Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the Michael Ryce lecture titled “The Laws of Living”. This lecture tries to make a clear distinction between rules, man’s “laws”, and The Law. The difference between a rule and a Law, is that a rule is something which has been created by man, and if you break a rule there are consequences imposed by men. The Law is something which simply is, and it is not possible to break The Law. You either work within The Law or you “get broken”. For instance if you step off a 100 foot cliff because you choose to ignore The Law of gravity, you suffer the natural consequences once you land. There is no one imposing a consequence for your choice to ignore The Law.

The point was made that while many people say they have done things they regret doing, there is only one reason why we do anything, and that is because we had a “reality” in our mind which directed us to act in that way. Since we are the authors of the realities in our minds, it is possible to be mindful of the realities we are creating, and change them so that we don’t keep doing things we regret. The tool for removing a false reality from the human mind is what was called “Forgiveness”, in the ancient Aramaic. The worksheet titled The Reality Management Worksheet is the primary tool for doing this work in Dr. Ryce’s teachings. http://www.whyagain.com/worksheets.php

Once again this lecture discusses the need to build slowly and in stages, the understanding of how the energetic system of the human body/mind works. When we first begin to get exposed to this material it is so foreign and unusual, compared to what most of us have been taught and experienced, that it is impossible to understand the material fully. This is why it is important to keep reading, listening to, and practicing the application of this material, so that the foundation of understanding can be built, and eventually the deeper meaning of the material can be grasped.

The first and most important step in the process is to learn to hold the energy of Love, conscious, active and present in the mind, at all times. It is only when we are holding the energy of Love in our minds that we are able to see clearly what the world actually offers us, and who and what we actually are. Whenever we hold the energy of hostility or fear in our minds, our minds distort the information we receive, and we then construct a false reality in our minds, which leads us to more fear, more hostility and more pain.

The tools provided in this work are all focused on one thing, the removal from the human mind/body energy system of anything which is less than Love. It is not necessary and in fact absolutely futile to look for love from anyone or anything in your life. However it is absolutely possible and highly recommended to extend Love in all of your relationships with people and things.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Last night the Mindshifters Group watched the second half of the lecture titled: Co-Dependence to Inter-Dependence. The definition of Co-Dependence for this lecture is the process of believing that someone else is responsible for anything I am feeling or experiencing. The process of projection was explained in even more detail. The process of projection requires that I have denied and suppressed thoughts and emotions within myself. Once this happens, and I have made the decision, often at the unconscious level, that I won’t accept or deal with things in my mind, I doom myself to projecting them onto the world I see. The world I experience is not the actual world. The world I experience is the product of my mind and the thoughts, memories and emotions that get triggered in my mind, most of which is unconscious and comprised of things I have denied and suppressed. Once these things get triggered, they make up my experience of the world, as I project them onto the image my mind creates of the people and things in my world.

What I “see” in others and the world around me, always tells me more about me than it does about others and the world. Until I have uncovered and dismantled every thought, emotion, and conclusion which I have denied and suppressed, I cannot hope to “see” the world accurately. My internal reality is driven by the process of “Blockage of Truth”. Until I make “Love of Truth” the most important thing in my life, I will have no hope of seeing the world accurately. Perception is the servant of purpose, and when I tell my mind that I am right, my perception will organize the evidence to show me how I am right. The only hope I have of seeing Truth, is to value Truth more than being right. This is a very tall order for us as humans, raised in a culture which values “being right”.

Another point which jumped out at me about this lecture is the definition for the word “Decide”. The root of the word means “to cut off, or kill”. It is the same as the words, homicide, suicide, genocide, etc. The word “decide” may be said to mean: “To cut off choice”. In this way it is the end of the spiritual faculty of “Choice”. The ability to be “In Choice” requires that we be able to see what is actually happening in the world, without the effects of personal distortion and the effects of denial, suppression and projection. The process of forgiveness is a tool for dismantling the process of denial, suppression and projection. See www.whyagain.com for the free download titled: The Reality Management Worksheet.

