Losing Your Mind and Creating a New One
Linda M. Potter
Although he may be most recognizable as one of the scientists in the groundbreaking quantum physics film, What the Bleep Do We Know!?, Dr. Joe Dispenza is also one of the leading authorities on the interconnectedness of the brain, the mind, the body and consciousness. He is the author of Evolve Your Brain (2007) and an upcoming new book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One. He is also a working chiropractor, fondly referred to by clients and friends as simply, Dr. Joe. Working out of a small office in tiny Rainier, Washington, Dr. Joe keeps things simple — enjoying his patients, his work, and his occasional sojourns “down the rabbit hole” of quantum physics.
But what he enjoys talking about most is the brain and its miraculous ability to create and re-create reality, transcending the “appearance” of physical challenges. Through studying the brain, the mind-over-matter phenomenon, spontaneous healing, and how the body can restore itself after injury or disease without turning to therapies that rely on drugs and surgery, Dr. Joe is able to offer revolutionary new insights into how changing our thinking can truly change our lives.
LINDA POTTER: Your message in What the Bleep Do We Know!? (as well as your seminars, books and DVDs) has been centered around recreating our reality by “changing our minds.” What new insights does your upcoming book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One, have to offer?
JOE DISPENZA: After I wrote Evolve Your Brain, the feedback I got was, “Great, I now know I can change my mind, but how do I do that?” Well, we need to unlearn the emotional states that drive our thinking and then reinvent the new self. If you’re cultivating a new garden, you have to dig up the plants from the year before, pull out the weeds, break up the soil, till it, cut your lines, plow it and fertilize it. This is the same process — bring up the old self and then replant a new self. If we plant a new self with the old self still there (along with the weeds and the infertile soil), there is competition between the old self and the new self.
LP: It seems like most of us tend to wait until life gets pretty uncomfortable before we’re willing to even look at what we need to change about our patterns of thinking and behavior.
JD: The new book inspires people to realize that they don’t have to reach that point. If they took time for themselves every day and began to bring out those skeletons in their closet one by one and examine them, they wouldn’t have to reach that desperation point. Instead, when people feel unhappy they turn on the television, or get on the phone and complain, or go and eat too much or whatever else they can do to make that feeling go away, when they could take that time to begin to become familiar with themselves.
When you become familiar with yourself — your unconscious thoughts, your unconscious actions, your unconscious feelings — it makes you conscious. You just went into the operating system where 90 percent of your personality exists and you brought everything right up to conscious awareness. Now you’re devoting yourself to personal transformation. As you do so, you’re developing what we call, “metacognition” [meaning the awareness of one’s cognitive process]. We’re one of only a few species that can observe our thoughts and observe our actions. And because we can do that, we can modify our behavior and do a better job of living. We can do that right today instead of working through millions of years of trial and error. We can practice that new self through meditation and become so involved in the experience that we actually begin to feel as if it is happening. Well, then that new experience signals new genes, and so you get up as a different person than when you sat down. The word “meditation” means to become familiar with the old self, to gain conscious control over it and then develop a new self. You then become so involved in that new self that you forget about the old self and become, instead, familiar with the new one.
LP: Meditation is part of many people’s regular spiritual practice. How does spirituality play into this process?
JD: People who really have true transformative changes, who sit in the presence of their discomfort and get present with it, begin to realize that it’s bigger than them and they have to surrender to a greater Mind. They have to give it up to Spirit, give it up to the Field, give it up the power within. The relationship they begin to develop with that invisible force is what starts to move their life.
LP: Most of us have a lot to “unlearn.” How do we decide where to begin?
JD: I always say pick one, because if you change one, if you can unmemorize one, you’re going to change other ones along with it. In other words, if you’re no longer angry you’re going to be less frustrated, and if you’re less frustrated you’re going to be less hateful, and if you’re less hateful you’re going to be less judgmental. Plus, remember, emotions are energy, so when we unmemorize an emotional state we’re freeing up energy, and that energy in the quantum field is the magnetism that creates destiny.
LP: We all want to become magnets for whatever we perceive will make us happy. But don’t many of us, particularly as we approach midlife, begin questioning whether we even know what that is?
JD: There’s always a gap between the way we appear and the way we really are. We create this identity that we project to the world and that identity is only intact through our interaction with the environment. People we know, the places we go, the things we do, the material things we own, the experiences we have in our life — all of that information is lodged in our brain because we need the environment to remember who we are as a “somebody.” What happens in the middle of our lives is that we begin to realize that all those things don’t make us happy. And we begin to break our emotional agreements with our environment, with everything in our external world. Friends, family, everyone thinks we are crazy. All of a sudden we’re behaving differently. I think that’s the moment when the soul wakes up. The soul kind of nudges us and says, pay attention. You’ve got one chance here before the curtain goes down and you fall into oblivion. When the environment is done, you’re left with this person here — the one with all that sadness, that unhappiness, that pain. It no longer matters how much money you have, what things you own. When all that is taken away, you’re left with this sense of emptiness.
LP: How do we change that and redirect our lives?
