The Authentic You

Your mood, motivational drive, and energy levels are intimately linked to your self-perception. It's vital to actively embark on the journey of self-discovery. Along the way you will gain momentum and feel driven to continually nurture and maintain a deep connection with your authentic self.

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Biologically speaking, you are not a single being. You are 50 trillion beings that got together in an alliance to increase their collective experience by working together. Yes, each of your 50 trillion cells have their own knowledge, awareness, and memory. Each one of them can survive on their own outside of your body under the right conditions. They are impacted by “you” equally as much as they impact “you.” Once you fully grasp what it means to be human, you can begin to evolve your self-perception.

For nearly 3 billion years, Earth was only inhabited by single-celled organisms; then around 700 million years ago some of them figured out how to increase both their survivability and life experience by making connections with other cells. You are that multicellular organism that resulted from that cooperative agreement. You are collaborating with these 50 trillion beings, and your life is as much theirs. Who and what is the real you? Do not discount the magic going on here. How does your self-aware human consciousness emerge from the amalgamation of these cells? Consider the notion that the human body offers an environment conducive to engaging with consciousness at a heightened self-reflective level.

Your consciousness wields immense power over your vast community of cells. Your thoughts and actions directly impact the environment of each cell. Consequently, each cell responds to its environment based on the biochemical signals you unleash upon it. This is where the magic occurs, for better or for worse. Although your thoughts are not made of matter, they prompt matter to activate through your emotions. Your mind triggers your brain to release chemicals and electricity as it translates your thoughts into action. Subsequently, the cells of your body become immersed in the newly created electrochemical environment. This process unfolds with every micro-decision your mind makes, whether consciously or subconsciously. It encompasses the food you choose to consume, the level of physical activity or sedentary lifestyle you adopt, and the quality of rest you prioritize. Above all, how you align and think shapes the environment in which your 50 trillion cell community resides. Every story you consciously or subconsciously construct for yourself has the potential to become your reality. This is a vital point to constantly keep in mind in order to impact and elevate your life experience.

With time, a feedback loop is established. These cells store your memories, occasionally echoing fragments of them back to your consciousness. Continuously, day and night, they transmit signals to your mind. This ongoing communication spawns new thoughts, thus more emotions that trigger fresh electrochemical responses. You therefore inadvertently condition yourself and your body to a mental and emotional cycle from where your thoughts initially originated. Ninety-eight percent of physical and psychological health issues stem from this intricate interplay.

Your consciousness transcends the mere sum of your bodily parts. The intricate electrochemical processes within your body create the conditions for your conscious self-awareness. Rather than subscribing to the illusion that science presents, consider an alternative perspective. You are an expansive energy field of consciousness, harmoniously aligned with a colony of 50 trillion cells that graciously host you on your earthly journey.

Your Network

Your mind extends beyond the confines of your physical brain. While science posits that consciousness arises from the neurons within the human brain, this notion is as speculative as the belief in a divine being. It lacks empirical evidence and remains a theory derived from deductive reasoning. Throughout its existence, science has endeavored to validate the idea that consciousness is a product of the body's material substance.

As discussed previously, our thoughts manifest as biological electrochemical signals that course throughout our entire body. These signals are not solely confined to the neurons in our brain; rather, they extend to other neural networks distributed throughout our body. While the majority of the body's approximately 100 billion neurons reside in the brain, significant numbers are also present in other regions such as the gut (500 million), spinal column (69 million), and heart (40,000).

The array of responses you encounter, whether in the form of thoughts, emotions, or feelings, is profoundly influenced by your neural activity. Your whole body is engaged in the field of “mind.” Many of us rely on "gut feelings" when making decisions, recognizing an intuitive sense that often proves accurate. Yet, we often find ourselves overthinking situations, attempting to analyze past experiences and predict future outcomes instead of trusting our intuition. Similarly, we may err by prioritizing logical reasoning over heartfelt responses, leading to poor decisions or unnecessary conflicts. Where is your mind really? Are you the logical brain? The creative brain? The heartfelt person or the one going with your gut? With all these “minds” who is the real you and where do you choose to align?

