Step 8: How does the human nervous system work.

The first thing to remember: Habits equal memory ( or the so-called “past experiences” ).

Make a different choice. Say YES to an opportunity you didn’t want to say before.

To the people who have read my series so far:

“Your skin isn’t paper, don’t cut it!”

“Your face isn’t a mask, don’t cover it!”

“Your body isn’t a book, don’t judge it!”

“Your life isn’t a movie, don’t end it!”

“Your heart isn’t a door, don’t lock it!”

“You’re beautiful!”

You’ll understand later why I’m saying these things. Without knowing you I can say these things about you.

Everyone is aware of a habit. A routine. Everyone experiences them, knowingly or unknowingly. 

It has 2 values: positive or negative.

So a habit can be positive – a passion, a healthy activity, a learning activity. Or negative – gambling, smoking 1 pack a day, drinking till you drown your sorrows.

A habit, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is “something that you do often and regularly, sometimes WITHOUT KNOWING THAT YOU ARE DOING IT”

So basically it’s a thought that you have done so frequently, that now you’re not/may not even be aware it happens. It’s an automatic thing that is in your life. 

Do you get it? It’s A THOUGHT. It’s YOUR thought.

To summarise, paraphrase and highlight some of the things that world-renowned Neuroscientist and best-selling author – Joe Dispenza said:

“A habit is when you’ve done something so many times that your body now knows how to do it better than your mind.” 

If you think about it, people usually wake up in the morning, and they begin to think about their problems. Well, those problems are circuits – neural circuits in the brain. 

What is a memory? It is that “something that you remember from the past”.

So a bunch of memories, put together, create and associate people to things, to the environment at certain times and certain places, through the use of our sensory system. 

What is that sensory system again?

1. Eyes for seeing
2. Ears for hearing and for equilibrium
3. Nose for smelling
4. Tongue for tasting, experiencing different chemicals types
5. Skin for touching, for feeling surfaces, textures, temperatures

There’s a great documentary on Netflix – The Mind Explained, where you can see actual studies of how the brain works, in terms of memory ( specifically, for this case ).

So this is our brain. With different sections for different types of activities or processes.

Those neural circuits in the brain connect all these parts with each other. The Hippocampus is very important in memory as the hippocampus is taking part in the formation of new memories and is also associated with learning and emotions.

The amygdala is the part of the brain that is involved in processing fear.

Coming back to people waking up in the morning. They begin to think about their problems, their crappy road to work. The rain outside. The cold. The dirty streets. The smelly street that they have to walk by every single day. That means that your brain is a storage facility for information of the past. It stored memories, and now you are accessing it.

When you know almost for sure that something is going to happen.

When you are CERTAIN of it. Most of the times, it means that you have experienced that over and over. 

When you experience that thought, that memory (of the past, in this case), those are called emotions. “Emotions are the end product of past experiences. They’re the end product of memory.”

So the moment when people recall those moments of their problems, they feel all of a sudden sad, unhappy, maybe even miserable. They feel pain.

Lesson: So what you think and how you think are important.

Thinking and feeling create your state of being.

So the person’s entire life, when waking up, when they wake up, their entire state of being, is in the past.

“Ah, I know I need to wash my teeth, eat something, leave at 8 am to catch the train from 8:10 am. Find a place to sit down on the train. Again horrible traffic. Ah no, I may not get an empty chair this morning. Ah, I have a meeting and I know what my manager is going to say that I haven’t finished that report yet”,…and so on.

So what does that mean?

The familiar past will sooner or later be, the predictable future.

If you, reader, believe that your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, your faith, God’s will, your predestination ( “I never dared to sale something”, “I never dared to ask for a raise”, “I never managed to get 1 day in the gym per week”), and you can’t think greater of how you feel, or feelings have become the means of thinking, by the very definition of emotions, you’re thinking in the past and for the most part, you’re going to keep creating the same life.

When you wake up and grab your phone, you check your Whatsapp, you check your Instagram, your Facebook, your emails, you take a picture of your feet, you post it on Instagram, you scroll the Facebook feed. At this moment in time, in the present, you are checking the news, you are checking something that has already happened. You are connecting to everything that’s known in your life.

