Change Your Brain

“How Thinking Can Change the Brain” Science Journal by Sharon Begley

The Dalai Lama, who had watched a brain operation during a visit to an American medical school, asked the surgeons a startling question: Can the mind shape brain matter?

Over the years, neuroscientists had explained to him that mental experiences reflect chemical and electrical changes in the brain. When electrical impulses zip through our visual cortex, for instance, we see; when neurochemicals course through the limbic system we feel.

But something had always bothered him about this explanation, the Dalai Lama said. Could it work the other way around? That is, in addition to the brain giving rise to thoughts and hopes and beliefs and emotions that add up to this thing we call the mind, maybe the mind also acts back on the brain to cause physical changes in the very matter that created it. If so, then pure thought would change the brain's activity, its circuits or even its structure.

One brain surgeon hardly paused. Physical states give rise to mental states, he asserted; "downward" causation from the mental to the physical is not possible...
The Dalai Lama had put his finger on an emerging revolution in brain research. In the last decade of the 20th century, neuroscientists overthrew the dogma that the adult brain can't change.

The kind of change the Dalai Lama asked about ... would come from inside. Something as intangible and insubstantial as a thought would rewire the brain. To the mandarins of neuroscience, the very idea seemed as likely as the wings of a butterfly leaving a dent on an armored tank. Neuroscientist Helen Mayberg had not endeared herself to the pharmaceutical industry by discovering, in 2002, that inert pills -- placebos -- work the same way on the brains of depressed people as antidepressants do...
Attention, for instance, seems like one of those ephemeral things that comes and goes in the mind but has no real physical presence. Yet attention can alter the layout of the brain as powerfully as a sculptor's knife can alter a slab of stone… "This positive state is a skill that can be trained," Prof. Davidson says. "Our findings clearly indicate that meditation can change the function of the brain in an enduring way."

The article goes on to say that they studied changes to the brain that occurred during meditation and how the brain changed after meditation. The grand epiphany was that after meditation changes to the brain lingered and remained. The brain was physically different after meditation
The butterfly of positive thoughts and attention could dent the armored tank of our minds.

Things previously thought impossible are quite common. This has two key messages for us.
First, expand your imagination of the possibilities. Things in your life that you have always considered impossible could be quite common. All you have to do is change the way you look at it.

Second, this knowledge is a powerful tool to change the chemistry of your mind. Changing your thought processes to a positive perspective will change the way your brain is wired, bring better health and also open your mind and add power to your processing possibilities. You will begin to have more capabilities to change your life and to change the world.

Surpassing Man's Perspective of Laws

Scientist break speed of light CBC News of NEC Research Institute published in Nature journal.

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.
It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it. The experiment is the first-ever evidence of faster-than-light motion.
The result appears to be at odds with one of the basic principles of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, that nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second.
However, Lijun Wang, one of the scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., says their findings are not at odds with Einstein. She says their experiment only disproves the general misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light…
The NEC experiment caused a pulse of light, a group of waves with no mass, to go faster than light.
For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapour of laser-irradiated atoms that boost the speed of light waves causing a pulse that shoots through the vapour about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum…

The concept of the speed of light is one of the most stringent “rules” in our world. We knew you could slow light down or bend it as is goes through another substance. But this experiment obliterated the earlier rule. The speed of light wasn’t exceeded by a factor of 10% or even double. It was exceeded by 300 times faster.

We too frequently express with our words and with our thoughts the current situation thinking that we are simply being realistic and describing the current circumstance. However, when we engage in this description, whether good or bad, we are creating more of the same in our life.

We are hindered by the misconception that our description of the future must be kept in the realm of reality. What we fail to understand is that our perception is only that. It is only our perception. If we change our verbiage and our thoughts to reach far beyond our current situation we begin to create a reality far beyond where we are living right now. The real question is, “what are the limits of your imagination?” If the speed of light can be exceeded by 300 times, by what kind of factor can you increase your success?

When we approach challenges in our lives, government, politics, business, sports, how restricted are we by perceptions of "that is how it has always been done," "there is no other way," or "that is not possible? We need to let go of those restrictions and look to the impossible and ask "How?!"

Laws and Purpose

Some may wonder why the posts have been following more personal development concepts as opposed to traditional political discussion following trends of right wing and left wing ideologies and their merits and disadvantages. To have a substantive and valuable discussion you have to begin with a valid basis of discussion. We need to have a foundation of understanding of principles of power. There are laws in this world and universe that irrevocable.

