“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”
—Benjamin Disraeli

You had the good vibes going. You were high from the love potions coursing through your body. You were humming all the crazy-in-love songs you’ve ever heard, and for once they made total sense. You had created the honeymoon effect with the love of your life, and you knew that this time it was going to last forever.

Except, it didn’t!

It all came crashing down, and you were left devastated and obsessed with what might have been. And puzzled: how could something so magical degenerate into endless, bickering recriminations, and if you were married, divorce court?

After all, you wanted it to work. You believed it would work. Maybe The Biology of Belief works for other people, you’re thinking, but it doesn’t for you. Yes it does! But there’s a catch, which explains why positive thinking and believing, by themselves, don’t work.

A relationship created by the conscious mind

The catch is that when you bonded so closely with your partner during those first blissful days and months, your behaviours and actions were controlled by the processing of your conscious mind. The conscious mind is the ‘creative’ mind, the one that acts on behalf of your wishes and desires. So when the conscious minds of two lovers entangle, together they create magical harmony. Because honeymoon partners are operating from their deepest wishes and desires, the outcome of their interactions is… voilà, heaven on earth!

However, over time, your conscious mind becomes burdened with thoughts dealing with the busy-ness of everyday life—balancing your budget, scheduling your chores and planning your weekend. The processing of the conscious mind shifts from creating the honeymoon experience, to the management and strategies, needed to deal with perceived necessities. The result is that the conscious mind relinquishes behavioural control to default programmes previously stored in the subconscious mind.

How our subconscious mind wreaks relationships

When it comes to partners, there are suddenly four instead of two minds involved. And these two ‘extra’ subconscious minds can wreak havoc on happily-ever-after relationships. When our conscious minds stop paying attention to the moment, we lose control over our honeymoon creation because we unknowingly engage in preprogrammed behaviours we acquired through our developmental experiences. For many couples, once that subconscious programming comes to the fore, the honeymoon glow fades very quickly.

That’s not surprising because the behaviours programmed in the subconscious mind are primarily derived from observing and downloading other people’s behaviours [many of them negative and disempowering]—especially those of your parents, immediate family, community and culture. You start seeing a side of your partner [and yourself] that never emerged during the honeymoon. When the conscious mind stops paying attention to the current moment, you automatically and most importantly, unconsciously engage in behaviours you downloaded from others.

Programmes we learn from our parents

Here’s a scenario that may be all too familiar to you.

You’re basking in the honeymoon effect, full of love for your supportive partner who lights up your life. Then one day you ask him a simple, loving question. He’s not thinking about how good your relationship is. His conscious mind is preoccupied with fixing the car or paying the rent, so he responds reflexively and nastily with a tone that says, “Leave me alone.” Shocked, you respond: “Who are you?”

You have just experienced the moment when honeymoons generally begin to fall apart. He responded so unconsciously that he didn’t even notice how nasty he was. And in his response to what he perceives as a personal ‘attack’ on his character, he starts digging in his heels to defend himself to the death. He’s thinking, she accused me of not being me. I’m the same me I’ve always been. I don’t know what she’s talking about. What’s her problem?

Meanwhile, you’re thinking, where is the loving man I married? Your conscious mind detaches from the current moment, to assess the unpleasant situation in which you now find yourself. Unbeknownst to you, you also unconsciously default to your own formerly hidden subconscious behaviours that you acquired from your family and culture. Now it’s your partner’s turn to be shocked, as his once loving spouse shifts into criticism and blame, as well as other less than loving programmes you downloaded from your parents.

As the daily issues of life increasingly occupy your and your partner’s conscious minds, more disharmonious unconscious behaviour patterns begin to rise to the surface. Soon you both shift from appreciating your partner, to focussing on his or her periodic nasty outbursts. Both you and your partner turn defensive and begin to critique the other’s faults: he never cleans up, she never puts the cap on the toothpaste and so on. All the things you ignored in the first glow of love now start to bug you.

If you met through an online dating service, both of you want your money back! He/she didn’t fill out the questionnaire honestly! But actually, you both filled it out in good faith. You both filled it out consciously—and that’s the rub. Your thoughtful submissions from your conscious minds truly represent the people you aspire to be. Unfortunately, the character of the ‘you’ who answered the questionnaire normally expresses itself only about five per cent of the time. What both partners failed to include in their surveys were the sabotaging and limiting subconscious programmes they acquired from others, which all of us unconsciously engage in about 95 per cent of the time.

