New Realities recorded on February 26, 2008
In this interview, Alan Steinfeld and Dr. Joe Dispenza discuss the ongoing shift in global consciousness and the limitations of conventional paradigms. Dr. Dispenza explains how the brain’s conditioned responses keep individuals trapped in routine and how learning new information is the first step toward change. They explore the neuroscience behind creating new neural networks by aligning thoughts and actions, and moving from a state of survival to one of creation. The conversation emphasizes the importance of intention and surrender in manifesting new realities, highlighting that true change requires both mental visualization and physical action.
Transcript
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, welcome to New Realities and New Realities Radio. I was waiting for my theme song to come up, but it didn’t seem to come up. So this is Alan Steinfeld, and each week I bring to the audience here what I consider the leading edge of a paradigm shift that’s happening in consciousness, how we’re becoming more consciously evolved, spiritually aware beings. And tonight’s guest is someone who’s been in this field for a long time. He’s written an amazing book called ‘Evolve Your Brain’. He’s one of the stars of ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?’. I’ve known him for a while as a teacher of mine of consciousness. He’s Dr. Joe Dispenza. Thanks, Joe.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
A pleasure to be with you, Alan.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, it’s been a quite a few busy years the last few years, hasn’t it?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, I think since the release of the movie ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?’, I think in the United States anyway, there’s more people putting their ear to the track and are more interested in kind of understanding the nature of reality and actually taking a shot at applying it to their lives and see if they could actually make a difference. So it’s been exciting for sure.
Alan Steinfeld
Now do you think that’s about what I feel it’s sort of about a shift in consciousness or vibration that’s happening planetarily and the media and the internet. I mean what do you see as the reason so many people are becoming aware of this knowledge.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well I think there’s a pretty obvious separation that’s taking place. There’s people who have reached the limit of what they can expect from the government, from religion, from scientific paradigms, conventional beliefs. There’s people who want to know more and there’s an awakening because first of all it’s the information age and with information there comes consciousness and awareness. Awareness is the side effect of having information be so readily available for most people and because of that I think a lot of conventional models are breaking down. So many different medical models, political models and models that even have to do with beliefs that people don’t even know that they have. And at the same time there is reflections in our environment, global warming, war, where people are beginning to say, ‘Is this the kind of world we want to live in?’ And then there’s people who actually buy the present paradigms and the present understandings and wholeheartedly live and put their attention behind them. But I think that separation is causing people to ask some greater questions and there’s an interest, a strong interest in people actually looking for answers that are based in sound evidence instead of just dogma and hearsay. And so I think it’s a great time to be alive.
Alan Steinfeld
Well it is. And it’s obvious I think that it seems like the old paradigms do not seem to be working. The health care, the political system, endless senseless wars. It’s become obvious to even the most conservative of people and limited minded people that something isn’t right with the way things are happening or it’s reached a critical point where we are now open to new possibilities. And I think part of the paradigm that you’re presenting is how do we deal with new possibilities. How do we first acknowledge that new possibilities are available and then how do we make ourselves available to them and how do we then change into becoming new beings. That’s what I like about your work. So what I want to know first is there’s two kind of questions. How do we know what we don’t know and how do we make known the unknown. So right there’s two different things. How do we ever know what we don’t know in our reality. And the mission that I’ve learned is that we’ve incarnated here to become more conscious every minute. The process of evolution as Proust said is not exploring new lands but having new eyes to see reality. So starting from those two ideas, how do we make known the unknown and how do we know what we don’t know.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well if we address how do we know what we don’t know, one of the rules of the brain in neuroscience is the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. And what makes us so unique as individuals is that we can actually pose questions and then begin to force the brain to work in new ways. And the brain is made up of a hundred billion neurons that are seamlessly pieced together and the brain reflects pretty much the environment. In other words, every experience we’ve had in the environment, people we meet, places we go, things that we learn, things that we own, time and events, they’re all pretty much calibrated and over our learning process as we grow up into adults, the brain is organized to reflect the environment. So if the brain is organized to reflect the environment then we never think greater than what we know. So what is the solution that allows us to begin to first of all have the brain actually reflect more than the environment. And the solution is this, the first step is always learning information. We have to learn knowledge, we have to learn information. We have to ask questions. And then instead of turning on the television, instead of getting on the internet or going to social gatherings or text messaging or getting on the phone or whatever people do to distract them from their discomfort. But actually the idea of speculation and contemplation, the idea of beginning to investigate greater outcomes. And when we do that, when we learn new information and then we force our brain to begin to look for answers, we’re literally making the brain work in new sequences, in new patterns, in new combinations. And that’s what the mystics and the great thinkers throughout antiquity knew.
Alan Steinfeld
But just back up for one second. How do we even get people to ask new questions if they’re so fixed in their routine and safe and secure in that, even though that’s an illusion. How do we ever implant a new potential?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Okay well here’s the answer. Throughout history it’s always been this. It’s always been tragedy, it’s always been conspiracy, it’s always been fatality. It’s that usually when we wait till situations get so tough in our life with our own health, with our own circumstances, with our own careers, with our own marriages, our relationships.
