The Resilient Mind - Breaking Through Limitations - Dr. Joe Dispenza

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Dr. Joe Dispenza is a renowned author, speaker, and educator in the fields of neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics. He has spent over three decades studying the mind-body connection and the ways in which we can harness our thoughts and emotions to create positive change in our lives.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalSubscribe to Steven Bartlett for more inspiring videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Breaking Through Limitations with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I think if we define a habit is a redundant set of automatic, unconscious, thoughts, behaviors and emotions that's acquired through repetition. The habit is when you've done something so many times, that your body now knows how to do it better than your conscious mind,

then it's programmed subconsciously. So then when the body knows how to do it better than the conscious mind, then for the most part, the greatest habit we have to break is the habit of being ourselves, right? So there's a principle in neuroscience that says that nerve cells that fire together wire together. If you keep thinking the same way, if you keep making the same choices,

if you keep doing the same things, if you keep reproducing the same experiences and feeling the same emotions, your biology begins to become hardwired in a sense. It becomes programmed. So in order to change something to arrive at a new vision of your future, if you wanted to arrive at a new goal or new vision of your future, you'd have to change something about yourself in order to get there. And you'd have to change the way you think, the way you act, and the way you feel. When you begin to become conscious of those unconscious thoughts, so conscious that you don't let them slip by your awareness unnoticed or unchecked by you,

if you catch yourself speaking in a limited way, or you become conscious that you're behaving in a certain way in a habit, and you can notice or pay attention to how you're feeling, then you're no longer the program, how your consciousness observing the program, you're only unconscious when you're in the program. And so to change then is to become so conscious that you don't go unconscious again. And in a sense, that is consciousness that is really the puppet master that really decides who we want to be. I think the biggest problem is that people lose their free will to a set of programs.

And so their body is basically programmed in to predict before. future based on what they've done in the past. So to change then, to change that habituation takes an enormous amount of energy, an enormous amount of awareness. When we look closely at certain habits, whether you can ride a bicycle, whether you can speak a language, whether you can snowboard, when you first learn any of those things, it takes an enormous amount of conscious awareness to get your body to do what your mind is intending. But if you keep doing it over and over again, then the body begins to economize it in some way.

And so we have a lot of things that we can do automatically or unconsciously or subconsciously that allows us to multitask, to drive your car, to talk on the phone, to do several different things at the same time. So a habit isn't a bad thing. They can work for you or they can work against you. The problem is, is if you're, As an example, complaining and blaming and making excuses and feeling sorry for yourself and judging other people.

And you practice that and you get really good at whatever you practice. You practice that enough times that you're unconscious to the fact that you're doing it. The moment you become conscious that you want to change that, you're going to be uncomfortable. It's going to feel unfamiliar. It's going to feel some degree of uncertainty. you're leaving kind of familiar known territory and you're stepping into the unknown. And so many people, when they want to change a habit, they have to be willing to be uncomfortable to do it.

But habits can work for us. There's a lot of great habits that you and I both have that I would never want to change or would want to evolve in some way, but then there's a lot of habits that don't serve us. And so a person really wants to set a vision of the future, whatever that is. and they just have to agree that in order to arrive at that vision, they have to change in order to get there. If you look at a lot of the work that we're studying in terms of human change and human transformation,

we've seen people with really difficult pasts, really brutal pasts that were abused and traumatized at a very early age, and then repeated traumas that took place in people's lives. And they had night terrors, They couldn't be in relationships. They had social anxiety. They had a lot of health conditions.

We've seen them completely change, completely changed to be happy people again, to free themselves from the past. And so I would never put a limitation on change because I just don't think you can really predict that. I think many people that are learning how to change and they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. And the how it gets easier, I think for the most part, people can change all kinds of things.

And when they do change, our research shows that their brain changes, their heart rate changes, their gene expression changes. There's thousands of metabolites that are being released into their bloodstream that weren't there prior. There's a host of different changes that take place biologically that kind of support the person's transformation. I'm so pleased to tell you that my beliefs have been challenged just in the last two years in witnessing so many different changes in people's health that I never knew was even possible. You know, everything from stage four cancers that were in a very progressed state that metastasized to organs and tissues and bones in the body, a complete reversal. in that health condition. Not once, not twice, not three times.

