S2 EP72 – Coming into Your Right Mind – The Inner Bonding Podcast

Transcript

My friend, neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who had a major stroke when she was 37 from a congenital defect in her left brain which took her 8 years to heal, and which she wrote about in “My Stroke of Insight” and who’s TED talk is the most watched of all TED talks with 26 million views, told me that the Inner Bonding process that Dr. Erika and I created 36 years ago has now been scientifically validated. Of course, I was delighted to hear this! What she meant refers to the work on the brain she has done once she recovered from the stroke and which she wrote about in her recent book, “Whole Brain Living.”

What she discovered is what she calls the four characters – our upper left brain, our lower left brain, our lower right brain, and our upper right brain. In Inner Bonding terms, our lower left brain is our wounded self, our lower right brain is our inner child, our upper left brain is the aspect that acquires information and takes action in the world – the external aspect – what we call in Inner Bonding the father aspect of the loving adult – the part that takes loving action guided by our higher guidance, and our upper right brain is the nurturing loving adult who connects us with our spiritual guidance – accessing truth and loving action.

The problem in our society is that we have not cultivated our right brain and have over-cultivated our left brain. When the left brain is in charge, without the spiritually-connected right brain, it can wreak havoc in the world, because, when the left brain operates on it’s own rather than in service to the right brain, it operates from fear rather than from love, from greed rather than caring, from separation rather than oneness, from control rather than openness to learning.

Coming into your right mind means developing your spiritually-connected loving adult capable of connecting with your higher source of love and wisdom, and then taking loving actions guided by spirit rather than by the fear of the wounded self – the fear housed in the lower left brain. The loving adult comprises both the left and right upper brain, but without the right brain being guided by spirit, the left brain, on it’s own, cannot function as a loving adult in the world.

It’s obvious by what’s happening on our planet that it’s time to cultivate our spiritually-connected right brain. It’s time to learn to operate from our right mind. The problems on our planet will not be solved without our connection with our higher source of love, compassion, and wisdom.

I’m delighted that Dr. Jill has scientifically validated the power of Inner Bonding!

So what might be in the way of developing your right brain spiritually connected loving adult, and how important is it to you to become a loving adult?

Napoleon Hill said that “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” 

How strong is your desire to be a loving adult?

This is an important question to ask yourself. Do you have a strong, keen ‘pulsating desire’ to be a consistent loving adult, that transcends everything? Or are there things that are far more important to you? It’s time to be honest – what is REALLY important to you – more important than evolving in your ability to love?

I’m going to list some statements that may actually be more important to you than developing your right brain loving adult and evolving in your ability to love yourself and others. Go inside and honestly see if any of these statements fit for you, and please listen without judgments! If you judge yourself, you won’t be able to be honest with yourself.

What more important to you than learning to be a loving adult? Is it more important to you to:

• Be loved than to be loving? 
• To avoid the pain of rejection or engulfment?
• To have your way in terms of controlling others and outcomes?
• To not be controlled?
• To avoid being duped or taken advantage of?
• To avoid having your feelings hurt?
• To avoid mistakes and failure, embarrassment and humiliation?
• To avoid the pain of loneliness, heartbreak, grief and helplessness over others, situations, and outcomes?
• To make a lot of money, even if others get hurt in the process?
• To have consistent sex?
• To numb your feelings with various addictions?
• To feel safe?
• To be seen as ‘good’ and ‘nice?’
• To be seen as smart, or not be seen as stupid?
• To be seen as physically attractive?
• To avoid being seen as weak?
• To avoid anger and judgment?
• To avoid conflict?
• To be right or at least not be seen as wrong?
• To avoid being alone?

If you found some that you relate to, take a moment to reflect on why these things are more important to you than being a loving adult in your right mind. What is ACTUALLY most important to you?

If you have been struggling with learning to be a loving adult, it is likely that one or more agendas are in the way. If these agendas are unconscious for you, then they can easily get in the way of being a compassionate loving adult with yourself and others.

The challenge in becoming aware of what is more important to you than being a loving adult is to take off all judgment of these agendas so you can understand and eventually release these agendas.

You might have the hope and the wish to be in your right mind as a loving adult, but it is only when your desire is deep and profound that you can move beyond these agendas of the wounded self.

Many of the people who consult with me believe that the most important thing to them is being loving. But for most of them, the deep desire isn’t there – and this desire is what is necessary to do the level of inner work required to be a consistent loving adult.

For me, the thing that brought me the profound desire was my deep soul knowing that my reason for being on the planet is to evolve in my ability to love – which has to start with loving me – and to fully manifest my essence on the planet. To me, everything else pales in importance.

