Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

by Joe Dispenza

  This, I feel, is the beginning of true unconditional love. Feeling a sense of love and awe for life without needing anything from outside of us is freedom. It is no longer being attached to external elements. It is a feeling that is so coherent that to judge another or to emotionally react to life and change from this state is compromising self. This is when the greater consciousness that we are all connected to begins to move out of us, and we begin to express this through us. We move from human toward divine. We become more like it. We become more loving, more mindful, more powerful, more generous, more intentional, more kind, and healthier. That’s its mind.

  Something else amazing begins to occur as well. When you feel elevated and joyful, you will feel so wonderful that you will want to share the feeling of what you are experiencing with someone. And how do you share such great feelings? You give. You think, I feel so superb and uplifted that I want you to feel the way I feel. So here is a gift. And you will begin to give so that others can feel the gift that you’re expressing from within. You are selfless. Imagine a world like that.

  If, however, you can fashion a new reality from this internal order of wholeness, you must know that you will be creating from a state of being in consciousness that is no longer separate from whatever it is you desire. You are in absolute oneness with your creation. And if you can slip into it naturally, and forget about everything that is tied to the old you, you will feel such a sense of exuberance that you will begin to know that the creation you are focusing upon is yours. It will feel like hitting a tennis ball in the sweet spot or parallel parking without mirrors within inches of the curb. It just feels right. You somehow know.

  This is how I end my daily meditation, and I offer it to you as a suggestion:

  Now close your eyes. Become aware that there is an intelligence that is within you and all around you. Remember that it is real. Contemplate that this consciousness is noticing you and is aware of your intentions. Recall that it is a creator that exists beyond space and time.

  In your journey past the cravings of the body and the nuances of the ego mind, you have made it to this final step. So if in fact this consciousness is real and it exists, ask for a sign to let you know that you made contact with it. Say to the creator, “If I emulated you in any way as a creator today, send me a signal in the form of feedback in my world to let me know that you were noticing my efforts. And bring it in a way that I least expect, that wakes me up from this dream, and leaves no doubt that it has come from you, so that I am inspired to do this again tomorrow.”

  Let me remind you of what I stated in the chapter on the quantum. If the feedback comes to you in a way that you could have expected or predicted, then it is nothing new. Resist the temptation to ascribe novelty and unpredictability to what you know deep in your soul to be the familiar. In your new life, you must be startled and, in a sense, taken unaware—not by what came to you, but by how it came about.

  When you experience surprise, you wake up from the dream, and the novelty of whatever is happening to you is now so thrilling that it captures all of your attention. You are lifted out of your normal feelings. To “leave no doubt” means it has to be so cool and fun that you know that what you are doing is actually working. You want to know that this unusual event is coming from this greater mind and that it can’t be anything else.

  The Ultimate Experiment

  You now have a relationship with the higher consciousness, because it’s talking back to you, and only you know that what you are doing within is affecting the “without.” Once you know this, you should be inspired to do it again the next day. In essence, you can now use the emotion of the new experience as new energy with which to create your next outcome. You become like a scientist or an explorer, experimenting with your life and measuring the results of your efforts.

  Our purpose in life is not to be good, to please God, to be beautiful, to be popular, or to be successful. Our purpose, rather, is to remove the masks and the façades that block the flow of this intelligence and to express this greater mind through us. To become empowered by our efforts of creativity and to ask greater questions that will inevitably lead us to a more enriched destiny. To expect the miraculous instead of the worst-case scenario and to live as if this power is in favor of us. To ponder the uncommon, to contemplate our achievements in utilizing this unseen power, and to open our minds to more expanded possibilities challenges us to evolve our being, to let more of this mind come through us.

  For instance, by your truly healing yourself of some type of malady, then it should naturally lead to more evolved questions like: “Can I heal someone else with a touch? And if I accomplish that feat, is it possible to heal a loved one from a distance?” And once you master that possibility because you changed the physical matter in that person, you might ask, “Can I create something out of nothing?”

  How much further can we go? There is no end to this adventure. We are only limited by the questions we ask, the knowledge we embrace, and our ability to keep an open mind and heart.

  AFTERWORD

  Inhabit Self

  One of the biggest lies we have come to believe about ourselves and our true nature is that we are nothing more than physical beings defined by a material reality, devoid of dimension and vital energy, and separate from God—which I trust you know by now is within us and all around us. To keep the truth about our real identity from us is not only enslaving, but it asserts that we are finite beings living a linear life that lacks real meaning.

  The dictum that there are no realms and no life beyond our physical world and that we have no control over our destiny is not a “truth” that you and I should ever believe in. It is my desire that you have become empowered by a bit of knowledge in this work to help you see who you really are.

