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
