50% divorced - I’m not going to be like that

A Young Person’s view on what’s needed to break the cycle 

 

 

Sharing a house in Bronte in the Eastern suburb of Sydney. What’s fun was life was interesting, was sharing all good things. And finally, one of my good friends from there came to stay over the weekend with her very much grown children now like 16, 15 and 9 years of age and like myself and actually all four of us females in our early twenties at the time were living together with a couple of other guys who had different people share the fifth room, nice big five-bedroom house in Bronte. And all of us are not with the fathers of our children and we're all quite happy or do fine. So today, mostly neutral relationships, not necessarily for her. It's still pre-mid-divorce and there's still lots of angst to some of the conversation, it was around that, and around acknowledging the pain and the frustration, and then moving through, what does the next phase look like?

 

And her daughter who's very, very competent young woman, just amazing, really to listen to. That’s a 16-year-old. She said, “Well, given that 50% of people (when we say people, let's just say in NSW, that's a stat that we know is correct) 50% of marriages end in divorce.” She said, well, “If the children learn by seeing what their parents did, that didn't keep them together, and they did differently. It'd be interesting to see the statistics of when these children grow up like her generation”, because as she said, she’d be thinking to do things differently from her parents. So, it wouldn't repeat the same mistake. And I shared that I too grew up in a house where alcohol, violence... See, I keep going to downplay it and say, well, isn't it really that violent. It was okay. There was a lot of fighting. There's physical fighting between my mum and dad. And even if it wasn't s lot, it stood out enough that it was definitely a thing. And when it wasn't actually happening, there was the suspense that it may happen at any time.

 

So, there was the need to sort of feel on guard. So, the adrenals were ready at a young age and watching for signs that you get used to, “if this happens and that happens”, it's more likely to be outburst. And that's the biochemistry that I was creating in my body as a young child. And then I had a number of boyfriends, mostly quite long-term, couple of years each, and the ones that weren't so long, short term were the ones I said were boring.

 

And it was only years later. My Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha suggest one of the many books she’s suggested, and movies was “What the bleep do we know?” Now that's been around quite a while now, seems quite simple. It was a number of scientists or what other people were saying, pseudo scientists, ‘cause they had spirit and the other parts in them, but absolutely real science in there as well.

 

And one of the key parts was chemical addiction to emotion and that Cherokee and many others who have learnt from, know that this is a thing and have tools and techniques to work with the young people and with older people, with anyone, when there's a pattern that's there to allow the person to reflect and release and see those patterns for themselves.

 

And this part of chemical addiction to emotion, when I realized it, I was like “Oh wow…” I didn't really have words for it. It's just, you feel it. There's a feeling in the body of when you have one of those aha moments of your own. And a quick aside, reminds me of another teaching Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha where we see butterflies and that's often associated with transformation. Yes, the caterpillar goes into the cocoon. It undergoes an amazing transformation. It pushes through resistance to come out. That's all teachings. Another teaching, which I found really interesting was the one that's termed “don't steal another person's thunder.” And that is their aha moment because when someone gets to realize something for themselves, it really is like thunder. There is a change inside their biochemistry. And if you put brainwave sensors on it, quite often, it would show that there's a registering of what's gamma brainwaves. Now you don't necessarily need to know what that means right now, except so the concept isn't strange to you, it means like really high frequency. So, there’s really something's happening here. It's like, “wow”. So, these waves like your brain, you just know brainwaves (people talk about brainwaves all the time). There's certain brainwaves when you're awake, like beta, you're looking out, you're really active to the outside world. And there's brainwaves when you start to go to sleep, you can say Delta, you can say different sets of brainwaves are associated with different types of thinking or activities like deep sleep, meditation, completely awake, very alert. So, these gamma ones are the ones that are sort of off the Richter of normal behavior, normal thinking, normal sleeping. And it's the aha moment. So not stealing someone else's thunder, it means allow them to have that aha moment. And from a biochemical perspective, there are lots of reasons for that. It has effect more than you telling somebody so much more than ever what you say to someone, unless what you've said creates the aha moment. 

 

And in traditional ways, and in many good therapist's ways as well, the power is in asking the questions, rather than telling. So, if you ask questions, and a person is able to answer such that they hear themselves, and they have that ability to go, “Aha.”  That's a true healing way. So back to our chemical addiction to emotion, not stealing thunder would mean, at that point where you're going through a realization, you allow the person to go through it. So, you don't jump ahead and say, “Yeah, that's right.”, “That's why you'd be feeling like this.”, or “You would have that.” or specially to put it on somebody to say, “You are thinking like this”, or “You are feeling like that.” So, allow them to have their thunder and their aha moment.

