neuroplasticity

We hear a lot about the word consciousness these days.  It wasn’t a common word 50 years ago or even 10 years ago.  So, what does consciousness mean?

Dictionary definitions

…the awareness or perception of something by a person:” her acute consciousness of Mike’s presence”

…the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world: “consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain.”

…an awareness of yourself and the world. Research on consciousness has focused on understanding the neuroscience behind our conscious experiences.

These definitions don’t fit my experience of the journey into greater consciousness not only of what is ‘me’ but also of what is my ‘Self’ that came here on earth to be, to do and to have. My larger Being, this Self, holds why I came here, my unique and essential gift to earth and humanity.  It is not a straightforward awareness of my mind nor is it a straightforward awareness of the greater dimensions that interact with humanity.  It is both.  We are both matter and energy; finite and infinite.  Our experience of consciousness depends on both dualities operating in our being in the world.

First let’s look at our brains, where most people think consciousness resides

– the head brain, the Gut Brain and the heart.

Up until the 1980s and 1990s the medical profession only recognized the head brain.  They also thought that it was unchangeable…that nothing could be done for people who were either born with or had injured their head brain.  Two paths of inquiry changed that picture: Neuroplasticity and the Gut Brain.  Research into what we now call neuroplasticity has proved that the head brain is the most malleable organ in the body.  Other research discovered the second brain/gut brain has almost the same white and gray matter as the head brain and most of the neurotransmitters. Our experiences are stored in glial neural pathways that connect all three areas of our brains.

Now imagine how an individual’s consciousness about their own possibilities would shift when they have physicians who come from these new perspectives. We can imagine how just these new awarenesses would open up new possibilities for both the patient and the doctor.  It’s the combination of new perspectives and new actions that will help the patient and the doctor live differently and thus live a different experience of consciousness.  It is with our brains/minds and our spirit that we create new possibilities such that there are new levels of consciousness  experienced over time.

Other current research on consciousness focuses on locations within the brain where consciousness is sourced:  The frontal lobe or the back of the brain.  It may be that these paths of research will yield more information on how the human head brain supports our consciousness and they do not fully address how the wider/deeper/higher levels of consciousness are achieved through both matter and energy.  In both systems, there isn’t a path to discovering what the larger field of dimensional consciousness is beyond our matter, our body, and our brains. It’s not a knowing that can be achieved by looking only at the physicality of our brains.

Then what is the mind?

It’s the functioning of the three brains – the enteric nervous system/gut brain, the heart and the head brain all connected by the Vagus Nerve and our Spirit.  We think of it as our intellect or maybe everything we experienced in the past through thinking, willing something to be, etc. Our brains hold all the information, ideas, beliefs that we have been fed by our larger society, our family, our religion.  These beliefs/truths are stored in pathways in all our brains.  So, when we ‘think’ our mind is ‘thinking’ we are mostly simply regurgitating what we learned earlier in life.  We are not actually thinking something new, instead we are repeating the old statements that were given to us as the truth about the world.

Ancient spirituality believed that the Solar Plexus housed our Spirit.  If that is true and the glial neural networks are located there, what communications are arising through your enteric nervous system/solar plexus?  Is this how our spirit informs our mind/brain?  When writing our Creation Exercises, we often experience sentience registers arising from our solar plexus.  Often people exclaim how they are surprised by the deep wisdom that is written in their ‘embodied’ phrase.  Is that their spirit talking?  Their deepest wisdom? Creation?  Our brains take this wisdom and integrate it into the neural networks about the Craving phrases that we choose.  Our mind of our consciousness then is both in matter and thru spirit.

How do we change if we are simply repeating what we have been told? 

We can’t think newly if we never explore ourselves outside of the box that has been provided us.  Dipping your mind into the wider arena of discovery starts the process of consciousness.

What are ways that we can expand our thinking?

There are tools for the individual to use in this journey of ‘opening up to’ different perspectives, different information…changing perspectives, listening within conversation, writing your Creation Exercises.  The Newfield Network suggests that you step outside your normal thinking and investigate new perspectives.  Like the five blindmen who disagree what an elephant is…. when they ‘opened up to’ the idea that the other blindman might have a different experience of the elephant…they could change their position around the elephant and thus gain another perspectives.  Eventually the ‘all’ of what an Elephant is would be clear to them.