This lecture once again reminds us that the root of all healing is the ability to hold Love conscious, active and present, and hold this state whenever anything unlike Love arises. When anything unlike Love is exposed to the energy of Love, the energy gets transmuted and the energy of Love is all that is left.

This lecture also describes the process that all of us have gone through, in which a parent becomes a power person for a child, and the child gives up her connection to her source of Love, in order to seek the approval of the parent. When this happens, the child learns to define the approval of the parent as Love. This leads us to be human doings, rather than human beings. We get busy doing things trying to gain the approval of those we want to “love” us, rather than focusing our awareness on the reality that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

This week the group listened to Dr. Ryce describe the process of how our thoughts send out energy which interacts with the world of energy potentials around us and literally creates effects in our world. The first part of the lecture discussed how this energy effects us personally within our body/mind system. The second part of the lecture discussed how the energy we send out also affects the world around us, and influences what it is that “shows up” in our lives.

One of the things that struck me most about this lecture is the balance between the observation that I literally create my own internal reality, and the fact that what other people think and feel, and the energy they send out, can also affect me. While the thoughts of others creates very real energy which radiates out from them and interacts with the world around them, it is nothing compared to my infinite ability to choose what I will focus my consciousness on and what I will create as my own internal reality.

So, I may walk into a situation at work in which people are being rude, angry, blaming and even aggressive to one another, and I still have the ability to choose to see only the highest and the best in each of those people, and to choose to cooperate only with that part of them. I have the ability to choose calm and Love and to create my internal reality from that. No matter what someone else does, or chooses to create as their internal reality, I remain infinitely free to create my internal reality from an awareness of my connection to my Source, the energy of creation which has also been called, Love, and the mind of God.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

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The Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce, “Empowered to Heal”. This lecture discusses observations about how we are energetic systems and not “physical bodies”. This week my learning is about the value of repetition for the material I find most valuable. Dr. Ryce talks a great deal about the value of “building new brain cells” to be able to understand new material. The only way for this to occur is to provide numerous repetitions of the material, combined with the ability to question everything that one thinks one “knows”. Both of these factors are needed in order to “build new brain cells”.

Even if I am able to question the validity of everything I think I know while reading a good book about a new subject, or listening to a lecture about a new approach to an old topic, I will only get a small amount from that material. I will need to read that book, or listen to that lecture, time and time again in order to fully understand what is being offered. The first few repetitions merely lay the foundation for new levels of understanding which will occur in future repetitions of that work. Likewise, if I listen to a lecture 37 different times, and my entire focus is on denying and refuting what is being said, by comparing it to what I already “know”, I will not gain anything from the experience.

Recent research reveals that a person’s ability to “learn” new material, or “accept” new findings is directly related to whether those findings are similar to what that person already believes. If a person reads a scientific paper which presents findings that are in alignment with what that person believes to be true, they are much more likely to “believe” the new findings. If a person reads a scientific paper which presents findings that are not in alignment with what that person believes to be true, that person is much more likely to reject the findings. This is a prime example of the need to “build new brain cells” before one can comprehend and accept new information. The point has been made that historically we, as humans, build our cultures and our belief systems on many things which eventually are proven to be wrong. Recent examples include, “The world is flat.”, “The earth is the center of the solar system.”, “The atom is the smallest particle of matter.”, “We are determined by our DNA – The Primacy of DNA”, and “The laws of physics as presented by Newton”.

If in our history each of these things has been called into question and proven to be at least partially wrong, what might we find out in the future about some of our current beliefs? Which beliefs will prove misguided or even totally wrong, and how will that affect our daily lives? The point is, that if one is not able to question the validity of everything one knows, and open themselves up to direct observation with a “less” biased mind, then the process of “building new brain cells” cannot even begin.

And so, I strongly recommend the frequent repetition of whatever material challenges your thinking, opens you to new possibilities, and leaves you with a good feeling in your mind/body energy system. You will probably be amazed at “how the material has changed”, since the last time you read or listened to it, (Just so you know, the change will have been in you, not in the material). The material may be even better than you remembered. There may be whole chunks or key points which you do not even remember from the first reading/hearing. There may be points that you remember, but upon reading/hearing it again it has an entirely different meaning for you. There is also the possibility that with the changes in you and your experiences, since the last time you read/heard the material, you decide that you don’t like the material or the conclusions nearly as much as you did the first time.

