Your Brain On God

We are all storytellers ... when we pray or even think, we are telling the Law our story

What story do you want to tell?

A Cherokee elder is teaching his grandchildren about life and says, "a fight is going on inside of me it is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.

One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, pride and superiority … lies, lies, lies.

The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion,faith and Truth.

This same fight is going on inside of you and every other person too," the elder said to the wide-eyed kids. The grandkids thought about it for a while and then one of them asked "which wolf will win?"

"The one I feed," the old Cherokee answered, “the one I feed.”

What are you feeding your mind?

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. ~Thoreau

Sympathy with Intelligence? That's with God, Spirit....

In the book, HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN, Andrew Newberg MD and Mark Robert Waldman talk about the science of faith. Using our brain's plasticity, we can change our lives through faith, meditation, prayer and other spiritual practices. The reasons for this change come through our desire, focus, conscious regulation of breath, and posture/body movements. The mechanism for change is faith. It is a practice that stops you from ruminating or focusing on fear and/or anger. Meditation or prayer and other spiritual practices are the opposite of rumination and cause your brain to change.

You may say, "hey, Jay, I don't always have time to meditate or pray and my mind is tired from a full and busy morning at work." Or you may not have any spiritual practice at all. Then just take a moment and Breathe; breath replenishes neural energy and gives you a coffee-like boost.

I'm sure most of you have heard of Jill Bolte Taylor. Ms. Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuro-anatomist who experienced a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996, at the age of 37. She lost judgment, critical analysis, sense of past and future and was finding herself existing just in now, using her right hemisphere. She wrote"

...and for me it was a total experience of peacefulness and euphoria. ... "The Blue Sky is Always There", and to me the blue sky is the consciousness of the right hemisphere. And then the clouds come in, which is the consciousness of the left hemisphere and the verbiage and it blocks our ability to see the blue sky, but the blue sky is always still there. And to me that's what going on with our consciousness. We always have that blue sky, that right hemisphere experience of euphoria is at the essence of what we are. You always have the option, moment, by moment, of saying in this moment, I'm going to sit back, I'm going to look at the world around me. I'm going to escape all the things that I'm thinking about. And I am just going to pay attention to how the air feels, the temperature of the air, my breath... Look at the colors in the field around me, stop thinking and analyzing everything that is going on in your left hemisphere; all the jargon. ...consciously choose to have that experience at any moment. …. we are biologically designed to have this experience of feeling at one with all that is.

You can watch her TED Talk to learn more. And she has written a book on the experience, as well.

With your brain on God, the chemicals zapping around lowers anxiety and depression and relaxes you; it lights you up like the sun. I don't want to get into the electro-chemical descriptions of it all, but suffice it to say, different hormones and the like are excreted on a moment-by-moment basis, when you daily use spiritual practices. And I don't mean just prayer or meditative modalities. What lights you up in positive way? What music, reading, affirmations, walking the beach or the mountains, etc. are you including in your life on a daily basis? And if not on a daily basis, why not? There's enough junk floating around in your head that gets in your way, why do we not set ourselves up for greater success by setting a mental experience, along with goals and other success tools?

Some of you might ask, "Do you need God to do all this?" "God," it's just a term/name for the energy that surrounds us. But most importantly, it is an energy or frequency or vibration that we surround ourselves with. The breath, the music, the animal friend we hang out with, enjoying he company of our children, reading inspiring words, sitting on the porch and watching the sunset, etc. It is the consciousness of Universe being allowed to step in and refresh the brain and thus the body, spirit, et al. Call it what you will, the name is irrelevant. But if you are okay with the term 'God,' realize that that word is a noun....and a verb....and an adjective.

In the book, How God Changes Your Brain, they list five fundamental neurological truths that coincide with New Thought:
1-Your thoughts clearly affect the neurological functioning of your body
2-Optimism is essential for maintaining a healthy brain
3-Positive thoughts neurologically suppress negative thoughts (conscious optimal ones even more)
4-When you change the way you think , you begin to change your outward circumstances
5-Consciousness, reality, your mind, and your spiritual beliefs are profoundly interconnected and inseparable from the  functioning of your brain

Let's all get in the Zone everyday...the zone of Spirit in our lives. Stay interested, be in wonderment, use your imagination, have smiles at the ready, release anxiety in your mind and body with yawns, and increase your playfulness. You will see that when your perception changes...reality bends! Yes, negative experiences may occur, but how you deal with it will change; gratitude will step in quicker, your neutrality to the negative condition will rise up and free you from emotional blockages in wisdom and action . You will still have compassion for yourself and others' plights in the moment, but you will react from strength not weakness and love not fear.

Affirmation
I AM IN  UNITY WITH THE DIVINE!
Peace surrounds me. Peace upholds me.  Peace is what I surrender to, with which I inhale, and from which I begin and end my day. Peace is where I flow from and what I travel with.  In me is embedded an attitude of peace, a bias of peace, a philosophy of peace, and a mind set in peace.                       
LOVE, ACCORD, AND FRIENDSHIP ARE MINE!