Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

by Joe Dispenza

Figure 8B. The progression of brain-wave development from Delta in infancy to Beta in adulthood. Look at the difference in the three ranges of Beta: high-range Beta can be twice as high as mid-range Beta.

  Brain-Wave States in Adults: An Overview

  Beta. As you’re reading this chapter, most likely you are in the everyday waking state of Beta brain-wave activity. Your brain is processing sensory data and trying to create meaning between your outer and inner worlds. While you are engaged in this book’s material, you may feel the weight of your body on your seat, you may hear music in the background, you may glance up and see out a window. All of this data is being processed by your thinking neocortex.

  Alpha. Now, let’s say that you close your eyes (80 percent of our sensory information derives from sight) and purposefully go inward. Since you are greatly reducing sensory data from the environment, less information is entering your nervous system. Your brain waves naturally slow down into the Alpha state. You relax. You become less preoccupied with the elements in your outer world, and the internal world begins to consume your attention. You tend to think and analyze less. In Alpha, the brain is in a light meditative state (when you practice the meditation in Part III, you’ll go into an even deeper Alpha state).

  On a daily basis, your brain moves into Alpha without much effort on your part. For example, when you’re learning something new in a lecture, generally your brain is functioning in low- to mid-range Beta. You’re listening to the message and analyzing the concepts being presented. Then when you’ve heard enough or you particularly like something interesting that applies to you, you naturally pause and your brain slips into Alpha. You do this because that information is being consolidated in your gray matter. And as you stare into space, you are attending to your thoughts and making them more real than the external world. The moment that happens, your frontal lobe is now wiring that information into your cerebral architecture … and like magic, you can remember what you just learned.

  Theta. In adults, Theta waves emerge in the twilight state or lucid state, during which some people find themselves half-awake and half-asleep (the conscious mind is awake, while the body is somewhat asleep). This is the state when a hypnotherapist can access the subconscious mind. In Theta, we are more programmable because there is no veil between the conscious and subconscious minds.

  Delta. For most of us, Delta waves are representative of deep sleep. In this realm there is very little conscious awareness, and the body is restoring itself.

  As this overview demonstrates, when we move into slower brain-wave states, we move deeper into the inner world of the subconscious mind. The reverse is also true: as we move into higher brain-wave states, the more we become conscious and attend to the external world.

  With repeated practice, these terrains of the mind will begin to become familiar to you. Just like anything else you persist at, you will come to notice what each brain-wave pattern feels like. You’ll know when you are analyzing or thinking too much in Beta; you’ll observe when you are not present because you are swinging from the emotions of the past to trying to anticipate a known future. You’ll also sense when you are in Alpha or Theta, since you’ll feel its coherence. In time, you will know when you are there and when you are not.

  Figure 8C. A comparison of different brain-wave patterns in adults.

  Gamma: The Fastest Brain Waves of All

  The fastest documented brain-wave frequencies are Gamma waves, from 40 to 100 hertz. (Gamma waves are more compressed and have a smaller amplitude compared to the other four types of brain waves I have discussed, so although their cycles per second are similar to high-range Beta, there is not an exact correlation between them.) Having high amounts of coherent Gamma activity in the brain is usually linked to elevated states of mind such as happiness, compassion, and even increased awareness, which usually entails better memory formation This is a heightened level of consciousness that people tend to describe as “having a transcendent or peak experience.” For our purposes, think of Gamma as the side effect of a shift in consciousness.

  Three Levels of Beta Waves Govern Our Waking Hours

  Since we spend most of our conscious waking day with our attention on the external environment and functioning in Beta, let’s talk about the three levels of these brain-wave patterns.2 This understanding will facilitate moving from Beta to Alpha and ultimately to Theta in the meditative state.

  1. Low-range Beta is defined as relaxed, interested attention ranging from 13 to 15 hertz (cycles per second). If you are enjoying reading a book and are familiar with the material, your brain would probably be firing in low Beta, because you are paying a certain degree of attention without any vigilance.

  2. Mid-range Beta is produced during focused attention on sustained external stimuli. Learning is a good example: if I were to test you on what you read while enjoying that book in low Beta, you would have to perk up a bit, and thus there would be more neocortical activity such as analytical thinking. Mid-Beta operates between 16 and 22 hertz.

  With mid-range Beta and even low-range Beta to some extent, these frequencies reflect our conscious or rational thinking and our alertness. They are a result of the neocortex taking in stimuli from the environment through all of our senses and assembling the information into a package to create a level of mind. As you can imagine, with this focus on what we’re seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, and smelling comes a great deal of complexity and activity within the brain to produce that level of stimulation.

  3. High-range Beta is characterized by any brain-wave pattern from 22 to 50 hertz. High-Beta patterns are observed during stressful situations where those nasty survival chemicals are produced in the body. Maintaining this sustained focus in such a high-arousal state is not the type of focused attention we use to learn, create, dream, problem solve, or even heal. In truth, we could say that the brain in high Beta is functioning with too much focused concentration. The mind is too amped up and the body is too stimulated to be in any semblance of order. (When you’re in high Beta, just know for now that you are probably focusing on something too much and it’s hard to stop.)