When watching a school of fish or a flock of birds moving seamlessly in tight formation, one is observing a phenomenon that continues to perplex most scientists regarding the intricate interactions between individuals. The rapid movements of these creatures occur at speeds surpassing the transmission of electrochemical signals necessary for reflexive muscle action, suggesting an alternative mode of communication among them. This hints at the existence of a collective consciousness—a shared energetic field of mind—wherein their focused intensity and entranced state within the school or flock are amplified and linked to a communal mindset. Such phenomena are species-specific, and humans too reside within their own collective mental realm. This concept, also referred to as morphic resonance, is currently under investigation by biologists exploring the notion of an unconscious awareness shared among humanity on a global scale. This collective unconscious, like one's subconscious, exerts influences on one’s mind that contributes to your reactions to life’s challenges.

It's a far more enriching perspective to view your consciousness as interacting with your body, rather than emerging solely from it. This viewpoint considers consciousness as a form of energy intricately linked to the frequency of your body. By solely adhering to the scientific belief that consciousness arises from matter, one is taking a leap of faith into magic. And if one is going to be taking a leap of faith into magic, why not take one that has a far more exciting and interesting storyline? That consciousness may very well be fundamental, in which case your material world is a perception in which to experience, learn and grow. That you are an energy field that some call “soul” having a material experience, rather than a material being trying to find a soulful life.

Your Microbiome

Are you even human? Your body contains about 100 trillion cells. The 50 trillion mentioned above that are human cells is an estimate that ranges between 30-50 trillion. The other 50-70 trillion cells that are inside of your body are not even human. They include bacteria, fungi, and much more, and they are collectively known as the microbiota. The most amazing thing about this symbiotic relationship that you have with this vast community of bacterial and fungal cells, is that you cannot survive without them. This collaboration of human, fungal, and bacterial cells harmonized long before human consciousness arrived on the scene. Some may find this disgusting, but if you are to truly get to know who you really are, you absolutely need to have everything in context. Without this perspective, embarking on a journey to discover your authentic self would be incomplete.

Everything from the type of food you consume to the environment you inhabit, the level of physical activity you engage in, and even the substances you ingest or expose yourself to—all of these factors directly influence this intricate ecosystem. Your microbiota, in turn, plays a pivotal role in shaping your overall life experience, influencing aspects such as mood, energy levels, and mental clarity. This illustrates both the consequences of your actions and the complex nature of what you really are: an energy field of consciousness interacting with the earthly realm.

Your Mind

Exploring the inner workings of your mind-body connection delves into the origins of your thoughts and reactions. Where do your thoughts originate? What prompts your reactions? To what extent are your bodily responses driven by your conscious self, and how much stems from your body's innate drive for survival?

At its core, your body is hardwired for survival. This fundamental drive encompasses not only the need to sustain itself but also to perpetuate its genetic lineage through procreation. To ensure its survival and continuation, your body is equipped with an army of chemical signals that it readily sends to your mind, influencing your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Many of your desires and impulses can be traced back to this primal urge for survivability. Key among these are the basic instincts for food, sex, and comfort. These desires are deeply rooted in your body's evolutionary history, serving as essential mechanisms for the perpetuation of life and the propagation of genetic material.

The human brain comprises three distinct layers, each reflecting different stages of evolutionary development. At the most primitive level lies the reptilian brain, represented by your brainstem, responsible for basic survival functions. Next in line is your mammalian brain, the cerebral neocortex, which governs your emotions and instinctual responses, such as fight or flight reactions. Finally, the pinnacle of human brain evolution are your frontal lobes, responsible for your higher-order thinking, reasoning, and decision-making.

The human part of the brain is not instinctual like the reptilian and mammalian brain sections, and it requires learning in order to function. Each of us is limited to what we have observed and learned from others in our past. When you are faced with a difficult situation, which of these parts of your brain are driving your response? All of them, and at the same time. Your brain's default control network attempts to integrate and filter these various responses, influencing your overall reaction. Since your default control network is part of the human brain, it means that it is mostly operating on programming that you received from other people. Parents, peers, and community all shape how your brain functions, which means that you are living out someone else’s belief system and incorporating it as your own. Many people do not take control and live only as they were programmed.

