De-Biasing Minds Is Hard

Becker went further. He messed around with electricity in salamanders and other animals and made them grow extra limbs and even heads. Using tiny electrodes he re-reversed the polarity at injured limbs and stopped them regenerating. Then he showed that higher animals, such as rats, can sometimes regenerate limbs, especially if he provided the injury site with an extra boost of electricity. He noticed that this power diminishes as the rat gets older and the injury gets more severe. As he worked with more evolved animals, he noticed that this regeneration reduced, along with the ability to generate a strong DC regenerative current and nucleated red cells. Finally, he came to the conclusion that the more energy a species has spent on creating a big brain, the less ability it has to regenerate. Humans, with the largest brain per size of any large animal, have been left with the regenerative short straw. It is really a simple, three-step process to create our experiences deliberately, rather than by default. And we only really need to focus on one of them! As we go about our lives, without trying, we are sending out through our thoughts, a vibrational signal to the Universe of how we'd prefer that things be in our lives. Generally, we experience something or have a problem, decide that we'd like that experience to be better in some respect, and our preference is automatically communicated to the Universe through the vibration we are emitting. That part of the process was just Step One and required virtually no effort on our part, other than living our lives and having preferences. In Step Two, Source Energy or Infinite Intelligence responds to every one of those desires or preferences. That's where the Law of Attraction comes in. Our wish for improvement or the solution to our problem is created, so to speak, energetically, and held for us in a sort of escrow known as our vibrational reality or our vortex, until we Allow it into our experience. Our desire or solution to our problem can't be pulled into our life until our vibration matches it or, at least, is in the vicinity of it, when we can begin to see evidence of its existence. Source Energy, the energy that created and maintains our world, is working with us at all times and is already responding to every desire, amassing everything needed for its fulfillment. If saying what came to mind mended people, saloons would long ago have healed humanity. A wise therapist does not rely on insight alone, for an insight from the head will not heal the pain in our hearts.

How does healing happen? The therapist invites us to experience who we are under the words, the excuses, and the explanations. We embrace our inner life (our urges, thoughts, and feelings) and the outer world, hidden from us by the lies we have believed about others and ourselves. And by facing what we have been hiding from, we go through the inner challenge known as healing. If knowledge is the food of the soul, as Plato claimed, then healing happens when we bear what we avoid so knowledge can arise. Pills, shots, and electroshock are not substitutes for the living relationship that therapy can be. This article shows how facing what we avoid can heal us. The examples drawn from my practice present people struggling with the problems everyone has, using the excuses everyone uses, and demonstrate how, together with the therapist, people can bear the unbearable to face what they formerly feared. In an ideal scenario, once the threat has passed, all systems return to normal and you're able to relax. Your body is designed to do this automatically. But here's where we humans, with our big brains and vast imaginations, come into trouble. If we keep thinking about the past threat--imagining all the terrible things that could have happened, what our friends would think, how much it would have cost, and on and on--we keep the threat alive. If we get stuck in threatened thinking, we get stuck in the chronic stress response. Breaking the cycle of chronic stress starts in the here and now. For some people, it's helpful to follow up with therapy that will help you make sense of the past. But for everyone, learning simple, effective ways to cope with stress right now is the best way to start. Why Manage Stress? You know without being told that it's bad for you when you're pushed too hard, either by yourself or by the world you live in. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE HAPPY? Well, for one thing, by definition, you will feel better.

