Source Code Meditation
Hacking Evolution through Higher Brain Activation
DR. MICHAEL COTTON
Learn to mobilize latent energy in your body and direct it to energize and awaken your higher brain
• Provides a simplified step-by-step guided process to the higher-brain activation techniques of Source Code Meditation
• Explains how to shift energy out of the lower “survive” brain into the higher “thrive” brain to bring confidence, clarity, and empowerment for transformative change in all areas of life • Reveals how the “brain first” techniques of SCM tune the brain to receive meditation,
enabling access to deep flow states, transcendent states of consciousness, and higher brain potential
The human brain is like a flowing river of potential. Until now, that river has been blocked, barricaded, and diverted by the primitive lower brain. The lower brain hijacks our ability to experience deeper flow and higher transcendent states of consciousness. It also guards against the full expression of the passionate human heart. Source Code Meditation (SCM), with its nine summits of transformation, effortlessly re-routes that lower brain diversion, allowing you to activate latent energy in your body, awaken your higher brain, enlighten your mind, and set your heart on fire to create a new world.
With traditional meditation techniques, it often takes decades of practice for hours each day to confer significant changes in the mind and the higher brain. Few of us make it to these rari-fied states of mind, due to the amount of time and the intensity of focus needed. With “brain first” SCM techniques, you mobilize latent energy in the body and direct it to energize and awaken the higher brain before meditation begins. With the higher brain prepped and tuned, meditation is efficiently received, leading to quantum breakthroughs in higher consciousness without years of practice as well as access to deep flow states, transcendent states of conscious-ness, and higher brain potential.
Providing a simplified step-by-step guided process to SCM, Dr. Michael Cotton explains how to shift energy out of the lower “survive” brain into the higher “thrive” brain to bring confi-dence, clarity, and empowerment for transformative change in all areas of life. Distilled from the world’s most comprehensive philosophy, Integral Metatheory, SCM offers not only a way to create the brain state necessary to change the mind, but the crystal clarity needed to use these advanced meditative states to actualize your potential and live your destiny to the fullest.
Dr. Michael Cotton, D.C., is a leading theorist in the evolution of consciousness, culture, and the brain. The creator of the Higher Brain Living technique with more than 30 years’ experience in personal and cultural transformation, he holds a doctorate in Chiropractic. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Findhorn Press • ISBN 978-1-84409-747-0 • $16.99 (CAN $21.50) Paper Also available as an ebook • 240 pages, 6 x 9
Includes 26 black-and-white illustrations Rights: World • Spirituality/Mediation
April 2018
SOURCE CODE
MEDITATION
Hacking Evolution
Through
Higher Brain
Activation
Dr. Michael Cotton
SOURCE CODE
MEDITATION
Hacking Evolution
Through
Higher Brain
Activation
Rochester, Vermont 05767
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Disclaimer
The information in this book is given in good faith and is neither intended to diag-nose any physical or mental condition nor to serve as a substitute for informed medical advice or care. Please contact your health professional for medical advice and treat-ment. Neither author nor publisher can be held liable by any person for any loss or damage whatsoever which may arise from the use of this book or any of the informa-tion therein.
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www.sourcecodemeditation.com
1.
Prelude ... 11
Miracle in Mexico ... 11
Preface ... 14
Midway between the Gods and the Beasts ... 14
Introduction ... 17
My Story ... 17
The Great Search and Discovery ... 19
The Future of Yoga, Meditation and the Human Potential Movement ... 23
Do We Really Believe Transformation Is Possible? ... 24
Now That the Time Is Right ... 26
PART I - The Base ... 31
The Source Code Meditation Base ... 33
Your Stone Age Brain Is Eating You Alive ... 33
Why ‘Self-Help’ Seldom Helps ... 35
Why Health and Wellness Care Rarely Lead to Health and Wellness ... 39
The Solution ... 44
Activation Energy for Your Higher Brain ... 47
The Science of the Energy of Transformation and its Pathways ... 55
Higher Brain Mechanisms and the Energy of Transformation ... 57
The Source Code Meditation Base – Creating the Biological Thrive State ... 61
Let’s Get Started ... 66
The SCM base ... 67
For Review Only
3.
4.
5.
6.
