T. Sebastian's Blog: Tame Your Lizard Brain (Goodreads)

Fear is the tool that your Lizard Brain uses to keep you from encountering anything that could disrupt your already unstable sense of self. (T Sebastian)

For this whole dualistic thing to work, it’s important that everyone doesn’t just go wandering off, that they stay onstage and play their role. Fear is the glue that holds the whole thing together and keeps everyone in character… (J Mckenna – Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment)

To look closely at our fear is a direct doorway into self transformation. It leads to the dismanteling of the origins of fear. These reactions that seem to define us do nothing of the sort when we see through them. Then they become the catalyst of a radical leap to a more mature emotional state, which is: The Emotionally Mature Adult Human. (T Sebastian)

To become an adult human is like being born anew into an unimaginalbly different world and having to figure out where you are and how everything works. (J M)

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Jesus said, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.” (Yeshua, Gospel of Thomas)

So, how do we do this? We sit quietly with our fear. We breathe deeply into it. We open up our hearts to feel and pique our curiosity about how this could be. We ask this “arising” questions. We enquire into it’s origins. We thoughtfully and heartfully embrace with empathy that part of us that learned fear so long ago. Over and over til it is “healed”. (T Sebastian)

Guesthouse – (Rumi)

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Discover The Tools and Develop Your Skills For Self Actualization and Wholeness
This Book Is For You If You Want To…

End Your Lizard Brain’s Resistance: Acquire the keys to free up your creativity and manifest your unique artistic contribution. Avoid the pain of not living your vision or dream.
Develop Your Emotional IQ: What is EQ? After following these catalyzing sessions, you won’t need a definition because you’ll have emotional intelligence.
Overcome Robotic Reactivity or End the Effects Of Trauma: Many people suffer from all types and intensities of post traumatic stress or PTSD.  Everyone has childhood trauma to be integrated. Learn how to remove your reactive buttons and triggers.
Speed Up Your Spiritual Evolution: Spiritual seekers often encounter what’s called spiritual blocks. You can get stuck on the path of transformation. Build the skills to remove your blocks to growth.
Master Negative Emotions: Painful and unhappy feelings like fears, anger, frustration, loneliness or sadness keep us from living the creative, empowered and joyful lives we’ve envisioned. Discover the power to resolve these issues.
Integrate Your Shadow: The “dark side” has become a popular meme in recent years. Spiritual teachers and Transpersonal Psychologists are declaring how important it is to integrate your shadow for self development and the journey to wholeness. Develop your skill and lay the foundation to execute your unique journey to wholeness.

My struggle and Why This Guide?

Perhaps, like me, you’ve been searching for an inner healing for many years. Most of us are. You may have tried some metaphysical healing or emotional healing or spiritual healing methods. I tried all kinds of methods including energy healing, emotional freedom techniques, healing meditation, Eastern & Western religion and mysticism etc. I delved deeply into trauma therapy as well, and metaphysics.

What drove me was a strong drive for self development leading to spiritual growth. I also wanted to remove some of the unwanted negative emotions I experienced. Something told me it was possible to undo limiting aspects of my personality.

Some of the methods I researched gave me helpful gains, but I found the price of therapy is steep. On the other hand it is difficult to make real progress without an accomplished guide. It wasn’t my style to follow a guru either. After experiencing several different types of inner healing modalities and many years of study and practice, I found the most effective solution for me was a form of self healing that I call, generically, emotional integration. Fortunately, I found foundational keys that opened the doors for me.

To find these keys, I worked diligently for thirty years. Eventually by much trial and error, I developed the catalyzing sessions you’ll find in this self healing guide. Practicing them on a daily basis has given me the freedom, inner peace and self knowledge that I sought for so long. Most importantly, I gained the skills to create inner peace, clarity and well being for the rest of my life. The benefits I’ve seen are tremendous.

I boiled down much of what I discovered into the basic skills you’ll learn in this book. It’s designed to catalyze your integration process and give you the skills to direct your own inner healing journey.

Why this book? I’m not a guru, but I enjoy teaching and helping others. My natural response was to write this book.

So, why is the price so low if all this is included? Simple, my life vision is to bring sanity and wholeness to as many people as possible. I believe this is a birthright of every human and I want to provide the means for everyone to be able to access it.

This Guide Comes With Bonuses: A free membership site for those who want to interact directly with me, and Get your questions answered. When you join, you get a free audio that guides you through the catalyzing sessions.

For more details scroll up and click the “Look Inside” cover image.