  You are a multidimensional being who creates your reality. Helping you accept this idea as your law and new belief has been my labor in this book. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself means that you are going to have to lose your mind and create a new one.

  But when we fully lay down the old, familiar life or mind and start creating the new, there is a moment between the two worlds that is bereft of anything we know, and most rush back from this void to the familiar. That place of uncertainty—the unknown—is what the maverick, the mystic, and the saint know to be fertile ground.

  To live in the realm of the unpredictable is to be all potentials at once. Can you become comfortable in this empty space? If you can, you are at the nexus of a great creative power, the “I am.”

  To biologically, energetically, physically, emotionally, chemically, neurologically, and genetically change ourselves and to stop living by the unconscious affirmation that competition, strife, success, fame, physical beauty, sexuality, possessions, and power are the be-all and end-all in life is when we break from the chains of the mundane. I fear that this so-called recipe for ultimate success in life has kept us looking outside of ourselves for answers and true happiness, when the real answers and true joy have always been within.

  So where and how do we find our true self? Do we create a persona that is shaped by associations with the outer environment, which perpetrates the lie? Or do we identify with something within us that is as real as everything outside us, and create a unique identity, which has awareness and a mind that we can emulate?

  That’s right—it is that infinite resource of information and intelligence, personal and universal, that is intrinsic to all human beings. It is an energetic consciousness that is filled with such coherence that when it moves through us, we can only call it love. When the door opens, its frequency carries such vital information that it changes who we are from within. This is an experience that I have humbly learned to live for.

  It is my hope that you know that you always have access to it, if you choose. But if you live life as a materialist, then you will struggle with its existence. Why? Well, realists will use their senses to define reality; and if they can’t see it, taste it, smell it, touch it, or hear it
, then it doesn’t exist, right? This duality is a perfect scheme for keeping people lost in the illusion. Just keep their attention on an outer reality that is ultimately so sensually pleasurable or chaotic, and going within will seem too difficult.

  Your attention is where your energy is. Put all of your attention on the external, material world, and that becomes your investment in reality. On the contrary, command your mindfulness to unfold a deeper aspect of yourself, and your energy will expand that reality. You, as a human being, have the freedom to place your awareness on anything. To develop your ability to manage and properly use this abundance of power is the gift. Wherever you put your thoughts and your awareness becomes your reality.

  If you stop believing that thought is real, you will fall back into materialism and stop doing the work. You’ll simply choose some emotional addiction or habit for immediate gratification and then talk yourself out of possibility.

  Herein lies the dilemma: The future reality we create in our minds does not yet provide any sensory feedback, and by the quantum model, our senses should be the last to experience what we create. For this reason, many of us make materialism our law once again, and we go unconscious.

  I want to remind you that all things material come from the invisible field of the immaterial, beyond space and time. Simply said, by planting seeds in this world, you see that in time they bear fruit. If you can experience a dream so completely in mind and emotion within the inner world of potentials, then it has already happened. So just surrender; it has to sprout into your outer life. It is the law.

  But here is the hardest part of this whole process: making or taking the time for your precious self to actually do it.

  That’s it. We are divine creators. It is what we do when we are inspired and pressed to know more. But you and I are also creatures of habit. We develop habits for everything. We possess three brains that allow us to evolve from knowledge to experience to wisdom. To make whatever we learn implicit through the repetition of experience, we can teach the body to become the mind—that is our definition of a habit.

  The problem is that we have developed habits that limit our true greatness. The survival emotions, which are so addictive, cause us to live with limitation, feeling separate from the Source, and forget we are creators. In fact, the corresponding states of mind that correlate with stress truly are the reasons why we are controlled by our emotions, live by a lower denominator of energy, and are enslaved by a set of beliefs rooted in fear. These so-called normal psychological states have been accepted by most as ordinary and common. They are the real “altered states” of consciousness.

  Hence, I want to emphasize that anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, guilt, pain, worry, and sadness—the emotions regularly expressed by billions of people—are why the masses live life knocked out of balance and altered from the true self. And maybe the supposed altered states of consciousness achieved in meditation during true mystical moments are actually “natural” human states of consciousness that we should strive to live by on a regular basis. I accept that contention as my truth.

  It’s time to wake up and to be the living example of the truth. It’s not enough to espouse these understandings; it’s time to live them, demonstrate them, and be “at cause” in all areas of our lives. When you and I “in-body” such ideals as truth, and make them a habit, then they innately become part of us.

  Since we are wired to create habits, why not make true greatness, compassion, genius, ingenuity, empowerment, love, awareness, generosity, healing, quantum manifestation, and divinity our new habits? To remove the layers of personal emotions we decided to memorize as our identity; to shed our selfish limitations that we have given such power to; to abandon false beliefs and perceptions about the nature of reality and self; to overcome our neural habituations of destructive traits that repeatedly undermine our evolution; and to relinquish the attitudes that have kept us from knowing who we really are … are all part of finding the true self.