 

And back to the story, in the process of then sharing my story, I was able to say that there was a point when I watched that movie. And the aha moment, there was a visual in there, where the woman (she was actually a sex addict) and she was telling her cells, to her body, was saying “Yeah, let's go out and find somebody.” And it was a bit confronting in that because my conservative upbringing was like, “Whoa, that's not what females do.” That's a different aha moment to look at that conditioning. But it was that she was then talking to her cells in her body and saying, “No, we're not doing that today”. And I then realized at the time I was working in local government and at 3 o'clock, I'd start to feel like a cherry ripe. That's a little chocolate, very artificial middles, dark chocolate on the outside, sugar, the whole bit. Only small, about three centimeters or little over an inch long. And somehow, I justified that it was good because they were in there as fundraisers. So, you'd put in your 50 cents or $2 or whatever you put in, and took your little chocolate and went back to your desk.

 

And I realized that was more accurate than any clock that I had. My body would say, “This is the time for that particular set of chocolates and everything that came with the dopamine hit the whole lot. So that had become a routine addiction. And having watched the movie, I was then able to say to my cells, “No, we're not doing that anymore.”

 

And I'm in control. And this brought back the teachings of Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha or whose talking. There are so many script lines in there in our head. So many voices that seem logical when they come up to let you know, well, actually the little bit of sugar now, will this, or it's got coconut in it, or it raises money for other things for the lion's club.

 

You could start one. It's not a new moon today, you might as well just start next Wednesday, because that’s new moon, that's a good time to start. Who is talking, whose script is that? Because, my real feeling (when I say me, I could be talking about the essence of myself that thinks of the future) what do I want to feel like, look like, do like, be like right now, therefore, what are the steps I need to take?

 

And that included not having chocolate every day, not having the sugar highs and lows, not having my body telling me what the next action was. So, from that perspective, I was able to say, who's talking and who's talking was the body and the cells, because they'd been conditioned to that particular chocolate. Now, did just telling them once fix it? No, many times over a number of weeks until I didn't even have that feeling anymore.

 

Now, why did it take weeks? Actually, from a biological perspective, it can take three months. So, if you imagine a cell and it has a membrane, so it has a little packet, a little skin on the outside, and then it has the DNA or the information on the inside, that DNA on the inside is what then creates the messages that go around the body, like it will create this protein or create that one, or it will send a message to a particular gland that will then say produce this hormone, or this feeling, so incredibly fast. Another recommendation is to look into your biochemistry of your body and how it works. Just choose one piece, choose how a kidney works or have a look how the happiness or the dopamine gets released when you have chocolate or when you finish a project that you've been delaying, they will do it. But again, back to the story, there's that ability then to have the cell membrane influence the DNA.

 

Now how it does that. And Bruce Lipton describes this beautifully. So, I look up Bruce Lipton as well. He's a scientist. He does a lot in the biology. He's worked with some of the original work of that person I mentioned, Candace Pert, who did the book, biology of belief. And Bruce points out it's a brain membrane and think of that word brain in there, because the cell membrane has these little doors all over it and the doors, some of them are just open all the time. Things come in and out. Some of them have specific keys that needs to be unlocked to let that particular substance in. So, the cell membrane is full of doors. As we said, some open, some with keys. What gets in and out of the membrane is what then triggers the DNA what to create. Now, if we think of the DNA quickly as a massive recipe book, there are so many, many, many proteins, so many, many substances that can get made from the different combinations of the ingredients that we have. And it's the DNA as the recipe book that says, put one of these with one of those, and then one of these with one of those, and then they get matched up with the ingredients that are there.

 

So, we have this huge recipe book. Usually, we only go to a couple of pages, like in many families, if you usually cook lasagna, nachos, fried rice, a mix of standard food, you're probably more likely going to go to those pages over and over again. And the more you go to those pages, some of them wear out a bit. That's another story. Listen to some of Bruce's information for that. 

 

So, we've got this recipe book, now who's the, who's the chef that chooses what page of the recipe book? While it's quite often that little bit of information that comes through the door of the membrane. So, if you have, for example, a whole lot of information that says we are now low on dopamine, the one that makes you feel happy - then what is it actually saying something is low or high? Now you may know that the body has different chemicals, different substances, different particles, all through it. That's again, part of how we feel, part of how we work. For example, if we've eaten sugar, the work through our pancreas and many other, it's not that simple, but many, many pieces of information through the body to then release the insulin, which is a substance, which helps convert that sugar to glucose. And when we're low on sugar, we also have a process that helps convert the sugar that's been stored back into blood sugar. So, we have a blood sugar level that you would have heard of people talking about blood sugar level. That's meant to be at a certain amount and the body regulates if it's got too low, they'll unpack some of the stored and put it back in. If it's too high, they'll pack some up and take it out. So that's happening all the time. And when you really see how influential it can be to not have that in place - I've got friends who are diabetics, and it's really interesting to see what happens when the levels get too low or too high, obviously. They have medication and things to make sure they're safe. - You can see when it's borderline and they let you know. So that's happening all the time, but it's not just the sugar. Everything else has levels. So, our body knows some biological levels that are within the realms, how the body works safely, but then there's also ones that we create an example for those who crave of smoking. Now, whether you've smoked or not, or know someone who's smoked or not, I call it around here. There's so few people that smoke these days. Whereas when I was growing up, it was so normal. Even our house had this haze where if you went the bottom meter of the laundry room, didn't have the smoke. And then from there, there was a clear blue line. And from there it was all this blue smoke that hung in the air.