But there is more to it than that. Happiness does not just make you enjoy life more; A few years ago Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California and her colleagues set about the mammoth task of reviewing hundreds of studies in which experimenters cheered up selected people and then monitored the effects of their subjects' newfound joy. Sometimes the experimenters resorted to trickery, telling participants that they had performed especially well on an IQ test or ensuring that they accidentally found some money in the street. Regardless of the method used, the overall result was clear--happiness doesn't just flow from success; After trawling the data from hundreds of studies involving more than a quarter of a million participants, Lyubomirsky discovered impressive benefits to being happy. Happiness makes people more sociable and altruistic, it increases how much they like themselves and others, it improves their ability to resolve conflict, and it strengthens their immune systems. The cumulative effect means that people have more satisfying and successful relationships, find more fulfilling careers, and live longer, healthier lives. I envision a time when patients receive the best care possible, drawn from the various arenas of medicine. I am writing this article so that you get a glimpse of the system that I have been honored to study and share with my patients. Together we can help it evolve to better serve the needs of a world that strives for health and well-being. How to Use This article For your convenience, this article is divided into five parts. You can move immediately to the conditions that affect you now, or browse the article to gain general insight into the practices featured. Since the best oriental medicine is based on individual evaluation and diagnosis, the explanations and advice given in this article are meant to be instructive, but cannot replace the proper care given by a qualified practitioner. Statistically, most patients do not communicate with their conventional physicians about using traditional medicine. I encourage you to read these articles, which include information in both therapies, so that you can be better informed about your condition and choices. Talk with your doctor and the people who are your health providers. I can fulfill the expectations of others and yet fail my own; I can win every honor and yet feel I have accomplished nothing;

I can be adored by millions and yet wake up each morning with a sickening sense of fradulence and emptiness. To attain success without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an impostor anxiously awaiting exposure. Just as the acclaim of others does not create our self-esteem, neither do knowledge, skill, material possessions, marriage, parenthood, charitable endeavors, sexual conquests, or face lifts. These things can sometimes make us feel better about ourselves temporarily, or more comfortable in particular situations; The tragedy is that so many people look for self-confidence and self-respect everywhere except within themselves, and so they fail in their search. We shall see that positive self-esteem is best understood as a kind of spiritual attainment--that is, as a victory in the evolution of consciousness. When we begin to understand self-esteem in this way, as a condition of consciousness, we appreciate the foolishness of believing that if we can only manage to make a positive impression on others we will then enjoy positive self-regard. We will stop telling ourselves: If only I get one more promotion; She bounced from one foot to the other, with the skull back in her hands. Come see the rest of him! I was an obedient kid, more or less. So I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt over my swimsuit and we walked through a pasture filled with cows and up a hill. Once in the cemetery, we walked through the lichen-encrusted tombstones mixed in with yucca plants and cacti and dead people--here were the lives lost to stillbirths, scarlet fever, whooping cough, typhoid, suicide. Over one hundred and forty people were buried here, all early settlers in the region. No one ever paid for a burial space, no one kept records, and no one was responsible for its care. Until my mother came along, that is. She started caring for it--and making her teenage kids do so as well. She spent years researching and writing a article about this cemetery. And so how ironic it is that, when we are in shame, we think that we're the only one. For me, the symptoms of shame and trauma resulted in a way of experiencing the world that is called dissociative identity disorder (DID), which I've written about more extensively in my first article, Recovery is my best revenge.

Dissociation is a creative survival strategy that allows us to cope with trauma--and the shame inherent in trauma--by separating off from overwhelming experience. Shame is endemic to DID. In shame, we hide because we feel fundamentally unacceptable: what greater hiddenness is there than hiding even from yourself, and experiencing the world as altered states of consciousness, alter personalities, dissociated parts? The shame-based strategy of not being `me', because I believe I am too shameful and unacceptable as `me', underpins the nature of DID. Shame nearly killed me: I made a number of suicide attempts because I could not bear to be me. But somehow--mainly as a result of the therapist in this article--I survived. And so in writing, I want to give thanks, not only to her, but to every therapist and every human being who offers hope and compassionate connection to those who need it. If someone hadn't believed in me, and believed in my inherent worth and value as a human being, I wouldn't be here to write these words. There is no need to surround yourself with people who are continually bringing you down. No one should be coerced to start personal meditation. It should be a personal decision that one does out of a willing heart. The same way the support system surrounding someone should be people who come together without been forced. It is not only for those who want to lose weight. It should be for people who have realized the importance of healing. If there is no group in your area, you can as well start to reach out to people, and you will be surprised just by how many people show up, Always concentrate on things that excite you and make you feel good about yourself before you start the process. These activities prepare your mind and soul for the intended therapy. As human beings, we tend to judge people even before we get to know them. We can sometimes pass rude or negative comments on how someone weighs or look without knowing their struggles. There is no need to surround yourself with people who are continually bringing you down. No one should be coerced to start personal meditation.