We've seen it many times. We've seen people that were blind, that have been deaf, that have ALS, that have lupus, that have MS, that have Parkinson's disease, that have spinal cord injuries, that have strokes, PTSD, myostenia gravis, cystic fibrosis,

muscular dystrophy, We had a woman that had her thyroid removed, surgically removed, and I know this is difficult even for me to accept and grew a new thyroid back. You know, we have the medical evidence for that. So I don't know any longer what the limit is. I think there's something really cool happening in the world when people believe in themselves. And when you believe in yourself, you have to believe in possibility. When you believe in possibility, you have to believe in yourself.

So when somebody has the opportunity, and I think a story is, everybody loves a story, there's nothing better than a story. And when someone stands on a stage in front of 2,000 people and talks about their journey to heal themselves from a chronic health condition, and it's not always pretty. They lose things. They lose family. They sometimes lose their careers or get sick before they get better.

And you see this person's persistence, and you see that they were not doing the work, their inward work to heal. They were doing the work to change. And if they understood if they truly changed that their biology should change, and they were uncompromised. every day in showing up for themselves and staying conscious of their unconscious self and then reprogramming themselves in some way. And they tell that story, it's the four-minute mile. It's somebody breaking through a level of consciousness or unconsciousness and the collective that's observing the example of truth. They're actually relating with that person in a way that causes them to examine possibility differently. And when you become conscious of a new possibility,

a change in consciousness is a change in awareness, right? So now it's in the collective. And lo and behold, it's not uncommon. We just had this happen in our week-long event in Denver just a little over a week ago, two weeks ago. We had six people stand up out of a wheelchair by the end of the event. No, I wasn't expecting that, but one person that had MS in the middle of the week had a very profound experience, very profound experience. And a professional athlete, NFL football player, and stood up. And he stood up for the audience. And when he stood up, he said, I thought I was going to a yoga retreat. I thought my brother was taking me to a yoga retreat.

I had no idea what we were doing here. And then he said, I just never loved. loved myself. And it was his act of change that somehow changed his health condition. He somehow upregulated genes in different ways, suppressed the genes for MS, and somehow he was more mobile. He was walking by the end of the event. And he was the magic number one. And when everybody saw that and the crowd, the audience was excited, we started seeing other people. have a similar experience now that possibility is becoming more of a reality for people. So I will always, I never limit what could actually happen,

but I can tell you that what an amazing time right now to witness people really doing the uncommon. I do feel responsible for always keeping the information based in science and as pure as possible. I feel it's really important to do the research that we're doing. I mean, we've studied so much from a scientific standpoint, the process of change and the process of transformation and what meditation actually can do for a person in terms of their biology and some of the changes that we're seeing just in seven days. My responsibility really is to give people my greatest understanding of the truth and numerous opportunities to experience it, nothing more. You know, there is a way to inspire people. into possibility. And so they, we combine different models of science, whether it's quantum physics or neuroscience or neuroendocrinology or psycho-neuroimmunology, the mind-body connection,

epigenetics, electromagnetism, all of these sciences allow people to understand themselves better. And if knowledge is powered, knowledge about yourself is self-empowerment. You can empower people to do something with it. So the more you understand what you're doing, in the process of change, the more you understand why you're doing it. As I said, the how gets easier. So we now know that if you give people sound scientific information, and that is the contemporary language of mysticism. And they can learn that information.

They're basically making new circuits in their brain. That's what learning is. Learning is forging new synaptic connections. But if you don't review what you learn, if you don't repeat it, it's so much easier to forget it than to remember it. So you've got to repeat it over and over again. So we allow people in our workshops to, then begin to turn and teach it back to somebody. They have to really explain it. If they can't

explain it, it's not wired in their brain. Something's going to be left to conjecture to superstition, to dogma, to spirituality. And that's not the result we want. We want them to use science as that model. And if they can explain that model and remind themselves what they've learned, reproduce the same level of mind, nerve cells that fire together, wire together. So they begin to install the neurological hardware in their brain. By teaching others? Yeah, exactly, so that they are prepared for an experience. So then if that information is installed in their brain, that philosophy, that theory,