The Higher Brain and the Emotions That Drive Change ... 74
The Higher Brain and Higher Order Thoughts ... 77
The Higher Brain and Spiritual Experience ... 79
Acquired Savant Syndrome: Undeniable Evidence for Transformative Brain Potential ... 81
Your New Brain’s Architecture Has Arrived But… ... 83
The Silent Area Is About To Roar! ... 84
A 21st-Century Renaissance ... 86
Hacking Meditation ... 87
Learn the SCM Technique ... 92
The 9 Summits of Transformation – Brief Summary ... 94
Integral Metatheory – Your 21st-Century Reality Map ... 96
A Brief Introduction ... 96
The 4 Dimensions ... 98
Mind and Brain, Two Irreducible Perspectives of One Holism ... 100
Lower Brain Feedback in 4 Dimensions of Life ... 103
Enlightenment States ... 110
Soul Awakening ... 111
Transcendent Awakening ... 113
Unitary State Awakening ... 115
Hacking Enlightenment with SCM and the 9 Summits ... 118
Vertical Transformations of Your Brain, Consciousness, Culture ... 119
How We Grow ... 123
The Proposed Dominant Brain Structures/Physiology ... 125
What’s Wrong With Where We Are? ... 126
Are We Running Out of Time? ... 126
Shadow Elements and Lower Brain Loops ... 129
Epoch 5 and its ‘Cultural Creatives’ – Poised to Transform the World ... 131
For Review Only
EPOCH 6 Emergence ... 140
Signs That You Are Moving into EPOCH 6 ... 143
Hacking Evolution ... 148
The Thrive DNA of the New Human ... 150
Sacred ‘WE’ Space ... 151
Red Velvet Cake (Context as Causative Agent) ... 153
Epoch 6 Ascension ... 156
Hallmarks of Moving into Epoch 6 Ascension ... 163
PART II - Source Code Meditation & The 9 Summits of Transformation ... 165
The 9 Summits of Transformation ... 167
SUMMIT 1: Soul Awakening ... 169
SUMMIT 2: Transcendent Awakening ... 171
SUMMIT 3: Unitary Awakening ... 175
SUMMIT 4: Your Authentic Self and Your Soul’s Purpose ... 179
SUMMIT 5: Look up: Promoting the Vertical Trajectory of the Authentic Self ... 185
SUMMIT 6: Look down: Reclaiming the Spiral of Development ... 188
SUMMIT 7: Illuminate, Liberate and Trans-Mutate the Shadow into High Brain Fuel ... 194
SUMMIT 8: Your Life Codes ... 204
SUMMIT 9: Unitary Evolutionary Enlightenment ... 213
The SalutoGenic Thrivestyle of an Architect of EPOCH 6 ... 219
Bibliography ... 221
Acknowledgments ... 230
About the Author ... 231
This book is dedicated to the love of my life, Laura Cotton. Your perfect embodiment of the divine feminine wrapped your love around me and created the sacred space
for my life’s purpose to emerge.
This book would not have happened without you. Thank you for our lives together my little one.
Miracle in Mexico
“When you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
— SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
A
few months ago I was part of a deep and moving experience in a smallcolo-nial town in the mountains above Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
A long string of synchronicity led a tour guide – whom specializes in visiting ranches and villages untouched by tourism – to contact me and invite me on a trip to connect with locals, see rare petroglyphs and experience an authentic side of Mexico. I accepted, having no idea where this was heading. The tour guide later divulged his larger agenda of assembling a small group of healers to impact the lives that we came across that may be struggling in the remote villages we were going to visit.
After a beautiful tour of remote areas containing ancient Aztec petroglyphs we arrived in the 16th century mountain town of El Tuito, Mexico. It was here that Brad knew of a woman that was depressed and struggling and couldn’t sleep due to nightmares. She was estranged from her children and the people of the town despised her because of her ‘meanness’.
The small group he had assembled, six of us, together entered her 10’ x 18’ home. An old massage table with no head piece accompanied us on the journey and was set up by our group in the center of the only room in her home. In Span-ish, our guide asked her if I could do ‘healing work’ on her. She could hardly maintain enough focus to even comprehend what we were asking but she agreed and lay on the table as the rest of our party sat around the table and held the space.
I was filled with a deep sense of awe and wonder at the strangeness of this moment in the mountains of Mexico, with a woman laying on my table that did not speak my language and whom had virtually no context for what was about to happen. That moment brought me very close to, not just the mystery at hand, but ‘the mystery’ of it all. Somehow, all of us in our party had surrendered to an
unseen force that had led us to this moment in unknown anticipation of what was to be revealed.
As she lay face down on the table a few of my words were translated to her in Spanish, I took a moment to acknowledge the sacredness of what was unfold-ing, and began introducing elements of the Higher Brain Living protocol (The hands-on work that Source Code Meditation is derived from). I introduced information in the form of touch in a unique code designed to liberate subtle energy in her body to her brain… and it did. Within moments her entire body started to ‘breathe itself’ as waves of energy coursed through her, releasing dec-ades of suffering.
The rest of the group sat stunned and in reverence for the power of this energy coursing through her body and the deeply sourced truth being revealed in front of our hearts and eyes. After a period of deep and spontaneous dissipa-tion via waves of breath and energy coursing visibly through her body – releasing repressed emotion at each apex of the waves – I turned her onto her back as her heart opened and energy poured into higher structures of her brain.
We bore witness as the ‘noise’ left her mind and the aberrant history was purged from her physiology. Somehow an hour and a half passed in what seemed like a moment. She lay still and silent in the absolute peace of the Godhead.
Finally, she sat up, energy again started moving in her body, and with the eyes and conviction of someone who has been allowed to see the truth she stated dra-matically that she felt energy from her toes to her head and that she had thought that her brain had been dead, and now it was alive. She declared that she was finally free and said that she had been touched by God and that she was “happy, happy, happy”.