Alan Steinfeld
With our own planet.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
With our own planet. Normally we have to wait till there’s a breakdown in a system and then when we begin to start to experience our own discomfort, when routine can no longer be business as usual. That’s traditionally how people have gotten together and they said we need to change the way we think, we need to change the way we act, we even need to change the way we feel. And to change is actually to think and act greater than your circumstances. To think and act greater than the conditions in your world. And that takes an act of will because now you’re no longer allowing the environment to cause you to think. You’re actually thinking greater than the environment. And so traditionally it’s been that we’ve had to reach the point of discomfort to be able to begin to rise above our resting state and begin to make changes. And pretty much sorry to say but there’s a lot of conditions that are taking place globally where people are beginning, anybody who could rub two neurons together is beginning to see that our future looks like there’s a possibility of going in a couple different directions. And anybody who can even speculate that is going to begin to ask those big questions, like what’s this all about and how can they contribute. And that’s when maybe we go from being selfish to being selfless. How can we contribute to the whole? How can we make this planet last? How can we begin to use alternative energy so that we don’t have to fight over oil and everything else. And people are beginning to realize that there’s a better way. And just because it doesn’t exist yet, doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be invented or we can’t begin to use our mind to be able to make things happen in different ways. So I think the first thing of course is if you can inspire people to begin to look at possibility and begin to look at new outcomes without waiting for tragedy or without waiting for a difficult end. And inspiration is the other ingredient. If you can inspire people spiritually or mentally or emotionally to reach beyond what they presently believe in. And I think that every single person secretly believes in their greatness. I think everybody thinks they can do a better job in life and I think that when you appeal to human potential and you can inspire people first that they could have what they want. And after we get everything we want in our life, the next thing we want to do is we want to contribute back. We want to give back. And so I think the first thing is providing unconventional wisdom, providing unconventional knowledge so that people begin to think in new ways and begin to try it out and begin to actually see if the belief works and weigh it against the old belief and see if the old belief ever served them. And I just think that we don’t have to wait for discomfort in order to do that.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. So the other way then would be to be what we’ve learned if we come and are educated to know that we’re here primarily to explore new possibilities every minute. Like a cell is always searching out its environment and if we choose to make known what is not known and that becomes the reality in which we live by, then each moment is increasing and evolving us. Like your book says.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well here’s the thing about that. I think that, and I agree with you, but I think that most people don’t take time for themselves. I think we’re in such a fast pace. I think time has picked up quite a bit in the last 20 years here and I think that most people don’t really take the time for themselves and ask questions like how did I do today? Where did I fall from grace? How could I be better tomorrow? What do I want to change about myself? What are the things that stand in the way for me being happy? And actually wait for an answer and begin to think about how they’re going to modify their behavior, how they’re going to evolve their actions, how they’re going to begin to think and act differently. If we’re not doing that, then we’re pretty much headed for our genetic destiny, we’re pretty much headed for our genetic outcome. But the brain is plastic enough according to neuroscience that we can change at any time. And so the first step of course as we said is learning knowledge, but in fact we have three brain systems in place that allow us to go from thinking to doing to being. The neocortex in the brain is the thinking brain. It’s how we gather information and how we gather facts and philosophy. But that’s not enough. You can focus on world peace and you can get a group of people meditating in a community and you can see the crime rate drop. Because their consciousness is lifting the collective consciousness. However, when those people go back to daily lives and the meditators stop, it rises back to the resting level again. So it’s not enough to just think, we actually have to apply what we learn, we have to personalize it, we have to demonstrate it. And when we can modify our behavior, now we’re setting ourselves up for a new experience. And that new experience then enriches the brain. Learning information makes new connections in the brain and it evolves the brain. But when we apply what we learn and we have a new experience, then the accumulation of sensory information, our seeing and smelling and tasting and feeling and hearing sends a rush of information back to the brain and causes gangs of neurons to reflect the experience and they string into place and release chemicals and those chemicals are emotions. And we remember experiences better because we remember how they feel. So the end product of an experience is called an emotion. And if we’re living by the same feelings every single day, we’re living by the same emotions every day. That means we’re not having any new experiences. And it’s the redundancy of those same chemical emotions that keep signaling the cell over and over again that push the same genetic buttons that ultimately causes disease. So to see if we’re learning something, we have to actually modify our behavior and that experience then causes a new signal to the cell and the body then upscales its hardware. But it’s not enough to have the experience once. We have to be able to repeat the experience over and over again. You can’t read a book on compassion and forgive your mother-in-law and then think you’re a saint. It just doesn’t work that way. You have to be able to demonstrate it consistently. And when we do, we actually activate that third brain system, the cerebellum. The second brain system is the chemical brain or the limbic brain. And so when we get all three of them working together, now we have mind and body working together. And when we have mind and body working together, that’s when the heart is open, that’s when people tend to be more altruistic, tend to be more lifted, tend to be more inspired, tend to see things differently instead of seeing them based on their old emotions and old chemistry. So I think we make known the unknown but not by not just thinking it and philosophizing and speaking about it, but in fact we have to demonstrate it. If we want to see the end of conspiracy, we have to eliminate that in every area of our lives as well.
