PART II - Source Code Meditation & The 9 Summits
The 9 Summits of Transformation
practice, you will have the tools necessary to create a dramatic upward shift in your own brain function and hopefully you will be inspired to discover our pro-grams and retreats here at sourcecodemeditation.com.
I believe the key to the next major transformation both personally and glob-ally lies in fully energizing the untapped higher brain and providing a path and a map for new consciousness and a new culture to emerge. Through this system we can directly participate in our own evolutionary unfolding and become the architects of a new age of transformation. We can usher in a world with more care, compassion, and consciousness and create a life of more joy, purpose and passion.
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Before we dive in any deeper I would like to clarify my stance on human develop-ment. Even though the SCM technique has positioned itself as a brain changing technique, it is so much more than that. I am not a materialist reductionist and do NOT assign ultimate primacy to the brain (more on this understanding in the Integral Metatheory section of this book). Throughout this book I will use the terms ‘produced by’ or ‘generated from’ the higher brain; this simply makes communication easiest.
In reality often the term, ‘associated with’ would be more accurate. I am an Integral Metatheorist and SCM, and the 9 Summits of Transformation are inte-grally informed techniques that promote evolution in ALL areas of life, BUT that take, as the starting point, a powerful change in the brain. In this book I repre-sent the brain very generally. This book is not about brain science but is about the science of transformation of which the brain plays a key role. Secondly, mod-ern brain research is just not clear enough to be overly precise, even if I wanted to be, so generalizations such as ‘lower brain’ and ‘higher brain’ will make our point just fine. I do not reduce reality to any particular dimension (including the brain), however, conversations have to start somewhere and the first step of any technique or discipline has to begin somewhere.
We begin then with a flow of energy that wakes up higher brain potential. In my view there is no better place to start than by loosening the grip of the lower brain and taking as our starting point for transformation the dramatic shift to higher brain function that accompanies the SCM technique. This profound
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energy shift into the higher brain provides the requisite physiology and much needed opening for the integral informed 9 Summits of Transformation to be pursued.
You will soon learn to create the ‘Source Code Meditation Base (SCMB)’ in yourself and proceed to the brain first meditation that builds onto the SCMB (SCMB + new meditation = SCM). As you develop proficiency with SCM you will simultaneously be reading the ongoing chapters that create the context you will need to begin the 9 Summits of Transformation in Part 2 of this book.
Let the context of each chapter sink in as you approach Part 2 where you will bring the context to life!
As you read along in Part 1, your daily SCM practice will prep you for greater absorption of the information. Context cannot be separated from experience.
In other words any and all experience is contextualized based on what you already know and most of this contextualization is occurring below your con-scious threshold. Your experiences are being shaped and molded by the story in your head and the unconscious programming beneath your awareness. Thus context is ‘bio-psychoactive’, it literally shapes and alters your mind and body.
Context is sewn into experience, therefore creating the best context provides the best experience. We will cover this ‘power of context’ in more detail later in the book, but for now just know that your understanding of your experience changes your experience, and knowing this requires that we create the best pos-sible understanding.
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The Base
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The Source Code Meditation Base
Your Stone Age Brain Is Eating You Alive
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lthough this book is first and foremost an introduction to the SCM Tech-nique® and all the wonderful potential available in the higher brain, I want to use this first chapter to point out the deleterious effects of not making the shift to higher brain function. If it is not enough to know that a completely new way of being in the world awaits you in your higher brain, consider that you are currently being eaten alive by your old lower brain!The year was 50,000 B.C.; a Paleolithic woman, alone with her children, steps out of her cave and immediately picks up scent in the wind. There were beautiful wild flowers blanketing the landscape around her as a brilliant red and golden sunrise exploded in the sky. The lake that spread out before her reflected the luminous red and golden sunrise as a million diamonds danced on the rippling water, a sublimely colored display of sacred geometry in motion.
The grace of spirit was all around and yet the beauty of this landscape escaped her awareness.
Hers was a brain built for survival, not reverence. The scent that she picked up in this pristine beautiful corner of the world was not the sweet, aromatic fragrance of the wildflowers all around her, in fact she didn’t even notice that exquisite sweet smell, because her sense of smell was tuned to notice the scent of predators in her environment. She felt no wonder or gratitude for the beauty all around her; she was being automatically prepared to notice only ‘threats’.
Flowers weren’t important, the warring tribes to the east and the saber tooth tigers in the valley below were. Her environment required constant monitoring for danger around her and the constant threat of starvation required that she stay focused on surviving another day by finding food to eat.