Every eye in that room was filled with tears and every person there knew that they had witnessed the sacred.
U
I deeply contemplated the significance of that event and the ease and beauty with which it unfolded, reflecting on how it contrasts so sharply with our postmodern predicament and the disenchanted world that that world-view so blindly inhabits. I realized that years of conditioning had made cynicism and nihilism the norm. But they’re not normal. Cynicism is for the lazy and nihilism belongs to those who are lost. To pretend that our rational western materialistic beliefs disclose ultimate reality is just intellectually dishonest.
We must transcend the old ways and we must include the best of those old ways too. We don’t want to abandon rational consciousness but on the other side of it we MUST learn to source our truth from something deeper. That something,
dwells within. We have so much conditioning stripping away the wonder, that it
has become easy to live a life of quiet desperation.
But really, this world is nothing but pure enchantment. We just forgot. Our origin story begins with a universe exploding into being from no-thing 13.8 bil-lion years ago. Dancing quanta were then and are still now, continuously com-ing from no-where and arrivcom-ing inexplicably in space and time. An unseen Eros is directing it all towards greater degrees of biological complexity and towards greater degrees of that mystery of all mysteries: consciousness. And just to think, if we’re truly honest, we have no Idea why there is something (anything at all) rather than nothing. It’s all just radically unknowable and reminds me of an Augustine quote, “if you comprehend it, it is not God”.
And so it is. In this relative realm of space and time, we are right here, right now and we are evolution becoming self-aware; the entire mystery encoded in our DNA, the entire 13.8 billion years of the cosmic becoming nested in our bod-ies, and the ever present consciousness that thrust it all forward has donated to us the same ‘being’ that we know absolutely as our personal existence.
And there I was, right then in that Mexican mountain town, witnessing one more miracle in the endless stream of miracles. But what does this miracle mean? What is my responsibility for having been shown? What must we do when we have been allowed to see? What powers truly lie inside of us?
On February 16th, 2017 in Tuito, Mexico, just a few gentle touches awakened a slumbering intelligence and liberated a lost soul. What indwelling dormant potential still waits our discovery? Who are we really? Where do we go from here?
Michael Cotton. Chicago, IL 2017
Midway between the Gods and the Beasts
N
early two thousand years ago in the ancient city of Alexandria the wisephilosopher, Plotinus declared: “Mankind is poised midway between the
gods and the beasts.” I think he got this right and I think modern neuroscience
confirms it. We humans have an unconscious primitive lower region of our brain the purpose of which was to ensure our survival in a dangerous, brutal and hos-tile world. This old part of our brain evolved at a time when the environment was predator rich and although predators are no longer lurking around every rock and tree, this ‘stone age’ brain of ours still functions at an ever-vigilant capacity, and usually without our conscious knowledge or choice.
We pay a terrible price for this lower brain dominance in the modern world. The primitive lower brain’s perceptions and reactions arrest our development into higher consciousness and stifle our potential for more creativity, insight and meaningful lives. We are continuously cycled back into a life of familiar (even if negative) thoughts, circumstances, relationships and environments, because to the lower brain, sameness equals safety.
In our 21st-century lives these primitive lower brain survival mechanisms are at odds with the potential of our ‘higher selves’ – a potential that lies slumber-ing in the newly emerged, yet largely dormant, higher brain. The higher human brain seeks creativity, change and growth, but below our conscious threshold the old lower – and still dominant – brain has its grip on our life. The unconscious lower brain reacts to the potential for significant life change (even if positive) as though it were going headlong into the unknown, an unknown that may very well harbor dangerous predators. Thus the lower brain is change adverse and always defaults to what would have kept us safe in a pre-modern, hostile, predator-rich world. Safety, to put it simply, means ‘don’t change what you are doing, because what you are doing has been keeping you alive’.
So here we are, poised “midway between the gods and the beasts”, midway between the higher and the lower brain. Stuck. Seeing glimpses of our tran-scendence and yet always pulled back down into old familiar patterns. Are we destined to live in the lower brain states of fear, sameness, stress, anxiety and
apathy, merely ‘surviving’? If so, why are we equipped with this largely dormant higher brain? Modern neuroscience informs us that the higher human brain, particularly the ‘prefrontal cortex’ when energized is associated with intuition and insight, elevated emotional states and advanced states of consciousness, and yet, this remarkable part of our brain slumbers.
Our higher brain’s potential is largely silent, and as remarkable as that is, it appears as though it isn’t the only thing that slumbers in the human body. Perhaps you have heard of a ‘dormant energy’ in the body? An energy that’s awakening has been the subject of sacred doctrine since time immemorial. This quiescent energy has been at least partially known of for millennia and revered by ancient healing arts and wisdom traditions east and west. Sacred texts inform us that when this energy is activated it flows along hidden pathways in the body, positively impacting health, well-being and expanding consciousness.
