Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets ofthe Heart

by James R. Doty

Now think of the person in your life who has given you unconditional love. Unconditional love is not perfect love or love without hurt and pain. It just means that someone loved you selflessly once or for a time.

Sit with the feeling of warmth and contentment that unconditional love brings, while you slowly breathe in and out. Feel the power of unconditional love and how you feel accepted and cared for even with all your flaws and imperfections.

What matters is that you have an open heart. An open heart connects with others, and that changes everything.

I opened my heart and imagined that I would be where I was needed with someone who needed me. Then I trusted it would happen. Things don’t always happen the way we think they will, but I’ve learned that they happen exactly the way they’re supposed to happen. I don’t know why I was supposed to spend this time with you. But I know there’s always a reason.

there is an old saying: ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ You were the one who was ready.”

write a list of ten things you want. Think about what you want to create. Write down who you want to be. And then bring it with you tomorrow.”

“Now that I have your attention, it’s time to set your intention.”

“Your intention. If you relax your body, clear your mind, and open your heart—it’s easy to set a clear intention. You intend to be a doctor. You are very clear on that.”

I promise you, everything you put on your list, everything you feel in your heart, everything you think about and imagine with your mind, if you truly believe, if you work very hard, will happen. You have to see it and then you have to go after it. You can’t just wait in your room.

But in some mysterious way you will also be drawing it to you, and you will become what you imagine. If you use your mind and your heart, it will happen. You have my word.”

“You understand it now, don’t you? The power you have inside you? You were ready to learn, and I was privileged to teach you. Each of us has that power inside. We each just need to learn how to use it. But remember, the magic I have taught you is powerful.

it is your thoughts that create reality.

Others can create your reality only if you don’t create it yourself.”

I believed in a world of unlimited possibilities. I could create anything I wanted, and this gave me a sense of power and a sense of purpose. Ultimately, we all have the ability to learn the same magic. I had tapped into the power of my mind, and I was ready to use that power and not let anyone or anything stop me.

Clarifying Your Intent Sit in a quiet room and close your eyes. Think of a goal or something you wish to accomplish. It does not matter that the details of the vision are not fully formed. It is important that such a goal or vision is one that does not involve harm to another or bad intent. While this technique could help you accomplish such a goal, it will ultimately result in pain and suffering to yourself and make you unhappy. Relax your body completely (Ruth’s Trick #1). Once relaxed, focus on your breathing and try to empty your mind completely of all thoughts. When thoughts arise, guide your attention back to your breath. Continue to breathe in and out, completely emptying your mind. Now think of your goal or wish and see yourself as having accomplished it. Sit with the vision as you slowly breathe in and out. Feel the positive emotions associated with accomplishing your goal or having achieved your wish. Experience how good it feels to have taken a thought and turned it into reality. Sit with the positive feelings as you see yourself having accomplished your goal. Once you have seen yourself having accomplished the goal and have sat with the positive feelings, begin to add details to the vision. Exactly how do you look? Where are you? How are people responding to you? Add as much detail to the vision as possible. Repeat one to two times daily or more for ten to thirty minutes. Each time begin with the vision of yourself having accomplished your goal. Sit with the fe...

With each time you do the exercise you will find you are refining the vision as your unconscious mind begins having clarity of the intent. You may be surprised what you discover and how you end up achieving your goal. What is important is the goal, not exactly how you get there. It is with clarity of intent that vision becomes a reality.

prefrontal cortex controls our executive functions—planning, problem solving, judgment, reasoning, memory, decision making. It’s what helps us regulate our emotional responses, overcome a bad habit, or make a wise choice. It’s the place in our brain that allows us to consider our own mind—what Ruth had already begun to teach me to do. It’s also where we learn to feel empathy and connection to others.

since that summer in the magic shop, the universe has always seemed to conspire to get me exactly where I needed to be.

Our experiences and our environment shape us all,

not to let circumstance define me. Not to let other people define my worth.

“Who gave you the right to destroy people’s dreams?”

anything is possible if you believe in yourself, if you stop the voice in your head that tells you who you are is based on who you were.

“I have had this dream for most of my life. It has driven me. Sustained me. Been the only consistent in my life.

You can do it, Jim, she said. You can do anything. You have the magic inside you. Let it out.

Every single person, at one time in life or another, needs a chance to do something no one else believes is possible. Each of you here today is here because someone believed in you. Because someone cared. I am asking you to believe in me.

Believe

Sometimes rules and criteria are critically important, but oftentimes they are arbitrary and act only to sift through numbers and limit opportunity.

Who was I? Was I the guy Oscar Wilde described, the one “who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing”?

focused-attention meditation training improved memory, focus, and overall cognitive function

I believed in the power of my own magic.

Every morning and every night, I saw myself there in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t worried about the outcome, I had learned to visualize what I wanted and yet detach myself from the end result.

I felt compelled to stand up and tell the truth, no matter what, and this blunt honesty did not help my cause much as a resident.

up to fifteen million Americans have had a near death experience, or NDE,

Like so much of life, our beliefs are a manifestation of our life experiences. And our brains are the consolidation of those experiences.

Perhaps what we experience during NDEs are our heart’s greatest longings. To be loved unconditionally.

To feel the warmth of home and family. To belong.

We can die a thousand times in this lifetime, and that is one of the greatest gifts of being alive.

I felt the warmth of a light and a sense of oneness with the universe.

belief that who we are today doesn’t have to be who we are tomorrow and that we are connected to everything and everyone.

my greatest strength was as a healer,

moral compass with a question mark after it, and what you think you want isn’t always what is best for you. This had three question marks after it.

Compass of the heart.

Each of us in our lives experiences situations that cause pain. I call them wounds of the heart. If you ignore them, they won’t heal. But sometimes when our hearts are wounded that’s when they are open. Frequently it is the wounds of the heart that give us the greatest opportunity to grow. Difficult situations. Magic gift.

Magic of the heart

“Do you know what a compass is?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. “It tells you what direction to go in.” “Your heart is a compass, and it is your greatest gift, Jim. If you’re ever lost, you just open it up, and it will always steer you in the right direction.”

What you think you want isn’t always what’s best for you.

One of humanity’s most enduring myths is that wealth will bring happiness and money is the solution to any problem. I had lost my money, and that was a problem. Now I potentially had a good chunk of it back, and that was also a problem. I had given my word to these charities. My father had been full of empty promises, and I had vowed to myself that I would never be a man who didn’t keep his word.

I sent love to every person who had ever questioned their own value or worth, and to every single person who thought money defined them.

a feeling of being enveloped by warmth and love . . . a sense of deep inner peace and an absolute certainty that everything was going to be OK—only

The heart has an intelligence of its own, and if we learn from it we will know that we keep what we have only by giving it away.

If we want to be happy, we make others happy. If we want love, we have to give love. If we want joy, we need to make others joyful. If we want forgiveness, we have to forgive. If we want peace, we have to create it in the world around us.

If we want our own wounds to be healed, we have...