Our brains are divided into left and right hemispheres, and each side has a different personality profile. The two sides are connected but filter through the default control network, and they create a battle over how you might respond to any given situation. You are literally “of two minds” when it comes to all decision making. Your creative and intuitive half, often the right hemisphere, would tend toward an intuitive and instinctual response. The dominant side, typically the left hemisphere for most individuals, controls speech and tends to acquire the most attention since most people think in words. You may “feel” one way, but then “talk yourself into” the opposite decision as your two lobes send conflicting responses. Every thought that you have is influenced by the desires of your reptilian brain, instincts from your mammalian brain, and two different reflective thoughts each from left and right sides of your human cerebrum, all at the same time.

Your Clan: Genes, Epigenetics, and The Collective Unconscious

You are not merely a product of mechanistic hardware and software, as conventional medical and scientific understanding might suggest. Following the completion of the human genome project, researchers anticipated uncovering around 120,000 genes encoded within human DNA to account for the number of combinations of genetic traits. Surprisingly, they found only 25,000 genes, a number comparable to that of mice and roundworms. This discovery shows that both your physical attributes and personality traits are only moderately influenced by genetic coding. The majority of your characteristics stem from environmental stimuli, which activate a series of genetic response strings. Your self-perception is crucial. Genes are activated and deactivated in various sequences based on your mind-body's response to various inputs, both macro and micro. Your mind possesses the remarkable ability to alter these sequences in ways that might seem magical, particularly from a personal perspective. You might start to think of this from that magical perspective, for that is the only way to fully activate and engage with it.

Your personal hero’s journey starts out at the age of six. This is when the core of the belief programming is active within your mind-body configuration. This includes your family, peers, teachers, and community beliefs and inputs. It also includes the genetic triggering happening at conception and gestation, as well as the epigenetics passed along to you by all the generations that came before you.

It begins with epigenetics, the intricate programming of memory carried through inherited genetic imprints. Scientific studies have demonstrated that descendants of Holocaust survivors bear genetic markers reflective of the trauma endured by their ancestors, almost as if they themselves had lived through those events. Consequently, every unresolved personal issue of your direct ancestors is etched within your body's biological makeup. This includes your parents, grandparents, and up the chain until you get just five generations back amounting to a full 62 direct ascendents of yours whose unresolved psychological "baggage" resides within your DNA.

Genes, like cells, are dynamically regulated by the environment they inhabit within the mind-body ecosystem. Each thought triggers an emotion, and every emotion sets off a cascade of body chemistry that envelops your cells, influencing the activation and deactivation of various genetic mechanisms encoded within DNA. During the days leading up to and including the moment of conception, the collective mindset of your parents impacts which genes are activated or suppressed as they merge to form your genetic blueprint. Throughout the nine months of gestation, your development in the womb is further shaped by the mental and physical well-being of your mother. Her experiences during this crucial period transmit a spectrum of emotional and personality traits, as genes are modulated into unique on-off configurations in response to the perceived environment awaiting your birth.

Your Parts: Shadow Self and Subconscious

All of the above is to explain that you are a complex amalgamation of memories, experiences, thoughts, and emotions that originate from various parts of your body. You are consciously aware of feelings and sensations but lack clarity on their origins or significance.

For instance, you might walk into a room and suddenly feel flushed and uncomfortable. Unknown to your conscious mind, your body's cellular memory may be reacting to a past experience or trigger, causing physiological responses such as increased heart rate and expanded capillaries, resulting in a flushed state. This example illustrates how your body's subconscious processes can influence your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations long before you consciously recognize them. In fact, such occurrences are happening constantly, every millisecond of your life. When these processes operate beneath the threshold of conscious awareness, they are deemed subconscious. The subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than your conscious mind. While you may perceive yourself as exercising free will through conscious thought, the reality is that only a small fraction—approximately 5%—of your mental processes are under conscious control. The remaining 95% of your preferences, desires, concerns, and decision-making are driven by the subconscious mind, influenced by all of the irrational life events that shaped it.

Much of what we do for survival happens subconsciously—breathing, blood circulation, digestion, and more. Our physical and intellectual responses to various stimuli mostly operate on a subconscious level. Consider when something flies at your head and your hand instinctively rises to protect you, milliseconds before conscious awareness kicks in. Our bodies function and respond without needing our conscious direction. While we often perceive ourselves as in control, we're more like passengers with significant influence. Throughout the day, we rely on patterned responses for tasks like driving, school, work, chores, and exercise, operating on semi-autopilot. This streamlined functioning conserves energy and enhances performance. However, it's crucial to recognize that we're not always as engaged or in charge as we believe. Much of our behavior is driven by subconscious programming, shaped by external influences rather than conscious intention.