Imagine what changes await us if this energy were understood in modern scientific terms and could be consistently mobilized and cultivated to become an ‘activation energy’ for the higher brain. What if, bear with me here, this energy source in the body had actually evolved concurrent with the new higher brain structures and was part of a circuit that could bring much needed fuel to evolu-tion’s most advanced accomplishment, the highest reaches of the human brain? What if, however, the arresting pull of the lower brain had never quite loosened its grip enough so that this sublime energy could come ‘on-line’, complete its circuit to the higher brain and bring to life the revolutionary potential locked within the highest aspects of our central nervous systems?
This, I believe, is exactly where we are as a species.
Now, thousands of years since the first discoveries of these mysterious path-ways in the body and the energy they harbor, a code has been cracked. A consist-ent, repeatable and teachable technique has been discovered and developed that gently cues these pathways in such a way that a release of this latent energy is promoted and astonishingly directs itself to the higher brain, nudging our higher brain awake!
Our higher brain, the ‘crown of creation’, having yet to metabolize suffi-ciently, and yet to awaken fully, can thus begin to fulfill its evolutionary poten-tial. This potential I believe is nothing short of a new beginning for humankind. A transcendence of fear motivated, survival-based living, to be replaced by a fully awake and enlightened new human and culture, forever in a state of conscious evolution.
Imagine a world where the lower brain would still be available to protect us if needed, but the brain’s ‘command center’ would shift to the higher more recently
evolved new brain. This highest part of the brain would awaken in all of human-ity and the empowered states then conferred, could be directed towards all areas of life.
Could joy, purpose, passion and meaning, become our new baseline in life? Even enlightenment? Could we create heaven on earth? I believe we can. If a ‘significant minority’ of us commit to this shift from the lower stress brain to the higher enlightened brain and we learn the most effective ways to live from this new awakened state, the ultimate result could only be a beautiful new world for all of us. I am on fire with this possibility!
Will you join me?
My Story
I
t was a Monday, seemingly like any other Monday, however on this particularMonday my life was about to be radically and irreversibly altered. On this par-ticular Monday, unbeknownst to me, the beginning of my ‘new life’ was about to be set in motion. Not because of some dramatic external event, just the opposite, my life was about to transform because of something happening inside of my brain.
Welding smoke and burning aluminum filled my senses as another ordinary workday was playing out in the same mundane way that most of the other days of my life had played out before. However, before this day would end my life would change forever. Disengaged and daydreaming at work, I had been think-ing about partythink-ing away the upcomthink-ing weekend. I was standthink-ing in an industrial shop in the mid-1980s completely checked out from my job and my life, as usual. Another day, just going through the motions, watching the clock, praying the day would end so I could find a way to distract myself from the meaningless life that I had created.
My life was full of stress, fear and apathy. I had been kicked out of college – academically ineligible to return after my freshman year – and now I was 26 years old and heading exactly nowhere. Suddenly, everything changed. As I stood, slouched – next to a piece of high-pitched buzzing industrial equip-ment – in grease-covered old jeans and a T-shirt, a sense of empowerequip-ment came over me and I, in that very moment, saw my stunning potential. I stood riveted in the middle of that shop, transfixed by a surge of energy in my body and a deep knowing in my soul.
The sights and sounds and smells of my surroundings ground to a halt and everything except my empowered inner feeling and the clear sense of my potential new life disappeared. The harsh welding smoke and grating noise of that steel and aluminum factory, in the middle of the Midwestern United States, vanished within the new atmosphere of my mind, the stunning vision of what was to come; a new life vision crystalized and was all that remained in my consciousness.
Time stopped, realization flooded my awareness and I was suddenly bursting with confidence. In this moment I knew that I was about to transform my life and there was nothing that could stop me. From this newly empowered place of clarity and knowing I immediately left my job and went back to college. I went from being a college failure with a 0.57 GPA, to an honor roll student taking (and acing) 32-credit hours – twice the normal full time college class load – per semester in undergraduate college. I took on this extreme college class load so that I would be granted acceptance into a professional school as quickly as possible. Once the mandatory undergraduate work was done, I was admitted and completed a four-year postgraduate doctoral degree in Chiropractic in only three four-years. I graduated with honors and was on the national deans’ list for academic excellence.
This was just the beginning of my new life which is now marked by many professional accomplishments, including owning and operating successful busi-nesses in the wellness and personal development industry, speaking in front of thousands of people, and ultimately – in the early part of the 21st century – I founded and developed Higher Brain Living® and now Source Code Meditation and the 9 Summits of Transformation. I have owned and operated numerous HBL centers, trained and certified hundreds of HBL facilitators and currently direct the Higher Brain Living Institute and the Source Code Meditation world headquarters in Chicago IL. I have traveled the world hosting retreats, speaking, teaching and training, while writing the book you now hold in your hands.
