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So many of us have heard the term, be present,
or, stay in the now, but what does that really mean?
Many individuals talk about meditation
as a tool to become present.
But from a scientific point of view,
I want to offer you a new way to understand
what it means to be fully present,
and how you can use your meditation
practice to transcend your body, your environment in time
in order to reach the sweet spot of the generous, present
moment.
I'm your host, Dr. Joe Dispenza, and in the previous episode,
we went into depth on how change works in the brain and body.
But how do we get really focused on this change?
In this episode, we're going to demystify meditation and show
you how to get into the present moment
so you can focus on creating a new personality, and thus,
a new personal reality.
This will help you understand a fundamental part
of becoming supernatural, which is to get
past the analytical mind.
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Let's start with the first question.
What does the word meditation mean?
Now, the word meditation, if you research the symbol in Tibetan,
the word literally means "to become familiar with."
Now, familiarization means, then,
if 95% of who you are by the time you're 35 years old
is a set of hard-wired thoughts, unconscious, automatic habits
and behaviors, and reflexive emotional reactions that
define our personality, that means
95% of who we are typically runs in an unconscious or
subconscious program.
Then the first start to change is
becoming conscious of your unconscious thoughts,
beginning to become aware of your automatic actions
and behaviors.
And when you begin to notice how you're
feeling, as you're beginning to observe and become
familiar with those states of mind and body,
you are now no longer the program, living unconsciously.
Now you're becoming conscious of your unconscious self.
So think about this, many people quit in their meditation
practice because they don't think
they can control their mind.
Well, if you're thinking 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts in one day,
the majority of those thoughts are the same thoughts
as the day before.
And they're hard-wired, automatic attitudes
and thoughts.
They're typically happening behind the scenes
of your awareness.
Thoughts like, I'll never change.
It's too hard.
My life isn't very good.
I'll never find love in my life.
I'll never find the right job.
These are the thoughts that people
think constantly, every day.
So then when those thoughts start
coming to the surface in their meditation practice,
the moment they start realizing they
can't control those thoughts, they give up.
And they buy into the belief that they're not
very good at meditation.
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But let's start by framing this a little differently.
The moment you become conscious of those unconscious thoughts
and you decide not to put your attention and your energy
behind them, that's a victory.
In other words, the moment you start noticing those thoughts,
and instead of reacting to them, just observing them,
you are beginning to know thyself.
If you notice, then, in your meditation
practice that your body is in a program
and it's busy every single day doing a lot of things,
and it wants to get up and go do something,
it wants to begin to habituate and autopilot,
and you become aware that your body wants to do that,
and instead of responding to the body as the mind
and getting up and quitting, if you can settle it
back down into the present moment,
that's a victory as well.
Because you're saying then that your body is no longer
the mind, you're the mind.
And those victories add up.
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Every time you work on overcoming
some aspect of your old personality,
there's a liberation of energy.
And we've measured this on students all around the world.
Because as they keep returning the body back
into the present moment, the body
is the servant to the mind.
And just like training any animal,
sooner or later, it's going to acquiesce.
And when it does, there is a liberation of energy.
And that's available energy for you to use to heal.
That's available energy for you to begin
to create a new future.
So then we said in the last episode
that the process of change is breaking
the habit of the old self and reinventing new self.
It's pruning synaptic connections
and sprouting new connections.
So it makes sense, then, if you are going to transition
from the old self to the new self,
and you decide, what thoughts do I want to fire and wire
in my brain, and you begin to put all of your energy
in installing those thoughts neurologically in your brain,
the act of firing and wiring over and over again begins
to assemble new neurological networks.
Now, neural networks are gangs of neurons
that have been fired and wired together
that relate to a thought, a memory, a behavior.
The body begins to assemble new circuits
so it becomes more automatic.
So it makes sense, then, if you keep firing and wiring
those thoughts, and they begin to assemble
into automatic neurological networks,
and you do it over and over again,
those thoughts are going to begin
to become familiar to you.
Then the thought in your mind literally
becomes the experience, and experience enriches the brain.
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Now, let's look at another way to understand meditation.
If we know that we are living in a state of the familiar past,
or we're living in the state of the predictable future,
and the familiar past represents the known,
and the predictable future represents the known as well,
and the sweet spot of the generous present moment
represents the unknown, then in order for us to truly begin
to make significant changes, where our body isn't
influencing our mind, where our environment isn't controlling
our feelings and our thoughts, then it makes sense, then,
that the first step that we have to use in order to meditate
is to sit our bodies down and close our eyes
and disconnect from everything known in our outer environment.
Less sensory information is coming into the brain.
Now, all of a sudden, your inner world
starts becoming more real than your outer world.
If you can sit your body down, and like training that animal,
saying to your body, you stay.