  There is an aspect of the self that is a benevolent being who waits behind all of those veils. This is who we are when we are not feeling threatened; fearing loss; trying to please everyone; racing to succeed and scrambling to get to the top at any cost; regretting the past; or feeling inferior, hopeless, desperate, or greedy, just to name a few. When we overcome, and remove whatever stands in the way of our infinite power and self, we are demonstrating a noble deed, not only for ourselves but for all of humanity.

  So the greatest habit you will ever break is the habit of being yourself, and the greatest habit you will ever create is the habit of expressing the divine through you. That is when you inhabit your true nature and identity. It is to inhabit self.

  APPENDIX A

  BODY-PART INDUCTION

  (Week One)

  Now, can you become aware of the space that your lips occupy in space, and can you sense the volume of space that your lips are in … in space….1

  And now can you sense the space that your jaw occupies in space … can you notice the volume of space that your entire jaw is in … in space….

  And now can you feel the space that your cheeks occupy in space … and the density of space that your cheeks take up … in space….

  And now notice the space that your nose occupies in space. Can you sense the volume of space that your entire nose is in … in space….

  And now, can you sense the space that your eyes occupy in space, and can you feel the volume of space that your eyes are in … in space….

  And now can you pay attention to the space that your entire forehead occupies in space, all the way to your temples…. Can you sense the volume of space that your entire forehead is in … in space….

  And now can you notice the space that your entire face occupies in space. Can you sense the density of space that your entire face is in … in space….

  And now can you notice the space that your ears occupy in space. Can you sense the volume of space that your ears are in … in space….

  And now can you feel the space that your entire head occupies in space. Can you sense the volume of space that your entire head is in … in space….

  And now can you notice the volume of space that the column of your neck occupies in space. And can you sense the density of space that your entire neck is in … in space….

  And now can you notice the space that your entire upper torso occupies in space; the density of space taken up by your chest, your ribs, your heart and lungs, all the way to your back and shoulder blades to your shoulders…. Can you sense the volume of space that your entire upper torso is in … in space….

  And now can you become conscious of the space that your entire upper limbs occupy in space, and the weight of space that your upper extremities are in … in space … your shoulders, your arms, to your elbows and forearms; the density of your wrists and hands. Can you notice the weight of space that your entire limbs are in … in space….

  And now can you sense the volume of space that your entire lower torso occupies in space … your abdomen, your flanks, to your ribs, all the way to your lower spine and back…. Can you sense the volume of space that your entire lower torso is in … in space….

  And now can you feel the density of space that your entire lower extremities occupy in space … to your buttocks, to your groin, to your thighs, the density of space of your knees, the weight of your shins and your calves. Can you notice the volume of space that your ankles and feet down to your toes—your entire lower limbs—occupy … in space….

  And now can you notice the space that your entire body occupies in space…. Can you sense the density of space that your entire body is in … in space….

  And now can you sense the space around your body in space, and can you notice the volume of space that the space around your body takes up in space, and can you sense the space that that space is in … in space….

  And now can you sense the space that this entire room occupies in space. And can you sense the volume of space that t
his room takes up, in all of space….

  And now can you sense the space that all of space takes up in space, and the volume of space that that space is in … in space….

  APPENDIX B

  WATER-RISING INDUCTION

  (Week One)

  Your job in this induction is to completely surrender into your body, let the warm water relax your tissues, and allow yourself to feel consumed by this liquid. I recommend that you sit up in a chair with your feet flat on the floor, hands resting on your knees.

  Imagine warm water beginning to rise in the room … first, as it covers your feet and ankles, feel the warmth of your feet as they’re immersed in the water….

  And allow the water to move higher now, up past your calves and shins, to right below your knees; and feel the weight of your legs from your feet to your calves, underwater….

  Let yourself relax as the water reaches your knees and rises over your thighs…. As it surrounds your thighs, feel your hands immersed in this warm water … feel the warmth consume your wrists and forearms….

  Now become aware of the soothing water as it encircles your buttocks, your groin, and your inner thighs….

  And as the water rises all the way up to your waist, feel it submerge your forearms and elbows….

  As the warm water continues to climb to your solar plexus, notice it as it moves halfway up your arms….

  Now, sense the weight of your body, immersed up to your rib cage under the warm liquid, and feel it consuming your arms….

  And now allow the water to encircle your chest and move across your shoulder blades….

  As the water rises all the way up to your neck, allow it to cover your shoulders … and from your neck down, feel the weight and density of your body, immersed under this warm liquid….