Trying to find love again

With the appearance of uninvited behaviours, 95 per cent of the time you and your partner have most definitively left the honeymoon and are back on the road of conventional life. If any of these heretofore unseen, destructive and disturbing behaviours had surfaced on the first day of your relationship, there probably would not have been a second day. Now you’re wondering if you should lower your expectations and accept what your relationship has become because “This is the way life is and I have to accept the bad with the good.” Or will the many compromises you make as you adjust to abusive behaviour become so intolerable that your once seemingly unbreakable bond shatters? You say, “The hell with this. I can’t do this.” And then you go out [again] and try to find what you once had.

The culprit for this repeating cycle is invisible: it’s the behaviours programmed in you and your partner’s subconscious minds. Your conscious mind sent you on the quest to find a loving partner and rejoiced when you found the one, yet your subconscious mind is destroying what you’ve created. But once you know that you’re dealing with four minds in the relationship, and once you know how to change the negative programming of your subconscious minds, you will have the tools to recreate what you’ve lost.

The post Why do relationships fall apart? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

The notion that our fate is indelibly inscribed in our genes was derived from the now dated scientific concept known as genetic determinism.

Erroneous conviction

Since James D Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the genetic code, the public has been programmed with the conventional belief that DNA ‘controls’ the attributes passed down through a family’s lineage, including dysfunctional traits such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and depression, among scores of others.

As ‘victims’ of heredity, we naturally perceive ourselves to be powerless in regard to the unfolding of our lives. Unfortunately, the assumption of being powerless is the road to personal irresponsibility: “Since I can’t do anything about it anyway.why should I care?”

Control above the genes

Just as the Human Genome Project got off the ground in the late 1980s, scientists began to acquire a paradigm-shattering new view of how life works. Their revolutionary research has become the foundation for a new branch of science known as epigenetic control, which has shaken the foundations of biology and medicine.

It reveals that we are not ‘victims,’ but rather ‘masters’ of our genes. The Greek-derived prefix epi- means ‘over’ or ‘above’. Consequently, the literal translation of epigenetic control is “control above the genes.” Genes do NOT control life; life is controlled by something above the genes. This knowledge of how life works provides the most important element in our quest for self-empowerment.

Environment and the genetic blueprint

The new science of epigenetics recognises that environmental signals are the primary regulators of gene activity. As described in my book, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, cells read and respond to the conditions of their environment using membrane protein perception switches. Activated switches send signals to control behaviour and regulate the activity of the genes.

Amazingly, epigenetic information can modify or edit the readout of a gene blueprint to create over 30,000 different variations of proteins—the cell’s molecular building blocks—from the same gene.

This editing process can provide for normal or dysfunctional protein products from the same gene. You can be born with healthy genes and through epigenetic processes, express mutant behaviours, such as cancer. Similarly, you can be born with defective mutant genes, and through epigenetic mechanisms, create normal healthy proteins and functions.

Perceptions shape biology, behaviour

The conventional belief that the genome represents the equivalent of a computer’s ‘read-only’ program is now proven to be false. Epigenetic mechanisms modify the readout of genetic the code—which means that genes actually represent ‘read-write’ programs, wherein life experiences actively redefine an individual’s genetic expression. The ‘new’ biology is based upon the fact that perception controls behaviour and gene activity!

The control is with YOU

This revised version of science emphasises the reality that we actively control our genetic expression moment by moment throughout our lives. Rather than seeing ourselves as victims of our genes, we must come to own the responsibility that our perceptions are dynamically shaping our biology and behaviour.

As organisms experience the environment, their perception mechanisms fine-tune genetic expression to enhance their opportunities for survival. The expression of a healthy or diseased biology is directly influenced by the accuracy of an individual’s interpretation or perception of their environment. Misperceptions rewrite genetic expression just as effectively as accurate perceptions, yet with far graver, perhaps even life threatening consequences.

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What is the subconscious?

In conventional parlance, the brain’s conscious mechanism associated with automated stimulus-response behaviours is referred to as the subconscious or unconscious mind. That is because its functions require neither observation nor attention from the self-conscious mind.

In fact, the functions of the subconscious mind evolved long before the prefrontal cortex [the neurological platform that enables us to realise our personal identity and experience the quality of ‘thinking’—responsible for our self-consciousness]. Consequently, it is able to successfully operate a body and its behaviour without any contribution from the more evolved self-conscious mind.

