by Joe Dispenza
I commended my daughter for her clear vision of what she wanted, and reminded her that universal intelligence would orchestrate the way her dream summer would manifest. She would take care of the “what”; a greater consciousness would handle the “how.”
Since my daughter is practiced in the art of thinking and feeling ahead of the actual experience, I merely reminded her to not only set an intention every day with regard to what that summer would look like—what people she would see, what events would transpire, what places she would visit—but also to feel what it would be like to experience these things. I asked her to create the vision in her mind until it was so clear and real that the thought she was thinking became the experience, and her brain’s synapses began to wire that information as if it was a reality.
If she was still “being” the young woman in the dorm room with a dream of going to Italy, then she was still the same person living the same reality. So while it was still March, she had to begin “being” that young woman who’d been in Italy for half the summer.
“No problem,” she said. She’d had experiences like this before, when she wanted to be in a music video and when she wanted to experience an unlimited shopping spree. Both of these transpired in perfect elegance.
I then reminded my daughter, “You can’t get up from your mental creation of this experience as the same person you were when you sat down. You have to get up from your seat as if you just had the most amazing summer of your life.”
“I got it,” she said. She understood my reminder that each day, she had to change to a new state of being. And after every mental creation, she was to go about her day living in the elevated mood of gratitude generated by having had that experience.
My daughter called a few weeks later. “Dad, the university is offering an art history summer course in Italy. I can get the cost of the program and all expenses down from $7,000 to $4,000. Can you help pay for that?”
Well, it’s not that I’m an unsupportive parent, but this didn’t strike me as what she had originally stated as her target. She was trying to control the outcome of this possible destiny instead of allowing the quantum field to orchestrate the events. I advised her to really inhabit that Italian trip and to think, feel, speak, and dream “in Italian” until she got lost in the experience.
A few weeks later when she called again, her excitement was palpable. She had been in the library, chatting with her art history teacher, and they eventually slipped into speaking Italian; both spoke the language fluently. At that point her teacher said, “I just remembered. One of my colleagues needs someone to teach Level I Italian to some American students who will be studying in Italy this summer.”
Of course, my daughter was hired. Get this: not only would she be paid to teach (all expenses covered), but she would be in six different cities in Italy for six weeks, spend the last week in Florence, and be able to be home for the second half of the summer. She manifested her dream job and every aspect of her original vision.
This wasn’t a case of a young woman pursuing this opportunity with the traditional dogged determination to find a program—searching the Internet, hounding professors, and so forth. Instead of following cause and effect, my daughter changed her state of being to the extent that she was causing an effect. She was living by the quantum law.
As she electromagnetically connected to an intended destiny that existed in the quantum, her body was then drawn to the future event. The experience found her. The outcome was unpredictable, it came in a way that she in no way expected, it was synchronistic, and there was no doubt that it was the result of her internal efforts.
Think about that for a moment. What opportunities are out there waiting to find you? Who are you being in this moment … and every other moment? Is your being that way going to attract to you all that you desire?
Can you change your state of being? And once you inhabit a new mind, can you observe a new destiny? The answers are what the rest of this book is all about.
CHAPTER TWO
OVERCOMING YOUR ENVIRONMENT
By now, I trust that you’re beginning to accept the idea that the subjective mind has an effect on the objective world. You might even be keen to acknowledge that an observer can affect the subatomic world and influence a specific event, just by collapsing a single electron from a wave of energy into a particle. At this point you may also believe the scientific experiments in quantum mechanics I’ve discussed, which prove consciousness directly controls the tiny world of atoms because those elements fundamentally are made of consciousness and energy. That’s quantum physics in action, right?
But perhaps you’re still on the fence about the concept that your mind has real, measurable effects in your life. You may be asking yourself, How can my mind influence bigger events in order to change my life? How can I collapse electrons into a specific event called a new experience that I want to embrace in some future time? I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re wondering about your ability to create life-size experiences in the larger world of reality.
My goal is that you understand, and can see in action, how there might be a scientific basis for accepting that your thoughts can create your reality. For the doubter, though, I would like you to entertain the possibility that the way you think directly affects your life.
Keep Revisiting Familiar Thoughts and Feelings
and You Keep Creating the Same Reality
If you can accept this paradigm as a possibility, then by pure reason, you would also have to agree that the following is possible: to create something different from what you’ve grown accustomed to in your personal world, you have to change the way you routinely think and feel each day.
Otherwise, by repeatedly thinking and feeling the same way you did the day before, and the day before that, you will continue to create the same circumstances in your life, which will cause you to experience the same emotions, which will influence you to think “equal to” those emotions.
