by Joe Dispenza
“You won’t believe it! Your lottery ticket was a winner!”
Now, you’ll recall that when the quantum field responds, it does so in a way that one couldn’t predict. Perhaps you are thinking, Of course she won millions and lived happily ever after.
Not exactly.
Monique won $53,000. Was she happy? Astounded is more like it. The couple owed exactly $53,000 in credit-card and auto-loan debt.
Monique relayed her excitement in telling us that story, but she slyly admitted that next time, instead of holding the intention that all her needs were met, she’d choose to imagine they were met—and then some.
What Monique’s story illustrates is the power of creating a new state of being. She couldn’t do that just by imagining that she was a new person; she had to put that new self into action. The old Monique wouldn’t have bought a lottery ticket; her new personality aligned her behavior to match her objective, and the field responded in an entirely unexpected yet perfectly appropriate way.
Because Monique developed a new personality who seized opportunities and acted differently, she experienced new and better results in her life. New personality, new personal reality.
You don’t have to win the lottery to change your life, of course. But you do have to make the decision to stop being your old self, enter into the operating system where those unconscious programs exist, and then formulate a clear design for a new one.
The Coherent Brain: Takin’ It to the Streets
Before I wrap up this chapter, I want to bring up a subject I referenced in Evolve Your Brain—namely, Buddhist monks who were studied at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. These “super-meditators” could go into a state of coherent brain waves well beyond what most of us are capable of. When they meditated on thoughts of loving-kindness and compassion, the coherence of the signal they were putting out was nearly off the charts.
Every morning during the study, they meditated while researchers monitored their brain-wave activity. After that, they were sent out onto the campus and into the town to do what they wished—visit museums, go to shops, or what have you. After they returned to the research center, they underwent brain scans again without first going back into meditation. Amazingly, despite not meditating throughout the day, and being subjected to the incoherent, chaotic signals that the external world exposes us all to, they maintained the same coherent brain pattern they had achieved in meditation.5
Most of us, when faced with the profusion and confusion of stimuli that the external world produces, retreat into survival mode and manufacture the chemicals of stress. Those stress reactions are like disruptors that scramble the brain’s signals. Instead, our goal is to become more like those monks. If we can produce coherent signal patterns—those synchronous waves—every day, we’ll find that this coherence of signal manifests into something tangible.
In time, if you can repeatedly create internal coherence like those monks did, you too may walk into the external environment and no longer suffer the self-limiting effects of its disruptive stimuli. And because of that, you won’t experience the knee-jerk reactions that formerly forced you to return to the old, familiar self that you are so eager to change.
By persisting with meditation and creating coherence within, you will not only remove a lot of the negative physical conditions that plague your body, but you can also progress toward that ideal self you’ve envisioned. Your inner coherence can counteract negative reactionary emotional states and allow you to unmemorize the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that make them up.
Once you’ve gotten to a neutral/empty state, it is far easier to engage a heightened one like compassion; it is easier to bring in pure joy or love or gratitude or any of the elevated emotional states. That’s true because those emotions are already profoundly coherent. And when you’ve moved through the meditative process and produce a brain-wave state that reflects this purity, then you will begin to overcome the body, the environment, and time, which once produced your self-limiting emotional states. They will no longer control you; instead, you will control them.
Having Embodied Knowledge,
You Are Prepared for Experience
You have now equipped yourself with the knowledge necessary to move on to the meditation discussed in Part III, with full understanding of what you will be doing and why.
Remember that knowledge is the forerunner to experience. All the information you have read has been put there to prepare you for an experience. Once you learn to meditate and apply this to your life, you should begin to see feedback. In the following section you will learn how to put all of this into practice and begin to make measurable changes in any area of your life.
I’m reminded of the two-stage journey that many climbers make when they ascend Washington State’s Mount Rainier, the highest volcano in the contiguous U.S. (14,410 feet). Leaving their car at the Paradise Jackson Visitor Center (5,400 feet), they first trek to Camp Muir (10,080 feet). Stopping at this base camp affords them the opportunity to look back at all the ground they’ve covered, assess what they learned from the preparation and experience of that hike, receive additional practical training, and rest overnight. This overview can make all the difference when they continue on to undertake the climb to Rainier’s majestic peak.
The knowledge you’ve gained has allowed you to ascend to this point. Now you’re ready to apply everything you’ve learned. And your newfound wisdom should inspire you to forge ahead to Part III, where you can master the skills to change your mind, and thus your life.
So I invite you to pause briefly, take a look back with appreciation for the information you acquired in Parts I and II, and if you need to, review any areas you may feel are important … then join me as you make your final preparation for the meditative journey to your own personal summit.
