Changing Our Lives Through Epigenetics
The psychology of believing
It’s hard to believe we can change our life; if it were that easy, people would have done it already. In a world in which one major component called “faith” has disappeared from the souls of many, and skepticism has governed our psyche, we have left behind the first essential ingredient we need to flavor our lives with, and that’s believing without seeing. Improving any aspect of your life requires you to believe you can do it. If you don’t, you will still live in a perpetual cycle of self-sabotage, victimization, and endless suffering.
And how can we convince ourselves our beliefs can shape and mold our realities? Do we need to follow a spiritual Guru? or do we have to rely entirely on science? Well, the reality is a combination of both.
The first seven years of our life
Do you wonder why we get so fascinated with children? We are drawn to them by their curiosity, their innocence, and their imagination. Children are hidden teachers; adults can learn about them. However, children are always attempting to mimic us, and as they grow, they start losing touch with their conscious awareness and creativity.
Why is that?
In the first seven years of life, children have an incredible capacity to learn quickly, and that’s because their brain operates with theta waves. Theta waves are responsible for the endless creativity and the astonishing ability to receive information from the exterior world.
As this article describes in detail, “Theta activity has a frequency of 3.5 to 7.5 Hz and is classed as “slow” activity. It is seen in connection with creativity, intuition, daydreaming, and fantasizing and is a repository for memories, emotions, sensations. Theta waves are strong during internal focus, meditation, prayer, and spiritual awareness. It reflects the state between wakefulness and sleep and relates to the subconscious mind. It is abnormal in awake adults but is perfectly normal in children up to 13 years old.”
All the information received as children stays in our brains, all the painful moments, memories that cause us trauma hence creating limiting beliefs. Those beliefs remain with us through our lives, making us feel trapped in our minds’ prisons, getting further away from self-awareness.
The matrix was not only a movie
The movie matrix represents this phenomenon. Neon, the protagonist, has to choose between taking the red pill or the blue pill. The blue pill is staying asleep, and the red pill is to awake.
Now, how does this movie translate to the reality we live in today’s world?
Multiple studies have shown how suicides, depression, and anxiety have risen over the years. One primary reason for this is people feeling a sense of hopelessness, people being imprisoned by their negative thoughts, simply not believing they are in charge of their destiny. That will be staying asleep ( taking the blue pill).
And what is the red pill?
The red pill hits you like a ton of bricks, making you realize you are the creator of your life. Changing your thoughts can change your life, rewrite a new story for yourself, and practice that story multiple times; eventually, it becomes a reality, meaning we become empowered to realize we force our fate, (taking the red pill).
We believed our genes determine our fate for many years, but Dr. Bruce Lipton revolutionized this belief through an experiment he made.
He cloned stem cells: embryonic cells.
One stem cell creates multiple identical genetic cells. The Dr put the cells into three different dishes in different environments, and he realized cells groups set in environment A developed muscle. Cells in environment B formed bones, and cells in environment C created fat cells.
All these cells had the same genes and what made the difference here is seeing how the information from the environment affected them.
Now how does this experiment apply to us?
What happens is that your thoughts influence your brain, then your brain releases certain chemistry through your blood that matches your thoughts, which translates into your genes, determining your behaviors and the consequences.
This science is what we call epigenetics, the science that shows how, by changing our beliefs, we can change the interpretation of our genes that alter our genetics, and change our behaviors. If you start having more positive thoughts, you will influence your biology, called consciousness healing.
A perfect example will be when people try to build muscle or lose weight; much of the discouragement and hopelessness comes from believing you cannot do it because of your genes. Although depending on your genes, yes, you might have a more difficult time achieving certain body aspects, epigenetics shows anything is possible on a cellular level.
We can change the environment we live in, and we are capable of changing our perceptions. Therefore, we are not victims, but we are masters of our genetic activity. We have to recognize that the belief of being a victim is a perception. If that is what you believe, you can be a victim because you will translate your perception into biology. — Dr Bruce Lipton
How can we change our beliefs? The missing piece is not only having positive thoughts. The missing part is understanding correctly how our mind works.
The fight between our two minds
Our mind is divided by the conscious mind, (representing our identities and the creative process for imagination), and the subconscious mind, (meaning our biology and process repetitive information), both operating in entirely different routes.
The conscious mind runs only 5% percent of our day, while the subconscious mind rules 95% of the behaviors we perform in our day, so even if you attempt to create positive beliefs with your conscious mind, this only works if your subconscious mind is in agreement. Meaning we can have positive thoughts on a conscious level, but the subconscious mind is the one controlling us. Suppose our subconscious programmed thinking is negative ( all the information received between 0 to 7 years old). In that case, we will manifest those negative thoughts into our real-life, even if we are forcing ourselves to think positively.
How can we change our subconscious mind’s programming, so it aligns with the conscious mind?
According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, we can do it by applying two methods.
By repetition: Suppose you start implementing habits in your life that serve the positive beliefs you want to manifest. In that case, eventually, they will be embed in the subconscious mind, and finally will manifest your desires in an effortlessly way.
By hypnosis: According to Dr. Bruce, we can do this by listening to the new programming ( the new thoughts we want to implement), before going to bed. In those quiet night moments, our mind is operating with theta waves, and as a consequence, all information we receive is going directly to the subconscious mind. Listening to positive affirmations minutes before falling asleep is an excellent way to start.
It’s great seeing how science has advanced in the last couple of years, discovering new approaches to the challenges we face in life. Having information at hand and realizing we are the creators of our lives, changing our behaviors through epigenetics, is a beautiful discovery for humanity; it shows how our faith can shape our destiny.