We might wish that gravity didn't exist and that we could fly upon any whim. But wishing won't make it so. Gravity is a power that exists and rather than looking to repeal gravity (good luck with that) we should learn to work with it and how we can use it to our advantage. There are temporary circumstances when we can oppose the effects of gravity. But there are better opportunities when we can use gravity to our advantage. But the basic principle of power is understanding the fundamentals and being able to create within the principles and dynamics of Laws.

Archimedes said, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." Until we understand the principles, powers, and laws of the Universe our actions will be guided blindly and we may stumble upon success but we are more likely to trip into chaos. However, if we understand the fulcrum of natural law and the power of leverage we can change the world.

Planning for Good or Bad

Ask and It Is Given : Learning to Manifest Your Desires
by Esther and Jerry Hicks

Every thought vibrates, every thought radiates a signal, and every thought attracts a matching signal back. We call that process the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself is drawn. …
By the powerful Universal Law of Attraction, you draw to you the essence of whatever you are predominantly thinking about. So if you are predominantly thinking about the things that you desire, your life experience reflects those things. And, in the same way, if you are predominantly thinking about what you do not want, your life experience reflects those things.
Whatever you are thinking about is like planning a future event. When you are appreciating you are planning. When you are worrying you are planning. (Worrying is using your imagination to create something you do not want.) ...
That which is like unto itself is drawn, so the vibration of your Being must match the vibration of your desire in order for the desire to be fully received by you.
You cannot desire something, predominantly focus on the absence of it, and then expect to receive it, because the vibrational frequency of its absence and the vibrational frequency of its presence are very different frequencies.
Another way of saying that is: Your desires and your beliefs must be a vibrational match in order for you to receive that which you desire.

Each thought that we have is put out into the world has power. That thought brings back to us similar experience. The universal law has been stated many, many ways. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. That which you put out shall return unto you again. Karma. As we think, we are creating our world.

Power exists in presence not in absence. You cannot take darkness out of room. You have to put light into the room and darkness can no longer reside. Our minds do not hear words of negation like “no", "not", or "don’t.” When we focus on what we do not want there is no power in the negative. When you think and desire to not be sick you are thinking about being sick. But if you focus on the desire to feel energized, breathe freely, feel strength in your core and feel at peace you create that in your life.

How do we know whether we are focusing on what we don’t want versus thinking about what we do want? Our emotions in this instance can be a powerful guide. Does that thought bring you joy? Does the thought cause distress? Are you thinking about the old junker car saying you want to replace it? How does that make you feel? Tired? Exasperated with all the times you have had to repair it?

Do you think about the new car and all the new features and qualities it has? Are you excited to hear the engine purr underneath you?

Our minds will create in our world what we dwell upon. Fortunately the positive thoughts have more power than the negative (as we discussed last time). As we dwell on our desires as though we already have them, they create in our reality the desires and wishes of our hearts.

The Power of Thoughts

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by Dr. David Hawkins

We’ve established that consciousness is capable of discerning any change of energy to a degree of energy of log 10∞. This means that there is no possible event in the universe that isn’t detectable by the exquisite sensitivity of consciousness itself. The energy of human thought, though minute, is nonetheless absolutely measurable. A thought that emanates from the 100 level of consciousness [fear] will typically measure between log 10-800 million to 10-700 million microwatts. On the other hand, a loving thought from the consciousness level of 500 measures approximately log 10-35 million microwatts.

This whole statement helps to phrase the power that positive thoughts have in contrast to the power of negative thoughts. What this statement is saying is that when you measure the electric energy of a thought of love it has 1 followed by 700 million zeros more electricity than a thought of fear. To give you some order of magnitude, a trillion is only a one followed by 12 zeroes. And that difference only measures the difference in the electrical energy. We haven’t even touched upon the possibilities of the energies that can be photographed with Kirlian or corona discharge photography.

I was once introduced to a mental exercise involving holding a small weighted object hanging from a string at arms-length. The objective is to try to move the object with your mind while keeping your body still. I was amazed that I was able to control the movement of the object to go back and forth or in circles and even stop the object with very minimal thought.

There are two possibilities as to how this exercise worked. The first possibility is that my conscious desire became manifested in imperceptible minor movements of my body that then created what I was trying to do. The second possibility is that energy created by my mind moved the object. Regardless of which is true there is a powerful lesson available to us.

The thoughts we have are hourly becoming reality. Whether we are sending out energy to create in reality the thoughts we have or we are subconsciously making changes to the world around us to create that world we conceive of in our mind is not critical to distinguish at this point. The important thing is to recognize the power that we have and to keep in our minds a clear picture of the things we want.