that knowledge and information, and now they can remember it, and they have that model of understanding, and they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, if we can set up the conditions in the environment and give them the proper instruction, if they can get their behaviors to match their intentions. They can get their actions equal to their thoughts. If they can get their mind and body working together, they're going to have a new experience. Now, experience enriches circuitry in the brain. That's what experience does. The moment those neurons begin to string into place, though, another part of the brain makes a chemical. And that chemical is called a feeling or an emotion. And the moment you feel unlimited, the moment you feel grateful,

the moment you feel in power, the moment you feel whole. Now you're, you're teaching your body chemically to understand what your mind has intellectually understood. The information is just not in the brain now. The information now is literally in the body. And now you're embodying the truth of that knowledge, of that philosophy, of that theory. So then you're teaching your body and instructing your body chemically to understand what your mind is intellectually understood. Okay? So then that information that's coming as a new experience is changing your biology in some way. And we've actually sure. shown this. So then if you've done it once, then it means you should be able to do it again.

And the idea is to be able to repeat an experience. And if you can repeat it over and over again, both neurologically and chemically, neurochemically, you can condition your mind and body to begin to work as one. And when you can do it, so many times that your body now knows how to do it better than your conscious mind, it's innate in you. First thing you have to do is you got to give people information. Yeah. And science is probably the closest to the truth in terms of information. And so when your brain is exposed to information and you're present and you're paying attention, that neurons begin to connect. That's what learning is. Learning is forging new synaptic connections. The Nobel Prize research, Candel, in the year 2000, the researcher said that if you learned

one bit of information and you paid attention to that information for about an hour, hour, he would double the number of connections in your brain as a result of your interaction with that information. But if you don't review it, if you don't repeat it, if you don't think about it, the circuits prune apart, right? So if learning is making new synaptic connections, then remembering is maintaining and sustaining them. So it's so much easier to forget this information than to remember it. So you learn it. Once I got a person's head nodding, then they turn the person next to say, let me try this out. Let me try this out. Let me see if I can repeat it. And so between the two of them, they exchange that information, and they start to build

the model of understanding. Ah, I understand. I got that. Okay. Then we advance the informational a bit more, and they're adding new stitches into the three-dimensional tapestry of their gray matter, and they have to remind themselves what they've learned, reproduce that same level of mind. Mind is the brain in action. As you install those neurological circuits in your brain then, now you're prepared. It's the forer to the experience. You're prepared for the experience. So give the proper instruction, get your body involved, get involved in the process. The experience then causes circuits to become more enriched. That's what experience does.

And then it makes a chemical, and that chemical is called a feeling or an emotion. And the stronger the emotion you feel from the experience, the more you remember it. And what is that experience? Abundance, health, wholeness, a mystical experience, success, a new relationship, a new career, a new life. whatever the person's whatever whatever that vision that person wants to arrive at in the future and to actually go from the thought of that vision to the actual experience of it and the distance between that thought and that experience is called time so if we can teach people to shorten the distance between the thought of what they want and the experience of having it then they start

believing more that they're the creator of their life but for me my thoughts do matter I think every thought that you have makes a chemical. And you can have thoughts that make you feel good and thoughts that make you feel bad. And I think that if 90% of the thoughts that we think are the same thoughts as the day before, the same thoughts lead to the same choices. The same choices lead to the same behaviors. The same behaviors will create the same experiences. And the same experiences produce the very same emotions.

And those same emotions influence a person's very same thoughts. and their biology, their neurosurcuitary, their neurochemistry, their hormones, and even their gene expressions stays the same because they're staying the same. There's nothing wrong with that. But I do think that if you think differently and you learn new information and you have new thoughts, if you can make new choices and demonstrate new behaviors and create new experiences and arrive at new goals and feel new emotions, I would say that's evolution. And I think that people really, really secretly believe in themselves on some level. And I think being defined by a vision of the future or really always, always dreaming of another great experience, I think is a great reason to wake up in the morning.

It normally takes crisis, trauma, disease, diagnosis, betrayal, loss. A person has to reach that lowest denominator where nothing's making that feeling go away. Has to. Well, not they don't have to, but this is the human. this is the human condition. This is the moment where they don't feel like returning the texts. They don't feel like going to dinner and seeing the same people. They don't feel like watching the same television show any longer.