What if it is soon possible to “prove” that we are “energy systems” and not simply “physical bodies”? How would that change the way you live your daily life? Would it have as much impact on you as the realization that the earth is round did to those who believed it was flat? Would it have more impact on you than the realization that Newton’s laws of physics don’t seem to apply below the level of the molecule?

What if the way I end each blog entry is Truth and not just a nice thought? How would that change the way you live your daily life?

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

One of the most prominent phrases in Dr. Michael Ryce’s lectures is, “building the brain cells”. This means to be exposed to new material and new perspectives until one begins to understand things in a completely new way. The fact of the matter is that most of us live in the past. Not by conscious choice, but simply because of the way the brain works. Our brains might be said to store information in file systems and whenever a stimulus triggers a file, everything in that file comes into our conscious mind. Another way to think about it is that whenever we are presented with something, we go searching through our memories to find a way to make sense of what is happening.

Last Tuesday evening the Mindshifters group watched the second half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, “Introduction to A Course In Miracles with Advanced Understanding”. While we have watched this lecture several times already, there is always something different which catches my attention. This week I was struck by the observation that, “Limited perception causes us to experience things which never happened.” The point here is that each of us as individuals choose to focus our attention on different things and use those things to create our realities. Each of us as individuals have basically the same ability to perceive things as every other human being, and yet we still choose to focus on different parts of what there is to be perceived and use those parts to construct our realities.

Beyond the set of limitations which we impose upon ourselves, by choosing only certain things to be aware of, there is the limitation of what our senses are able to perceive. For example we cannot hear a dog whistle, yet we know that it creates a sound because of the effect it has on dogs. Just because we cannot perceive it, does not mean that it does not exist. In truth, there are many things that are having an effect on our world, which we cannot perceive directly, such as ultraviolet light and infra red light. Well, if there are sounds we cannot hear, and light we cannot see, how many other things exist in our world which we are unable to perceive? The point here is that the only way for us to learn something new, is to be open to the possibility that everything we “know” is wrong, or at least incomplete. If one is not able to admit that they don’t know something, one can never learn anything new.

Another quote from the lecture is, “By perception we have lost sight of the real world.” This sounds ridiculous unless you start putting the pieces together of all the “things”, energies, sounds, effects which we can only become aware of through indirect observation, or with the help of technology, or the observation of our animal friends. When we look through our eyes and hear through our ears, and begin to assemble a “picture” of our world, we are “blind” to ultra high and low pitch frequencies, light energy above and below the “visible” spectrum, (I put visible in quotes because other animals and insects can clearly see those light energies), and probably countless other energies and experiences that we have not yet become aware of. But in truth, just because we cannot hear the vibration of a dog whistle does not mean it does not exist.

So just imagine what we are cutting ourselves off from experiencing because we are telling ourselves that we already know what the world is like. We already know this person or that person. We already know what a tree is like, etc.

Imagine how our world might expand if we approached everything with innocent observation and questioning. Imagine walking through life observing and questioning everything. Not with a forced insistence on knowing what is real, but with an open willingness to experience things as new, each time we encounter them. This could be applied to people as well as animals and things. Sounds like a challenging exercise for learning and growing!

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture, “Why Is This Happening To Me Again?” by Dr. Michael Ryce. The points that jumped out at me during this viewing were the following:

1) In the period of time that it takes for my brain to fire 10,000 units of electrical activity, I am only able to be consciously aware of 9 bits of information. It is estimated that in that same period of time, there are over 25 billion bits of information available in my immediate environment. This means that my unconscious chooses only 10,000 bits from the possible 25,000,000,000 bits that are available and that my conscious mind chooses only 9 bits from the 10,000 that my unconscious has chosen. This begins to explain the terribly restricted way that I choose and construct my own reality from the actuality which is occurring in each moment, and how my experience can be so dramatically different from others who witness the very same events.

