Power of choice

Dr. Carolyn Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist, has been researching the brain since 1981. She explains that as we journey through life, we must actively make choices about what thoughts to accept. Toxic memories take up space and affect the way you think as well as the way the brain functions. If you accept toxic thoughts, “you push it into a ‘memory tree’ of up to 200,000 branches. She shows a picture of the brain that has accepted a toxic thought. It looks like a tree, having many branches and looks dark and troubled.

Toxic thoughts spread through the body like a virus or vine, growing and twisting through other thoughts, all impacting your mind and body. Your immune system must activate and respond to it. She says it contains toxic emotions and toxic chemicals, increasing toxic load, creating abnormal brain patterns, foggy thinking, all of which are precursors to disease.

How do you accept a thought or belief? You’ve accepted a thought or belief when “you choose to ask, answer, discuss, and analyze to give meaning to”. Toxic thoughts create a forest of tangled trees that take up space in your brain, preventing the easy flow and development of creative thoughts.

Dr. Leaf says an unforgiving attitude can cause such things as high blood pressure, angina, strokes, and aneurysms. Saying or thinking things like “I can’t do it”, “I always mess up”, “things will never change”, “that’s not fair”, and “you always hurt me” overtime can make you sick. [1]


Dr. Leaf says everyone has the ability to become their own neurosurgeon! By our thinking and choosing, moment by moment, we are redesigning the landscape of our brain. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking. Constantly thinking or talking about some pain reinforces those neuro-pathways and increases the number of receptors for pain in the body!

In Quantum Physics, the Copenhagen definition says, “you the observer outside the system have the power to collapse a probability into an actuality.” What we think and choose happens. Everything that happens in our life begins with a thought.

Most often choices come from a reaction to life circumstances; they are not truly creative, but originate from habits, co-dependence, and addictions. A fully realized person does not react. They act. Freed from self-destructive behavior patterns, beliefs, and judgments; one acts, creating flawlessly from the direct perception of the need of the moment. This is freedom.

What control we have over our world may be limited. But we do have complete control over how we use our own minds. We may have completely forgotten this fact; we may feel we are victims to forces, external and internal, that are quite beyond our control. But it is not so.

Making choices for freedom is more than just positive thinking. We can look for the “good things of life”, but we miss the Source of Life. We miss Life itself. If we think that peace & joy is the goal of life, we miss the point. If we are devoted to material gains or material posses­sions, the focus is on the temporary. All attention goes to the changing and not to that which never changes.

Regular practice of the Art of Ascension not only roots out these troubled trees, but takes the mind to the Source. Using the eyes-open practice gives a simple way to actively choose for Praise, Gratitude, Love or Compassion that will magnify the root of all Life; as a result, the old trees of duality atrophy and wither away. 

[1] Leaf, C. P. (2008). Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions.

 

What Lies Do You Believe?

Our senses lie to us! You may not have ever thought about this concept. We don’t discuss it very often. Many may not even realize that our senses lie to us. And even more important, why do we care? 

· If we were to believe our senses, we would believe that the sun revolves around the earth, right?

· Our senses report that our desk, our possessions, even our body is solid, but physics tells us that is not true. Physical matter is more energy than substance. In fact, if you were to take all the solid matter out of the earth, physics tells us it would be about the size of a golf ball! The rest is just empty space or energy.

· We even see what we expect to see, an example from sports is the “change-up pitch” in baseball. The changeup is typically thrown after a fastball; the batter seeing the identical fastball arm and body-movement from the pitcher expects to see another fastball and swings wildly but misses the slower ball.

· And then there’s the reticular activating system, that part of our brain that helps us make sense of our world. In any moment, there are 4 billion pieces of data available to us through our subconscious mind, but the conscious mind is able to make sense of only about 2000 pieces of data at a time. So that ever helpful reticular activating system strips away everything that does NOT comply with our belief system! For example, I knew a young charming man who kept repeating “No one loves me”, but I saw many examples of people that loved him. He could not perceive any of that love.

· The human eye can only see a small bandwidth of the very large light spectrum. We are unable to see infrared, ultraviolet, etc.

· Albert Einstein said, “A human being is part of the whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness”.

What we have come to believe, based on our experiences, may not necessarily be true. Our knowledge of the world is changing at an ever-accelerating rate. What was certain fact yesterday is today questioned and may be refuted tomorrow.

Why is it important?

First of all, based on what our senses report, we believe we are isolated in space and time from one another; we think we are separate from others and our world. Because this is our perception and belief, we conclude that it is difficult or impossible to influence life; we believe that it is only with great expenditures of energy, time (and often suffering) that we can make things happen in our world. This is why we are astonished when someone has “spontaneous remission” of a terminal disease by changing their mindset. (Did you know that 20% of breast cancer heals by spontaneous remission?)

The type of mindset we have determines the quality of life we experience. Many beliefs are so far below the surface that you may not even be aware of them. This is why many see themselves as victims rather than as Co-Creator with the Universe.

Our beliefs hold things in place – our diseases, our tired aging body, our “out of harmony” relationships, etc. It is called the law of sowing and reaping. We can only change the fruit by changing the seed we plant.

What kind of life are you experiencing? Thoughts, especially strong emotionally based thoughts, plant seeds into the universe that sprout around us. If we plant tomato seeds, we get tomatoes!

Practicing The Art of Ascension not only plants new seeds of praise, gratitude, love, and compassion, but it also cuts the roots of our old belief system as it brings us to the Source of All Being. It changes the direction of our mind from revolving around the racetrack wasting time and energy to cutting through everything to find the Source of Creation. All that is required to move into higher states of consciousness is to retrain the mind to move vertically inward. The techniques of Ishayas’ Ascension can accomplish this. All that is required is a functioning nervous system, valid tools,  a commitment to learn and use them to begin the process toward freedom.