The sports car, the wardrobe, none of that is making this feeling go away. This is a moment of reckoning for the soul. And this is really when you could actually see yourself through the eyes of someone else because you don't feel like yourself anymore. And that's the moment where people begin to change. They can see how they've been thinking. They can notice how they've been acting. They could pay attention or become aware of how they've been feeling for the last 20 years.

And that idea in neuroscience is called metacognition. That's the moment you're no longer the program. Now, what we believe and what we've seen and what I think is much better approach is being defined by a vision of the future. And if you understood that you could actually elevate your state without anyone or anything every single day and hold whatever that intention of your future is. And it takes a coherent brain to do that. And feel the emotion of your future before it happens. That is, you know, you can't wait for your wealth to feel success.

You can't, or abundance. You can't wait for your new relationship to feel love. You can't wait for the mystical experience to feel awe or your healing to feel whole or grateful. That's kind of the old model of reality of cause and effect, waiting for something out there to change to take away this emptiness, this lack that I feel in here. If you teach people, then they could elevate their state, and we teach that model through meditation. And they can combine that clear intention with an elevated emotion and teach them how to make that heart of theirs more coherent. if they do that properly then, they'll live their life feeling like their future has already

happened. Now, from that elevated state instead of that self-limited state, they can become as conscious of that unconscious self as they could if they were at that limited state and being defined by that vision of the future, getting up every day inspired by it, and not letting any person, any circumstance, anything in our life, remove us from that vision, that would be a day well lived. So then, most people then, they have that vision of the future, but they give up on that vision because in order for them to arrive at that vision, they have to do something. They have to think differently.

They have to act differently. They have to feel differently. And it's so much easier to make the same choice every single day. And the hardest part about change is not making the same choices. as you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, you're going to feel uncomfortable because you're stepping from the known into the unknown.

So some people would rather cling to their self-pity than take a chance and possibility. They'd rather tell the story of their past instead of telling the story of their future. They'd rather believe in their past instead of believe in their future. It's so much more important, though, to romance your future

that have romance your past. And I think if people understood that they could actually arrive at it, I think many people have done this already in their life. I think everybody at least once in their life has done something great. And when they did something great, they just made up their mind. And they made a decision in that moment to do something or to change with such firm intention. But the amplitude of energy in making that choice caused their body. to respond to their mind, that the choice that they were making to change became a moment in time

that they would never forget. And the stronger the emotion they felt in order to change, the more they remembered the choice. And we could say then that they're giving their body a taste of the future emotionally. And they're literally aligning to that destiny. We discovered that if you keep doing that every day, somehow you'll arrive at that destiny. and your biology will literally begin to change to look like you're living in a different life. I think in so many ways that a belief is an unconscious process, a belief is a thought you keep thinking over and over again until it's hardwired in your brain.

And most beliefs are based on past experiences. And so many people have a belief about something that has to change in order for them to arrive at a new place in their life. And what we discovered a lot of times with people in this work is that they, they, when they, say, for example, they were healing themselves of a health condition. Sometimes they would do their meditations three times in one day. And I asked them why three times? And they said, because I stopped believing. And when I caught myself no longer believing in it, I had to sit down and change my belief again.

In other words, they had to get up believing more in their future instead of believing less in it. And they have to change their state of being to do that. So I think that that's a limitation. I also think that unconsciously we're always waiting for something out there in our life to change so that we can change or feel the relief of the lack of what we don't have. And I do think that's kind of a limited model of reality. I think when you start changing inside of you and you start seeing the change. change is happening outside of you. You go from being a victim in your life to being a creator of your life. And I think that when that occurs, then all of a sudden it's no longer a have to.

It's something that you want to do. You don't, you actually don't want the magic to end in your life. So now you become a work in progress by investing in yourself. When you invest in yourself, you invest in your future. So there's probably a chronic disbelief that many of us have that we're not creators of our life. And the only one we get the parking space or something good happens to us, do we believe that we're the creator of our life? But imagine a world where everybody actually took responsibility in being the creator of their life and no longer the victim of their life. I think we would see a dramatic shift in consciousness. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.