(Symptoms versus root causes: why willpower fails)
The reason conscious intentions alone don’t bring permanent change is that they seek to overcome symptoms, not cure the root source. When that fails to make us happy, we usually move on to any number of negative behaviors that move us further away from peace and satisfaction.
Intentions — Conscious or Unconscious? Doesn’t it make sense to instead find and deal with the root causes? To begin to do that, we must first identify the things that are blocking us from life and health. Those stumbling blocks are our “unconscious intentions.” If those unconscious intentions don’t match the efforts of our willpower, we’re doomed to failure!
As Dr. Alex reports, scientific research has already proven that basing your future happiness on conscious intention almost never brings the results you desire. The key to lasting happiness in life is in aligning what we really want (our unconscious intentions) with what we say we want (our conscious intentions). Only then can all our energy be focused on improving our lives.
Dr. Tiller verified the importance and power of conscious intention, but went on to point out that we all also have an unconscious intention, and that if the two do not agree, the unconscious intention will win every time. Dr. Bruce Lipton has in essence said that it is almost impossible to change things by willpower. As important and necessary as willpower is, unconscious intention is one million times more powerful than willpower or conscious intention. That’s why so few people ever “break the cycle” of changing the negative patterns that run in their lives. Many experts conclude that people just don’t ever change.
Commit to discovering the deeply embedded roots that anchor you to unhappiness, and begin focusing your energy on healing that pain for good.
(Unconscious intention overpowers conscious will every time)
3 — Stress and Failure Come From a Physical Source Symptoms are a diversion What will it take to break the cycle of failure in your life? Many of us spend years, and substantial amounts of money, attempting to cure one of the five major areas in which problems occur.
As we saw in the first chapter, Dr. Bruce Lipton, a groundbreaking cell biologist, goes farther and concludes that ninety-five percent of disease is caused by stress, and that the other five percent that is “genetic” is the result of an ancestor experiencing enough stress to unmask a disease at the cellular level and introduce it into the family’s genetics.
Stress — How it works Let’s explore then, how stress actually brings about disease and failure in our lives. It’s important to know that stress actually does five things — it makes us physically ill, drains our energy, gives us over to a negative outlook, reduces our problem solving ability, and because of these other results, predicts our failure.
The cellular stress brought about by this reaction, “unmasks” the possibility of disease in individual cells. We literally “open the door” to the diseases that lie dormant in our body by reacting to stress over and over throughout the day.
Most people can identify 20 or 30 things that literally cause them to feel their stress level increasing. We suggest you take the time to make a list
Research has proven that the “failure mechanism” is kicked into gear when we face stress in our lives. The chain of events is like this — we face a perceived threat (someone else’s anger, a high pressure work situation, etc.), and as described in the last chapter, our body responds to it in the same way that our ancestor’s bodies responded to a physical threat of death. The hypothalamus in the brain tells our pituitary gland to rally the adrenal system to release cortisol and adrenaline throughout our bodies, making us ready to fight, or run from the fight.
(How stress unmasks disease by activating the fight-or-flight chain)
That’s possible, because our bodies already contain the hormone oxytocin, which allows us to respond favorably to stressful situations. All we need is a way to release oxytocin, rather than cortisol, into our bodies in response to daily stress. Before you learn to trigger the success response, start by answering a question. What do you truly want out of life?
You Already Know How You’re probably already activating the success response temporarily through pleasurable experiences such as sex and eating. That’s why we love to do those things! We get a momentary glimpse of what it is to feel great.
recall a pleasant relationship experience that is not overshadowed by negative relationship experiences. Activating that memory of a positive, loving relationship stimulates the release of oxytocin to our bodies.
What few people understand is that memories, good or bad, are broadcasting like little TV stations throughout the body 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We invite you to make a list of the five memories that are most painful to you. Then recognize that based on our TV station analogy, that those memories are actively causing internal stress even when you aren’t actively thinking about them. Is it any wonder that you seem to be in a constant state of stress?
(Memories broadcast stress 24/7, whether or not we recall them)
5 — Beliefs — the Reason We Do What We Do Why do we continue to do things that are self-destructive?
The alarming fact is that 99% of our beliefs are in our un- and subconscious mind making them impossible to examine, even though according to Dr. Bruce Lipton they are a million times more powerful in regulating our behavior that our conscious beliefs.
Have you ever known that you should exercise regularly but yet not been able to consistently exercise? All kind of reasons (excuses?) come up to take us off the hook. Isn’t the same true of our eating habits? We know that the apple is better for us than the donut, but what do most of us end up reaching for?
Change the Belief to Change the Action Dr. Lipton found in his research that a person’s beliefs control their physical response to everyday stress, which in turn, determines their overall health.
The lesson to take with you is this — if you continually do things that are destructive to your personal peace, that’s an indicator that your underlying belief system is in need of healing.
Ask yourself, am I doing in my life, 100%, the things I want to be doing? Am I exercising as much as I believe I should be?
