Photo by Pascal Habermann on Unsplash

by Linda Forrest

We all understand that mental illness is a result of poor brain function. Whether it’s a mild condition, such as stress or insecurity or something more severe, like PTSD or Depression, doctors will diagnose and medicate us for it. Therapists will see us for years helping us manage it. We’ll take yoga classes, learn to meditate and try a myriad of alternative medicines to improve it, but what no one tells us–maybe because they don’t really see it–is that we can completely alter our brain function and therefore, the consciousness it creates; not over decades or even years, but in just weeks to months.

So, how do we do it? I’ve tried to find simple ways to explain it, but there isn’t one, because of the condition itself. In the early stages of growth, we can’t yet understand the full picture. Like a child learning to read, we must first understand letters. We can then learn to use those letters to form words. Words eventually become sentences and then paragraphs, until one day we are reading entire books. We become brilliantly successful in a process that becomes so inherent to who we are, we tend to forget how difficult it was to learn.

I want all of us to understand our physical, emotional and mental well-being is a simple matter of brain function. So, I’m going to share how we can easily alter our brain function to then alter the resulting condition. I want everyone to be able to understand this concept at a deep level. So, like our educators did when we were children and first learning to read, I’ll begin with what would be the letters of this alphabet. We’re going to think of those letters as our symptoms, the conditions of the world we experience as our lives, and the day to day activities we define as good or bad. The letters in this alphabet are representative of our consciousness.

For the most part, we like to think of ourselves as conscious and we are, to an extent. We are conscious of our own perspectives and to the conditions we experience as reality, but what we need to address is not what we already see. What we need to address is what we don’t see.

The world is full of opportunities which promise to teach us how to analyze and eventually try to control our personal experience of reality, usually by controlling the thought, feeling or emotion behind it. This in and of itself, is a major error in thinking. The brain does not think first. Thought does not occur until a lot of other decisions have been made. Thinking is a simple matter of neuron clusters. Some clusters result in defeating, self-recriminating, negative thought, while others result in inspired, self-loving, positive thought. This isn’t a choice that’s made at the conscious level, not without a whole lot of effort and only nominal success.

Of the eighty-six billion neurons in the brain, only three billion are conscious. Yes, that leaves eighty-three billion neurons acting at either subconscious or completely unconscious levels. In a nutshell, the three billion conscious neurons are nowhere near the neurons that are really in charge. This is the basis of understanding confirmation bias and why the goal of most therapeutic treatment is to uncover the unconscious triggers that drive our brain function. This works, but it also consumes arduous hours of effort. To try and process every memory we have, to try and evolve one thought, one perception of reality at a time can take decades of work– lifetimes for some — while producing only nominal results.

To create faster, more significant change, we need to understand the brain functions that occur before thought, the brain functions that ultimately decide how we think, which directly translates to what we think. We need to understand the chemicals and the physical functions of the brain and even more than that, we need to understand what happens before the function, so we can gain the ability to direct it.

The Inspired Evolution Project (IEP) works primarily with five levels of brain function and the consciousness those functions produce. When it comes to being more conscious in our lives and less driven by the unconscious mechanisms of the brain, we must go to the source. We must work to increase our brain function beyond the mostly unconscious level of mere primate and into the high function capabilities inherent to all humans. In this way, we naturally increase our ability to be conscious. Yeah, it’s not the other way around. You can’t think better to feel better. If you improve your brain function, you will feel better and as a result, you will naturally think better thoughts.

Can you try to control your mood, your thoughts, your perceptions of reality? Yes. Can you experience growth through your effort? Yes, but it will be arduous, and it will be incremental. The questions we should all be asking ourselves are; Is my current approach giving me the results I really want? Is my life significantly better than it was a month ago? If it is, stay with what you’re doing. If it isn’t, be willing to try something new, something which will give you faster, more permanent results.

The IEP process gives us the opportunity to first realize, we don’t need to suffer, ever. Think of this as the letters in your new alphabet. When we can realize the way we think, feel, and act are not the cause of our triggers, but the result, what we previously perceived as reality changes. This can be one of the most difficult stages of the process, but it is also the most instrumental in creating better brain function. We don’t need to work on the symptoms of feeling or thought or even our personal identity. We can go right to the source and we can do it by the simple manipulation of our brain and better yet, we can completely transform who we are by doing it.

The human brain functions in a specific way, like a machine. Our experiences as individuals are representative of our function, but they are not a complete representation of our potential level of function. Our reactions are day by day, moment by moment survival mechanisms fiercely working to keep us safe. However, the brain function you inherited or adopted or even created is not definitive of your capabilities. I’ll say that again. Your current or past brain function is not at all a representation of your potential future brain function. All of us can improve the performance of our brain by simply changing our survival mechanisms to those of a high-level species. But, to make real change, it is not the reactions we must address, it is the mechanism itself.

If you are a person who is suffering, whether you consider it mild suffering or deep suffering, if you are anywhere less than the bliss you deserve, having the skill to first recognize that your suffering is not inherent to who you are and then, having the ability to free yourself of that suffering, is vital. This is our alphabet.

As we move forward in the practice, we will learn to use the letters of this new language we are discovering to form words. Then, the words will become sentences and in a relatively short time, we will be operating in complex, innovative, high-thinking brain functions. Brain functions so advanced we will write our own paragraphs and eventually entire books steeped in levels of consciousness most humans are just now coming to comprehend.

Are you at the top of your game? If you’re not, you can be in a matter of days or weeks. With the right approach, you’ll find yourself doing things you never imagined you could. I hope you’ll follow-up with the next article to learn how you can not just be aware of your brain function but can also learn to consciously control it.

To get more information about the individual phases of the IEP program, please visit The Inspired Evolution Project.

I wish you peace in your journey.