2) There are only two types of energy relative to my body/mind energy system: integrative energy – that which builds the system up, and dis-integrative energy – that which tears the system down. Whenever I am feeling any form of hostility or fear, I am choosing thoughts that are putting dis-integrative energy into my body/mind energy system, and unless I work to cancel or dismantle that energy it will stay in my system and work to dis-integrate my body/mind system and eventually lead to physical illness and disease.

3) The germ theory is called the germ theory because it is not proven. Some believe it will never be proven because it is not able to account for the lack of the spread of disease. What is meant by this is that if a germ was the cause for an illness, infection, or syndrome, then everyone who was exposed to that germ would automatically get the illness, infection, or syndrome. But that is simply not what happens. Some people who are exposed to the germ become ill, while others who are exposed show no signs or symptoms whatsoever, and never become ill. The discussion point in the lecture was that when tissue breaks down it “triggers” nature’s clean-up crew to dismantle and dispose of the dead tissue. This clean-up crew is made up of the “diseases” and “germs” and “viruses” which have mistakenly been seen as the cause of the decay and death in the tissue. This mistaking of the “trigger” for the cause is the next point to be discussed.

4) Many people in our culture have been taught that other people make them angry, other people hurt their feelings, other people make them sad, and other people make them happy, etc.

This lecture asserts that each of us create our own internal reality by choosing what thoughts we will focus on, and thereby creating the feelings and emotions we experience. It is not possible for someone else to make me angry, happy, or afraid. In fact, if I know that someone is just doing something to “try to make me angry”, that is the time that it is easiest for me to ignore them and refuse to give them the response they want. In truth, when someone does something and I choose to respond with anger, fear or sadness, what is happening is that I already had the energy of anger, fear or sadness within me, and this energy was simply “triggered” by the actions of the other person, the way I interpreted them, and the thoughts I chose in response to those actions. So what has happened here is that I mistake the “trigger”, (the other person’s actions and my thoughts about them), for the cause, (my stored and unacknowledged emotional energy of sadness, fear or anger.)

Let’s look at the example of the person who knows nothing about draw bridges, or mechanics, or motors of any kind. If we take this person and sit them on the bank of a river near a draw bridge and ask her to discover what makes a bridge go up, she will begin to observe that every time a boat approaches the bridge goes up, and that every time the boat moves away, the bridge goes down. She will likely come to the conclusion that boats make the bridge go up. In reality it is not the boat that makes the bridge go up, it is the motor and the pulleys and the chains attached to the bridge which cause the bridge to go up. The appearance of the boats are just the events which “trigger” the person in the bridge tower to start the motor which lifts the bridge and causes it to go up.

Now then, suppose we offer her anything she wants if she prevents the bridge from going up again, she will assume she needs to change the direction of any boat that heads toward the bridge. Potentially she may end up trying to change the direction of hundreds or even thousands of boats, because she believes that the boats cause the bridge to go up. If she knew about the actual mechanism, she could prevent the bridge from going up by simply cutting some wires feeding power to the motor which lifts the bridge.

Have you ever gotten tired of trying to make everyone else change, so that you did not have to experience a negative emotion or reaction?

5) Lastly the observation was made: “Feelings are a gift to alert you to the quality of mind energy you are engaging in.”

Whenever I have a feeling, it is because I have chosen certain thoughts. Thoughts, when invested with enough energy and focus, produce emotions. This is the only cause of emotions. Only my thoughts can cause my emotions. Therefore, when I become aware of feeling an unpleasant feeling it is a wake-up call to alert me that I have chosen unproductive and dis-integrative thoughts.

Fortunately for us, Dr. Ryce teaches a simple tool for dismantling and canceling the negative thoughts and their resultant negative emotions. It is called The Reality Management Worksheet, (available free at www.whyagain.com), and we teach people how to apply this tool to their negative thoughts and emotions, in our Mindshifters Group.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Last night the Mindshifters group did something we have only done one other time in the last four years. We watched a movie which was not one of Dr. Michael Ryce’s lectures. We watched the movie, The Living Matrix, which talks about the integration of the science of Quantum Physics into the science of biology and medicine. The point is made in the movie, as in a book by Bruce Lipton, that the science of biology and medicine are the last sciences to hold out against accepting, and integrating the findings of Quantum Physics. The movie makes the point in many different ways, that our insistence on seeing the body as being only solid matter, and treating “illnesses” by attacking symptoms on a physical and chemical level, is what is keeping us sick and making us sicker.