The subconscious v/s the self-conscious

The power of the subconscious mind lies in its ability to process massive amounts of data acquired from direct and indirect learning experiences at extraordinarily high rates of speed—it has the ability to interpret and respond to an estimated 40 million plus nerve impulses per second.

In contrast, the diminutive self-conscious mind’s prefrontal cortex can only process about 40 nerve impulses per second. As an information processor, the subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than the self-conscious mind. As a trade-off for its computational bravado, the subconscious mind expresses only a marginal creative ability—one that may be best compared to that of a precocious five-year-old.

In contrast to the freewill offered by the conscious mind, the subconscious mind primarily expresses pre-recorded stimulus-response ‘habits’, such as walking, getting dressed, or driving a car. Although the prefrontal cortex’s ability for multitasking is physically constrained, the self-conscious mind can focus upon and control any function in the human body.

In fact, it is now recognised that some bodily functions such as the regulation of heart-beat, blood pressure, and body temperature, which were thought to be beyond the control of the self-conscious mind, can be controlled by the conscious mind. Yogis and other practitioners have trained their conscious minds to control functions formerly defined as involuntary behaviours.

How both function

The subconscious and self-conscious components of the mind work in tandem, with the subconscious controlling every behaviour not attended to by the self-conscious mind. Most people’s self-conscious minds are rarely focussed upon the current moment, since their mental processing continuously flits from one thought to another.

The self-conscious mind is so preoccupied with thoughts about the future, the past, or resolving some imaginary problem, that most of our lives are actually controlled by programmes in the subconscious mind.

Cognitive neuroscientists conclude that the self-conscious mind contributes only about five per cent of our cognitive activity. Consequently, 95 per cent of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behaviours are derived from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind. This data reveals that our lives are not controlled by our personal intentions and desires, as we may inherently believe.

Do the math! Our fate is actually under the control of the pre-programmed experiences managed by the subconscious mind.

The control mechanism

Now here’s the catch: Behaviour is automatically controlled by subconscious mind’s programmes when the self-conscious mind is not focused on the present moment. When the reflective self-conscious mind is preoccupied in thought and not paying attention, it does not observe the automatic behaviours derived from subconscious mind. Since 95 per cent or more of our behaviour is derived from the subconscious mind.then most of our own behaviour is invisible to us!

For example, consider you know someone intimately; you also know his or her parent. From your perspective you see that your friend’s behaviour closely resembles her parent. Then one day you make a casual remark to your friend. something like, “You know Mary, you’re just like your mom.”

Back away! In disbelief and perhaps shock, Mary is likely to respond with, “How can you say that!” The cosmic joke is that everyone else can see that Mary’s behaviour resembles her mom’s except Mary. Why? Simply because when Mary is engaging the subconscious behavioural programs she downloaded in her youth from observing her mom, her self-conscious mind is not paying attention. At those moments [when she’s behaving like her mom], her automatic subconscious programmes operate without observation.

Consequently, when life does not work out as planned, we rarely recognise that we were very likely contributing to our own disappointments. Since we are generally unaware of the influence of our own subconscious behaviours, we naturally perceive of ourselves as victims of outside forces.

Unfortunately, assuming the role of victim means that we assume we are powerless in manifesting our intentions. Nothing is further from the truth! The primary determinant in shaping the fate of our lives is the database of perceptions and beliefs programmed in our minds.

It’s up to you

We have all been shackled with emotional chains wrought by dysfunctional behaviours programmed by the stories of the past. However, the next time you are “talking to yourself” with the hope of changing sabotaging subconscious programmes, it is important to realise the following information.

Using reason to communicate with your subconscious in an effort to change its behaviour would essentially have the same influence as trying to change a programme on a cassette tape by talking to the tape player. In neither case is there an entity in the mechanism that will respond to your dialogue.

Subconscious programmes are not fixed, unchangeable behaviours. We have the ability to rewrite our limiting beliefs and in the process take control of our lives. However, to change subconscious programs requires the activation of a process other than just engaging in a running dialogue with the subconscious mind. There are a large variety of effective processes to reprogram limiting beliefs, which include clinical hypnotherapy, Buddhist mindfulness and a number of newly developed and very powerful modalities collectively referred to as energy psychology.

You can!