JD: When we want to change something in our life, we have to change the energy around it. And the way we change the energy around it is to change our emotions. The emotions are the magnetic field; our intention is the electrical field. So, we have to bridge both of those together. When we do that, we’re happy because that Divine Mind now believes through us, and the emotions that were creating blocks have been removed. We are now patient; we’re kind; we’re loving; we’re sincere; we’re flourishing and joy is coming from within us. Now we don’t need things to be happy. We don’t need the environment or other people to be happy. We’re happy because we have transcended something about ourselves.
LP: Let’s talk a little about physical illness. Your current work was inspired by your own miraculous healing after a catastrophic bicycle accident. Is there any scientific evidence to confirm that our thoughts and feelings can actually make us well?
JD: Some of the genetic research is beginning to show that it could actually be possible. They have also found that diabetics who spend an hour in front of a comedian or watching a comedy show — just through the process of moving into an elevated, joyous mood — turn on some 23 genes that change their blood sugar levels without an insulin injection.
LP: You have done a lot of work with spontaneous healing. What’s your best spontaneous remission story?
JD: One of the ones I think is so fabulous is about a little kid who had leukemia. This 10-year-old child was in a cancer ward — one of these units where they know there’s not much more that can be done. While he was there, the boy was introduced to a guy named “Woody,” who would come in and donate his time to these children by building them toys he made out of wood. So one day while Woody’s there, the doctor comes in and tells the mother that her son is not responding to chemotherapy at all and he’s thinking about moving him to Hospice. The mother breaks down and cries and leaves the room to call her husband.
The boy pulls the craftsman aside and says, “Hey Woody, I need a ship.” So Woody says, well, okay and asks him to draw the ship he wants. So the kid draws a clipper ship. Seeing the picture, Woody asks, what do you need the ship for? And the boy says, “I need to sail away from this condition.” So Woody builds the ship. Well, this kid loves the theme to Rocky, so every day the boy would play this music, close his eyes and sail away on the ship.
Some time goes by. The doctor’s back in the room and says to the mother that her son is still not responding at all to the treatment and that they need to start making plans. Once again, the mother breaks down and leaves the room.
The child calls Woody in and says to him, “I need a gun.” Once again Woody says, “Draw the gun you want.” So the boy draws a machine gun. As Woody is leaving to go back to the shop and make the machine gun, he asks, “What do you need the gun for?” The boy replies, “I need it to shoot my cancer.” Woody makes the gun. Every day the boy would get up (while the Rocky music was playing) and shoot his toy gun at a big sheet of paper Woody held up for him. After he was done shooting, Woody would tear a little piece of the paper away. So, each day the boy would shoot at the paper to the point of exhaustion, and each day Woody would tear off another section of the paper. The child was getting visual feedback until there was no longer any paper there.
The doctor comes back again and this time he says he is going to now transport the boy because none of the tests show he is responding to treatment. The boy calls on Woody again and says, “I need a sword — a big sword — and I need blood on the sword.” Woody has him draw the sword and then makes it for him. The boy uses the sword to stab the piece of paper to the point of exhaustion while the Rocky music plays in the background. After he finishes with this process, he is once again visited by the doctor. This time, however, the doctor comes in and says to the mother that he doesn’t know what happened, but her son is now in remission. Like a warrior, the boy intentionally attacked his own disease. This is a nice story about thought and emotion, intention and surrender. This child got better just by practicing being somebody else, moving out of that old state of thinking and feeling, and actually moving into a new state of mind.
LP: You are involved in so many different projects right now. What would you say is your passion? What makes you the happiest?
JD: I’m the happiest when I’m learning; I’m the happiest when I’m changing. If I’m not doing either of those things I’m so bored with myself. I’m the happiest when I can contribute. I’m the happiest when I can make a difference for people. People always think that when they have success, when they have wealth, then they arrive in life. That’s not true at all. When you have everything you really want, the only thing that really matters to you is how you’re going to give back, how you’re going to contribute, how you’re going to make a difference in peoples’ lives. Evolve Your Brain was a good beginning for me. My mind is in a different place these days because I’m beginning to understand.
LP: Most people were first introduced to you in What the Bleep Do We Know!? For many people, this movie was also their first introduction to quantum physics and creating our own reality. Why do you think there is so much interest now in quantum theory?
JD: The cool thing about quantum physics is that if you look at the observer changing the wave function [the Observer Effect], there’s nobody that’s excluded from that — no one. Everybody does it, everybody creates their own reality. So people begin to feel special again, begin to look at possibility, begin to self-reflect and that’s what will get them to where they want to go.
LP: Quantum physics, particularly as it relates to spirituality, is difficult for many people to understand. How do you explain the connection between quantum physics and spirituality to people who are new to all of this?
JD: I always make it really simple. Do you want to understand quantum physics? Well, quantum physics is the language of the spirit. That’s the way it is. I think, though, that people in our culture right now are beginning to want definitive practical answers. And so, it has forced spirituality to stand on some broad, strong legs instead of just tossing it out for people to believe in something that has no basis. I think it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening now because people are locking themselves into their own empowerment.
Linda M. Potter is a licensed spiritual counselor, public speaker and published author. She conducts Quantum Physics & Spirituality workshops through the Whole Life Center for Spiritual Living. www.lindampotter.com
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