  High Beta: A Short-Term Survival Mechanism, a Long-Term Source of Stress and Imbalance

  Emergencies always create a considerable need for increased electrical activity in the brain. Nature has gifted us with the fight-or-flight response, to help us quickly focus in potentially dangerous situations. The strong physiological arousal of the heart, lungs, and sympathetic nervous system leads to a dramatic change in psychological states. Our perception, behaviors, attitudes, and emotions are all altered. This type of attention is very different from what we normally use. It causes us to act like a revved-up animal with a big memory bank. The scales of attention become tipped toward the external environment, causing an overfocused state of mind. Anxiety, worry, anger, pain, suffering, frustration, fear, and even competitive states of mind induce high-range Beta waves to predominate during the crisis.

  In the short term, this serves all organisms well. There is nothing wrong with this narrow, overfocused range of attention. We “get the job done” because it affords us the ability to accomplish so many things.

  However, if we remain in “emergency mode” for a long time, high Beta knocks us far out of balance, because maintaining it requires an immense amount of energy—and because this is the most reactive, unstable, and volatile of all brain patterns. When high Beta becomes chronic and uncontrolled, the brain gets juiced up beyond the healthy range.

  Unfortunately, high Beta is terribly overutilized by the majority of the population. We are obsessive or compulsive, insomniac or chronically fatigued, anxious or depressed, forcibly pushing in all directions to be all-powerful or hopelessly holding on to our pain to feel utterly powerless, competing to get ahead or victimized by our circumstances.

  Sustained High Beta Sends the Brain into Disorder

  To put this into perspective, think about the normal functioning of the brain as part of the central nervous system, whi
ch controls and coordinates all other systems of the body: it keeps your heart beating, digests your food, regulates your immune system, maintains your respiratory rate, balances your hormones, controls your metabolism, and eliminates wastes, to name a few. As long as the mind is coherent and orderly, messages that travel from the brain to the body through the spinal cord will produce synchronized signals for a balanced, healthy body.

  However, many people spend their waking days in a sustained high-frequency Beta state. To them, everything is an emergency. The brain stays constantly on a very fast cycle, which taxes the entire system. Living in this thin margin of brain waves is like driving a car in first gear while simultaneously stepping on the gas. These people “drive through” their lives without ever stopping to consider shifting gears into other brain states.

  Their continual repetition of survival-based thoughts creates feelings of anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, depression, competition, aggression, insecurity, and frustration, among others. People become so caught up in these intoxicating emotions that they try to analyze their problems from within these familiar feelings, which only perpetuates more thoughts overfocused on survival. Also, recall that we can turn on the stress response by thought alone—the way we are thinking reinforces the very state of the brain and body, which then causes us to think the same way … and the loop goes on. It’s the serpent eating its tail.

  Long-term high Beta produces an unhealthy cocktail of stress chemicals, which can tip the brain out of balance like a symphony orchestra out of tune. Parts of the brain may stop coordinating effectively with other areas; entire regions work separately and in opposition. Like a house divided against itself, the brain no longer communicates in an organized, holistic fashion. As stress chemicals force the thinking brain/neocortex to become more segregated, we may function like someone with multiple personality disorder, only we’re experiencing it all at once instead of one personality at a time.

  Of course, when disorderly, incoherent signals from the brain relay erratic, mixed electrochemical messages through the central nervous system to the rest of the physiological systems, this puts the body out of balance, upsetting its homeostasis or equilibrium, and setting the stage for disease.

  If we live in this high-stress mode of chaotic brain function for extended periods, the heart is impacted (leading to arrhythmias or high blood pressure), digestion begins to fail (causing indigestion, reflux, and related symptoms), and immune function weakens (resulting in colds, allergies, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and more).

  All of these consequences stem from an unbalanced nervous system that is operating incoherently, due to the action of stress chemicals and high-range Beta brain waves reaffirming the outer world as the only reality.

  Sustained High Beta Makes It Hard to

  Focus on Our Inner Self

  The stress I’ve been discussing is a product of our addiction to the Big Three. The problem isn’t that we are conscious and aware, but that our focus in high Beta is almost exclusively on our environment (people, things, places), our bodies’ parts and functions (I’m hungry … I’m too weak … I want a better nose … I’m fat compared to her …), and time (Hurry up! The clock is winding down!).

  In high Beta, the outer world appears to be more real than the inner world. Our attention and conscious awareness primarily focus on everything that makes up the external environment. Thus, we identify more readily with those material elements: we criticize everyone we know, we judge the way our bodies look, we’re overfocused on our problems, we cling to things we own out of fear that we might lose them, we busy ourselves with places we have to go, and we’re preoccupied with time. That leaves us little processing power to pay attention to the changes that we truly want to make—to go inward … to observe and monitor our thoughts, behavior, and emotions.