Going out on a limb here, permit me to compare this situation to the proverbial hamster in a wheel. As you continually think about your problems (consciously or unconsciously), you will only create more of the same type of difficulties for yourself. And maybe you think about your problems so much because it was your thinking that created them in the first place. Perhaps your troubles feel so real because you constantly revisit those familiar feelings that initially created the problem. If you insist on thinking and feeling equal to the circumstances in your life, you will reaffirm that particular reality.
So in the next few chapters, I want to focus on what you need to understand in order to change.
To Change, Be Greater Than
Your Environment, Your Body, and Time
Most people focus on three things in life: their environment, their bodies, and time. They don’t just focus on those three elements, they think equal to them. But to break the habit of being yourself, you have to think greater than the circumstances of your life, be greater than the feelings that you have memorized in your body, and live in a new line of time.
If you want to change, you must have in your thoughts an idealized self—a model that you can emulate, which is different from, and better than, the “you” that exists today in your particular environment, body, and time. Every great person in history knew how to do this, and you can attain greatness in your own life once you master the concepts and techniques to come.
In this chapter, we’ll focus on how you can overcome your environment, and lay some groundwork for the two chapters that follow, in which we’ll discuss how to overcome your body and time.
Our Memories Make Up Our Internal Environment
Before we begin talking about how you can break the habit of being yourself, I want to appeal to your common sense for a few moments. How did this habit of thinking and feeling in the same way, over and over, begin?
I can only answer that by talking about the brain—the starting point of our thoughts and feelings. Current neuroscientific theory te
lls us that the brain is organized to reflect everything we know in our environment. All the information we have been exposed to throughout our lives, in the form of knowledge and experiences, is stored in the brain’s synaptic connections.
The relationships with people we’ve known, the variety of things we own and are familiar with, the places where we’ve visited and lived at different times in our lives, and the myriad experiences we’ve embraced throughout our years are all configured in the structures of the brain. Even the vast array of actions and behaviors that we’ve memorized and repeatedly performed throughout our lifetimes are imprinted in the intricate folds of our gray matter.
Hence, all of our personal experiences with people and things at specific times and places are literally reflected within the networks of neurons (nerve cells) that make up our brains.
What do we collectively call all these “memories” of people and things that we experienced at different places and times in our lives? That’s our external environment. For the most part, our brains are equal to our environment, a record of our personal past, a reflection of the life we’ve lived.
During our waking hours, as we routinely interact with the diverse stimuli in our world, our external environment activates various brain circuits. As a consequence of that nearly automatic response, we begin to think (and react) equal to our environment. As the environment causes us to think, familiar networks of nerve cells fire that reflect previous experiences already wired in the brain. Essentially, we automatically think in familiar ways derived from past memories.
If your thoughts determine your reality, and you keep thinking the same thoughts (which are a product and reflection of the environment), then you will continue to produce the same reality day after day. Thus, your internal thoughts and feelings exactly match your external life, because it is your outer reality—with all of its problems, conditions, and circumstances—that is influencing how you’re thinking and feeling in your inner reality.
Familiar Memories “Re-mind” Us
to Reproduce the Same Experiences
Every day, as you see the same people (your boss, for example, and your spouse and kids), do the same things (drive to work, perform your daily tasks, and do the same workout), go to the same places (your favorite coffee shop, the grocery store you frequent, and your place of employment), and look at the same objects (your car, your house, your toothbrush … even your own body), your familiar memories related to your known world “re-mind” you to reproduce the same experiences.
We could say that the environment is actually controlling your mind. Since the neuroscientific definition of mind is the brain in action, you repeatedly reproduce the same level of mind by “re-minding” yourself who you think you are in reference to the outer world. Your identity becomes defined by everything outside of you, because you identify with all of the elements that make up your external world. Thus, you’re observing your reality with a mind that is equal to it, so you collapse the infinite waves of probabilities of the quantum field into events that reflect the mind you use to experience your life. You create more of the same.
You may not think that your environment and your thoughts are that rigidly similar and your reality so easily reproduced. But when you consider that your brain is a complete record of your past, and your mind is the product of your consciousness, in one sense you might always be thinking in the past. By responding with the same brain hardware that matches what you remember, you’re creating a level of mind that is identical to the past, because your brain is automatically firing existing circuits to reflect everything you already know, have experienced, and thus can predict. According to quantum law (which, by the way, is still working for you), your past is now becoming your future.
Reason this: When you think from your past memories, you can only create past experiences. As all of the “knowns” in your life cause your brain to think and feel in familiar ways, thus creating knowable outcomes, you continually reaffirm your life as you know it. And since your brain is equal to your environment, then each morning, your senses plug you into the same reality and initiate the same stream of consciousness.