I'm going to feed you.
You can check your emails.
You can check your text.
You can post anything on Facebook.
You're going to get a shower.
You're going to get a cup of coffee.
But right now, you're no longer the mind.
I'm the mind.
Your body's in a program, and where
you place your attention is where you place your energy.
And the moment you're sitting in your meditation
and you start putting your attention
on the emotions, familiar emotions that are connected
to the past, the moment you start
thinking about those memories and feeling those emotions,
it makes sense, then, that you're siphoning your attention
and energy out of the present moment into the past.
And if you're sitting there thinking
about the phone calls you have to make,
the meetings you have to go to, the shopping list you have
to get to, those are all known things
in your predictable future reality.
And every time you put your attention
on some predictable future, you're
siphoning energy out of the present moment
into the predictable future.
And now your energy is completely
commingled with that line of time.
So then when you become aware that your attention is
on those emotions, and you become aware
and we turn your attention back to the present moment,
you're disinvesting your attention and energy out
of your past, present reality and you're calling it back
to you.
Every time you do that, it's a victory,
and those victories add up.
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Now, the stronger the emotion that you
feel for some problem or condition in your life,
the more you pay attention to the cause.
Now, where you place your attention
is where you place your energy.
If you're sitting in your meditation
and you're feeling a very strong emotion that's
connected to some problem or some person,
we could say then that you're giving your very life
force away to that person or that problem.
And that's available energy that you could be
using to create a new future.
So then as you sit in your meditation practice,
and your body is used to at 8 o'clock in the morning,
checking emails and getting frustrated and judgemental,
your body is going to notice that you're off schedule,
and it's looking for those chemicals.
If you're aware that your body is doing that,
and you settle your body back down into the present moment
and you lower the volume to that emotion,
you're going to take your attention off that person
or that condition in your life.
And yes, it takes a greater level of awareness, a greater
level of energy to begin to break those energetic bonds
with everything in your past, present reality
that you're connected to emotionally.
So then when a person finally starts
to overcome those emotions, all of a sudden,
they start calling energy back to them,
and they begin to build their own electromagnetic field.
And now they have available energy to design a new destiny.
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So think about meditation as a form to get beyond your body,
to get beyond your environment.
And what is your environment made of?
People, objects, places, everything material
in your three-dimensional reality.
If you keep your attention on everything that's known,
you're going to create more of the known.
So then as you disconnect from your body,
and you get beyond all the elements known
in your outer environment, and you
keep working for the sweet spot of the generous present moment,
what you're saying is, I want to begin
to change the way I think, and I want
to be able to create something new.
So meditation, then, allows us to move
from living unconsciously as a victim, in other words,
allowing our outer world to control our thoughts
and feelings, to consciously becoming
the creator of your life so that your thoughts
and feelings begin to produce outcomes
in your outer environment.
And so then if you do this properly,
we should see changes in your body, in your environment,
and in some future time.
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Now, the purpose of meditation is
to get beyond your analytical mind.
Now, what separates your conscious mind
from your subconscious mind is your analytical mind.
When you're born, you're totally subconscious mind.
And we know this to be the case, because children's brainwaves
for the first six years of their life are in a very slow state,
and it makes them very suggestible to information.
In fact, they have no analytical facilities.
So all the information that they're exposed to
goes into their subconscious mind unedited.
For example, big boys don't cry.
Little girls should be seen and not heard.
Money is the root of all evil.
And when children listen to this information
without analyzing it, it begins to lay
the foundation of who they will become later on in their life
subconsciously.
So if 95% of who we are by the time we're 35 years old
is our subconscious mind, then it's
entirely possible that children become
programmed at a very early age into some subconscious
behaviors that they're not even aware of because of things
they've seen or been exposed to with their parents
or primary caregivers.
So then this circle represents your mind.
And you learn by these different positive and negative
identifications and associations that
give rise to your habits and your behaviors.
A good example of a positive identification or association
is when you're young and you're hungry or uncomfortable
and you cry out.
And the moment you get fed or the discomfort
has been removed, you learn to associate subconsciously
crying out with being fed.
So every time you're uncomfortable or you're hungry
and you cry out, that behavior produces
a response called getting fed.
And so a good example of a negative association
is when you're young and you're exploring your environment,
and all of a sudden, you walk over to the stove
and you stick your finger in the flame.
The moment you notice a change in your internal state,
you pay attention to the cause of it.
All of a sudden, you begin to associate that pain
with that white object in the kitchen.
And all of a sudden, you start developing a behavior
around it.
And these positive and negative identifications
and associations begin to lay the foundation
of our subconscious habits and behaviors.