The wounded self generally resists shifting into your right brain, higher, spiritually connected loving adult because then you are giving over control to your spiritual guidance and the wounded self loses the illusion of control that it believes it has. So if you find yourself resisting opening to learning with your feelings – which is your inner child in your lower right brain, and with your guidance, look to why it’s more important to you to try to control than to love.

The challenge for many people is how to shift out of your lower left brain – your left amygdala, which as I said is the home of the wounded self, and into your spiritually connected right brain loving adult.

Have you ever had the experience of going along fine, feeling peaceful inside – and then something happens that triggers you into your anxiety, anger, stress, hurt, fear, depression and so on? Of course, it seems like it is the external event that triggered you, like someone yelling at you or blaming you, or issues with money or children or work, or rejection, engulfment or other control issues. Suddenly, instead of happily flowing along in your open-hearted loving adult, your heart is closed and you are stuck in the peanut-size part of your left brain that is the home of the wounded self.

The stress in your body is triggering thoughts that are creating even more stress, and you feel stuck in your anxiety or other painful feelings.

How can you consciously move from your close-hearted wounded self, back into the peace and open heart of your right brain, right mind loving adult?

The most important choice you can make, once you are aware of your stressful feelings, is to decide that you really want to learn about what you are telling yourself, what you are believing, or what you are doing or not doing that is causing the stress. When you open to learning, you activate your higher right brain, which is the place within you that wants responsibility for your feelings.

Along with opening to learning about loving yourself, there are many other choices you can make that will help you move out of your lower left brain wounded self. But while all these choices can help you to feel better and move into your right brain loving adult, you will not learn anything new unless you also have the intent to learn.

One of the things you can do is to get present in this moment. The left brain wounded self is programmed to focus on the past or future – taking past experiences and projecting them on to the future, so one of the first things you can do is focus on the present moment. If there is a lot of stress in your body, doing the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or doing some strenuous exercise such as running, can help move the stress out of your body and get you present in the moment. Other activities that may help you get present are things like deep breathing, gardening, being in nature, prayer and meditation, playing with a pet, listening to music, or even mundane activities like doing the dishes or cleaning the house.

For some people, doing a creative activity, such as art, writing, singing, or playing a musical instrument, can move you into your right mind loving adult state.

Asking someone for help – someone who can really listen to you so that you can sort things out – may help, too, as long as you really want the help rather than wanting someone to change or to fix things for you. Also, stepping out of your own problems and reaching out to help someone else will almost always get you open-hearted and present in the moment.

Once you feel open and present in the moment, do the Six Steps of Inner Bonding. Too often, once people feel better, they forget to do the learning that they need to do so that they don’t keep getting triggered into their lower left brain wounded self. Once you are calmer, utilize the situation that just occurred to explore what you were telling yourself or how you were treating yourself in response to the external event that triggered your stressful feelings.

You will find that the more you practice Inner Bonding every time you are triggered into your wounded self, the less you will get triggered by external events.

It is especially important right now with all the turmoil on our planet, such as the pandemic, global warming and the huge weather challenges, the systemic racism that is finally becoming very apparent, as well as sexism, the gun violence, food and economic insecurity, degenerative diseases and so many other issues – to learn to put our higher right brain in charge. We need to operate from love and truth, not from the fear and lies of the lower left brain. 

There is no better time than now to learn how to manage this challenging time as a loving adult. There is no better time than now to practice Inner Bonding in numerous areas of your life, such as physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Taking physical, emotional and spiritual responsibility means being very kind and gentle with yourself. It’s very important not to allow your lower left brain wounded self to scare you, because our main line of defense against COVID and other illnesses is our immune system, and stress erodes the immune system.

Start by acknowledging to yourself that this is a very challenging time. Imagine that your intention is to soothe a scared child, rather than further scaring the child. This is the time to stay open to your right mind higher guidance and bring comfort and compassion to your inner child, especially if you feel anxious. 

If you stay connected with your higher self, you can be guided regarding what is in your highest good. I’m reminded of one of my favorite books, “Man’s Search For Meaning,” by Dr. Viktor Frankl, who was able to stay alive in a concentration camp by listening to his inner knowing. This is a very important time to listen to your inner and higher knowing regarding what is safe and right for you and what isn’t.

Taking physical responsibility is so important right now, which right now means doing all you can for your immune system to stay healthy. 

Try to spend time outdoors. Nature and sunshine have healing qualities that can support your health.

A strong immune system can fight off viruses, and a major underlying cause of a dysfunctional immune system is the food you eat. If you have been eating fast food, processed food, sugar, and factory-farmed food, please consider trying your best to eat real food – the food your great-great grandparents ate.

Recently I asked some of the young people who help us on our ranch, “Why do you think indigenous people in different parts of the world rarely get cancer, heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune disease, or viruses?” None of them knew the answer.