Fortunately for her, and since there was no other options, the unconscious structures in her primitive brain were always preparing her to do battle with her world. Her life had no real sense of purpose or meaning beyond survival, for in this hostile, predator-rich world, she would be lucky to make it through her third decade of life.
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Fifty thousand years later a 21st-century woman (or man) – maybe you – steps out of her suburban home and the same unconscious primitive part of her brain senses a thousand little tigers and countless warring tribes in her envi-ronment. She is also being prepared for survival. Her tigers are different; her tigers are the demands and complexities of the modern world, the plumber she is waiting for – a cell phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear – to fix the dishwasher and relieve her of the dishes piling up in her sink. The late-arriving plumber is sure to make her late to an important work meeting. More tigers, in the form of an angry boss and poor performance review, a consequence of the meeting she is sure to miss.
Rushing in traffic she slams on the brakes as yet another tiger cuts her off as she misses her exit. She arrives late hoping the meeting will end before she has to pick up her children at school… worrying about money while ruminating about how she is going to go about making dinner tonight… rushing home with her kids yelling over the radio in her coupe, which is blasting an ominous warning of elevated terrorist alerts, on the evening before she has plans to fly down to Phoenix to visit her sister.
Tigers, tigers, and tigers – the lower brain perceives them everywhere – below the conscious threshold we are being prepped for battle, even in our modern lives! The shapes and sizes and actual threats are much different today, yet the Stone Age brain between our ears is the same.
Our modern woman is locked into the same survival structures in her brain that the aforementioned Paleolithic woman was. She doesn’t notice the beauty all around her. She feels no wonder and awe for being alive at such an amazing time in the history of our species. She just has to get through the day. No pur-pose, no meaning, only survival. She doesn’t even realize the staggering improb-ability of her birth and that it took a billion years of evolution (spirit-in action) to accomplish the exquisite masterpiece, the crown of creation that sits atop her shoulders.
Unlike the Paleolithic woman, this 21st-century human has a higher brain designed for transcendence. Newer areas of her brain, that when awakened, can fill her with gratitude and awe and wonder at this marvelous world. However, her new brain is rarely if ever awake because the unconscious lower brain that is trying to unconsciously protect her from falsely perceived danger in her world, is eating her alive!
Of particular importance is that even in our modern lives the most basic and usually fear-based human drives (perpetuated by the oldest lowest primi-tive brain) are often still influencing if not dominating all areas of our lives.
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Unconsciously directing us back into fight, flight, freeze or fornicate, thus co-opting – for survival purposes – our beliefs, thoughts and behaviors while creat-ing an internal and external personal and cultural environment that reinforces the dominance of the old lower brain mechanisms.
I believe we now have created negative feedback loops between the lower brain and its associated internal and external environments that lead to circular habituation between the lower brain and the life we create as a result of lower brain dominance. In effect the primitive yet powerful fear-based lower brain system predisposes our perspectives, behaviors, relationships and even rational thought processes to be directed towards fear-based survival, and round and round we go.
Humanity’s challenges are at least in part due to lower brain dominance and generally speaking the self-help industry has not had a good understanding of, or had many effective tools for changing the physiological component of our thoughts, behaviors and relationship to life. Our rampant addictions to food, sex, power, drugs, alcohol and social media all create lower brain reinforced habituated loops designed to keep our lives the same. The inability to heal physi-cally or change destructive behavior, violence, depression, the degradation of the environment, failing educational and financial systems, the inability to sustain positive life changes, are all signs of a world trapped in the grip of the lower primitive brain. Our personal future as well as the future of humanity is cur-rently locked up in latent higher brain potential.
Why ‘Self-Help’ Seldom Helps
Sameness = Safety
— DR. MICHAEL COTTON
So here we are, the 21st-century human, having won countless victories for humanity that have made life better for many, and yet recent research shows that we moderns are not very happy. We are stressed out and overwhelmed in life, we do not feel engaged in our careers, we are lacking deep spiritual meaning, and according to recent end of life research we die full of regret for what we did not do with our life.
What about you? Does your life feel stuck? Do you ever feel as though the world is stuck and you’re stuck in it? Do you feel like there is more to life than you currently experience but you’re not sure what it is or how to get it? Perhaps you know what it is that would make your life meaningful but you still spin your
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wheels and true fulfillment always eludes you. Does it feel like the demands and complexity of life leave you feeling powerless? Do you see problems in your life and challenges in the world but feel like they are just too big, complex and ‘out of your control’ for you to make a difference?
Ever wonder why you start out on a new path, have a good plan, set inspiring goals, but still have areas of your life that don’t improve? Maybe some of these areas do improve for a brief duration but ultimately always return back to the same old patterns? Sound familiar?
