by Joe Dispenza
Let’s stay with the animal world to look at how this works in terms of adaptation or evolution. A hypothetical group of mammals migrated to an environment in which the temperature ranged from -15 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The genes in those mammals, over many generations of living under extremely cold conditions, would eventually be triggered to produce a new protein, which would produce thicker and greater amounts of fur (hair and fur are proteins).
Numerous insect species have evolved the ability to camouflage themselves. Some that live in trees or other foliage have adapted to look like twigs or thorns, enabling them to escape the notice of birds. The chameleon is probably the best known of the “camouflagers,” and it owes its color-changing abilities to the genetic expression of proteins. In these processes, genes encode the conditions of the external world. That’s evolution, right?
Epigenetics Suggests That We Can Signal
Our Genes to Rewrite Our Future
Our genes are as changeable as our brains. The latest research in genetics shows that different genes are activated at different times—they are always in flux and being influenced. There are experience-dependent genes that are activated when there is growth, healing, or learning; and there are behavioral-state-dependent genes that are influenced during stress, emotional arousal, or dreaming.6
One of the most active areas of research today is epigenetics (literally, “above genetics”), the study of how the environment controls gene activity. Epigenetics flies in the face of the conventional genetic model, which stated that DNA controls all of life and that all gene expression takes place inside the cell. This old understanding doomed us to a predictable future in which our destiny fell prey to our genetic inheritance, and all cellular life was predetermined, like an automatic “ghost in the machine.”
In fact, epigenetic changes in DNA expression can be passed on to future generations. But how do they get passed on if the DNA code stays the same?
While a scientific explanation is beyond the scope of this book, we can use an analogy. Let’s compare a genetic sequence to a blueprint. Imagine that you start with a blueprint for a house, and scan it into your computer. Then, using Photoshop, you could alter its appearance on the screen, changing a number of characteristics without changing the blueprint. For example, you could change the expression of variables such as color, size, scale, dimensions, materials, and so on. Thousands of people (representing environmental variables) could produce different images, but they would all be expressions of that same blueprint.
Epigenetics empowers us to think about change more profoundly. The epigenetic paradigm shift gives us free will to activate our own gene activity and modify our genetic destiny. For the sake of example and simplification, when I talk about activating a gene by expressing it in different ways, I will refer to “turning it on.” In reality, genes don’t turn on or off; they are activated by chemical signals, and they express themselves in specific ways by making various proteins.
Just by changing our thoughts, feelings, emotional reactions, and behaviors (for example, making healthier lifestyle choices with regard to nutrition and stress level), we send our cells new signals, and they express new proteins without changing the genetic blueprint. So while the DNA code stays the same, once a cell is activated in a new way by new information, the cell can create thousands of variations of the same gene. We can signal our genes to rewrite our future.
Perpetuating Old States of Being Sets Us
Up for an Undesirable Genetic Destiny
Just as certain areas of the brain are hardwired, whereas other areas are more plastic (able to be changed by learning and experience), I believe genes are the same way. There are certain parts of our genetics that are more easily turned on; while other genetic sequences are somewhat more hardwired, which means they are harder to activate, because they have been around longer in our genetic history. At least, that’s what science says right now.
How do we keep certain genes turned on and others turned off? If we stay in the same toxic state of anger, the same melancholy state of depression, the same vigilant state of anxiety, or the same low state of unworthiness, those redundant chemical signals we have talked about keep pushing the same genetic buttons, which ultimately cause the activation of certain diseases. Stressful emotions, as you will learn, actually pull the genetic trigger, dysregulating the cells (dysregulation refers to impairment of a physiological regulatory mechanism) and creating disease.
When we think and feel in the same ways for most of our lives and memorize familiar states of being, our internal chemical state keeps activating the same genes, meaning that we keep making the same proteins. But the body cannot adapt to these repeated demands, and it begins to break down. If we do that for 10 or 20 years, the genes begin to wear out, and they start making “cheaper” proteins. What do I mean? Think about what happens when we age. Our skin sags because its collagen and elastin come to be made of cheaper proteins. What happens to our muscles? They atrophy. Well, no surprise there—actin and myosin, too, are proteins.
Here’s an analogy. When a metal part for your car is manufactured, it is produced in a die or a mold. Each time that mold or die is used, it is subjected to certain forces, including heat and friction, which begin to wear it down. As you might guess, car parts are built to very close tolerances (referring to the permitted variation in a workpiece’s dimensions). Over time, that die or mold wears to the point that it produces parts that won’t fit properly to other parts. This is similar to what happens to the body. As a result of stress or a habit of being repeatedly and consistently angry, fearful, sad, and so on, the DNA that the peptides use to produce proteins will start to malfunction.