Alan Steinfeld
Well you said two things though in a way that seem almost contradictory. The way I heard is that we have to free ourselves from the routine of experience. And then when we learn something new, we have to ingrain that so it almost then becomes a new neural net, but then it also becomes in a sense another routine experience. That’s what I heard. I think the part that we’ve learned is that it’s about owning the experience. So you have a new experience, you encode it into the neural net, and then you make it a part of your life, but then when you own it, you move on to something new. Is that right?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah and we’re saying the same thing but here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say a person wants to be happy. And they’ve lived for 25 years of being unhappy. So they can consciously declare that they want joy in their lives, but after 20 years of signaling the same chemistry to the body, a thought produces a feeling, that feeling then signals the body for them to feel unhappy. Then they begin to think equal to how they feel and they get caught in this loop of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking until the body becomes conditioned over time to live as the mind. And when the body becomes the mind, that’s called a habit. So a person’s in the habit of being unhappy. They can consciously understand that they want to be happy, but that unconscious automatic neural net has enslaved the body to be unhappy no matter what. So now how are we gonna get happiness into an automatic program? How are we gonna replace it? Well there’s a process of unlearning the unhappiness and a process of relearning happiness. And in that exchange, once we memorize the new emotion of joy, once we go through the process and we begin to have the experiences and repeat the experiences, then joy becomes the new neural network that then allows the person to ask the next question. So it’s a platform for them to stand on for them to continue to evolve. So yeah, the unhappiness is retired as wisdom. And now the new emotion is joy, but then from there what is the next experience you want to have in that new chemical state and it goes on and on and on.
Alan Steinfeld
Right so you have to keep retiring the experience as it becomes experience, right? Because then it becomes another addiction.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
It’s actually not even the experience, you just retire the emotion. It’s the emotion, which is the end product of the experience. So if a person lives in unhappiness for 25 years, it usually means some event happened to them 25 years ago that made them unhappy. And they keep remembering that experience and by remembering that experience they’re actually producing the same chemistry in the brain and the body as if the experience was happening. So over time they train the body to literally memorize that state of unhappiness. That was from an event that happened 25 years ago and for 25 years they memorized the feeling of unhappiness and live in that same state. So that then becomes the habit.
Alan Steinfeld
So then they retire it by how? I mean what’s the techniques that you recommend?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well that’s one of the things I teach in my workshops. It’s an unlearning process and a relearning process. And of course if the person’s just able to define those states of judgment or those states of hatred or anger or aggression or sarcasm or any of the other limited emotions and realize that that state is what they live by every day. And it’s that chemistry that drives their thinking. And if they were able to list all the thoughts that they had that are connected to that feeling, I hate other people, I judge other people, I’m jealous, I’m envious, what do I do, how do I act, well I sulk, I overeat, I talk about other people. Whatever people do. And then they were able to make conscious what was once unconscious, then by the process of making it conscious, they would be developing more control over it. So the first step is to actually unlearn, is to become aware, is to become familiar with. And the word meditation, the actual translation in Tibetan means to become familiar with, to make known. So to know yourself, to become familiar with your unconscious thoughts and feelings And behaviors. And by paying attention to them and making them conscious, you’re literally meditating. And so…
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, by making conscious of what’s been running us, running the emotions that are running us, then in a way, we have a chance to look at them and own it and give it up in a sense.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
And actually not only give it up, but actually inhibit those thoughts and feelings from being activated by any stimuli in our environment. You know, people can say, oh yeah, I want to be happy and I want to be healthy. And then why is it that an hour later they’re sitting on the couch with remote controls eating chocolate? It’s because the environment activated a circuit in their brain and it caused them to go right back into their most familiar state of mind and the body was running the mind. And when the body is running that mind, then we have the body that’s conditioned one way and the mind is wanting something else. And when mind and body are in opposition, we actually never change.
Alan Steinfeld
So then you have to, would you say suggest changing environment in a sense so the mind can have new stimuli? Is that one approach?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, one approach of course is to retreat. You know, the word retreat means to leave your environment, right? Leave the familiar people, the familiar place, the familiar things that cause you to think and act in familiar ways. And that allows you to begin to free your mind and brain up. That’s one way to do it. The other way is you just have to close your eyes. You know, if you just close your eyes and took an hour a day and planned how you’re going to think and act and planned how you’re going to behave and plan what feeling you wanted to live by that day different than the familiar feeling. Well, you would be becoming familiar with a new self. You would be meditating about a higher, more elevated being. And by the way, the brain changes. Literally changes its circuitry when we do that.