Developing an intentional belief system is one important key. Equally important is unraveling the layers of subconscious programming that shape our behaviors and perceptions today. This programming begins in infancy, as we absorb and internalize our parents' responses to our actions. It continues to evolve as we navigate school, interacting with teachers and peers whose feedback shapes our self-image. Every interaction leaves an imprint—whether we are praised, criticized, ridiculed, or validated. These experiences, coupled with the dynamics of our familial relationships, shape our coping mechanisms and behavioral patterns.

Your shadow is the place where you put all of these things, and for most of us we have anywhere from 30-50 substantial unresolved challenges parked there. Some are huge and extreme, and most are just habitual behaviors that need to be forgiven and unlearned. Operating beneath conscious awareness, your subconscious dictates many of your responses, rendering you unaware of their origins. This is your shadow. It builds over a lifetime, but mostly during the first 30-40 years of life. The shadow stays with you your entire life until you shine a light on each bit. Each bit that remains unaddressed grows and morphs over time until it controls one’s life.

All of the various sources within the body that generate thoughts, feelings, and emotions—such as cellular memory, heart or gut neurons, and different brain regions—create internal factions within us. One part of us may lean towards action A, while another part favors action B. These parts are an important path into our own personal psyche, and they provide a means for finding your authentic self. Each one of us has at our core an authentic self: a part of us that is indestructible, grounded, unconditionally loving, sensible, trustworthy, and full of deep meaning. It is heavily covered under deep layers of whatever life has been throwing at you over time.

The only way to live from the perspective of the authentic self is to take off each layer, one at a time with loving and kind intention. The lighter you get, the higher you become. Living your life close to your authentic self in the higher state of emotions is the same high that one experiences when using their substance of choice (alcohol, food, drug, sex, thrill-seeking, excitement, shopping). The substance is having the effect of disassociating you from your shadow and your lower survival-self emotions. This is temporary and fleeting and always carries side effects. When you align with your authentic self and learn to drop associations with survival emotions, you are able to live in a higher state of mind. A high that is sustainable, lasting, meaningful, and aligned with the higher state of emotions, such as compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, hope, optimism, and peace.

You

Your body undergoes cell replacements approximately every seven years, meaning that over a lifespan of ninety years, you experience nearly thirteen cycles of near full body replacement. Despite this physical turnover, the field of your consciousness remains consistent. Your consciousness is not confined within your physical form, and science is unable to prove that it is. There is no harm in taking a broader view of what you are. In fact, taking an alternate view is liberating! You are the passenger in your body, riding around absorbing all of the sensory experiences that the world has to offer while you are on this voyage.

Science has demonstrated that at the atomic level, we are essentially pure energy moving at a speed slowly enough for us to experience things at a certain rate that we call time. Each atom contains 99.99% space, revealing that our physical bodies, despite their apparent solidity, are predominantly emptiness with an illusion of density. As we are already living in an illusory world, there is no harm in taking charge of your perception and modifying it in a way that allows for a much more expansive view.

You are not born a blank slate awaiting knowledge and growth; rather, you are a continuation, woven from the threads of souls preceding you, facing a series of challenges meant for you to confront, overcome, survive, and thrive. Recognizing this reality is the first step. Opening up to the idea that this journey unfolds within the intricate framework of your mind and body is the second step. Blame nobody and blame nothing and consider that you are here for a purpose is the third step. Accepting the challenge and summoning the immense effort and courage necessary to overcome your unique life’s difficulties is the fourth step.

Walking through your life journey and traversing the abyss that each one of us faces in our own specific and unique way is the main purpose of a human life. This must be followed by a collection of practices, habits, and new belief systems that become essential for maintaining a sustained connection with one's authentic self. Alignment with your authentic self and compassion with your survival self will increase and enhance your personal life experiences with ever-increasing meaning. There is no limit to the various levels that one can achieve in this part of the journey.