Learning how to harness our minds to promote growth is the secret of life, which is why I refer to the new science as The Biology of Belief. As we become more conscious and rely less on subconscious automated programs, we become the masters of our fates rather than the “victims” of our programs.

In this way, we can rewrite old, limiting perceptions and actively transform the character of our lives so that they are filled with the love, health, and prosperity that are our true birthrights.

The post What controls our behaviour appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Then, by observing behavioural patterns of people in their immediate environment, a child learns perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable social behaviours that become the subconscious programmes that establish the ‘rules’ of life.

The catch

Now here’s the catch—these life-shaping subconscious programmes are direct downloads derived from observing our primary teachers: our parents, siblings, and local community. Unfortunately, as psychiatrists, psychologists, and counsellors are keenly aware, many of the perceptions acquired about ourselves in the formative period are expressed as limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs.

An example.

Consider that you were a five-year-old child throwing a tantrum over your desire to have a particular toy. In silencing your outburst, your father yelled, “You don’t deserve things!” You are now an adult and in your self-conscious mind, are considering the idea that you have the qualities and power to assume a position of leadership at your job. While in the process of entertaining this positive thought in the self-conscious mind, all of your behaviours are automatically managed by the programmes in your more powerful subconscious mind.

Since your fundamental behavioural programmes are those derived in your formative years, your father’s admonition that “you do not deserve things” may become the subconscious mind’s automated directive. So, while you are entertaining wonderful thoughts of a positive future and not paying attention, your subconscious mind automatically engages self-sabotaging behaviour to assure that your reality matches your programme of not-deserving.

How subconscious develops

Nature facilitates the enculturation process by developmentally enhancing the subconscious mind’s ability to download massive amounts of information. EEG [Electroencephalography] readings from adult brains reveal that neural electrical activity is correlated with at least five different states of awareness, each associated with a different frequency level:

• Delta [0.5 – 4Hz]: Sleeping/unconscious state
• Theta [4 – 8Hz]: Imagination state
• Alpha [8 – 12Hz]: Calm consciousness state
• Beta -12 – 35Hz]: Focused consciousness state
• Gamma [>35Hz]: Peak performance

EEG vibrations continuously shift from state to state over the whole range of frequencies during normal brain processing in adults. However, EEG vibration rates and their corresponding states evolve in incremental stages over time.

The predominant brain activity during the child’s first two years of life is delta, the lowest EEG frequency range. In the adult brain, delta is associated with sleeping or unconsciousness.

Between two and six years of age, the child’s brain activity state ramps up and operates primarily in the range of theta. In the adult, theta activity is associated with states of reverie or imagination. While in the theta state, children spend much of their time mixing the imaginary world with the real world.

Calm consciousness associated with emerging alpha activity only becomes a predominant brain state after six years of age. By 12 years, the brain expresses all frequency ranges although its primary activity is in beta’s state of focused consciousness.

This stage usually arrives in the life of children when they leave elementary education behind and enter into the more intense academic programmes.

A profoundly important fact in the above timeline that may have missed your attention is that children do not express the alpha EEG frequencies of conscious processing as a predominant brain state until after they are six years old. The predominant delta and theta activity of children under six signifies that their brains are operating at levels below consciousness.

It’s fixed before six

Delta and theta brain frequencies define a brain state known as a hypnogogic trance, the same neural state that hypnotherapists use to download new behaviours directly into the subconscious mind of their clients.

The first six years of a child’s life is spent in a hypnotic trance. Its perceptions of the world are directly downloaded into the subconscious during this time, without the discrimination of the dormant self-conscious mind.

Consequently, our fundamental perceptions about life are learned before we express the capacity to choose or reject those beliefs. We are simply ‘programmed.’

The reason behind

The inhibition of conscious processing [alpha EEG activity] and the simultaneous engagement of a hypnogogic trance during the formative stages of a child’s life are a logical necessity.

The thinking processes associated with the self-conscious mind cannot operate from a blank slate. Self-conscious behaviour requires a working database of learned perceptions. Consequently, before self-consciousness is expressed, the brain’s primary task is to acquire a working awareness of the world by directly downloading experiences and observations into the subconscious mind.

The flaw in the method

However, there is a very serious downside to acquiring awareness by this method. The consequence is so profound that it impacts the life of the individual—we download our perceptions and beliefs about life, long before we acquire the ability for critical thinking. Our primary perceptions are literally written in stone as unequivocal truths in the subconscious mind, where they habitually operate for life, unless there is an active effort to re-programme them.

