Accepting Toxic Thoughts Creates Twisted Forests in Nervous System

We don’t need to accept toxic thoughts

Toxic thoughts create Toxic Forests in the mind

Dr. Carolyn Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist, has been researching the brain since 1981. She explains that 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 toxic chemicals.” 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. She says it contains toxic emotions and toxic chemicals that can be a precursor to disease.

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”, and “that’s not fair” overtime can make you sick. [1]

As we journey through life, we must actively make choices about what thoughts we accept. How do you accept a thought or belief? You’ve accepted one 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.

Our life actions are based upon our internal thought life and the forest of trees. We react to life circumstances because our thought life is based on being a victim to our environment and ruminating on problems. A fully realized person does not react.  They act. Freed from self-destructive behavior patterns, beliefs and judgments, one acts, creating effortlessly from the direct perception of the need of the moment. This is freedom.

Making “good” choices is more than just positive thinking.  We can look for the “good things of life”, but miss the Source of Life.  We miss Life itself.  If we think that peace and 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.

The Source of Life is Omnipresent, it is universal. It never changes. It exists inside every human heart, inside every human mind. It fills all of space and all of time with its wonderful radiance; there is no place it cannot be seen and fully known. Our role as self-conscious beings is to choose to look first for the Source of Life.

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 of forces, external and internal, that are quite beyond our control. But it is not so.

A regular practice of 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 retrain the mind to look toward the Source of all Life. As a result, the old trees of duality and toxicity atrophy and wither away.

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

The Effects of Love on Bunnies

Oh, the power of love!  Odes and sonnets have been written, yet the power of love to heal is just beginning to be researched by science. 

Here is a favorite story that astonished the scientific community in the 1970’s. This is an excerpt from Deepak Chopra's Quantum Healing: "An Ohio University study of heart disease in the 1970's was conducted by feeding quite toxic, high cholesterol diets to rabbits in order to block their arteries. Consistent results began to appear in all of the rabbit groups except for one, which strangely displayed 60 percent fewer symptoms. Nothing in the rabbits' physiology could account for their high tolerance to the diet until it was discovered by accident that the student who was in charge of feeding these particular rabbits liked to fondle and pet them. He would hold each rabbit lovingly for a few minutes before feeding it; astonishingly, this alone seemed to enable the animals to overcome the toxic diet. Repeat experiments, in which one group of rabbits was treated neutrally while the others were loved, came up with similar results."

Who would have believed that feelings of love can reach out and affect diseases to create healing? …Even when the intent of the experiment was to bring about illness!

Depending on the study, lonely and depressed people have been shown in numerous studies to be 3 to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely compared with people who have a strong sense of love, connection, and community.

The cardiologist, Dean Ornish, who first proved that hearts can self-repair in his book, Reversing Heart Disease, said, “Love and intimacy — our ability to connect with ourselves and others, is at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well”.

Furthermore, our unresolved issues are mirrored in our world. Gregg Braden gives a key saying, “The ancient key to allowing our love to heal us is to let it into our lives. To do so, we must find a way to change our greatest hurts into our deepest wisdom.” When we change by transforming our unresolved issues into love and acceptance, we change chemically, change our DNA, and that transformation becomes mirrored in our world.

The Ishayas teach that the healing of the world begins with the healing of the self. This healing does not occur from working on our issues, because what we focus on grows. It comes from a daily practice of love and acceptance in all our life situations.

Ishayas’ Ascension (aka the Art of Ascension) is made of simple and effective techniques.  They are not just for meditation but also for daily life.  The practice utilizes and then generates more Appreciation, Gratitude, and Love in the user’s life. Appreciation is the force, the driving emotion that causes Ascension. You might look at this as a continuum, that there is some appreciation in Praise, more appreciation in Gratitude, and more appreciation in love. It is just appreciation expanding and building on itself. It is a natural by-product of using the techniques taught in the Art of Ascension.

If you are interested in learning more about this practice, visit "Learn to Ascend" for more information. Also the book by MSI, An Analysis of the Art of Ascension, provides a good overview of the workings of the mind and love.