All of the sensory input that your brain processes from the external world (that is, seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, and tasting) turns your brain on to think equal to everything familiar in your reality. You open your eyes and you know the person lying next to you is your spouse because of your past experiences together. You hear barking outside your door, and you know it’s your dog wanting to go out. There’s a pain in your back, and you remember it’s the same pain you felt yesterday. You associate your outer, familiar world with who you think you are, by remembering yourself in this dimension, this particular time and space.
Our Routines: Plugging into Our Past Self
What do most of us do each morning after we’ve been plugged into our reality by these sensory reminders of who we are, where we are, and so forth? Well, we remain plugged into this past self by following a highly routine, unconscious set of automatic behaviors.
For example, you probably wake up on the same side of the bed, slip into your robe the same way as always, look into the mirror to remember who you are, and shower following an automatic routine. Then you groom yourself to look like everyone expects you to look, and brush your teeth in your usual memorized fashion. You drink coffee out of your favorite mug and eat your customary breakfast cereal. You put on the jacket you always wear and unconsciously zip it up.
Next, you automatically drive to work along your accustomed, convenient route. At work you do the familiar things that you have memorized how to do so well. You see the same people, who push your same emotional buttons, which causes you to think the same thoughts about those people and your work and your life.
Later, you hurry up and go home, so you can hurry up and eat, so you can hurry up and watch your favorite TV show, so you can hurry up and go to bed, so you can hurry up and do it all over again. Has your brain changed at all that day?
Why are you secretly expecting something different to show up in your life, when you think the same thoughts, perform the same actions, and experience the same emotions every single day? Isn’t that the definition of insanity? All of us have fallen prey to this type of limited life, one time or another. By now, you understand the reason why.
In the preceding example, it is safe to say that you’re reproducing the same level of mind, every day. And if the quantum world shows that the environment is an extension of your mind (and that mind and matter are one), then as long as your mind remains the same, your life will stay “status quo.”
Thus, if your environment remains the same and you react by thinking in the same way, then according to the quantum model of reality, shouldn’t you create more of the same? Think of it this way: the input remains the same, so the output has to remain the same. How, then, can you ever create anything new?
Hardwired to Hard Times
There is another possible consequence that I should mention, if you keep firing the same neural patterns by living your life the same way each day. Every time you respond to your familiar reality by re-creating the same mind (that is, turning on the same nerve cells to make the brain work in the same way), you “hardwire” your brain to match the customary conditions in your personal reality, be they good or bad.
There is a principle in neuroscience called Hebb’s law. It basically states that “nerve cells that fire together, wire together.” Hebb’s credo demonstrates that if you repeatedly activate the same nerve cells, then each time they turn on, it will be easier for them to fire in unison again. Eventually those neurons will develop a long-term relationship.1
So when I use the word hardwired, it means that clusters of neurons have fired so many times in the same ways that they have organized themselves into specific patterns with long-lasting connections. The more these networks of neurons fire, the more they wire into static routes of activity. In time, whatever the oft-repeated thought, behavior, or feeling is, it
will become an automatic, unconscious habit. When your environment is influencing your mind to that extent, your habitat becomes your habit.
So if you keep thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, and feeling the same emotions, you will begin to hardwire your brain into a finite pattern that is the direct reflection of your finite reality. Consequently, it will become easier and more natural for you to reproduce the same mind on a moment-to-moment basis.
This innocent response cycle causes your brain and then your mind to reinforce even further the particular reality that is your external world. The more you fire the same circuits by reacting to your external life, the more you’ll wire your brain to be equal to your personal world. You’ll become neurochemically attached to the conditions in your life. In time, you’ll begin to think “in the box,” because your brain will fire a finite set of circuits that then creates a very specific mental signature. This signature is called your personality.
How You Form the Habit of Being Yourself
As an effect of this neural habituation, the two realities of the inner mind and the outer world seem to become almost inseparable. For instance, if you can never stop thinking about your problems, then your mind and your life will merge together as one. The objective world is now colored by the perceptions of your subjective mind, and thus reality continuously conforms. You become lost in the illusion of the dream.
You could call this a rut, and we all fall into them, but it goes much deeper than that: not just your actions, but also your attitudes and your feelings become repetitive. You have formed the habit of being yourself by becoming, in a sense, enslaved to your environment. Your thinking has become equal to the conditions in your life, and thus you, as the quantum observer, are creating a mind that only reaffirms those circumstances into your specific reality. All you are doing is reacting to your external, known, unchanging world.