The answer, of course, is that they continue to eat their traditional diet – food that hasn’t been sprayed with pesticides and grown on devitalized soils, meats that haven’t been contaminated with hormones and anti-biotics, food that has not been altered with GMOs. 

If you really want to understand how to take physical responsibility, I recommend you read, “Food Fix,” by Dr. Mark Hyman.

In this book, you will see that our dysfunctional and contaminated food system is one of the greatest underlying causes of our current planetary problems – including climate change, the economic problems from the overwhelmed health care system, and the huge loss of both plants and animals that have gone extinct due to our food system. In fact, humanity itself could be in danger of becoming extinct if we don’t start to heal our food system.

The good news is that it is possible to improve your immune system, and it doesn’t have to take a long time. Why not start right now? Your gut is the seat of your immune system. Sugar, processed foods, industrial seed oils (such as safflower, sunflower, canola, soy, corn, etc.), processed dairy, and factory-farmed foods erode your immune system. If you keep in mind the way people ate a few of hundred years ago, and eat accordingly, you will be showing up as a loving adult to physically take care of your inner child.

The other great benefit of eating clean organic food is that, along with the intent to learn, it raises your frequency high enough to access your spiritual guidance and learn to operate from your right mind.

In the time I’ve been practicing Inner Bonding, I’ve been delighted to discover the healing power of the right brain loving adult.

Before Inner Bonding, I practiced as a traditional psychotherapist, and I often wondered why true healing seldom occurred. By true healing, I mean that people leave their work with me feeling a deep sense of self-worth and inner safety, with relatively little anxiety and depression, and they know how to manage their pain and they understand how to create a loving relationship. Before Inner Bonding, I didn’t know how to accomplish all this for myself, so of course I couldn’t help others to do it. Yet I was doing all I had learned in school, all I had learned from books, all I had learned from my own extensive psychotherapy, and all I had learned from the many other ways I had sought healing.

What I did not know at the time, although I kind of sensed it, was that true healing could not occur without Spirit. But there was nothing in all my years of schooling that even mentioned or implied this. Not one professor in my master’s program or my doctoral program ever stated that there is no true healing without a spiritual connection and spiritual help. Fortunately, we have an inborn way of accessing this which is our right brain loving adult. Our higher right brain, our right mind, is naturally able to connect with our spiritual guidance. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor discover this when her left brain when offline due to her stroke.  As her right brain took over, her connection to spirit no longer had the limitation of her left brain and she became deeply connected with her higher self. 

When Spirit brought Inner Bonding to Erika and me, we knew that we had to leave the ranks of traditional psychotherapy. We knew that it was a dead end – that without Spirit we would keep going round and round in the wounded self, and the wounded self cannot heal the wounded self.

What heals is love and truth, and love and truth are not accessed from our lower left brain programmed mind, which is what needs healing. 

This is why, when a person diligently practices Inner Bonding, true healing occurs. Just like lifting weights develops muscles, Inner Bonding is the practice that develops the right brain spiritually connected loving adult, as well as the ability of the higher left brain loving adult to take loving action for us in the world. As I said earlier, when the left brain adult is in service to the right brain loving adult, then we are able to take loving action on our behalf and on behalf of others. The more you practice Inner Bonding, the more connected you feel to your personal spiritual guidance, and the more you are guided in taking loving action for yourself and others.

There is NO WAY to discover truth without a spiritual connection, and it is being able to bring through truth that is the beginning of healing the false beliefs of the wounded self. There is no way to discover the beauty of your essence and feel a deep sense of inner worth without Spirit letting you know who you are. There is no way to feel safe unless you know that you are never alone – that you are always being guided toward your highest good. There is no way to stay centered in the face of attack without your right brain loving adult bringing in the strength from Spirit. There is no way to feel the fullness of love in your being without Spirit, for Spirit is love. There is no way to consistently take loving action on your own behalf and on behalf of others without the strength and wisdom that comes through from Spirit and informs your left-brain loving adult.

It is actually arrogant to think that we can heal ourselves, our society, and our planet without Spirit. I’m not talking about the God of the Old Testament – I’m talking about God that is spirit, that is love, and that is always here for us to access and be guided by. 

But, of course, the wounded self is arrogant, believing that it doesn’t need Spirit to be okay. This is one of the major false beliefs of the wounded self.

Many people come to Inner Bonding after trying many different forms of healing that have not worked for them. Even if they have done inner child work, they have not found the healing they have sought, because much inner child work does not include the development of a spiritually connected loving adult, and without this you cannot be acting from your right mind.

The more you practice Inner Bonding, the more you will discover the power of this practice to bring about healing on the deepest level.

You can find many resources for learning how to develop your loving adult and connect with your higher guidance at https://www.innerbonding.com

Learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance with Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience with Dr. Margaret Paul.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”