  It’s difficult for us to focus on our inner reality when we are overfixating on our outer world. In general, we can’t concentrate on anything other than the Big Three, we can’t open our minds beyond the boundaries of our narrow focus, and we obsess about problems rather than thinking about solutions. Why does it take such effort to let go of the external and go within? The brain in high Beta can’t easily shift gears into the imaginary realm of Alpha. Our brain-wave patterns keep us locked into all those elements of our outer world as if they are real.

  When you are stuck in high Beta, it’s hard to learn: very little new information can enter into your nervous system that is not equal to the emotion you are experiencing. The truth is, the problems you’re so busy analyzing can’t be resolved within the emotion you are analyzing them in. Why not? Well, your analysis is creating higher and higher frequencies of Beta. Thinking in this mode causes your brain to overreact; you reason poorly and think without clarity.

  In view of the emotions that grip you, you’re thinking in the past—and trying to predict the next moment based on the past—and your brain can’t process the present moment. There’s no room for the unknown to show up in your world. You’re feeling separate from the quantum field, and can’t even entertain new possibilities for your circumstances. Your brain isn’t in creative mode; it’s fixated on survival, preoccupied with possible worst-case scenarios. Again, not much information will be encoded into the system that is not equal to that emergency state. When everything feels like a crisis, your brain makes survival the priority, not learning.

  The answer lies outside the emotions you’re wrestling with and the thoughts you’re overanalyzing, because they keep you connected to your past—the familiar and the known. Solving your problems begins with getting beyond those familiar feelings and replacing your scattered focus on the Big Three with a more orderly mode of thinking.

  High Beta’s Incoherent Signals

  Produce Scattered Thoughts

  As you can imagine, when the brain is in high Beta and you’re processing sensory information—involving the environment, your body, and time—that activity can create a bit of chaos. Along with understanding that the electrical impulses in your brain occur in a certain quantity (cycles per second), it’s also important to be aware of the quality of the signal. Just as the discussion of quantum creating showed how vital it is to send a coherent signal into the field to indicate your intended future outcome, the same coherence is essential to your thinking and your brain waves.

  At any one time when you’re in the Beta range of frequencies, one of the Big Three will have more of your attention. If you’re thinking about being late, your emphasis is on time—that thought is sending a higher-frequency wave through your neocortex. Of course, you’re also aware of, and therefore sending electromagnetic impulses related to, your body and the environment. It’s just that in the case of the latter two, you’re sending different wave patterns with a lower frequency through the neocortex.

  Your time-focused brain waves might look like this:

  Your environment-focused brain waves might look like this:

  Your body-focused brain waves might look like this:

  Your fractured attention, caused by trying to focus simultaneously on all of the Big Three, would then produce a brain-wave pattern that might look like this:

  As you can see, those three different patterns together during stress produce an incoherent signal in high-Beta mode. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had experiences when that last drawing represents how your thoughts felt: scattered.

  When we are plugged into all three dimensions—the environment, the body, and time—the brain tries to integrate their varied frequencies and wave patterns. That takes up an enormous amount of processor time and space. If we can eliminate our focus on any one of those, the patterns that emerge will be more coherent, and we’ll be better able to process them.

  Figure 8D. In the first picture, the energy is orderly, organized, and rhythmic. When energy is highly synchronous and patterned, it is profoundly more powerful. The light emitted by a laser is an example of coherent waves of energy all moving together in unison. In the second picture
, the energy patterns are chaotic, disintegrated, and out of phase. An example of an incoherent, less powerful signal is the light from an incandescent lightbulb.

  Awareness, Not Analysis,

  Permits Entry into the Subconscious

  Here is a way for you to know if you’re in Beta state: if you’re constantly analyzing (I call this “being in analytical mind”), you are in Beta and you’re not able to enter into the subconscious mind.

  The expression “paralysis by analysis” is an apt one here. Well, that’s what is happening to us when we live most of our lives in that Beta range. The only time we aren’t there is when we’re sleeping (then we’re in the Delta range of brain-wave activity).

  Now you might be thinking, But you said that we needed to be aware. We need to become familiar with our thoughts, feelings, patterns of responses, and so forth. Doesn’t that require analysis?

  Actually, awareness can exist outside of analysis. When you are aware, you may think, I’m feeling angry. When you are analyzing, you go beyond that simple observation to add: Why is this page taking so long to load? Who designed this stupid website? Why is it that whenever I’m in a hurry, like now when I’m trying to get a movie listing, the Internet connection is so slow! Awareness, as I mean it to be practiced here, is simply noting (watching) a thought or feeling and moving on.

  A Working Model of Meditation

  Now that we’ve covered some basics about brain waves in children and adults, this foundation will provide a working model (see the next five figures) to help you understand the meditative process.3

  Let’s start with Figure 8E on the next page. Thanks to the research into children’s brain-wave patterns, we know that when we are born, we are completely in the realm of the subconscious.

  Figure 8E. Let this circle represent the mind. When we are born, we are totally subconscious mind.