Alan Steinfeld
And that is some of the stuff you go into in the workshop and then people come out differently, they have a chance to lead different lives because they’ve made a new set of directives on how to live different. They plan a new future for themselves that they can live into.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Absolutely. And you know, quantum physics says that the environment is an extension of our mind. So if we change our mind, something should change in our environment. And that’s basically how it works.
Alan Steinfeld
Part of the thing I’m working on is also about art and creativity and how the artist in a sense taps into the unknown and brings it into cognition in the sense that the great artist has cognized an experience that was previously unarticulated, has brought that into the public, so the public can then recognize what’s been only vaguely felt by the masses. So I think a lot of new experiences are brought about by the artists. Do you agree with that as…
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I happen to have grown up with artists and my roommates in college were all artists and my wife is an artist so I’m very, I’m surrounded by that mindset all the time and I’m always blown away because what makes an artist so unique is that they literally have to stay out of routine. They have to literally stay out of convention. They have to always be thinking in new ways and waiting for streams of consciousness to move through their brain, they get imagery and pictures, and then be able to translate it into something that’s going to move somebody or change their resting state or lift them out of their conditioning. And one of the things about the brain that I’ve discovered in the last five years or so, 10 years, is that we have two halves to the brain. Everybody says the right half of the brain is the artistic or the romantic side or the gestalt side and the left half of the brain is the logic and reasoning side. Recent research has shown actually that the right side of the brain is actually designed to process cognitive novelty.
Alan Steinfeld
Cognitive novelty meaning new feelings, new experiences.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
New anything, new thoughts, new concepts, new feelings, new experiences, new learning, new things. And the left side of the brain is responsible for processing cognitive routine. So that’s why language is on the left side of the brain, because once it’s learned, you know, that becomes a very routine process. And when people have, you know, they’ve called the left hemisphere the dominant hemisphere because if people have a stroke on the left side of their brain, that’s considered fatal. And when people have had a or devastating or people had to have a stroke on the right side of the brain, they call that the minor hemisphere because, you know, you may lose some, you know, function on the opposite side of your body, but you don’t lose much cognitive, you know, functions. But as a child, when you have a stroke on the right side or a tumor on the right side of the brain, that’s considered devastating because, of course, the idea is that the child is learning enormous amounts of information at that time. And so this concept of cognitive novelty and cognitive routine answers a lot of questions about things like art. Because they used to say that music was a right hemisphere function. However, that’s only for people who, when they’re listening to music, that have never studied music. That the right hemisphere lights up when they’re listening to new music. A person who’s studied music and studied music theory or can play an instrument, when you look at how their brain functions when they’re studying or listening to music, the left hemisphere lights up because it’s already routine. Now, given that, the brain is then designed to make known the unknown. Learn new things and store it as routine information on a very gross scale. So people who tend to be very artistic love to stay out of convention. They love to stay out of routine. They love to stay out of fixed beliefs. And they separated themselves from society throughout history because they knew that once they fell back into the common thoughts of social, you know, social orders and social convention, that they would literally lose their ability to create. And so they stay on their right hemisphere because they love reaching beyond the abstractions, the concepts that are a little bit outside their reach.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right, exactly. And so that’s why Ezra Pound said that the artists were the antenna of the race. I mean, in the sense that the artist brings into awareness what the rest of humanity will then eventually recognize. Like, do you know the ancient Greeks didn’t have a color for blue? Everything was green. There wasn’t a distinction. So what I’m saying, and with your research, is that the artist brings in distinction of finer and finer awarenesses. Can you talk a little bit about that awareness, a feeling that we are evolving into?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, you know, I always say there’s two states of mind, Alan, that we live in. We either live in survival or we live in creation. And of course, survival we know has everything to do with the basic functions that have allowed pretty much animals to ensure their future and ensure their species. It has to do with sexuality and procreation. It has to do with overcoming conditions with pain and ultimately it has to do with aggression and protection.
