Creating Lasting Change

How can the preacher in the Deep South, in a moment of religious ecstasy, drink strychnine and have no biological effects? How can certain Indonesian children chew on glass and not bleed? Why do firewalkers not burn their feet on the hot coals when temperatures soar above 1000 degrees? How is it possible for an ordinary, middle aged mother to lift a 2000 pound car that has crashed and pull out her children who are pinned underneath?

In all of the above cases, these people made a decision with clear purpose and firm intention. Their decision carried with it an amplitude and level of energy greater than their biology. Simply put, their choice to accomplish the feat caused their body to respond to a new mind. In that moment, these people were transcendent of the conditions of their environment, transcendent of the typical habits and emotional memories stored in their body, and they were transcendent of linear time.

So, what does that mean for you? Most of us aren’t going to chew on glass or drink poison – and you don’t have to. It’s quite possible to produce the same kinds of changes in your own lives without going to such great lengths.

When you make a decision to change a belief or perception about yourself or your life, you have to do it with a level of energy or intensity that creates an inward experience that’s greater than the past experience. The moment this new experience becomes greater than the old one is the moment the past biologically no longer exists.

This happens because the novel experience you’re having has taken you out of your typical resting state. The circuitry in your brain reorganizes. New networks are created which then causes the brain to make new chemicals that send new emotional signals to the body. If this new experience is an experience or choice that you never forget then the experience becomes a long-term memory and that’s when your body moves from living in the past to living in the present future.

These new experiences don’t have to be extreme to be powerful. The only requirement is that they produce a level of energy greater than the one you’re trying to override. Now, that doesn’t mean the memory will go away. It will still be there, but it won’t have the same kind of power over you and a memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom.