Q: (Chu) About the book: “Healing Developmental Trauma”... We were discussing it earlier, and pretty much everybody seems to have some connection issue regardless of the survival style they developed. One possibility is that people need that as part of the "life plan" in this reality so that they suffer and then learn on a sort of fast track. And/or the other possibility is there is some kind of interference from hyperdimensional 4D STS beings to generate more suffering.
A: Why not some of both in some cases? And not to forget "past life" influences.
Q: (L) One thing I noticed about this last little set of books that I ended up on by following my nose... It was like following bread crumbs. I ended up with this Samenow, and then the Developmental Trauma book. It seems to me that these two approaches, which pretty much focus on making the changes in the now and not so much focusing on what's wrong, are probably the most practical expressions of what we have been calling The Work - as in Gurdjieffian stuff – that we’ve ever encountered. It's like we've gone through book after book after book, each one adding a bit to the picture. But this has brought it down to such a simple, practical level that almost nobody can miss it. My feeling is that something very profound is going to come out of this particular little experiment that we're doing.
A: Indeed. All in your group should read these books in order to jump start the necessary processes for achieving receivership capability. Those who have been blocked up to the present will find unblocking therein if they are able to receive.
Q: (L) So, you're suggesting that those who read and can take it on board... We've seen that happening! People are reading it, and they're REALLY getting it. Some people who have not really understood what it means when you say that your own mind can be your enemy, are finally getting it when they learn about thought errors, that emotions follow thoughts, and so on. I think it's also true that thoughts can be generated by emotions, but you can control your emotions with your thinking.
(Pierre) For some members, the realizations are very visceral. It's deeply felt, and not just an intellectual exercise.
(L) Yeah. Well, Jonathan Haidt talks about the mind-body system as a rider on an elephant. The emotions are the elephant, and the conscious mind is the rider. He gives a fairly bleak representation of this as though no rider is ever going to really be able to control the elephant. But if you follow the Samenow and the Work method along with the Pauline stoic method of dealing with your elephant, you can actually maybe grow your rider to the point where he's bigger and stronger. You can maybe give him some tools with which to control that elephant. Is that in fact the case?
A: Yes
Q: (L) The Developmental Trauma book talks about how you have to have knowledge of what's going on. That's the top-down thing. You have to know your survival style and your thinking errors so you can watch for those. At the same time, people who have been going along with these thinking errors for a long time, or those who developed thinking errors in response to a specific situation as they were growing up, also have an elephant that's kind of spring-loaded to be fractious and unresponsive to guidance and direction. That's where the bottom-up treatment comes from. It seemed to me that the neurofeedback was probably the most efficacious way because it helps to calm the brain down so that the rider of the elephant has a chance to grow and develop.
(Pierre) Yeah, and if I understand correctly, neurofeedback prevents this shift into sympathetic mode where the elephant gets all the power; once you've shifted into sympathetic mode, it's uncontrollable.
(L) Yeah, it's the amygdala hijack.
A: Good analogy.
Q: (L) You mean the rider and the elephant?
A: Yes
Q: (L) Okay. Is it possible for us to grow our rider and give him tools to better control the elephant? Is it possible?
A: Yes
Q: (L) Haidt makes it sound so bleak... It's like you're NEVER going to get control of that elephant.
(Pierre) Well, it's not black and white. He says you can nudge it a bit here and a bit there.
(L) Okay, what else?
(Mikey) My question is along the same lines. In 1994 in one of the sessions, the C's said one can have only positive emotions if one chooses to. And then they brought in the connection with the belief center. I would like to know if it's useful to develop the belief center because they also said that most power necessary to alter our physicality and reality lies in the belief center. That sounds like something that's interesting. Is it something for us to work on? And how to do it? Is belief something that's true, or something that's an illusion?
(L) Didn't Joe ask something like that in a previous session?