Alan Steinfeld
The four F’s as you call them, right?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah. Now, human beings have the same primitive nervous system in our brain, and we have certainly the same responses. And the thing is is that when we’re reacting to the environment, when we’re reacting to conditions in our world, we’re activating that fight or flight nervous system, that primitive nervous system that literally causes the body to mobilize enormous amounts of energy, and blood flow moves away from the thinking brain and moves more towards the reacting brain. Well, in that state, those chemicals of adrenaline and cortisone, those chemicals are the strong signals that cause the body to be prepared for an emergency situation. By the way, that’s real or imagined. And what makes human beings so unique is that we can turn on that stress response just by thought alone. And when we turn on that stress response and we can’t turn it off, now we’re headed for disease because it’s the intensity of those chemicals that are activating the emergency systems so that there’s no energy in the body for long-term building projects, for repair and regeneration and healing. So human beings wind up in trouble by living in the constant state of reaction, and it’s the elongation of those emotional reactions that then begin to cause the brain and the body to begin to function like an amped up animal with a big memory bank. Now the state of creation is when we forget about the things that turn on when we’re in survival. When those chemicals of survival are running, all of our awareness is on the environment, because the chemicals of adrenaline and cortisone allow us to have a heightened state of awareness, and we’re paying attention to what’s in the environment. We’re paying attention to our body, and our awareness is on time. So time, the environment, and body is a survival state. And if you corner a dog or you’re being chased by a bear, you can bet in a very short amount of time, you’re going to be thinking about where you’re going to be running in your environment, where you’re going to get your body to, and how fast you’re going to do it. And those primitive systems cause us then to begin to function in more similar ways, however, the circumstances are a little bit more complex. Now, in the state of creation, when we’re truly creating, we forget about ourselves. We actually forget about the body, the environment, and time. And my definition of creation is when I forget about myself. When I’m so involved with what I’m thinking about that there is no space and there is no time. And in that state, that’s when the body moves from survival to creation. That’s the state that the thought actually becomes the experience in and of itself. Now, great mystics and great scientists and great artists and great musicians, they all understood that, because that’s exactly the state that they moved in to have insight. To create a masterpiece, to write a poem, to play music or to create a symphony, that their thinking and their contemplation took them to an elevated state of mind. And when we move to that state of creation, the side effect of creation is joy. The side effect of creation is inspiration. It’s love, it’s being passionate for a moment. It’s like you don’t want the moment to end because it’s too good and you’re enjoying yourself so much. And so translating that into art and music and into theater and into different different outlets I think gives people a signal, it gives them a relief from their world, that they can actually shorten the refractory period of emotions to learn how to break the cycle of chemistry that keeps them depressed or unhappy or suffering or whatever people do.
Alan Steinfeld
Right, right.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
And those are the alleviators that move people. And being moved means literally you’re emoting, there’s motion coming to a new emotion.
Alan Steinfeld
I think that is the basic, I think that a part of government or the people who run society should be in to ensure survival. So we don’t have to constantly be reacting out of the lower parts of our brain and so finally at some point in our history we can all live in that creative imagination where we can start to drop in and start to feel the more subtle experiences of being alive and we can communicate on more subtle levels of awareness is where I think society is going and should be going and that’s the the power of the artist because we’re all artists. We all have the ability to imagine new unknowns. And this is the possibility of the future. We have an amazing society that we can then live in. What do you think?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I think there have to be some value changes that take place. I mean values are the thing that drives people and if media is portraying values in the way that it’s currently doing it, you’re going to find people seeking their lowest denominator. And of course comfort and convenience and consumerism, what I call the three Cs, keep people lost in actually realizing their potential. But you can’t tell a single mother with a second mortgage who’s raising three kids working two jobs to make room for creation because you have to…
Alan Steinfeld
No, we have to ensure survival.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
You have to ensure that.
Alan Steinfeld
So but what values do we have to change? I mean how do we change them let’s say? I know we have to change the value of fighting for survival but how do we do it?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, the answer, of course, is we need leaders. We need people who are beyond reproach that actually have gone from thinking to doing to being. For example, I have a problem with global warming and I have a problem with the war in Iraq and oil. I have a problem with that. But I can’t actually stand up yet and have a voice against those things if I’m still driving a car that’s dependent on oil and I’m consuming the same things that the United States is using for…
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, that’s driving the war machine, exactly.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
But if I was able to actually be beyond reproach and if I went into the inner part of my city and changed an abandoned lot into a hydroponic farm and started helping to feed poor people and running, taking kids out of the inner city away from violence and saying, let’s learn how to create life together and change my thinking, the thoughts, to something differently and then acted on those thoughts, and I believe in those philosophies. And then I made different choices, whether it was solar power or green building or driving an electric car, and I made that my, I actually did something. And I actually had enough experiences in which I made different choices because doing is about making a choice. Getting your body involved, it’s teaching your body what your mind has learned. It’s causing your body to actually experience what you physically or mentally been thinking about. Now, if I did all those things, now I would have two brain systems in place because now I would be thinking and doing. My mind and body would be aligned. I’d have head and heart working together here. I would have my thoughts and my actions aligned, my behavior and my intent equal. And if I made enough of those consistent choices and I memorized that state, I would become a different being. And if we had enough people doing that same thing, now you would see a group of individuals that could lead people because they’re not going to be compromised, they’re not going to be bribed, they’re not going to be swayed, because they’ve actually integrated a new lifestyle into their very nervous system, which then would allow them to begin to say, I can lead because I’m beyond, I don’t need these things and my lifestyle is different because I’m doing exactly what I’m thinking. Now that’s what it takes to lead people to a new outcome.
Alan Steinfeld
It’s not saying one thing and doing something else. Well, I just saw this movie tonight called Flow: For the Love of Water, and it’s about people around the world taking back the right to own their own water supplies, like getting rid of the big corporations that have built dams, that have created bottled water companies that control the very life substance of people, especially primitive living people in third world countries who are now banning together to say, no, no one’s going to own what is a natural gift for us, the right to have water. And there’s movements now all over the country. And this film, I think, is a very important film by Irina Salina, a director, and Steven Starr, producer. And it’s an amazing movie of people coming forward and doing just that, being their own leaders and saying, no, we’re not going to, we’re not going to let corporations ruin our lives anymore and ruin our families and destroy our countries and the environment. We’re going to do something about it. So it’s starting to take.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
What’s it gonna take?