What is of particular interest regarding my personal story of transformation is that there wasn’t anything in my past that could have predicted this dramatic upward shift in my life. I went from being a stressed-out anxious medicated kid with chronic migraine headaches to a college dropout (actually I was thrown out, as my grades were too low to continue) to becoming a high achiever almost over-night. There was absolutely nothing about my past that could have predicted such profound change in the direction of my life. So what exactly was going on? Why me? Where did this new direction, this empowered state, this sense of con-fidence and clarity and knowing come from?
I grew up in the lower Midwestern United States and had a good home with caring parents. However, my solid upbringing did not stop me from going through the world dazed, confused and fearful. I had been stumbling through life without any real sense of direction, and then suddenly, I had the clarity and the energy for transformation. What was it that woke me up – and even more importantly – drove me to action and radically transformed my life? The answer to this question, and the desire to help others experience transformative life change, became my life’s passion.
I want to be clear here; I am not suggesting that I had some sort of full-blown conversion experience or attained an ultimate enlightened state during my epiphany at 26 years of age. What I did experience however was a very radical shift in my brain and consciousness that led to a new life that was almost unrec-ognizable from my life up to that point. I am still a work in progress, as we all are if we embrace an evolutionary model, but I am very different than I once was, and you can be too. I apply the principles and techniques of Source Code Medita-tion every day and I continue to grow and evolve. My hope is that my personal evolution, and yours, never ends.
The Great Search and Discovery
Thus began my journey into the confusing world of self-development and the human potential movement. Following my transformation at the age of 26, I embarked on a two decades, and more, search to find out what caused transfor-mation to occur in some seemingly lucky individuals but not in most. Most of us, as Henry David Thoreau so painfully reminded us, “live lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with their song still in them”. Once the majority of us reach
adulthood, any kind of dramatic transformation of our consciousness seems to elude us, even though the desire for liberation exists across cultures and conti-nents in billions of people.
Historians, integral theorists and developmental psychologists have researched and articulated the outlines of evolving stages of mind that result in radically new ways to create meaning and interpret the world. Likewise, great sages both east and west have pointed to an ultimate unitary experience of consciousness that plunges one into deep divine rapture. We know the pos-sibility exists for transformation, but until now we were left without a means or mechanism for the masses to attain it, or for that matter to create vertical (evolutionary) and sustainable life change of any kind. We have stumbled in the dark for far too long without an adequate way to catalyze and accomplish this beautiful awakening for humanity. For most of us, being free of the bondage to this world of suffering and separation seems like a dream without any real hope of happening.
For the small percentage of individuals that do experience dramatic life improvements and transformations, they usually don’t understand how or why it happened. What hope is there for most of us ever even improving our day-to-day lives, let alone attaining the potential exalted state of oneness, knowing and connection? How could we possibly hope to attain this advanced form of enlightened consciousness reported by the saints and sages both east and west?
According to yoga and mysticism historian Gopi Krishna, “it is the rarest of rare
human beings” that has ever attained this ultimate state of being at any time
in history. It seemed as though luck had looked down on some individuals and granted them exaltation. What about the rest of us? The burgeoning new path
elucidated in this book points to a new way forward that can create the fertile ground for our awakening.
U
What I discovered after devoting my life to this search is shocking; there is a ‘missing link’ to personal transformation approaches, and a hidden key that must be turned if positive change of almost any kind is going to gain the necessary momentum to take hold in your life. This ‘missing link’ holds most of us back from even ordinary life improvements such as losing weight, improving relation-ships or furthering our careers. This ‘missing link’ squelches our joy, flattens our passions and hides us from our life’s purpose. It even diminishes our capacity for deep authentic spirituality and enlightened states of being.
What I know now is that the profound change that burst into my life over 25 years ago is just the beginning of what awaits humanity if we are willing to open to a new story and commit to a new movement that promises to disclose a stunning new landscape of possibility. A possibility that is just now starting to emerge and that is pointing to a new vista of human potential. What I came to understand is that the very key to our growth and evolution as individuals and as a world community lies in the energizing of the latent highest potential of our brains. From the most ordinary day-to-day life improvements we seek, such as less stress, and better relationships to the potential for enlightened states of consciousness and transformation; the ‘missing link’ is the same. The ‘missing link’ to personal transformation is the untapped, slumbering highly evolved part of our brain. Source Code Mediation is a key that turns it on.
What this book will reveal is not just theory but also a practical new way to turn the key that unlocks your higher brain potential, so that we may ‘wake up’ and use our new brain state to transform our lives.
Tragically, the lower primitive stress-producing part of our brain – running its survival programs below our awareness – is hijacking our potential and reinforc-ing problematic areas of our lives. As we will learn, the lower brain has a primitive biological imperative to keep things the same, because sameness = safety.
The concept is simple; when certain areas of your life are not improving, your lower brain is controlling those areas! If stuck areas of your life are going to change, the lower brain has to loosen its grip and the higher brain has to power up. SCM is a key, a new way to energize the untapped higher brain, liberating
its latent potential so that you can bring an empowered emotional state and elevated consciousness to the areas of our life that you wish to improve. You will soon learn to make this brain shift possible in yourself! There’s even more good news; when enough of us make this shift into the higher brain I am convinced that a point of critical mass will be achieved and positive widespread social change will occur. This collective brain change will disrupt the gridlock in our world and open us to new possibilities for what it means to be fully human.