The same happens with each of us when, in listening and conversation, we ‘open up to’ others’ perspectives, others’ wonderings, others’ hopes, others’ values and their common humanity.  Our comprehension of what more there is to the world and to life expands our glial neural networks with more pathways; we have more choices in our thinking; and our levels of reactions lessen as these additional choice points makes responding instead of reacting to input more possible.  When we write our Creation Exercises, we are increasing our glial neural networks with life-enhancing, life-generating phrases.  As we move from writing our Creation Exercises on Template 1, then 2…then 3…then 4,…then 5,…then 6…., and then 7, we are writing from higher and higher levels of our own consciousness intertwined with and inspired by our relationship with Creation.

These expansions help us access levels of consciousness that we hadn’t imagined before. To achieve new perspectives, new common knowing with another and within ourselves, we must shift what we do to listen both externally and internally.  In those actions we raise our consciousness levels.

What are the ways that you can search out different perspectives? 

I use conversation with others who listen fully with their minds, their bodies, their hearts, and their spirit.  They want to open up to others’ perspectives.   They are looking to create a future that takes care of everyone on earth including nature, the land, and the waters. Conversations with these people open me up to others’ ideas and information, their wonderings, and their hopes.  We use language to explore these ideas.  Our language is expanded through these conversations and then becomes anchored as words with larger meanings in our brains. Those meanings carry cognitive and sentient information which makes the new neural pathways part of our whole system, body, mind, and spirit.

In order to language my inner consciousness journey, I use the Templates of the Language of Creation to give myself a connection to Creation and to access the deeper wisdom of my Spirit and Creation.  It is in the regular writing of my Creation Exercises that I deepen my own consciousness of who I have been (my historic self) and of my Self…whom I deeply am, whom I came to earth to be, to do and to have.  I experience these two processes…the observing of what is occurring and the craving of something new in my life.  This interaction of Observing and Craving is integral to my consciousness. They cannot be separated out as just one or the other.  We must reflect on where we are to take our next step to creating the life that we crave.

If we are to create a more viable and sustainable future for coming generations, we must come to the world, to ourselves differently.  We must operate within consciousness experiences that are wider, deeper, higher than that within which we were born and raised.  We raise up others as we raise up our own consciousness.  We come to others differently when we ‘see’ from a higher level of consciousness.

That means learning to identify our historic patterns and habits and lessen them.  That means changing how we be with others in our families, in our communities.  We must look to creating a world, a society that works for everyone. Our present economic system does not do that. Our present healthcare system does not do that. Our present educational and judicial systems do not do that.  Paying deliberate attention in these ways creates new experiences of consciousness of the wholeness of all life on earth.  All life is interconnected, interdependent, interrelated.  In that experience, we will return to honoring and respecting not just all people but also nature, the land, and the waters.  Without this whole system response to the earth home and its inhabitants, we won’t be creating a sustainable future for our grandchildren and coming generations. That whole system recognition is a higher level of consciousness than most humans in western societies have lived in the last centuries.  We look to the ways of our indigenous peoples who still hold the ways of being one with the land, with nature and each other.  It is in their traditions and practices that we discover all that we modern western humans have lost in our experience of connection and consciousness.

To learn more about the Templates of the Language of Creation, visit the website of the Language of Consciousness Institute.  Go to our products and investigate what support we can give you in this inner and outer journey of deepening your consciousness. (www.loc-institute.com/store/)  If you want to be in conversation with others, join us in several conversations we are presently offering.  (www.loc-institute.com/courses-courses-events/)

What is most critical is that you place yourself in a supportive field with others.  It is in the common journey of discovery and ‘opening up to’ that we find that we are most able for what has been hard for many of us.  The LOC Institute offers free individual mentoring when you first start writing your Creation Exercises and paid mentoring whenever a need for support is felt.  We also provide discussion groups to be with others in the expansion of your consciousness through conversation.  Go to our website to see what is being offered. www.loc-institute.com/courses-events/