Alan Steinfeld
What’s that?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
It’s gonna take that exact mentality. And if you look at any leader in history, whether it was Martin Luther King or William Wallace or Mahatma Gandhi or Queen Elizabeth or Mother Teresa, any great leader, they were all basically, they had their thoughts and actions aligned. They had their intention and their behavior equal. And of course, people magnetized to that because it’s a congruent state and that’s when people can actually fall in and believe in an outcome. So that’s what it’s going to take. And the problem is that there’s, in terms of my current understanding, is that this culture is in chronic distractibility. There’s so many distractions, there’s so much information, there’s so much that keeps people distracted and multitasking that our attention is divided. And our attention is divided and it’s very difficult to unify on something if there’s enough chaos going on, and of course that is reflected in short attention spans and everything else.
Alan Steinfeld
Right, but you know intense, I mean it takes a disciplined life to get over the addiction to distraction. And so what do you suggest to people living in this world?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, you know, people have to start turning off their televisions. They have to start, you know, investigating things and then beginning to move on those and beginning to make a difference. And it’s going to be, it’s going to be requiring people to be a little bit uncomfortable. They’re going to be uncomfortable because as they start breaking the small addictions to the things that everybody else is doing conventionally, I think that’s when people start saying, you know, I feel so much better, I feel more alive. I don’t believe in those things because I’ve investigated them and these are the facts. And I’m going to spread the word about the truth of these facts because I know. And it’s going to just take enough grassroots individuals to begin to get people to begin to realize that there are other options.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I think it is happening. I think we’re moving in that direction. But another thing, I mean, it seems like we have to and it’s something stirring underneath the soil there. But what I want to also talk about is this whole idea of the, you talk a lot about the brain and mind, but there’s also the awareness that the mind or consciousness itself is not really in the brain or directly connected to the brain. I mean, I want to know how you’ve explored this thing about mind outside of brain, things like out of body experiences, near death experiences. How does that then register back in a brain that cognizes those experiences when the mind or consciousness have not been in there? Do you know what I mean?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I do know what you mean. Well, let’s first, let’s just back up here and just say that first of all, in the Buddhist or in the Eastern tradition, mind and consciousness a lot of times are interchangeable. In the Western model, when we talk about mind, mind usually is represented as the brain in action or the brain at work. Mind is what the brain does.
Alan Steinfeld
Mind is to the software to the hardware of the brain.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Right. So you see consciousness manipulating this immaterial aspect of ourselves that uses the brain to produce mind. Now, the reason that we have to actually finally realize that mind just isn’t the sum total of biological processes taking place in the brain is because in fact, people are able to make their brain and mind work better. And if you can make the brain and mind work better, and neuroscience has proven this, then who’s doing the changing of the brain and the mind? The brain can’t change the brain because the brain is just an organ, just like a liver or a kidney. And the mind can’t change the brain because the mind is the product of the brain. And so who’s changing the brain and the mind? It’s that nasty 13 letter word called consciousness. Consciousness in fact is using the brain to produce mind. And only when we’re truly conscious and when we’re truly ultimately present and ultimately aware, that’s the moment when we’re no longer the brain or the mind, but in fact we are the immaterial aspect of ourselves that’s using the brain. That’s the moment we have cognition and understanding that. And so mystical experiences like out of body experiences, it’s literally awareness is literally separate from the body and it’s moved to a non-local, consciousness is non-local, so it’s moved to another location. And because it’s non-local, the brain can still be processing the information and we can remember it because the brain will track the experience. But in fact, the conscious being is now no longer attached to the body. And that happens with out of body experiences, it happens with lucid dreams, it happens with the vision quests, it happens with several mystical experience where people actually have lost a form of consciousness that they know themselves as in their body and then woke up in a new consciousness realizing that they were something else than their body and their brain and their mind. And of course, we all look for those moments because that in fact is a paradigm shift and that is a recalibration. After you have one of those experiences, the side effect of that is you start asking some big questions like, who am I really? And what is my body? And what is spirit? And what is energy? And how did that happen? And you start investigating those answers. And of course, then the traditional models of science and traditional models of religion and traditional models of social mores all begin to break down. And that’s exactly what we want to have happen.