 

So, nicotine, the addiction to it.

 

There's a time then when that cell membrane that we talked about with all the doors and the keys, the cell membrane has a little doorway with a lock that says, this is the one for nicotine. Now the cell membrane is very accommodating. It's like having a house and whatever people are on the outside of that house, if each different sort of person had to come in a different door, they want to make sure that everyone is able to get into the house.

 

So, if some people need a certain type of door, and different people need a different type of door, they make more doors. If you've got more nicotine sitting outside the cell, the cell will realize this, there's more on the outside of the membrane than the inside, and that they need to make more receptor sites to be more welcoming for that substance to come in.

 

There's not an override that says this is not healthy for you. Therefore, we will not make more receptor sites. Self-determinism is so high that there is complete allowance to choose. That's another story. When you work with traditional peoples or even some therapists, there isn't an acknowledgement that there was a time well back in our creation of this physical form, that self-determinism was included there for the detriment or the betterment of a person.

 

So, if we feel like something, like a cigarette, like an ice cream, like anything that we at other times with logically say that's not in alignment with my body's best interest and believe me, sometimes the cigarette might be in someone's best interest and ice cream at sometimes might be in someone's best interest.

 

Please know that I'm not saying these things are good or bad, but it's, “who's talking”, as Pa'Ris'Ha said, “ask who's talking”. So, if it's the body that now has so many of these little doorways to nicotine, and if this nicotine has started to reduce in level, because someone's made that conscious decision to reduce their nicotine intake, or their sugar intake, or their salt intake, or their anger intake (now, let's get back to that one after), it'll have doors with nobody coming through it, and it will say, “Hey, something's gone wrong”. We had all these doors ready, and now it's not there. Let's send a message up to the brain that this particular substance isn't coming through the door anymore. So, we need more.

 

So, then the cells send information to the brain to say, “Hey, we're low on nicotine.” And this is really where the who's talking comes in. So, the body then can make up wonderful scenarios. Here's a quick example from mine. I finished the science degree, we had an honors year where you do research and write a thesis, obviously that has a timeline in which to do it. When you get to the end, that timeline can feel very compressed. I was sleeping little. Spending long nights, moved in to live on campus so I only had to work from walk from the biology building over to the campus, sleep a little, 8 in the morning, start working again. There was a lot of adrenaline associated in those last days, weeks, actually. Now I remember at one time thinking, when I've handed this thesis in, I am just going to feel amazing.

 

The reality, I handed the thesis in and I'd have a normal day or good. Didn't quite feel amazing, but it felt good. But then I'd go to bed at night. And my mind, this is the who's talking, the body cells, I realized later the benefit of hindsight, the body cells were saying to me. We made all these receptor sites for adrenaline and we're not getting enough. And all of a sudden, before I knew it, my body had created a scenario where my mind was playing a video of a little dog running out onto the road, just like in the little shopping complex area, near where I live and there's cars everywhere. And I'd be like, and I'd have a hit of adrenaline.

 

I'd be like, why am I having these (not even dreams) I wasn't even asleep. Why am I having these? I didn't know the information then of chemical addiction to emotion.

 

After some time when I did know, I was then able to say to my cells, I appreciate that you created the adrenaline. I appreciate that was the right thing that got us through, that particular set of life called finishing the thesis. We, including every wonderful cell in my body, we, do not need to do that anymore.

 

And even that felt like, whoa, so now who's talking, I'm talking, I am the commander of these trillions of cells and it's like “oh, okay, we don't need to do that anymore”. A little bit of a lag time. It's still there, but it didn't have the same intensity. Because I realized what was going on, and soon the visualizations would stop. Same with the nicotine and the person when they realize that this story is the cells on the membrane.