So now the next question to ask yourself is, why? You just said that you believe it, so why aren’t you doing it? Most will answer, I don’t know or I can’t. When you have something in your life where you’re not doing what you believe you should be (or vice-versa), it is a virtual certainty that you have a belief in your un- or subconscious mind that says, don’t do that.
The surprising and somewhat disconcerting fact of the matter is that the un- and subconscious mind are irrational a lot of the time.
(Subconscious beliefs control behavior, not conscious knowing)
You can absolutely rest assured that for everything you are doing (or not doing), that you have a belief in your un- or subconscious that says, do that.
So, we invite you to make a list of those areas in your life where you are not doing what you know you should be doing in your rational mind, and secondly, write down how your life would be different if you were doing those things that you know you should be doing.
6 — How to Build the Success Foundation
Why is this foundation so powerful? According to Dr. Alex Loyd, who has spent years reviewing scientific research while formulating The Healing Codes, if the brain senses fear, it initiates the stress response throughout the body. If the brain senses love without fear, it initiates the “Success Response.”
How to know if you’re caught in this cycle? If you live in a state of unease, rather than peace, your life is probably based on a faulty set of foundational beliefs. So, what’s the cure?
For Your Further Growth Stress immediately suppresses our immune system. Then it “dumbs” us down, drains our energy, and causes us to view things from a negative perspective. This occurs as the hypothalamus senses a threat or any emotion that has its root in fear (e.g., anger, sadness, low self-worth, overwhelm, frustration, and many, many others). Most think that the “stress switch” is thrown by the hypothalamus only when one consciously is thinking about or remembering the negative memory. Unfortunately, that’s not at all true. These negative memories are like little radio or TV stations transmitting those emotions 24/7 to the cells around them, shifting the cells from growth mode to self-protect mode.
(The success response: love without fear as the biological switch)
This demonstrates that you can force positive thoughts and do positive affirmations all day long with negligible long-term effect, because the root of the stress is occurring in the un- and subconscious and are orders of magnitude stronger than the conscious mind can counteract. In actual fact, the negative memories are protected from being altered because they are providing the body the first line of defense from whatever created the memory from happening again.
It’s what Dr. Loyd refers to as “living from the heart”, rather than being trapped in automatic negative responses. Once we do, we’ll have positive, appropriate images available for our minds to use. As a result, we experience peace, health, and happiness instead of illness and defeat.
While we might think that our stress is caused by our bad habits, though, the exact opposite is actually true.
(Cellular memories as the true source of all stress and disease)
Faulty Memories Equal Faulty Responses We’ve learned from recent scientific research that our brains respond to our environment based on images stored at the cellular level. When those images, those cellular memories, are faulty, we respond negatively to people, things, or situations that won’t physically harm us. That’s called “stress.” Millions of dollars have been spent seeking ways to “de-stress” ourselves and correct negative habits, but little permanent change is seen in most people’s lives.
human beings, it is our natural inclination to rationalize our negative behaviors. Here’s an example: what if, after repeated exposure to an abusive father, those negative cellular memories caused us to respond fearfully (feel stress) around all men? Obviously, that would cause a huge problem in our relationships.
For example, if you’ve been taught that all government is corrupt (a stored memory), and you receive a notice of tax assessment to improve sidewalks (sensory input), your response will be that the government is stealing your money (this comes from the limbic system). That “programming” from past experience all happens in the limbic system.
His conclusion was that the reticular formation causes immediate physical action through the central nervous system.
If the memory is positive, we’ll experience pleasure. Think of those memories as frequencies, similar to radio waves. Negative frequencies trigger the limbic system’s alert to the hypothalamus that we can either, 1) get ready to fight, or 2) run away from the situation.
I want you to know that at the very core of all that damage is a collection of lies. That’s right; all those damaged, negative images stored within your spiritual heart are based on lies about those experiences.
Here’s the scenario: a person recalls negative memories, stress occurs, the disease gene is unmasked, and illness appears. Dr. Bruce Lipton, cell biologist and recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award, has concluded from his own decades of research that this is the only way disease does occur.
18 — Understanding How Cellular Memories Are Stored The True Source of Stress If conventional wisdom tells us stress is relieved by “fixing” areas in life — relationships, finances, job — why does the stress return after the problem is repaired? It’s because problems in these areas are the symptoms, not the source, of your stress. The true source of stress is found in destructive memories, and that’s where healing must begin, if you hope to permanently eliminate the effects of stress in your life.
If someone regularly told them they were evil because they enjoyed eating, for example, that implication of being evil while eating remains.
ask yourself this question: “What one thing would I choose if I could have anything I wanted?” (And it’s not acceptable to give an answer that describes what you don’t want.) Were you able to answer the question? If not, take time now to do that. Then, ask yourself one more question: “What would that one thing be worth to me?” Clarifying for yourself what would make you feel fulfilled, and its worth, seems like such a simple thing, but, as we said earlier, ninety-nine percent of us cannot come up with an answer.