PART III
STEPPING
TOWARD YOUR
NEW DESTINY
CHAPTER NINE
THE MEDITATIVE PROCESS:
INTRODUCTION AND PREPARATION
As I stated earlier, the main purpose of meditating is to remove your attention from the environment, your body, and the passage of time so that what you intend, what you think, becomes your focus instead of these externals. You can then change your internal state independent of the outside world. Meditating is also a means for you to move beyond your analytical mind so that you can access your subconscious mind. That’s crucial, since the subconscious is where all your bad habits and behaviors that you want to change reside.
Introduction
All the information you have received up to this point has been intended to help you understand what you will be doing in this section, as you learn how to use the meditative process to create a new reality. And once you comprehend and repeatedly execute the “how-to” steps presented here, you can then work on anything that you want to change in your life. Remind yourself often that in taking the steps to change, you are pruning away the habit of being yourself so that you can create a new mind for your new future. When I do the process you are about to learn, I want to lose myself in consciousness, dissociate from my known reality, and be devoid of the thoughts and feelings that define me as the old self.
In the beginning, the newness of the task you are undertaking might cause you to feel unsettled or uncomfortable. That’s okay. It’s just your body, which has become your mind, resisting the new training process. Understand this before you initiate your discipline, and relax—each step is designed to be easy to understand and simple to follow. Personally, I look forward to my meditation practice as much as anything I do. I find such order, peace, clarity, and inspiration that I rarely miss a day. It took some time for me to arrive at this relationship, so please be patient with yourself.
Turning Small Steps into One Easy Habit
Whenever you’ve learned anything new that required your full attention and committed practice, you probably followed specific steps during your initial instruction. This makes it easier to break
down the complexities of the skill or task at hand so that the mind can stay focused without being overwhelmed. In any endeavor, of course, your goal is to memorize what you’re learning so that eventually you can do it naturally, effortlessly, and subconsciously. Essentially, you want to make this new skill a habit.
It’s easier to comprehend and execute any new skill when by repetition, you master one small task or procedure at a time and then move on to the next. Over time you string each step together as part of one coordinated process. The sign that you’re on your way is when all the steps start to look like one easy, fluid motion and you produce the intended result. That’s your aim in learning this meditation as a step-by-step process.
For example, in learning to hit a golf ball, there are a host of cues that your mind has to process in order to have your actions match your intention. Imagine that while you’re preparing to tee off for the first time, your best friend shouts, “Keep your head down! Bend your knees! Shoulders square and back erect! Keep your front arm straight, but loosen your grip! Shift your weight when you swing! Hit behind the ball, and follow through!” And my favorite: “Relax!”
All these instructions at once could throw you into a state of paralysis. What if, instead, you worked on one thing at a time, following a methodical order? In time, it seems logical that your swing would look like one motion.
Similarly, if you were learning to cook a French recipe, you would start by following its individual steps. Do that enough times, and there would come a moment when you no longer would prepare the recipe as separate steps, but as one continuous process. You would integrate the instructions into your body-mind, merge many steps into just a few, and eventually, cook the meal in half the time. You’d go from thinking to doing—your body memorizes what you were doing, as well as your mind. That’s what a procedural memory is. This phenomenon occurs when you do anything long enough. You begin to know that you know how.
Building a Neural Network for Meditation
Remember that the more knowledge you have, the better prepared you are for a new experience. Every meditation step you practice will have a meaning to you based on what you learned earlier in this book; each one is based on a scientific or philosophical understanding so that nothing is left to conjecture. The steps are presented in a specific order designed to help you memorize this process for personal change.
Although I have mapped out a suggested four-week program for you to learn the entire process, please take as much time as you need to practice each step until it becomes familiar. The best pace to set is one that is comfortable, so you never feel overwhelmed.
You will begin every session by doing the previous steps you learned, then practice the new material for that week. Because it’s more effective to learn some steps together, some weeks will call for you to practice two or more new steps. Also, I recommend that you practice each new mindful step, or group of steps, for at least a week before you move on to the next ones. In a few weeks, you’ll build quite a neural network for meditation!
Suggested Four-Week Program
Week One (Chapter 10): Every day, do STEP 1: Induction.
Week Two (Chapter 11): Start every daily session by once again practicing the first step; then add STEP 2: Recognizing, STEP 3: Admitting and Declaring, and STEP 4: Surrendering.
Week Three (Chapter 12): Start every daily session by practicing STEPS 1 through 4, then add STEP 5: Observing and Reminding and STEP 6: Redirecting.
Week Four (Chapter 13): Start every daily session by practicing STEPS 1 through 6, then add STEP 7: Creating and Rehearsing.
Please take your time and build a strong foundation. If you are already an experienced meditator and want to do more at once, that’s fine, but work at following all the instructions and committing what you will be doing to memory.