(Joe) You have to get rid of all of your beliefs and then you can change reality if you don't have any limiting beliefs. You have to be completely open, and then you can maybe read from the information field or something. And then you might be able to change something.
(L) It's like getting rid of expectations or assumptions about how things are going to be.
(Joe) Because they're limiting, and you don't have the whole banana. It's just not how it works. People think they're going to change reality like by a light beam coming out of my head and I can change anything I want. But it seems to be more like a 2-way process where you engage with something else. You have to get in tune with something that already exists that's objectively real in order to manifest that potential for change. It's not like you can just dream up anything and make it happen. Right?
A: Yes
Q: (L) Well, they said the power for changing reality lies in the belief center of the mind. But then they also said something about emotions. Emotions that are limiting, and then emotions that help to progress... So, maybe the belief that one needs to cultivate - if any - is the belief in unlimited possibilities AND also in the benevolence of the universe and the process. Maybe that's what it is?
A: Yes yes yes!
Q: (Joe) The other phrase was that the one thing you have to do before transitioning to 4D is to think in completely unlimited terms. That doesn't mean you have to be able to think of everything that exists, but...
(L) You have to be open.
(Joe) Right, no expectations. That means getting rid of your hard and fast beliefs about things.
(L) And I think that comes back in a funny sort of way to this “Healing Developmental Trauma” book. One of the problems of early trauma is that children come to believe that the universe is not a safe place or it's scary. They just get completely wrong ideas which lead to thought errors. That's something that's preverbal…
(Pierre) And very limiting.
(L) And those are the kinds of things that probably the neurofeedback can fix more easily than anything else because those are things that produce certain brain waves that persist over time. There's no other way to get to them because you can't TALK your way through something that's preverbal! You can get into some kind of body therapy and spend years with a therapist, but why do that when you can just go directly and change the brain waves? And if you change brain waves, the brain's going to change. Right?
A: Yes yes yes!
Q: (Mikey) So, the trick is to get rid of the negative beliefs, and then find positive beliefs and everything should sort out, right?
(Artemis) No
(Joe) No, not positive beliefs.
(Andromeda) Beliefs are limiting.
(Joe) Any fixed, hard core beliefs. Think about all the books we’ve read. It's not that we're gathering information, but instead that we're discovering that all the things we thought we knew are wrong. Just the information in those books that you read that supplants the more limited beliefs, that gives you a broader perspective on things. But that's still not the whole truth. No matter how many books you read, you can never say, "I know this for sure!" So, the process of learning is about getting rid of stuff related to limiting beliefs.
(Pierre) What I understand from this discussion is that the healthy beliefs are the unlimiting beliefs, but...
(L) Why believe anything?
(Pierre) Yes; beliefs by definition ARE limiting. If you don't believe this, then you believe that. So, I guess unlimited beliefs is sort of a transcending of the very notion of belief. It's going beyond beliefs.
A: Become like little children...
Q: (Artemis) Inquisitive, but without bias or beliefs.
(L) And adventurous, open to experience, and not formed up with any beliefs. And one hopes that it's a little child that has not been developmentally traumatized! [laughter]
(Chu) I think it comes down to what the books say, really, which is that if you're in the present, you stop having the wrong beliefs. Instead of living in the past, you're in a state where you're curious again. So, it is a positive emotion in the end, but it's not the positive emotions as we normally understand them with all the wishful thinking that goes along with them.
(Andromeda) Right.
(Chu) It's like let's live life as an experiment, and...
(L) Like, "This is interesting to see what happens next..."
(Andromeda) But you still have the ability to feel negative emotions as a response to something that happens. Which would be proper.
(Pierre) A lot of PK events or paranormal events involve children. And children, compared to adults, have less of those limiting beliefs. Therefore, they can connect and experience a wider range of events.
(Artemis) So basically, neurofeedback plus reading will help people increase their receivership capability...
(L) If they apply what they read...
(Artemis) ...will help them become conduits for positive forces in the universe.
A: Yes