If you have negative thoughts do not despair, they have amazingly less power to create. However, how much difference can you make in your life if you replace the negative with only a little for positive images of what you do want?

Incredible Energy

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Neutrons and protons occupy the atom’s nucleus. The nucleus of an atom is tiny – only on millionth of a billionth of the full volume of the atom but fantastically dense since it contains virtually all the atom’s mass… If an atom were expanded to the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would be about the size of a fly - but a fly many thousands of times heavier than the cathedral…It was a fairly astounding notion to consider that atoms are mostly empty space, and that the solidity around us is an illusion

There is so much about energy and space that is a mystery to us. The force that keeps all the positive protons together in such a small space (remember that like charges repel) is given the very simple name of strong nuclear force. It’s ten billion, billion, billion times stronger than gravity and we know very little about it.

Einstein was brilliant enough to teach us that Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared (E = mc2). To help translate what that means, if you were able to assemble from the dust and explosion all the pieces of the bomb that landed on Hiroshima you would be missing about a chunk about the size of the tip of your finger. That small amount of matter changed to energy caused the mushroom cloud.

What does all this chemistry and quantum physics mean to you in every day life? Our perception of matter and reality are based upon the things that we have expected. Most of what we perceive as solid is mostly space. Small things can make a big difference when applied in the right way. We have infinite amounts of energy available to us that can literally change the world overnight.

What is holding us back? What are your challenges? How solid are the obstacles that are in front of you? We give way to much strength to the things that stand in the way of our dreams.
We sometimes forget the power and energy that is available to us and how easily in can change our whole world. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Energy is not created or destroyed but it can be converted from one form to another. Each thought is an electrical impulse that fires neurons through your brain and through out the nervous system. How is that energy changing the world around you?

Riches and Creativity vs. Competition

Excerpt from The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles:

No one is kept in poverty by a shortfall in the supply of riches; there is more than enough for all. A palace as large as the capitol at Washington might be built for every family on earth from the building material in the United States alone; and under intensive cultivation, this country would produce wool, cotton, linen, and silk enough to clothe each person in the world finer than Solomon was arrayed in all his glory, together with food enough to feed them all luxuriously.

The visible supply is practically inexhaustible; and the invisible supply really IS inexhaustible. Everything you see on earth is made from one original substance, out of which all things proceed…

KNOW that there are countless millions of dollars' worth of gold in the mountains and industries of the earth, not yet brought to light; and know that if there were not, more would be created from thinking substance to supply your needs.

KNOW that the money you need will come, even if it is necessary for a thousand men to be led to the discovery of new gold mines (both figurative and literal) tomorrow.

Never look at the visible supply; look always at the limitless riches in formless substance, and KNOW that they are coming to you as fast as you can receive and use them. Nobody, by cornering the visible supply, can prevent you from getting what is yours.

One of the greatest fallacies of all time is that of scarcity. I would like to share with you two examples of scarcity that opened my mind to reconsider future examples.

First, in the 1970s experts proclaimed a crisis and declared that the earth would run out of oil in 40 to 50 years at current consumption rates. A little later, the oil cartels decreased supply and costs skyrocketed. Automobile manufacturers began converting from standard steel construction to using lighter alloys and fiberglass. Fiberglass is made from sand, one of the most abundant substance on the planet and more is made every single day. The lighter vehicles used much less gas and we substituted a “scarce” resource for a plentiful resource. Also, because of the higher costs of oil, people reevaluated existing wells and found that they could extract a great deal more oil than they originally anticipated. Wells previously declared dead were reopened and yielded millions of barrels. 30 years later, experts have since reevaluated their estimates and believe that at current consumption rates we only have 70 to 90 years of oil at current consumption rates.

Second, a few years ago it was declared that the laws of physics would make it impossible for any silicon solar cell to be more than 29% efficient (meaning that no cell would be able to store more than 29% of the solar energy that hits it). Last week, the US Department of Energy declared they had created a silicon solar cell that was 40.1% efficient by stacking and arranging the cells in a way that hadn't been considered before. I am always amazed at how miracles occur that defy even the "laws of physics".

In essence, there is more abundance than we can conceive. Any limitations that we have are limitations that we have chosen to accept. If we allow ourselves to get caught in the perspective of competition, we will continuously be battling against the challenge to try and take from someone else. If we open our minds to the infinite possibilities and allow them to flow into our lives, we will be blessed with abundance. We are creators. The key for us is to choose what we want, ask for it and be open to receive it.