When you can concentrate on what you’re doing without letting your thoughts wander to any extraneous stimuli, you will come to a point when your body actually aligns with your mind. Now your new skill will become easier and easier to do, thanks to Hebb’s law of firing and wiring. The ingredients of learning, attention, instruction, and practice will develop an associated neural network to reflect your intentions.
Preparation
Preparing Your Tools
The write stuff. Separately from your meditation sessions, you will read some descriptive text about each step, often accompanied by questions and prompts under the heading “Opportunity to Write.” I recommend that you keep a notebook handy to write down your answers. Then review your responses before you go into each day’s meditation. That way, your written thoughts can serve as a road map to prepare you to navigate through the meditative procedures in which you will access the operating system of your subconscious.
Listen up. When you are first learning the meditation steps, you may want to listen to prerecorded guided sessions. For example, you will learn an induction technique that you will use in every one of your daily sessions, to help you reach the highly coherent Alpha brain-wave state in preparation for the approach that is the focus of Chapters 11 to 13. In addition, the steps you are to learn each week are available for you to follow in a series of guided meditations.
Two Approaches to the Meditation
Meditation Option 1: Wherever you see this headphone icon …
… a guided induction or meditation is available. To listen to these guided sessions, you can download them from www.drjoedispenza.com and either play them in MP3 format or burn them onto a CD.
After you read each chapter, then journal your responses in a notebook, you can download the corresponding meditation. Each week, as you add the next step or steps to those you practiced the previous week, you can find the next related meditation available for download. They will be listed as the “Week One meditation,” “Week Two meditation,” “Week Three meditation,” and “Week Four meditation”—Week Four will include the entire meditation.
For example, when you hear the Week Two meditation, it will lead you through the Week One step—which is an induction technique—then will add the three steps you will practice for Week Two. When you do the Week Three meditation, you will repeat the steps you learned in Weeks One and Two, then add the steps for Week Three.
Meditation Option 2: Alternatively, scripts for these guided sessions are included in the Appendices so that you can read them until you memorize the sequence, or dictate them into a recording device.
Appendices A and B provide two techniques for the induction. Appendix C is the script for the entire meditation, encompassing all of the steps you will learn in Part III. If you decide to use the Appendix C script to guide your meditation, then each week, please start with the steps you learned in previous weeks, then build on them by doing that week’s meditation.
Preparing Your Environment
Location, location, location. You have learned that overcoming your environment is a critical step in breaking the habit of being yourself. Finding the right environment in which to meditate, one with a minimum of distractions, will really give you a leg up on defeating the first of the Big Three (we’ll cover the other two, the body and time, in a moment). Pick a comfortable place where you can be alone and not be seduced by the addiction of the external world. Make it secluded, private, and easily accessible. Go to this place every day, and make it your special location. You will form a strong connection with this setting. It will represent where you frequent to tame the distracted ego, overcome the old self, create a new self, and forge a new destiny. In time you will truly look forward to being there.
A participant in one event I led told me that she always fell asleep when she meditated. Our conversation went like this:
“Where do you practice your mindfulness training?”
“In bed.”
“What does the law of association say about your bed and sleep?”
“I associate my bed with sleep.”
“What does the law of repetition demonstrate about sleeping in your bed every night?�
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“If I sleep in the same place nightly, I am hardwiring an association of bed with sleep.”
“Given the fact that neural networks are formed by combining the law of association with the law of repetition, might you have formed a neural network to the effect that bed means sleep? And since neural networks are automatic programs that we unconsciously use every day, does it stand to reason that when you are on your bed, your body (as the mind) will tell you to automatically and unconsciously fall into oblivion?”
“Yep. I guess I need a better place to meditate!”
Not only did I suggest that she stay out of bed when she meditates, but that she find a different place separate from her bedroom. When you want to build a new neural network, it makes good sense to do your mindfulness practices in a setting that represents growth, regeneration, and a new future.
And please, do not see this location as a torture chamber in which you have to meditate. This type of attitude will undermine your efforts.
Preventing distractions from your environment. Make sure you won’t be interrupted or distracted by people (a DO NOT DISTURB sign can help) or pets. As much as possible, eliminate sensory stimuli that could force your mind back to your old personality or to awareness of the external world, especially to elements of your familiar environment. Turn off your phone and computer; I know it’s hard, but those calls, texts, tweets, IMs, and e-mails can wait. You also don’t want the aroma of coffee brewing or food cooking to waft into your meditation setting. Ensure that the room is a comfortable temperature, with no drafts. I usually use a blindfold.
Music. Music can be useful as long as you don’t play selections that will bring to mind distracting associations. If I play music, I typically use soft, relaxing, trance-inducing instrumentals or chants without lyrics. When not listening to music, I often put in earplugs.