Alan Steinfeld
So have scientists been able to track the recording of non-local consciousness in that sense that you’re aware of? Because it’s not a step.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, there’s two ways you can look at that. First of all, the first way to look at it is that you can take a person and you can have them bond with another person, you can have them shake hands with another person or look into their eyes. And then you can take one person, you can put them in one room. And you put the other person and put them in a whole separate room that’s lined in copper. And you can have the person that’s sitting in the regular room watch a horror show, watch on television, a series of events on a movie that’s potentially irritating or scary. Now the person sitting after they’ve bonded with that person and connected with them, who’s reading the paper in the other room whose brain is hooked up to a scan, would be producing the same brainwave patterns as the person watching the horror show. So there’s this entanglement that takes place between us that’s reflected in social consciousness. And of course, as we raise our consciousness, of course, hopefully it has an effect on raising the people’s consciousness around us. So that’s the one example of how the brain begins to act in a non-local way. Now, there are experiments being done where they can actually induce an out-of-body experience by tricking the brain into thinking or tricking the mind into thinking that it’s experiencing itself out of the body.
Alan Steinfeld
How do they do that?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, I can’t remember right now the lab that was doing it, but it was just recent in the last couple of months where they put a camera basically above the head and they blindfold the person, they induce them into a relaxed state, and they get them at a certain point and then they just nudge them, just hit, jolt their body just the right way. And for certain people, it allows them to actually have the experience of feeling like they’re separate from their body or being out of their body. And they’re beginning to try to correlate that with certain brain activity. And I’m pretty sure it was a temporal lobe function where we saw that the brain was tracking the experience in the right temporal lobe, I’m pretty sure. So anyway, they’re doing that stuff and of course, because the technology is so sophisticated, the cool thing about it is that you only are limited by the questions you ask. And if you have the right technology and you have the creativity, I think you’re going to begin to see a lot of scientists amalgamating a lot of things that were once mysteries.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. So I think we are changing the paradigm as new scientists, like I think the experiment you talked about entanglement is Dean Radin’s entangled minds. I think he mentions that. And so there are Noetic sciences, Institute of Noetic Sciences funding some of these experiments. And the idea then is taken from what you said earlier, if we can start to then continuously have these experiences of this non-local consciousness, it starts to then build a neural net somehow, even though the experience isn’t really taking place in the brain. Is that true?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, of course. Creating reality is all about having the experience taking place in the brain before the actual experience. Having the brain and mind and the body be ahead of the experience. And in my lectures I talk a lot about what neuroscience has to say, and that’s actually very possible. If you begin to contemplate on possibilities and you begin to speculate outcomes and you begin to think about what the experience would be like, you’re literally growing new circuits in your brain and you’re literally making a new mind. And it’s the process of creation and of speculation, of invention, that if we repeat it enough times, now the brain and the mind are actually ahead of the experience. And that’s when the experience happens, because one of the privileges of being human being is that we can make thought more real than anything else. How we choose to do that, of course, could be our exaltation or our demise. And it’s just really what we focus on, how long, and that determines our destiny.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, no, I know that’s possible. And I know that’s the way to do it. But sometimes what also happens in human experience is that we have something that happens to us where we have no explanation for, where we’re overwhelmed by a reality that impacted upon us and sometimes that shocks us or it’s too much. And we don’t know what to do with that. Do you know what I’m talking about there?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
You mean you have a mystical experience beyond your present understanding, is that what you mean?
Alan Steinfeld
Or even some kind of trauma beyond anything. There’s a shock of, well, there’s an art book out called The Shock of the New. There’s something that we have no preparation for at all, we sometimes experience, and often times we are traumatized by it because we don’t know what to do with it. How do we welcome new experiences in any form that we may not be prepared for?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, this is a whole area that psychology, I think, has spent years to be able to deal with and create answers for. First of all, trauma in the brain has a very specific pattern on functional brain scans. And what trauma really does more than anything else is the event is so emotionally overwhelming that it catches all of the brain’s attention. So if it’s a difficult trauma, like a shocking trauma that’s bad news or a bad event, let me use bad in terms of it’s not self-serving or difficult to overcome. The problem is this, is that the way the brain works is that when the chemistry is changed in the brain and the body as a result of the event, we tend to think about the event over and over again. You get in a car accident and the experience is over, but you tend to think about the event so many times over and over again. And it’s that process of thinking about the event over and over again that a lot of times begins to allow the person to memorize the event subconsciously.