This is a very interesting movie and it makes the case for opening a person’s belief system so that they are able to “believe” that they can get healthy, even without, or in spite of, surgery and medication. The film introduces a new way to think about “The Placebo Effect”, and even re-defines it as “The body’s ability to heal itself”, or “The Belief Effect”. Both of these terms are more positive and descriptive of what is happening when someone gets better after taking, “a placebo”. Bruce Lipton is quoted in the movie as saying that fully one third of all healing that takes place in our medical system is attributed to “The Placebo Effect”. He goes on to say that at a time when we are drowning in health care costs, it is remarkable that the medical community does not acknowledge this and begin to actively use “The Belief Effect”, which would immediately reduce health care costs by at least one third.

I highly recommend the movie for anyone who is questioning whether they should try an “alternative” approach to traditional medical care, or anyone who wants a nice refresher, and an optimistic update about where medical science and research is possibly headed in the near future.

However, I must say that as I watched the movie for the second time, I was struck repeatedly by the thought that it is a shame that they are still so focused on the physical and the “scientific” proof of this and that energy, etc., etc. I kept thinking that what they are talking about in terms of healing and health and wellness, has been known for centuries and is found in a number of “religious” and healing traditions. As I watched this movie about the latest in scientific advances and the theory of “fields” of energy which govern the physical body, and its expression and response to thoughts and emotions, I kept thinking about a friend of mine who was raised as a Christian Scientist, and who has seen dramatic, powerful, “miraculous healings” all her life, and knows that they are completely ordinary!

I kept thinking about how ridiculous it would sound for someone who was raised in Christian Science, or Religious Science, or any of a number of other Healing traditions, to watch a movie today which talks about how “New” and “Amazing” and “Powerful” this new science of healing is. It would probably sound about as silly and useless as the words of an ice salesman to an Eskimo.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The Mindshifters group watched a 1995 interview with Bruce Lipton on the topic of “The Primacy of DNA” and the source of the “intelligence” which is observable in each human cell. The power of the work he and other researchers have done is revolutionizing the way we look at our bodies, the theory of evolution, and source of our human awareness and “intelligence”.

For many years now there has been a dogma in science called, The Primacy of DNA. This means that DNA is “first cause”, and that all things flow from or interact with DNA after DNA has been determined or established. What Bruce Lipton and others are now finding is that the DNA in human cells, and the genes in human cells cannot turn themselves on. They are not determining whether they are multiplied and grown, or whether they are shut down and die off. This is determined by “the environment”, or signals from the environment, including the thoughts and the power of the mind. They have determined that cells have receptors for both physical signals, and energetic signals. This means that cells can determine whether there is a physical or chemical threat in its environment, and it can determine whether the mind believes there is a threat.

Each cell in the human body has only two modes of functioning, Growth mode or Protection mode. When the cell is in Growth mode it takes in nutrition and rebuilds damaged parts, and eliminates wastes. When a cell is in Protection mode, it does not take in nutrition, rebuild damaged parts, or eliminate waste. Cells can only survive in Protection mode for a limited time, because they need to take in nutrition and eliminate waste in order to survive. Since the cell responds to the physical environment and the mental emotional environment, it can be tricked into thinking that there is a danger, and therefore a need to be in Protection mode, when in fact there is no physical threat. What researchers have found is that the mental emotional signal over-rides the physical signal, so that if we are feeling “stressed” or upset, the cells in our bodies go into protection mode, just as if we were actually being physically attacked, or being exposed to toxins.

It is known that our immune system and healing response is not active when we are in “fight or flight” mode. This makes even more sense now that it has been shown that each cell in our body has only two modes of operation, either Growth or Protection mode. What the new research tells us is that if we even think that we are in danger, we stop our immune system from functioning properly. We put ourselves into a state in which our bodies cannot fight off i