have power over change and we can set our sights on the other side of the river. If we embrace the fact that change is the denaturing of the hardwired circuitry from years of unconsciously thinking the same way, we can cope. If we understand that the discomfort we feel is the dismantling of old attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that have been repeatedly etched into our cerebral 85 architecture, we can endure. If we can reason that the cravings we battle in the midst of change are real withdrawals from the chemical-emotional addictions of the body, we can ride it out. If we can comprehend that real biological variations are occurring from subconscious habits and behaviors in which our bodies are changing on a cellular level, we can forge on. And if we can remember that we are modifying our very genes from this life and from untold previous generations, we can stay focused and inspired to an end. Some people call this experience the dark night of the soul. It’s the phoenix igniting itself and burning to ashes. The old self has to die fora new one to be reborn. Of course that feels uncomfortable! But that’s okay, because that unknown is the perfect place to create from—it’s the place where possibilities exist. What could be better than that Most of us have been conditioned to run from the unknown, so now we have to learn to become comfortable in the void or the unknown, instead of fearing it. If you told me that you didn’t like being in that void because it’s so disorienting and that you can’t see what lies ahead because you can’t predict your future, I’d say that’s actually great, because the best way to predict the future is to create it—not from the known, but from the unknown. As the new self is born, we must be biologically different, too. New neuronal connections must be sprouted and sealed by the conscious choice to think and act in new ways everyday. Those connections must be reinforced by our repeatedly creating the same experiences until they become a habit. New chemical states must become familiar to us from the emotions of enough new experiences. And new genes must be signaled to make new proteins to alter our state of being in new ways. And if, as we’ve seen, the expression of proteins is the expression of life and the expression of life is equal to the health of the body, then anew level of structural and functional health and life will follow. A renewed mind and a renewed body must emerge. Now, when anew day dawns for us after the long night of darkness and the phoenix rises regenerated from its ashes, we have invented anew self. And the physical, biological expression of the new self is literally becoming someone else. That’s true metamorphosis. Overcoming Your Environment Another way to look at the brain is to say that it’s organized tore ect everything you know and have experienced in your life. Now you can 86 understand that each time you’ve interacted with your external world, those events have shaped and molded who you are today. The complex networks of neurons that have fired and wired together throughout your days on Earth formed trillions and trillions of connections, because you learned and formed memories. And since everyplace where one neuron connects with another neuron is called a memory then your brain is a living record of the past. The vast experiences with every person and thing at different times and places in your external environment have been stamped into the recesses of your gray matter. So by nature, most of us are thinking in the past, because we’re using the same hardware and software programs from our past memories. And if we’re living the same life everyday by doing the same things at the same time, seeing the same people at the same place, and creating the same experiences from yesterday, then we’re enslaved to having our outer worlds influence our inner worlds. It’s our environment that is controlling how we think, act, and feel. We’re victims of our personal realities, because our personal realities are creating our personalities—and it’s become an unconscious process. Then that, of course, reaffirms the same thinking and feeling, and now there’s a tango or a match between our outer worlds and our inner worlds, and they merge and become the same —and so do we. If our environment is regulating how we’re thinking and feeling everyday, then in order to change, something about ourselves or our lives would have to be greater than the present circumstances in our environment. Download 5.46 Mb. Share with your friends:
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