On the website www.sourcecodemeditation.com/demos you can witness demonstrations of the technique taught in this book. You will see the dramatic response in the human body as energy uploads into the higher brain. By the end of this book, and with practice, you will be able to do what you see on these video demonstrations! These will put in perspective the profundity of what you are about to discover.
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As this book progresses I am going to take you on the same search that I com-mitted the last two and a half decades of my life to. We will journey deep into the world of human potential and I will show you what I found. We’re going to trace a path that started nearly 5,000 years ago in caves in India. It was here that spiritual adepts were amongst the first to discover a mysterious energy in the human body, devoting their lives to techniques and practices that would awaken this energy.
These adepts committed all of their waking hours to the rare possibility of directing this sacred energy into their brains to transform their minds. They had stumbled upon the ‘missing link’ and were experimenting and searching for the key that they believed could end human suffering and deliver us from the despair of our own impending mortality. They isolated themselves from the distractions of society and dedicated themselves to decades of practice in the hopes of mobilizing this mysterious energy and attaining transformations of their consciousness.
The ultimate in these sought-after transformations of consciousness were the ‘enlightenment experiences’, a departure from ordinary reality so radical that it left the bewildered seeker with direct and immediate answers to the time immemorial questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What does it all mean? Attaining enlightenment experience felt as if one had been asleep one’s whole life and had just woken from a dream. This enlightened consciousness conferred a sense of oneness, connection and belonging that did not have to be (and could not be) intellectualized or ‘figured out’. This new state simply provided under-standing on a deep and profound level beyond the rational mind’s capacity. In
this state what was directly experienced was a deep sense of being and bliss and a knowing how everything in the universe fitted together with wholeness and meaning. These rare ancient realizers had in effect experienced a new mind with which to know themselves and the cosmos. The legendary orations and sacred writings describing these advanced states of consciousness were so powerful that seekers gave up everything to pursue them.
Unfortunately, what I did not find in my intensive search (past and present) and deep inquiry into human potential, were the vehicles, techniques or prac-tices capable of ushering in this higher consciousness for the masses living in modern society. For that matter, I did not find evidence of any practices or tech-niques that have ever created rapid sustainable transformative change of any kind in large populations of people at any time or place in history.
Within all cultures, past and present, there have always been a few rare indi-viduals who plummeted into this new leading edge of enlightenment conscious-ness. An awakening that was so far beyond the cultural understandings that they often faced severe repercussions for even talking about it. The great realizers are legend, so are the martyrs. From Christ, to Krishna to the Buddha, the mes-sage was the same: ‘we can wake up to a new reality’. Those rare individuals that accessed this new awareness reported a direct merging of their individual consciousness with that of the divine.
This higher consciousness has yet to fully emerge in an accessible way within the great spiral of human development. But I am convinced, based on new information and developments that our odds today are better than ever. You have probably figured out that the ‘missing link’ to this enlightened state of consciousness, is the same ‘missing link’ that keeps many of us stuck in bad rela-tionships, unfulfilling careers, unhealthy habits and apathetic about our lives. The ‘missing link’ towards enlightenment is of course also the slumbering higher human brain.
Due to the slumbering nature of the higher brain and the paralyzing grip of the lower brain, nearly all of the world’s physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual improvement techniques cannot fully deliver their potential for change. With-out increased metabolism of the higher brain, synchronized to these personal growth techniques, the technique’s effects are muted and often temporary. In short, the key to this ‘missing link’ must be turned if we are to flourish in body, mind and spirit. I believe SCM turns the key. These ancient adepts provided us with a piece of the puzzle, a piece that we have now taken out of the caves and connected to an understanding of modern neuroscience, Integral Metatheory and set within a cosmic evolutionary context.
We have filled in the missing pieces to the puzzle of personal and cultural evolution and can map it into our modern lives and through this book make it part of the global commons. SCM is creating consistency and reproducibility to our transformation so the masses may not only improve their day-to-day lives but also pursue the path towards a new liberated way to be and become.
The Future of Yoga, Meditation and the Human Potential Movement
“Out of thousands, only one seeks me.
And out of thousands who seek me, only one is successful.”
— BHAGAVAD GITA
What the personal growth pioneers of the past discovered, eventually led to various techniques and practices now generally classified and categorized within the ‘human potential movement’. Amongst these techniques and practices are the two most popular and enduring: yoga and meditation. Due to the sheer rigor and unrealistic time, energy and commitment it took to become transformed by these techniques in ancient times, they were eventually simplified and diluted to become accessible for the masses. We now have more utilizers without any more realizers. This is not a criticism of these approaches. Put simply these techniques were not historically developed for modern seekers to pursue. They, inevitably, had to be modified for the busy schedules and short attention spans of the modern mind.