A great many heart attack sufferers do not change their diet and lifestyle even after a physician has told them in no uncertain terms, ‘If you do not change you will die soon!’ If we don’t change with the motivation of imminent death how can we possibly change just to create a better life, realize our full potential or find our true purpose and give our gifts to the world? Surely as compelling as these things are, they are still less motivating than impending death. So why don’t we change? The challenge is what’s lurking below the conscious threshold, that old lizard brain of ours that does not want to change, even when we logically know change is in our best interest; however, the lower brain just doesn’t work logically.
Once the old behaviors get wired in and habituated by the lower brain, they become very difficult to change. Finding your purpose and creating an extraordi-nary life don’t motivate the lower brain’s unconscious programming.
Let’s go back to our Paleolithic woman for a moment. We have already seen how her lower brain dominates her perception of the world. Let’s also look at how her behavior is affected from this survival-based part of her brain.
The torrential rain has been falling for days, the floor of her cave collapses and she and her children are left exposed to the elements and the lurking preda-tors below. She must find shelter, perhaps a new cave to call home. She departs the cave and darts into wild lands as her family huddles together in the last remaining stable ground in the very back of the cave they have known as home for nearly a decade. Her instincts carry her north along the ridge of the moun-tains. Two moons, and many miles later, she finds another cave high enough up the side of the mountain to provide an adequate lookout and safety from the local predators. She climbs in, finds it empty and returns for her family, narrowly avoiding an attack from a hungry sabre-toothed tiger. She gathers her family and they depart, taking great care to avoid the path she was nearly attacked on.
Arriving wet, tired and hungry they climb in and sleep.
Morning comes, the rain has stopped and they are famished. Having not eaten in days she again leaves the new cave, this time for food to feed herself and her family. She found shelter, now she must find food. It is her first time in
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this new territory, but fortunately her brain is wired to survive. Her instincts guide her to the ridge west of her cave, but they also betray her; a few hundred yards down the ridge two tigers explode out of the underbrush, and she runs, her survival brain changing her physiology, pumping blood to her large muscles and releasing a cascade of chemical reactions all designed to give her the best chance of survival. It works, she narrowly avoids the attack and scurries into her new cave.
Finally, the fear-based survival mechanisms in her brain and body go back to a somewhat lower level of alert status, she falls asleep and wakes the next morning desperate for food for herself and her family. She must go out again into unknown territory, but today that territory is less unknown then it was yesterday for she knows the ridge to the west is not safe and her brain has deeply encoded that knowledge and will send her in a different direction for food.
Shall she follow the dry creek bed to the west? Might this easy path lead to sustenance? No, not west, her brain registers west as danger. She will avoid the ridge to the west at all cost as the neurological associations are closely linked to the dangerous ridge to the west. How about the open smooth path leading out from her cave? It appears to be easy to navigate and has been used by game animals most probably leading to food or water. She doesn’t even have to think about it, her dominant unconsciousness primitive brain feels like it is risky, and without thought or analysis moves her in another direction. She assesses the path that’s farthest away from the previous predator attack. She ignores several potential paths until she finds one far to the east. The eastern path is not as smooth and more overgrown than the paths she avoided, however it winds far away from the last tiger attack. She takes this path. It is rocky, she bruises her feet but keeps going, no tigers; her feet hurt but she keeps going, she has already made it further then she did before tigers attacked her on the western ridge, thanks to her lower brain.
The overgrowth thickens and her body is scraped bloody by the branches, but no tigers – thanks to her lower brain – and she keeps going. Bruised, with aching feet and bloody body she enters the wetlands where the path ends.
She sees the clearing on the other side of the swamp that appears to contain fruit trees. She wades through the swamp; chest deep in filth, stinking muck and leeches sticking to her body but she is alive and there are no tigers in the area – success to her lower brain. She climbs out of the swamp and surveys the clearing which appears to be free from predators, she approaches the fruit trees and finds an ample supply – not nearly the variety or abundance of food she had located near her other cave – but she is safe and here she can fulfill one
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of the primary survival mandates: food. She eats quickly and to avoid risk she returns in reverse down the exact same path she came in on. She gets back to the cave and feeds her family – success to her lower brain.
The choices our Stone Age woman makes next, when she is hungry again, is most germane to our story and applicable to our modern lives. The same brain regions that led to her survival lurk below the surface of our modern evolved
The choices our Stone Age woman makes next, when she is hungry again, is most germane to our story and applicable to our modern lives. The same brain regions that led to her survival lurk below the surface of our modern evolved