So the days, besides a few changes here and there, a new house, a new car, a new job, a new boyfriend, are basically the same. They repeat, over and over. It’s something ‘natural’ for you. It’s something safe.

Then what happens throughout your day – you go through a series of routine behaviors. You sleep on the same side, you go to the toilet, you brush your teeth with your left or right hand, you cook something, you get a cup of coffee, you get dressed, you drive to work the same way, the same roads, the same trains. You do the same things, you see the same people. You push the same emotional button and that routine, daily habit, becomes your life program. It becomes your life plan.

It’s that moment when your brain knows what you have to do, better than you. You have created a program, unwillingly, that has defined you as a human being. Your brain, your awareness, take a nap, as your body knows from past memories what you have to do to get safe where you need to be. And only when it’s something very strange happening towards the way. When a man shouts in the tube. When there’s a huge accident on your way to work, you realize what’s actually happening. 

So your body checks with you: “Hey, what is wrong here, because I have never experienced this in my life. It doesn’t feel familiar. So it doesn’t feel safe”.

This ‘snapshot’ that is taken by your brain, is what is called a memory.

So in conclusion, you must feel disconnected, so that your body doesn’t know what to do. 

Take your body by surprise. Do repeat the same things that you have done on the previous day. Change something daily. The world is abundant! ( Maharishi – later reference, you will understand later the whole meaning. )

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.

Chinese Proverb

So now people have lost their free will, to a program! And there’s no one in this universe that’s doing it to them.

So now, 95% of who we are by the time we’re 36 years old ( half of the average life expectancy in the world), is a stored set of functions, of actions, behaviors, emotional reactions, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, believes and perceptions that run our life just like a computer program.

So because you have a low percentage of control over your life, as you have been running by your subconscious mind, you can say with your conscious mind:

“I want to be happy!”

“I want to be healthy!”

“I want to be wealthy!”

But your subconscious mind is on a whole different program.  This is when you wanted to do something, but the program had 95% control over you. At a later date (hours/days/year…) you realize that what you wanted to do (your thought) wasn’t achieved. 

This is called conscious frustrations or remorse.

“Remorse is a distressing emotion experienced by an individual who regrets actions which they have done in the past that they deem to be shameful, hurtful, or wrong. Remorse is closely allied to guilt and self-directed resentment.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remorse

So how would someone begin to make those changes?

You have to get behind the analytical mind because what separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind, is the analytical mind.

And that’s where meditation (Transcendental Meditation) comes in because you can teach people through practice how to change their brainwaves, slow them down. And when they do that properly, they do enter the operating system of their life where they can begin to make some really important changes. 

-> SPIRITUAL

Now, I’m not a priest or a monk. I’m an engineer with a passion for success. But this is what the Bible’s answer was:

(Romans 12:2) – “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s.” 

So something clicked in my mind.

Jesus, and all his Appostholes, they only want us to live a free, happy, stress-free life. That’s it. No other religious…requirements. “Stay on your knees. Pray, buy candles, dress nicely, and come every Sunday to the church to sing with the Choir”.

No! It may have said some of these things. But the main thing here is that the global institution called “religion” deviated a bit from its initial path. To enlighten people. To lead the way. To get them out of their bad habits.

Here is where success blends in with the spiritual.

By confession, you explain your “problems/failures/wrongdoings” (aka in religious terms – Sins) to the priest, so that you analyze them. So by confessing your problems, it means that you have thought of them and you won’t repeat them. Because..why should you repeat a problem? That’s why it’s a problem. To learn from it, so that you don’t do it again.

Life is such a good teacher that if you did not learn the lesson, it will explain it to you again.

Anonymoys

And by having Faith and Free Will, the only other thing left to do is to want something ( thought ), because you can, and believing that it will actually happen, and it’s not only a dream, or a wish.

What humans are: The only animal who stubs his toe twenty times on the same pebble. Each generation learns from its experiences, not from those of others.

José Mujica

Enjoy life,

Ionut Furnea