My concern now is that we have forgotten the ‘why’ of liberation and a radi-cally transformed life. I want to assure you that transformation is possible and SCM and the 9 Summits of Transformation is a vehicle that you can use as a complete system but that also doesn’t prohibit what you currently do for your growth and well-being. In fact you will realize new potentials locked away in the things that you have been doing for years. As one example, if you pursue this SCM approach, and also take your yoga classes, you will generate benefits from those yoga classes that you never could have imagined.
I have chosen to position SCM as a revolutionary ‘brain first’ meditation technique. However, when we include the 9 Summits of Transformation it could accurately be considered a 21st-century yoga but not a yoga based on asana (pos-tures) as is heavily emphasized in American yoga. Instead SCM and the 9 Sum-mits are reintroducing the intent of ancient yoga as a vehicle for the practitioner to attain full liberation in this lifetime. Part of the genius of early yoga was that
asana (postures) practice was an early attempt to change physiology, followed by the introduction of meditation, while simultaneously learning how to live and engage the life process in specific ways.
In fact, the father of yoga, Pantanjali, included ‘eight limbs’ or components in his yoga model. Asanas were traditionally designed to be a precursor to medita-tion not a means to an end in and of themselves. Importantly with Source Code Meditation this relationship of physiology and meditation can be reversed. When the brain is prepped and in a thrive state – initiated through SCM – and
then a yoga class is pursued, the yoga class leads to much more dramatic and
significant outcomes. In fact, one of the remarkable elements of the SCM tech-nique is its ability to amplify the benefits of all other productive human potential promoting techniques. In other words, SCM is not in competition with anything but instead can serve as a hub that enhances everything.
Do We Really Believe Transformation Is Possible?
A recent study titled Yoga in America, released by the Yoga Journal in 2016, demonstrated that 36 million people currently practice yoga and that number is projected to rise. The telling parameter in the study was, ‘The top five motiva-tions for practicing yoga,’ by yoga practitioners in America. These were reported as follows.
Top five motivations for practicing yoga in America:
1. Flexibility
2. General conditioning 3. Stress relief
4. Improve overall health 5. Physical fitness
Consider the intent of traditional yoga and consider what is missing from the list. Not found on the list of the top five motivations for practicing yoga:
1. Enlightenment
2. Finding one’s life purpose 3. Higher consciousness 4. Evolution
5. Spiritual awakening
Yes, missing from the list of the top motivations for practicing yoga were: enlightenment, spiritual awakening, finding one’s purpose, higher conscious-ness, creating a better world, transcendence, self-actualization, or personal evolution! My hope was that the study would find that a majority of students did indeed enter yoga practice with the hope of increasing flexibility or getting in better shape, but through the practice they would then aspire towards awaken-ing, spiritual growth and evolution. Unfortunately this was not the case. What the study also found was the initial motivations didn’t change much even with long time established yoga students.
Considering that a personal transformation that led to a union with God was the original aim of yoga, and considering that yoga is currently one of our most popular vehicles for change, does this top five list imply that we have largely given up on the possibility of transformation? Do we even really believe it’s possible anymore?
My hope is that this book will restore our faith in the long held belief that we can transcend the confines of our limited awareness and access and grow to new vistas of consciousness and new ways to ‘be and become’ in the world.
More recently developed approaches amongst modern life improvement seekers are life coaching and psychotherapy, as well as practices associated with the popular new-age notion that merely ‘thinking’ the right thoughts will lead to the life of our dreams. All of these approaches face the same daunting challenge. Changing your thoughts, goals, strategies or creating affirmations etc…without shifting the brain’s command center from the lower primitive survival brain to the higher thriving brain, will rarely lead to rapid radical real life improvement.
Consider this, if your higher brain is not adequately energized and associated with new, positive thoughts, goals, strategies or affirmations, those thoughts, goals, strategies or affirmations cannot be sustained and certainly not driven to right action. New ways of thinking, without being synchronized to new higher brain function, rarely leads to transformation. Thoughts are fleeting and ephem-eral until they are anchored to the correct brain state. Life coaching, psycho-therapy and positive thinking need to be introduced into your awakened higher brain to convert your new thoughts into new strategy, new experience, new behavior and a new life.
Later in this book you will discover that for the first time in history we have a way to associate ‘positive thoughts’ with an energized empowered higher brain state! This book will teach you how to do just that, how to anchor ‘right thoughts’ to the part of the brain that can promote ‘right action’ and convert those thoughts and actions into a new life.
What all of this seems to mean is that regardless of the technique, discipline or practice, it does not appear that rapid life transformation is occurring in most, nor that the percentage of people experiencing profound spiritual transforma-tion of any kind, or attaining an enlightened state of consciousness has increased significantly since ancient times. Due to the missing higher brain state, many of our new methods remain superficial and our old methods and ancient knowl-edge did not become sufficiently advanced in a way that accelerated transforma-tion in the modern world. Instead we found ways to take ancient knowledge, make it accessible for the many but with mitigated outcomes. Many techniques help humanity in many ways, but genuine transformation is still all too rare.