Alan Steinfeld
And it gets stuck there in a way, you think?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Subconsciously now their feelings are driving their thinking and they can’t even understand consciously why they’re acting in certain ways. And sometimes it’s not even short-term, it sometimes takes place over months and all of a sudden the person’s not thinking right or they’re not thinking clearly or they’re having emotional problems or they’re depressed or they’re anxious. And so this isn’t an easy thing to overcome. However, a new branch of science and a new branch of psychology is coming out called energy medicine or energy psychology. And energy medicine and energy psychology I happen to love because it’s based on the principles of epigenetics, which is your consciousness controls your genes instead of your genes controlling your consciousness. And in fact, the research that’s done with energy psychology and energy medicine actually allows the person to reintegrate the trauma into wisdom. And I don’t think we have enough time to go into it, but there’s plenty of research out there that’s actually showing that it’s possible. It’s simple, it’s inexpensive. It requires sometimes just tapping certain parts of the body and…
Alan Steinfeld
Oh right, emotional freedom technique, I’ve heard of that.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Emotional freedom technique, fabulous technique. Thought freedom technique, Tapas, body talk, all that stuff is actually addressing the subconscious programs that are driving the conscious mind.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s yeah, the thing I was also thinking about, let me just going out there a little bit. Let’s say you have a UFO sighting or a UFO possible abduction experience that’s so foreign to our way of thinking that we have no place to put that and it gets lodged in there. We’re not even thinking about it consciously, but there’s something that shifted inside of us. I mean, that is truly the unknown. And how do we, you know, and that’s happening probably all the time where we’re blocking out perceptions that we’re unaware of because we have no place to put them. So…
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I don’t know that we have time to even get into that but…
Alan Steinfeld
Well, we have a little more time, but you can get into like just how do we, how do we be prepared for the unknown? You understand what you’re saying before is like preparing for the…
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I think that just not to interrupt you, but I think that we either negotiate our events in our lives and I’m just speaking from my present state of ignorance right now, but I think that we negotiate events in our lives that we either negotiate from our own thoughts and actions that we’ve either consciously created or we’ve negotiated them on a soulful level that reflect everything that’s equal to our mind and what we create. So it’s either happening on a soulful level or it’s happening on an ego-based level or…
Alan Steinfeld
So we create it all, you’re saying?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I really, it’s the only model that actually sums it up for me. And so if I’ve negotiated events like that on a soulful level for me to experience that’s outside the realm of my personality’s understanding, then if I have that experience, you can bet that I’m going to spend a little time looking into all the avenues of how it happened, why it happened, what it means, who’s had similar experiences and how I can make it better or how I can change it.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. But even in creating your day, if you create your day and you’re creating what you would like to have, and sometimes, and you even said that in what the bleep, something happens that is even more than we imagine. And…
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Well, that’s the goal. That’s exactly what we want. You see, we always want the event to unfold greater than our ability to predict it.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, how do you explain that based on what you just said? If we’re always consciously or unconsciously creating it.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Okay, because it’s really simple. We have two aspects of creation. We have what’s called intention, which is getting clear on what you want. And then we have this other element of creation called surrender, which is you have to hand the outcome, how it’s going to happen, the players, the experience itself. You have to hand that over to the greater mind. You have to hand that over to spirit. You have to hand that over to the quantum field. You have to hand that over to the mother/father consciousness that’s holding all of this together. So I can intentionally have an interest in an experience, but how that experience is going to happen should not be within the realm of my predictability, because if it is, then it’s not unknown. It’s already known. So you want the event to happen in a way that surprises you, and enlivens you, and lifts you, and creates wonder and awe, because those are the things that let you know that there’s a greater mind that’s handling the details. And what do you want to say to… end does it or the greater mind is doing these things? You just have to get clear on the intention and then live as if it’s already happened. And then the greater mind will work out the players and the details.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, that’s something I did want to ask you, since “What the Bleep” came out.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I said I just talked in detail about that at the event in New York in April.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, no, I’m really excited. Dr. Joe Dispenza is coming to New York April 26th and 27th, I think it was, right? And if people are interested in that, they can contact me, Alan Steinfeld at newrealities@earthlink.net. Joe, thanks for the time in this interview.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Oh, it was a great time.
Alan Steinfeld
And I hope I didn’t throw you with too many out-there questions.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
No, no, I enjoyed it.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, your website is what?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
My website is drjoedispenza.com, it’s just d-r-j-o-e-d-i-s-p-e-n-z-a.com.
Alan Steinfeld
Right, that’s d-i-s-p-e-n-z-a. And you have some other workshops around the country coming up as well, right?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, you can visit my website. I’ll be in actually be in Austin, Texas this weekend with Lynne McTaggart doing an intention workshop at The Crossings. And then I’m pretty much around the country and around the world for the rest of the year.
Alan Steinfeld
The Crossings is a great place. Have you been there?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, it’s wonderful. Really looking forward to it.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, yeah, that little forest beneath it. Have you walked around that little forest?
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s the only place in Texas that I would ever consider living in.
Alan Steinfeld
Exactly. And Ken and Joyce back are beautiful people there.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah. Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
It’s a little name-dropping there. I helped, I did a couple of workshops with her in New York, and we had a great time.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
Yeah, she’s a great lady. And actually Will Arntz, who produced and directed The Bleep, he’s going to make a guest appearance on Saturday night, so it’ll be fun.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh good. Oh good. Well, have a great time there. Definitely, definitely. And I look forward to seeing you in New York. And I’ll say hello to Roberta.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
I will, I will.
Alan Steinfeld
And all the other people out there in Washington. All right, thanks, Joe. I’m going to just go out if this music will play now. It’s a music called the Song of the Soul, Chris Williamson, you know that? The 60s song. Oh there it is. And I just want to say this is Alan Steinfeld for New Realities. If you have any questions or comments about what you’ve heard here, email me at newrealities@earthlink.net. Also tune into my website newrealities.com for all the upcoming events in New York. Thank you for listening and I’ll see you next time.