Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind

by Joe Dispenza

Thinking is what we do when we are using the neocortex to learn. Doing is the act of applying or demonstrating a skill or action, so that we can have a novel experience. Both are part of our explicit declarative memories. Being, on the other hand, means that we have practiced and experienced something so many times now, that it has become a skill, habit, or condition that requires no conscious will to activate. This is the state we strive to achieve with all our actions. The final stage of learning is produced when we make a conscious effort to unconsciously be exactly what we have learned by the natural effects of repeated experience. If we “have” the knowledge, we can “do” the actions, so that we can “be” whatever it is we are learning. “Being” exists when a skill has become easy, simple, effortless, and natural enough that we can consistently demonstrate what we’ve learned.

If we were to consciously self-reflect about some unwanted attitude, we would be observing the nondeclarative habits and behaviors that we unconsciously demonstrate on a daily basis. This process takes what is nondeclarative and makes it declarative. We now can see and know who we were being. We can say, “I am a victim. I am a complainer. I am an angry person. I am addicted to unworthiness.” Once we consciously know this (we declared it), we can now reshape a new way of being, by asking ourselves those important questions we discussed earlier, on who we want to be.

As we build a new model of self by remembering who we consciously want to become, we can use mental rehearsal to build the circuits to facilitate a new level of mind. Our mental practice is declaring whom we are consciously choosing to become, by remembering how we want to be. This prepares us to consciously act equal to our intention. As we begin to alter our behavior, we demonstrate a new way of being that will produce a new conscious experience. When we are able to repeatedly demonstrate that experience at will, it becomes a hardwired, nondeclarative memory. After we have arrived at this subconscious state of being, nothing in our environment should cause us to fall prey to our past attitudes. We are truly changed.

Why, then, is it so hard to change? Because the body has remembered a repeated action so well that it is in charge, rather than the mind. Remember, implicit memories are hardwired programs that require little or no conscious effort. The body holds the reins on the mind, determining most of our unconscious, hardwired actions.

No matter whether we are learning how to line dance, shed pounds, become a more cheerful person, overcome insecurity, or cut seconds off a 5K race time, we use a three-step process as the opening moves in our attempt to meet our goals: 1. Knowledge 2. Instruction 3. Feedback

This simple example demonstrates how important is our perception of reality. When we are exposed to new information, we accumulate new experiences. They upgrade the neural nets of our brain, and we begin to see/perceive/experience reality differently, because we have made a new level of mind in our brainʹs existing hardware.

No se ve el arte de la misma manera cuando aprendes sobre los autores. Por lo tanto mientras mas sabes mas puedes modificar tu percepción

When our goal is to change an unwanted neural habit, replace it with a new level of mind, and then demonstrate our new attitude automatically and naturally, if our demonstration (external feedback) does not match the internal state of our body, we are still not there yet.

How can we accurately assess our new level of mind? We must self-reflect to examine whether what we are doing is congruent with how we are feeling. If it is not, then we must insert a new plan in our mental rehearsal so that the next time, we improve both our actions and our feelings.

When we make anything implicit—driving a stick shift, knitting, buttoning our shirt, playing the martyr—we do these things without the intervention of the conscious mind. We have wired those circuits to the cerebellum, and both the brain and the body have these tasks memorized almost like blinking, breathing, repairing cells, and secreting digestive enzymes. Once we have a conscious thought in our neocortex, an unconscious thought/associative memory/implicit memory fires in response to our environment, and causes us to think equal to this stimulus. This process is often referred to as priming: we have an unconscious response to an external source that makes us think and act in a certain way, without even being conscious of why we are doing it. Priming finds its origins in the nondeclarative memory system. Have you ever noticed that if you think about flowers and recall the image of a rose, the other flowers you have stored in your brain are likely to fire as well? That’s an example of priming.

In neurological terms, priming involves the activation of clusters of neural nets that are surrounded by, and connected to, other clusters of nets holding similar concepts. When one cluster is activated, those other nets connected to it will be more likely to come into consciousness. Priming can also refer to a phenomenon that we’ve all experienced: once we buy a new car, say a Nissan Sentra, we begin to notice many more Sentras on the road than we did before. Because of our exposure to one event or experience, we’re more acutely aware of other, related stimuli. With priming, a brief, imperceptible stimulus provides enough activation for a schema (a mental structure of some aspect of the world) to be rolled out. Schemas enable us to function in the world without necessitating purposeful thought. For example, we have a schema for a door, so that no matter what kind of door we encounter, we negotiate it. Unfortunately, we also have schemas that are stereotypes, scripts, or even worldviews to help us understand the world. That is why we may have unconscious, reflexive responses to happenings in our environment.

These functions that produce what we commonly refer to as our mood are part of our limbic system, which acts as a kind of subconscious thermostat. Because these are also subconscious systems, the body will follow the command of the brain, because that is what we have trained it to do so well. It doesn’t ask questions like, Are you sure, boss? It just takes orders and follows through on the commands of the mind.

Because priming activates circuits that cause us to behave in certain ways, we can prime our brain to function equal to a focused ideal. Instead of spiraling downward, we can rise upward. In this way, we demonstrate that it is possible to change, that we can disconnect ourselves from the environment and the collective influences that have shaped us. When we mentally rehearse, we are priming the brain to help us be at cause in the environment, instead of feeling the effects of it. Self-priming allows us to be greater than the environment. And being greater than the environment is what evolution is all about.

Yet, few people construct those positive ones. Few people arrive at the conclusion that just as we can develop the habit of being depressed, angry, sullen, suffering, or hateful, we can be happy, content, joyful, and fulfilled. We take the negative states of mind that we’ve inherited from our parents and other ancestors, and we reproduce them. We then reinforce those states of mind, based on our own prior experiences.

Scientific evidence shows that the brain is as changeable as the words we write in our word processing program. The irony of this is that the way out of the mess we’ve created requires us to use the same tools we used to get ourselves into it. We don’t need a simple twist of fate to write a happy ending to our own life story; considering things from a slightly different perspective may be all that’s required. All we can ever know is based on what we perceive. What we perceive is based on what we experience, along with the tools of interpretation we inherited and employ, time and time again. Do we perceive the world as a place filled with negativity, because we have trained ourselves to look for it and ultimately be its reflection? Colin Blakemore and Grant Cooper at the Cambridge Psychology Laboratory conducted an experiment on cats that sheds some light on this question of how and what we perceive.6 The researchers placed kittens in two groups. The first group was raised in a chamber lined with horizontal stripes. The second group was raised in a chamber lined with vertical stripes. Because the kittens were placed in their environment at a critical time in the development of their sensory apparatus, and because they were exposed to only one type of line, their visual receptors were limited. The so-called “horizontal cats” were unable to perceive vertical objects. When a chair was placed in their environment, the cats walked right into the legs as though they weren’t even ...

Experimentos que demuestran que a mayor aprendizaje mayor realidad

1. First, we start out unconsciously unskilled. We do not even know that we don’t even know. 2. As we learn and become aware of what we want, we become consciously unskilled. 3. As we begin to initiate the process of demonstration (the “doing”), if we keep applying what we learn, we eventually become consciously skilled. In other words, we can perform an action with a certain amount of conscious effort. 4. If we go further, continuously putting our conscious awareness on what we are demonstrating, and we are successful in performing the action repeatedly, we become unconsciously skilled. When we begin the process of change, this is where we want to end.