I am going to introduce a solution that is not only a completely new and unique stand-alone personal growth technique but one that can also accelerate and deepen the effectiveness of the wonderful, already existing techniques, such as yoga, psychotherapy, life coaching, meditation etc.
With that said, the adepts of the past were without question on the right track, and their ancient methods and sometimes ascetic practices opened a door that we can step through today. Enlightenment today however, must happen within the context of our modern world. How can we best incorporate all the wisdom of a 5,000-year-old path, create something entirely new, and apply that to our modern lives? What I discovered is that the only way to create a sustain-able awakening in the modern world, is to energize the newest most evolved area of the brain, and then use that new brain state to improve the areas of our life that rob our energy and create stress (Stress is a product of the lower primitive brain). Again, it’s simple; energy that is being used for the stress response (by the lower brain) is energy that is NOT being used by the higher enlightened brain.
Now That the Time Is Right
Many of the concepts in this book have previously only been taught in an elite Higher Brain Living® training and certification program. Higher Brain Living® is a technique I developed over a decade ago that requires hands-on facilitation – into the subtle energy pathways of the body – by a trained and certified HBL facilitator. Profound physiological responses and transformative life changes have been observed and reported in thousands of HBL recipients who have pursued the HBL programs administered by these trained and certified HBL facilitators. The outcomes of these programs have been studied (with study design approved by a major academic university) and numerous EEG scans per-formed demonstrating profound brain and life changes in the participants of HBL programs.
In 2014 and 2016, the University of Iowa in the department of social work approved two separate HBL research studies. This research was designed to assess quality of life changes in Higher Brain Living® recipients participating in HBL programs across the USA. Both studies have completed and both have demonstrated the following changes (see improved categories below) in the HBL recipients. Both studies were rigorously designed and passed university review boards. The second study even had a control group and has been demonstrated to be statistically significant. At the time of this writing the second study is being prepared for publication.
Improved categories:
• Feel happier
• Contribute to the happiness of others • Less anxiety
• Improved relationships • Feeling competent and capable • More life purpose
• Experience greater meaning in life • More enthusiasm
• Life mastery
• Ability to solve my life problems • Less fear
• Higher energy • Less boredom
• Progress towards goals • Feel respected
• Increased compassion
“I never would have believed the brain could change this fast if I hadn’t measured it myself.”
(comment following a research study conducted on Higher Brain Living)
— DR. PENNY MONTGOMERY, Brain researcher, co-author of Whispers in the Brain
Out of a commitment to the integrity of the HBL system much of the infor-mation in this book has been carefully guarded. As stated, until now, the only way to learn any of this technique was through a very intensive training and
certification program. However, massive change needs to happen in the world soon and we must impact more people if we are to do our part in the creation of our compelling future.
SCM and the 9 summits of Transformation were created from over a decade of research and development. At the completion of this book, and with adequate 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.
U
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
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.
The Base
The Source Code
Meditation Base
Your Stone Age Brain Is Eating You Alive
A
lthough this book is first and foremost an introduction to the SCMTech-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.
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.
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
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
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
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 brains. This same lower survival brain is dominant in us moderns even though we have newer higher brain structures. In the end, regardless of our best laid plans or stated desires to change directions the lower brain’s grip proves victori-ous and we habituate our same old life, because sameness equals safety.
Hungry again she leaves the cave for food and with no hesitation her survival brain turns her east. She avoids the ridge to the west and does not even consider several unknown, but potentially better and less painful and demanding paths that could lead to more abundant nourishment and less suffering to her body. She heads straight for the path that has already proven successful, because suc-cess to the lower brain means survival, nothing more. She takes the same path, bruises her feet again, scrapes her body bloody, wades through filthy swamp muck and arrives to mediocre nutrition. She returns in reverse the same way, back the same path. A couple of days pass and when she and her family are hun-gry again, she leaves the cave and as if on autopilot makes her way to the same path… this nearly automatic behavior plays itself out over and over until she dies or crisis (her cave collapsing, predators finding a way in etc.) redirects her.
Automatic behavior becomes hard-wired into the brain through a process called ‘myelination’. Everything that happens in your life has a representation in your brain. Specific behaviors in our lives correlate with specific physiology in our brains. Each time we repeat a behavior our brain wraps myelin (white matter) around the nerve fibers that fire when we take that path. Myelin accelerates the propagation of the nerve signal down a particular neurological pathway. Myelin thickens in representative areas of the brain each time we replay the same story in our life. Since our Stone Age woman’s brain has registered safety associated with the path to the east, it continues to direct her down that same path, each time thickening the myelin material and building her brain in such a way that this particular pathway becomes a default, wired into automatically determining her behavior in a perceived hostile world. The important thing to realize is that as this pathway becomes a default setting in the brain it becomes habituated in her life. She will pass by many alternative pathways that may lead to a better life because sameness equals safety. The unknown is risky and now her brain won’t even let her go down another path.