 

And then one might say, “when's it gonna stop?” If you've heard that little thing of, they say 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks. The 3 months that things seem to come around quite a lot in terms of giving up addictions, and from a biological perspective in 3 months, very many of your cells - depends which cells, because they all have turnover times at different rates, like your red blood cells, turnover really fast, your white blood cells last longer, your brain cells longer, again, the inside - the cells in your stomach lining they're replaced every single day. So, on average, the cells that are being used in these communications of what's present, and what's not, what's going inside and outside of the cell, what is the DNA being triggered to create the page of this wonderful recipe book are we are opening, to create molecules that are going to pass out of the cell into the bloodstream and have effect on our thoughts, our emotions, our physicality. Those cells, enough of them, within three months, we'll have become new that if that particular thing as we go back to the nicotine, if the nicotine is no longer floating around outside them, they're not hanging around at the door waiting to get in. When that cell divides, when I say a new cell, if you imagine one cell, what happens first is all of the recipe book gets transcribed. So now we have two recipe books, and that's our DNA doubling itself up. In theory, perfectly, we don't want to change our recipes they've got to be exact. The DNA doubles itself up, creates two nucleuses. So that's basically the kitchen where the recipe book is held. So, we have a nucleus, being the kitchen, inside is the DNA, which is a recipe book. It has been beautifully copied so that now we have two copies of the recipe book and indeed two kitchens. Once we have that, then the cell membrane starts to pinch in a little bit like a figure 8 with one kitchen or one nucleus in each side. And that pinches right in, and becomes two cells. But unlike the recipe books that get copied meticulously, the cell membrane - it's a bit of an effort for benefit - if something's not being used, when it divides - so when you get the membrane breaking into two, it's not going to make a whole lot of extra doorways for nicotine to come in. If there hasn't been much nicotine coming in the door, that's a wasted effort. So, this time around, it creates fewer doorways for nicotine.

 

So, each time that happens, if that particular substance isn't outside the door waiting to get in, when the cell divides, there are less doorways. Now this can mean if there's less doorways, there's going to be less messages from the body. Back up to the brain saying, “Hey, we're low on nicotine. We want more.” Whereas I said, low on sugar, low on receiving anger (we'll come back to that one). Then they make less receptor sites for it.

 

So, there is that period in the first minutes, days, weeks, months, where it may not feel any different, and this is where coaches will say consistency is everything. Stick at it. It'll work out in the end. When you know why it works out - like some people don't need to know the why like this - I like the science and I've known it's helped in my life. So, when, you know why, you can also visualize yourselves as they divide having less receptor sites for whatever it is you're giving up. And when we say you're giving something up again, there's a psychology to that. It's not meant to feel like you've got less. You’ve got less having this, you can't have it.

 

So, if we say, what are we changing? We are stopping that, and we are changing it to this. And again, if you look to nature, if nature has a river going in a particular way, if the river’s going to stop flowing one way, it just doesn't stop. It'll create a big dam, not dam going to bust out some time. So instead of saying to the river, you can't go there anymore, instead you just build a little farrow off to the side. So, some of the water can start going that way. And more water can start going that way. And if it really is in alignment with what works with the water as well, it'll have a new pathway. And when the water starts to flow in that way, it'll all go there in due the course.

 

So, let's see it as a stop change, and again, Pa’Ris’Ha would often say, “who's talking” now that, you know, do a stop change. So, there's a bit of the biology behind who’s talking and behind stop change. So, we're not necessarily just giving up nicotine. What are we doing instead? Now that's going to be different for each person.

 

The more you do of whatever that thing is, going for a walk in the morning, singing, dancing, drawing, gardening, meditating, listening to the birds. But it works also that if you had one or two receptor sites, say for the feeling, when you've done a good 20-minute walk, if you keep doing those 20-minute walks, you'll have more receptor sites for those. You will want to go on that 20-minute walk. So, as I said in the beginning, it's not necessarily that the body is selecting what's good for you or not good for you. It's responding biochemically to what is lining up outside the door. And that's, what's up to you. That's where, what you choose in your environment.

 

And when I say your environment, the physicality that you're looking out there outside of your body as an environment, but so too is the fluids (‘cause you can sort of think of your body as this wet thing), the fluids that your cells are bathed in that fluid is the environment of the cell, that is the outside of the door of the cell.

 

So, what is the environment that your cells are floating in? And that is influenced by what you eat, what you drink, what you breathe in, and again, they're the physicality’s. Now, just for a little stretch and we're going to complete with this one, because we just have it as an idea for now, everything I've just said about substances. If you extend that to emotions and have a little time thinking about that, you can be addicted to somebody being angry with you. Someone being angry with you creates the same physical response as taking a physical substance. You hear it, you feel. There is a thought. The thought is translated into a physical substance that moves through the bloodstream lines up outside a cell membrane door and says “I am”, whatever it might be.

 

I am a victim. I am angry. And it can be positive as well. This full range, even to be angry, sometimes, it could be positive. It's like about time someone actually stands up and says, no, I'm going to step forward in my own self. So again, not to say any emotion is bad, but if it's out of balance, like the too much nicotine or sugar, it could be time to change, stop change.

 

So, who's talking and stop change and more shared wisdom.

 

It feels like saying have a lifetime, such an influence in my life of a lifetime of teachings with Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha

 

By GDB