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Natural Awakenings Atlanta

Mind Creates Reality

Jun 30, 2019 02:00AM ● By Paul Chen
Here’s the short of it: If you have yet to read Dr. Bruce Lipton’s seminal work, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles, I recommend you do so.

To be honest, I was not aware of Lipton or his book until recently, when Unity North reached out about advertising his upcoming Atlanta appearance in August. But after NAA’s managing editor, Diane Eaton, and I watched just one of his many YouTube videos, we decided we needed to interview him. We each bought his book and started reading to prepare for our conversation with the great scientist and humanitarian.

Saying that The Biology of Belief is a big book is a big understatement. While I long ago subscribed to many of Lipton’s central assertions, his genius is in his ability to weave so many threads into a coherent narrative and along the way provide many, many compelling stories and pieces of research in support of his theses. Moreover, although he is a scientist, his writing is breezy and only occasionally challenging.

What is particularly gratifying about the timing of Lipton’s Atlanta appearance, and therefore the timing of our interview with him, is that it strongly reinforces two of our recent editorial efforts. A significant part of Lipton’s narrative explains how biologists ignored advances in physics for decades; instead of applying humankind’s new understanding of reality through the development of quantum physics, the vast majority of scientists studying the human body went on with life as if Einstein and others never lived.

In telling the story about how quantum physics upends mainstream biology, Lipton quickly arrives at energy healing, and in particular, energy psychology: what a wonderful boost to our 12-page special section on energy healing that we published in April. While our work hardly needs validation, it is a welcome addition to our pages to have Lipton speak to his own experience with PSYCH-K, a modality he’s used to reprogram his subconscious, overcome long-held beliefs and reach new heights in his personal and professional lives.

Just last month, we published an article based on Dr. Bonnie McLean’s model of integrative medicine. The piece described eight branches of integrative medicine, which were arrayed in a hierarchical, pyramid form. At the top of the pyramid—the most vital and essential variable in one’s health status—is The Self, or one’s essence or soul. And that’s how Lipton brings his book to a close, with an extended epilogue: “Now that we’re at the end of the book, I’d like to explain how my study of cells turned me into a spiritual person.”

Lipton had never been a spiritual person, and in his book, he doesn’t quite define what that means. So we asked, and he spoke of spiritual essence as nonmaterial—our consciousness that exists as an invisible field of energy. But what he does speak to in the book is the dark side of the division between science and spirituality. “When Science turned away from Spirit, its mission dramatically changed. Instead of trying to understand the ‘natural order’ so that human beings can live in harmony with that order, modern science embarked on a goal of control and domination of nature.”

My takeaway of The Biology of Belief is this: minds create realities. This echoes the first dharma teaching I ever received. The teacher started the class saying, “Happiness is a state of mind. Would you agree?”

I nodded.

“Then, to be happy, all you have to do is change your mind.”

Lipton says something very similar and connects it to health: “You can live a life of fear or live a life of love. You have the choice! But I can tell you that if you choose to see a world full of love, your body will respond by growing in health. If you choose to believe that you live in a dark world full of fear, your body’s health will be compromised as you physiologically close yourself down in a protection response.”

Thank you, Dr. Lipton, for sharing time with us and embodying so much of what Natural Awakenings is all about!



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