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Now, because brain waves are changing
and the child is interacting more in the environment,
and as the child, by trial and error,
is noticing different feelings or different experiences that
produce different emotions, when they
start feeling new emotions, they begin
to pay attention to the cause, their brainwaves
start to speed up and they move into what's
called alpha brainwave patterns, and they
begin to develop their analytical mind.
Now, the analytical mind is exactly what
separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind.
And as children's brainwaves change
because they're interacting with their environment,
somewhere between the ages of 6 and 9,
they begin to completely form their analytical mind.
Once that analytical mind is formed,
they begin to divide the conscious mind
from the subconscious mind.
Now, as we've been saying all along,
your conscious mind is 5% of your total mind.
Your conscious mind is made up of things
like logic and reasoning, which gives rise
to your faith, your will, and your creativity.
Now, your subconscious mind, as we've been saying all along,
is made up of 95% of who you are by the time you're
35 years old, and those are all those hardwired attitudes,
unconscious beliefs and perceptions, subconscious
habits and behaviors, and that makes up
the majority of who you are.
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Now, the analytical mind is always busy working.
The analytic mind is important for us,
because we need our analytical mind to survive in our life.
And because the brain is divided in half,
the analytical mind is always weighing past
against future, right against wrong, known against unknown.
And because the division of the brain
allows us to navigate with our analytical mind in our lives,
we need it.
We need our analytical mind when we're learning new things.
We need our analytical mind when we're navigating
in our life ethically.
We need our analytical mind when we
need to make decisions and choices that
are really important.
But when you throw in the hormones of stress,
and the brain becomes aroused because of the emergency state
the brain is in, we become overly analytical.
When people are analyzing their lives
within some disturbing emotion that
are derived from the hormones of stress,
and those emotions are familiar emotions from the past,
by thinking in the box of the past,
they drive their brain further into a more aroused state,
and they're moving further away from moving
into those subconscious states where
they can begin to make change.
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So the whole purpose of meditation,
then, is to get beyond the analytical mind
and enter the operating system where those subconscious
programs exist.
So then we can begin to take limited beliefs,
unconscious habits and behaviors,
and begin to reprogram them, become more self-serving
or more effective.
Now, you can't change the subconscious mind
with your conscious mind.
You have to get beyond the analytical mind
in order to do that.
So some people have a very thin veil
between their conscious mind and their subconscious mind.
And the thinner the veil between your conscious mind
and subconscious mind, the more you
are suggestible to information.
In other words, just like the child,
that information can enter the subconscious mind
and begin to have an effect on us.
So we want to be more suggestible
during the meditative process because we
want to accept, believe, and surrender to certain thoughts
without analyzing it so we can begin to program
our subconscious mind.
So then others have a very thick veil or thick barrier
between their conscious mind and their subconscious mind
and they're less suggestible to information.
And suggestibility is your ability
to accept, believe, and surrender to information
without analyzing it, so the information
doesn't pass through the analytical mind as easily.
So then the more analytical you are, the less suggestible
you are to information.
The less analytical you are, the more suggestible
you are to information.
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When you learn how to control your brainwaves
and move into a state of trance, you
pause in your brain, and your brain kind of moves
into stasis.
And in that state where you're not thinking and analyzing
and you're in a state of trance, you're
more suggestible to information, and you move your brainwaves
from the thinking, conscious mind into a slower brainwave
pattern in the subconscious mind.
It also makes sense that as you increase your brainwaves,
you're all of a sudden increasing
your analytical facilities, because you're
thinking and analyzing more, and your brain is less trance,
and you're less suggestible to information.
So in the meditative process, as we
begin to reprogram those subconscious
states of mind and body, what we want to do is learn the skill,
learn the formula, apply the tools to practice
getting beyond the analytical mind
so that you can begin to make those subconscious changes that
become more permanent.
So when you're living in a subconscious program,
just like a program on your computer,
the moment you press play or start, it runs automatically.
That's exactly what happens subconsciously.
And many people have subconscious programs
that are defining their lives.
Even though their conscious mind wants something else,
their subconscious mind may be sabotaging their outcome.
So then we have to begin to reprogram that subconscious
mind and begin to write a new program.
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So now that I've laid out the basics
of the model of meditation and how
you can transcend your analytical mind, your body,
your environment, as well as the familiar past
and the predictable future in time,
in order to create a new life, shouldn't we
be meditating on a daily basis?
And we live in two states of mind.
We either live in a state of survival,
or we live in a state of creation.
And living in survival is living in stress.
And the majority of people in this world
spend the majority of their time living in stress
and living in survival.
In that state, it's impossible to create.
In the next episode, we will delve
into survival versus creation, and how you can further
understand stress and what it can do to you and your life.
I'm your host, Dr. Joe Dispenza for "Rewired."
And I hope to see you in the next episode, where
we go beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary.
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