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!