What is the genetic impact if we stay in routine, familiar conditions—creating the same emotional reactions by doing the same things, thinking the same thoughts, seeing the same people, and memorizing our lives into a predictable pattern? We are now headed for an undesirable genetic destiny; we are locked into the same patterns as generations before us, which confronted the same or similar situations. And if we are only reliving our emotional memories of the past, then we are headed for a predictable end—our bodies will begin to create the same genetic conditions that previous generations faced.
Thus, the body will stay the same as long as we are feeling the same way, day in and day out. And if science tells us that it is the environment that signals the genes involved in evolution, what if our environment never changes? What if we’ve memorized the same conditions in our outer world and we’re living by the same thoughts, behaviors, and feelings? What if everything in our lives stays the same?
You just learned that the external environment chemically signals genes through the emotions of an experience. So if the experiences in your life aren’t changing, the chemical signals going to your genes aren’t changing. No new information from the outer world is reaching your cells.
The quantum model asserts that we can signal the body emotionally and begin to alter a chain of genetic events without first having any actual physical experience that correlates to that emotion. We don’t need to win the race, the lottery, or the promotion before we experience the emotions of those events. Remember, we can create an emotion by thought alone. We can experience joy or gratitude ahead of the environment to such an extent that the body begins to believe that it is already “in” that event. As a result, we can signal our genes to make new proteins to change our bodies to be ahead of the present environment.
Can Elevated States of Mind Produce
Healthier Expression of Genes?
Here’s an example of how we can signal new genes in new ways when we begin to emotionally embrace an event in the future before it is made manifest.
In Japan, a study was conducted to find out what effect one’s state of mind might have on disease. The subjects were two groups of patients with type 2 diabetes, all of whom were dependent on insulin. Keep in mind that most diabetics medicate with insulin to remove sugar (glucose) out of the blo
odstream and deposit it in the cells, where it can be used for energy. At the time of this study, the people involved were being treated with insulin pills or injections to help control their elevated blood-sugar levels.7
Each group had their fasting blood-sugar level tested to establish a baseline. Next, one set of subjects watched a comedy show for an hour, while the control group watched a boring lecture. The test subjects then ate a delicious meal, after which their blood-glucose levels were checked again.
There was a significant discrepancy between the subjects who enjoyed the comedy show and those who viewed the uneventful lecture. On average, those who watched the lecture had their blood-sugar levels rise 123 mg/dl—high enough that they would need to take insulin to keep themselves out of the danger zone. In the joyful group, who had laughed for one hour, their after-dinner blood-sugar values rose about half that amount (slightly outside of normal range).
Initially, the researchers who performed the experiment thought that the lighthearted subjects had lowered their sugar levels by contracting their abdominal and diaphragm muscles when they laughed. They reasoned that when a muscle contracts, it uses energy—and circulating energy is glucose.
But the research went further. They examined the gene sequences of the jovial individuals and discovered that these diabetics had altered 23 different gene expressions just by laughing at the comedy show they’d seen. Their elevated state of mind apparently triggered their brains to send new signals to their cells, which turned on those genetic variations that allowed their bodies to naturally begin to regulate the genes responsible for processing blood sugar.
Our emotions can turn on some gene sequences and turn off others, this study clearly showed. Just by signaling the body with a new emotion, the laughing subjects altered their internal chemistry to change the expression of their genes.
Sometimes a change in genetic expression can be sudden and dramatic. Have you ever heard of people, after being subjected to extremely stressful conditions, whose hair turned gray overnight? That’s an example of genes at work. They experienced such a strong emotional reaction that their altered body chemistry both turned on the gene for the expression of gray hair and shut off the genetic expression for their normal hair color, within a matter of hours. They signaled new genes in new ways by emotionally, and thus chemically, altering their internal environment.
As I discussed in the last chapter, when you’ve “experienced” an event numerous times by mentally rehearsing every aspect of it in your mind, you feel what that event would feel like, before it unfolds. Then as you change the circuitry in your brain by thinking in new ways, and you embrace the emotions of an event ahead of its physical manifestation, it’s possible that you can change your body genetically.
Can you pick a potential from the quantum field (every potential already exists, by the way) and emotionally embrace a future event before the actual experience? Can you do this so many times that you emotionally condition the body to a new mind, thus signaling new genes in new ways? If you can, it is highly possible that you will begin to shape and mold your brain and body into a new expression … so that they physically change before the desired potential reality is made manifest.
Changing Your Body: Why Lift a Finger?
We may believe that we can change our brains by thinking, but what effects, if any, will this have on the body? Through the simple process of mentally rehearsing an activity, we can derive great benefits without lifting a finger. Here’s an example of how that literally happened.
As described in an article published in the 1992 Journal of Neurophysiology,8 subjects were divided into three groups:
The first group was asked to exercise by contracting and relaxing one finger on their left hand, for five one-hour training sessions per week for four weeks.
