Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

by Joe Dispenza

Awareness, Not Analysis, Permits Entry into the Subconscious

“paralysis by analysis”

Meditation Takes Us Beyond Analytical Mind and into the Subconscious

Meditation Takes Us from Beta into Alpha and Theta Brain-Wave States

Once the body is no longer running the mind, the servant is no longer the master and you are working in a realm of true power. You are like a child again, entering the kingdom of heaven.

it is a good idea to meditate in the morning or evening, because it will be easier to slip into a state of Alpha or Theta.

When we make a decision that strongly and have a clear intention for what our new reality will be like, the clarity and coherence of those thoughts produces corresponding emotions. As a result, our internal chemistry changes, our neurological makeup is altered (we prune old synaptic connections and sprout new ones), and we even express our genetic code differently.

you do have to make the decision to stop being your old self, enter into the operating system where those unconscious programs exist, and then formulate a clear design for a new one.

In time, if you can repeatedly create internal coherence like those monks did, you too may walk into the external environment and no longer suffer the self-limiting effects of its disruptive stimuli. And because of that, you won’t experience the knee-jerk reactions that formerly forced you to return to the old, familiar self that you are so eager to change.

Once you’ve gotten to a neutral/empty state, it is far easier to engage a heightened one like compassion; it is easier to bring in pure joy or love or gratitude or any of the elevated emotional states.

Preparing Your Tools The write stuff. Separately from your meditation sessions, you will read some descriptive text about each step, often accompanied by questions and prompts under the heading “Opportunity to Write.” I recommend that you keep a notebook handy to write down your answers. Then review your responses before you go into each day’s meditation. That way, your written thoughts can serve as a road map to prepare you to navigate through the meditative procedures in which you will access the operating system of your subconscious.

Pick a comfortable place where you can be alone and not be seduced by the addiction of the external world. Make it secluded, private, and easily accessible. Go to this place every day, and make it your special location. You will form a strong connection with this setting. It will represent where you frequent to tame the distracted ego, overcome the old self, create a new self, and forge a new destiny. In time you will truly look forward to being there.

Preventing distractions from your environment.

As much as possible, eliminate sensory stimuli

I usually use a blindfold.

Music can be useful

When not listening to music, I often put in earplugs.

Preparing Your Body Position, position, position.

Preventing bodily distractions. In effect, you want to “put the body away” so that you can focus without needing to pay it any attention.

Take care of any hunger pangs before you begin.

Although you are sitting upright, you may find your head nodding as though you are about to fall asleep. This is a good sign: you are moving into the Alpha and Theta brain-wave states.

When to meditate. As you know, daily changes in brain chemistry result in easier access to the subconscious mind just after you wake up in the morning and before you go to bed at night.

However, I suggest that folks just starting out do so once daily.

How long to meditate. Take a few minutes before each day’s meditation session to review any writing you have done in connection with the steps you are about to practice—as I said, think of these notes as your road map to the journey you are about to take. You may also find it helpful to reread portions of the text—to remind you of what you’re about to do—before you go into meditation.

Preparing Your State of Mind Mastering the ego. To be honest, I do have those days where I battle my ego tooth and nail, since it wants to be in control.

I’m obsessing about everything predictable in my external life. Typically, my mind, like most people’s, is either anticipating the future or remembering the past.

When that occurs, I have to settle down and realize that those are all known associations that have nothing to do with creating something new in the present moment.

Mastering the body.

If your body bucks like an unbridled stallion because it wants to be the mind—to get up and do something, think about someplace it has to go in the future, or remember a past emotional experience with some person in your life—you must settle it down into the present moment and relax it. Every time you do, you are reconditioning your body to a new mind, and in time, it will acquiesce.

One of the techniques that hypnosis experts use to get individuals into a so-called trance is called induction.

Induction: Open the Door to Your Creative State

I urge you to spend at least a week of daily sessions, or more if needed, devoted to practicing induction.

Remember that this process will take up the first 20 minutes of ever...

Your objective is to “sta...

The cerebellum plays a role in proprioception (awareness of how our bodies are positioned in space). So in this induction, as you rest your awareness on different parts of your body in space and the space around your body in space, you’re using your cerebellum to perform this function. And since the cerebellum is the seat of the subconscious mind, as you place your consciousness on where your body is oriented in space, you access your subconscious mind and bypass your thinking brain.

All of this happens as you move from that narrow-minded range of attention to an expanded focus on the body and the space around it. Buddhists refer to this as an open focus, occurring when brain waves naturally become orderly and synchronized.

Body-Part Induction: The How-to* Specifically, you will focus on the location or orientation of your body in space. For example, think about the location of your head, starting at its top and gradually moving down. As the induction progresses from body part to body part, sense and become aware of the space that each occupies. Also sense the density, the weight (or heaviness), or the volume of space that it occupies. By focusing your attention on your scalp, then next on your nose, then your ears, and so on, moving down the body until you’ve focused on the bottoms of your feet, you will notice some changes. This movement from part to part, and the emphasis on the spaces within the spaces, is the key to this.

Next, become aware of the teardrop-shaped area surrounding your body, and the space it takes up.

If you can sense that density of space, if you can notice it and pay attention to it, you will naturally move from a state of thinking to feeling.

Recognizing: Identify the Problem

Many people who have had a near-death experience report that they underwent a “life review” in which they saw, as if watching a movie, all of their covert and overt actions, their expressed and suppressed sentiments, their public and private thoughts, and their conscious and unconscious attitudes.

With practice, this type of awareness can help you override what would otherwise be the predetermined destiny of your brain and body—the automatic, enslaving hardwired programs of the mind and the memorized emotions that have chemically conditioned the body.

As you develop the skills of contemplation and self-observation, you are cultivating the ability to separate your consciousness from the subconscious programs that have defined the old self.

Opportunity to Write Take some time to ask yourself questions such as these, or any others that occur to you, and write down your answers: What kind of person have I been? What type of person do I present to the world? (What is one side of my “gap” like?) What kind of person am I really like inside? (What is the other side of my “gap” like?) Is there a feeling that I experience—even struggle with—over and over again, every day? How would my closest friends and family describe me? Is there something about myself that I hide from others? What part of my personality do I need to work on improving?

What is one thing I want to change about myself?

Pick one emotion that is a big part of who you are (your chosen emotion may be one that’s not listed below) and that you want to unmemorize.

Observe How the Unwanted Emotion Feels in Your Body

Be present with your emotion and feel it as energy in your body.

This feeling is who you really are. Acknowledge it. It is one of the many masks of your personality that you have memorized. It started from an emotional reaction to an event in your life, which lingered into a mood, which developed into a temperament, which created your personality. This emotion has become the memory of yourself. It speaks nothing about your future. Your attachment to it means that you are mentally and physically bound by your past.

Define the State of Mind Associated with the Emotion Next, ask yourself this simple question: “How do I think when I feel this way?”