How subconscious influences reality

Acquired perceptions in the subconscious mind can even override genetically-endowed instincts. For example, every human can instinctually swim like a dolphin the moment he emerges from the birth canal. So, why do we have to work so hard at teaching our children to swim?

The answer lies in the fact that every time the infant encounters open water, such as a pool, a river, or a bathtub, the parents freak out in concern for the safety of their child. The parent’s behaviour causes the child to equate water as something to be feared. The acquired perception of water as dangerous and life-threatening overrides the instinctual ability to swim and makes the formerly proficient child susceptible to drowning.

Through our developmental experiences we acquire the perception that we are frail, vulnerable organisms subject to the ravages of contagious germs and disease. The belief of being frail actually leads to frailty since the mind’s limiting perceptions inhibit the body’s innate ability to heal itself.

This influence of the mind on healing processes is the focus of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that describes the mechanism by which our thoughts change brain chemistry, which in turn, regulates the function of the immune system. While negative beliefs can precipitate illness [nocebo effect], the resulting disease state can be alleviated through the healing effects of positive thoughts [placebo effect].

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About 700 million years ago, individual cells started to assemble into multi-cellular colonies. The collective awareness afforded in a community of cells was far greater than an individual cell’s awareness. Since awareness is a primary factor in organismal survival, the communal experience offered its citizens a far greater opportunity to stay alive and reproduce.

From awareness to evolution

The first cellular communities, like the earliest human communities, were basic hunter-gatherer clans in which each member of the society offered the same services to support the survival of the community. However, as the population densities of both cellular and human communities reached greater numbers, it was no longer efficient or effective for all individuals to do the same job.

In both types of communities, evolution led to individuals taking on specialised functions. For example, in human communities, some members focussed upon hunting, others upon domestic chores or child rearing. In cellular communities, specialisation meant that some cells began to differentiate as digestive cells, others as heart cells, and still others as muscle cells.

The dawn of consciousness

Most of the trillions of cells forming bodies such as ours have no direct perception of the external environment. For instance, liver cells ‘see’ what’s going on in the liver, but don’t directly know what’s going on in the world outside of the skin.

It is the function of the brain and the nervous system to interpret environmental stimuli and send out signals to the cells that integrate and regulate the life-sustaining functions of the body’s organ systems.

The successful nature of multi-cellular communities allowed evolving brains to dedicate vast numbers of cells to cataloguing, memorising, and integrating complex perceptions. The ability to remember and select among the millions of experienced perceptions in life provides the brain with a powerful creative database from which it can create complex behavioural repertoires. When put into play, these behavioural programs endow the organism with the characteristic trait of consciousness—the state of being awake and aware of what is going on around.

Awareness about the ‘I’

Many scientists prefer to think of consciousness in terms of a digital quality—an organism either has it or not. However, an assessment of the evolution of biological properties suggests consciousness, like any other quality, evolved over time. Consequently, the character of consciousness expresses itself as a gradient of awareness from its simpler roots in primitive organisms to the unique character of self-consciousness that is manifest in humans and other higher vertebrates.

The expression of self-consciousness is specifically associated with a small evolutionary adaptation in the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This is the neurological platform that enables us to realise our personal identity and experience the quality of ‘thinking’.

Monkeys and lower organisms do not express self-consciousness. When looking into a mirror, monkeys don’t realise that they are looking at themselves; they perceive the image to be that of another monkey. In contrast, neurologically advanced chimps looking in the mirror perceive the mirror’s reflection as an image of themselves.

How is self-consciousness different

Consciousness enables an organism to assess and respond to the immediate conditions of its environment that are relevant at that moment. In contrast, self-consciousness enables the individual to factor in the consequences of their actions in regard to how they impact the present moment and how they will influence the future.

Self-consciousness is an evolutionary adjunct to consciousness in that it provides another behaviour-creating platform: the role of a ‘self’ in the decision-making process. While conventional consciousness enables organisms to participate in the dynamics of life’s ‘play’, self-consciousness offers it an opportunity to simultaneously be an observer in the ‘audience’.

From this perspective, self-consciousness provides individuals with the option for self-reflection, reviewing and editing their character’s performance. Collectively, conscious and self-conscious functions of the brain are referred to as the mind.

Excerpted with permission from Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future [And A Way To Get There From Here] by Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman

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