A second group mentally rehearsed the same exercises, on the same timetable, without physically activating any muscles in the finger.
People in a control group exercised neither their fingers nor their minds.
At the end of the study, the scientists compared the findings. The first set of participants had their finger strength tested against the control group. A no-brainer, right? The group who did the actual exercises exhibited 30 percent greater finger strength than those in the control group. We all know that if we repeatedly put a load on a muscle, we will increase the strength of that muscle. What we probably wouldn’t anticipate is that the group who mentally rehearsed the exercises demonstrated a 22 percent increase in muscle strength! The mind, then, produced a quantifiable physical effect on the body. In other words, the body changed without having an actual physical experience.
Just as researchers have worked with test subjects who mentally rehearsed finger exercises and others who imagined playing piano scales, experiments have compared practical experience versus mental rehearsal for individuals doing bicep curls. The results were the same. Whether the participants physically performed bicep curls or mentally rehearsed those activities, they all increased their bicep strength. The mental exercisers, though, demonstrated physiological changes without ever having the physical experience.9
When the body has changed physically/biologically to look like an experience has happened just by thought or mental efforts alone, then from a quantum perspective, this offers evidence that the event has already transpired in our reality. If the brain upgrades its hardware to look like the experience physically occurred and the body is changed genetically or biologically (it is showing evidence that it happened), and both are different without our “doing” anything in three dimensions, then the event has occurred both in the quantum world of consciousness and in the world of physical reality.
When you have thoughtfully rehearsed a future reality until your brain has physically changed to look like it has had the experience, and you have emotionally embraced a new intention so many times that your body is altered to reflect that it has had the experience, hang on … because this is the moment the event finds you! And it will arrive in a way that you least expect, which leaves no doubt that it came from your relationship to a greater consciousness—so that it inspires you to do it again and again.
CHAPTER FOUR
OVERCOMING TIME
So much has been written about the importance of staying present. I could cite statistics on everything from distracted driving to divorce to support the notion that people have a really hard time staying in the present moment. Let me add to that body of knowledge by expressing this concept in quantum terms. In the present, all potentials exist simultaneously in the field. When we stay present, when we are “in the moment,” we can move beyond space and time, and we can make any one of those potentials a reality. When we are mired in the past, however, none of those new potentials exist.
You’ve learned that when human beings try to change, we react much like addicts, because we become addicted to our familiar chemical states of being. You know that when you have an addiction, it is almost as if your body has a mind of its own. As past events trigger the same chemical response as the original incident, your body thinks it is reexperiencing the same event. Once conditioned to be the subconscious mind through this process, the body has taken over for the mind—it has become the mind and therefore can, in a sense, think.
I just touched upon how the body becomes the mind by the cycle of thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking. But there is another way in which this occurs, based on past memories.
Here is how it works: You have an experience, which has an emotional charge. Then you have a thought about that particular past event. The thought becomes a memory, which then reflexively reproduces the emotion of the experience. If you keep thinking about that memory repeatedly, the thought, the memory, and the emotion merge as one, and you “memorize” the emotion. Now living in the past becomes less of a conscious process and more of a subconscious one.
Figure 4A. The thought produces a, memory, which creates an emotion. In time, the thought becomes the memory, and an emoti
on follows. If this process is repeated enough time, the thought is the memory, which is the emotion. We memorize the emotion.
The subconscious comprises most physical and mental processes that take place below our conscious awareness. Much of its activity is involved in keeping the body functioning. Scientists refer to this regulatory system as the autonomic nervous system. We don’t have to consciously think about breathing, keeping our hearts beating, raising and lowering our body temperature, or any of the other millions of processes that help the body maintain order and heal itself.
I think that you can see how potentially dangerous it is for us to cede control over our daily emotional responses to our memories and environment—to this automatic system. This subconscious set of routine responses has been variously compared to an autopilot system and to programs running in the background of a computer. What those analogies are trying to convey is the sense that there is something below the surface of our awareness that is in control of how we behave.
Here’s an example to reinforce these points. Imagine that in your youth, you came home one day and discovered your favorite pet lying dead on the floor. Every sensory impression of that experience would be, as the expression goes, burned into your brain. That experience would scar you.
With traumatic experiences like that, it’s easy to understand how those emotions can become unconscious, memorized responses to reminders from your environment that you lost a loved one. You know by now that when you think about that experience, you create the same emotions in your brain and body as if the event was occurring all over again. All it takes is one stray thought, or one reaction to some event in the external world, to activate that program—and you start feeling the emotion of your past grief. The trigger could be seeing a dog that looks like yours, or visiting a place you once took him as a puppy. Regardless of the sensory input, it activates an emotion. Those emotional triggers can be obvious or subtle, but they all affect you at a subconscious level, and before you can process what has happened, you’re back in that emotional/chemical state of grief, anger, and sadness.