Sincerely, T Sebastian

“Integration and Your Lizard Brain - Self Directed Integration Techniques” is a new book by T Sebastian that is nearing completion. The only thing missing is your comments, opinions and ideas! Please join us at the site where we are collaborating on the final phases of the book. For your participation you get a free copy of the book, direct interaction with the author and powerful techniques to rapidly and radically change your life for the better. Please let us know your experiences with these Integration Techniques. Become more emotionally mature, awake and aware, integrated and feel more whole.

On October 13-14 If You Have Buttons… You’re A Robot will be offered for free download on Amazon. Here’s the link: Tame Your Lizard Brain Ebook

 

A lot of the “self help” you run into in your search for stability, authenticity or inner peace amounts to a sort of treadmill. We find ourselves jumping from one treadmill to another, over and over again. New diet, new mate, new exercise program, new motivational / self image / spiritual seminar / audio / book… ad infinitum. It’s a universal quest to feel better than we do now.

I did that for a long time. Then I realized I was getting nowhere no matter what the treadmill looked like. After which I realized that real change / transformation / healing is more like swimming in the ocean where the waves and swells and currents are pulling at you and tossing you about. .. with one other thing: You have to be able to be OK with it.

OK with what? Wondering if you really are going anywhere, but not letting that throw you. Allowing the massive forces to push and pull you without really resisting, but still moving on. Being more devoted to discovering what is real or true than you are to avoiding what hurts. In fact the only thing that really works is moving toward and processing everything that hurts / upsets / irritates you. This amounts to emotional integration.

Get off the treadmill and jump into the ocean of deep feeling awareness.

 

In recent months there’s been a slew of articles born out of studies designed to discern the differences between the liberal and conservative brain. The studies do shed some light on the situation and the conflict we find ourselves in. On the other hand, the studies don’t seem to be able to define a causal factor. In other words, it’s a kind of “chicken and egg” question. Which came first? The differences in the brains, or the differences in values?

 

My point is this: Jumping to conclusions about the results of scientific studies is both unscientific and unhelpful. Unfortunately there’s been quite a bit of that by those eager to warp reality to support their groups validity (or ascendency). If the shoe fits…

 

The question about the causes of brain differences arises out of the fact that recent discoveries have also concluded that our brains have Neuroplasticity. Wikipedia citing several sources states: (emphasis mine)

 

Neuroplasticity (from neural – pertaining to the nerves and/or brain and plastic – moldable or changeable in structure) refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses which are due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury.[1] Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held position that the brain is a physiologically static organ, and explores how – and in which ways – the brain changes throughout life.[2]

 

So, the idea that “I was born this way, so I cannot change”, is hereby debunked. This understanding should at least cause us to hesitate before we point the finger at another group and their values claiming there’s something “wrong” with them. Environment and repeated behaviors are largely responsible for how our brains have formed (so far).

 

About the brain difference studies an article by ABC News Sept 13 states:

 

“Conservatives and liberals may have one less thing in common: neurology… ProCon.org  has gathered 13 peer-reviewed studiesof behavioral and neurological studies and come to the conclusion that differences between Republicans and Democrats are more than skin-deep.The studies looked at things like differences between groups’ perception of eye movement, and aversion to threatening noises.  Researchers also noted that Democrats had larger anterior cingulate cortexes, which are associated with tolerance to uncertainty, while Republicans had larger right amygdalas, which are associated with sensitivity to fear. …Although Markoff concluded the studies combine to mean that the different groups communicate in different ways, psychiatrist Greg Appelbaum said the studies point toward conservatives’ tendency to avoid something called self-harm, while liberals avoid collective group harm.”

 

So far the conclusions we can get from this information is:

 

There are differences in brain structure that result in a difference of emphasis on values.
Brain structure is not inherent, but attributable to environmental and behavior patterns.

 

However, groups on one side or the other are quick to use information like this to fuel the fires of conflict with more “factual” information which “obviously” makes the opposing group wrong or bad. From other studies focused on human development and social psychology we can gain even more insight.

 

We belong to groups because we are social animals. Whether that group is political, economic or religious or other, we have a tendency to adopt the beliefs of groups we associate with the most. How we behave in our social context actually has an affect on our survival possibilities. This is where the lizard brain comes into the picture. The lizard brain will engage to protect identity if it’s group or personal. Right now we see groups like the right and left wing political ideologists stratified. There is a constant barrage of finger pointing and blame in order to paint the other as less than or worse than.

 

This tells me that these groups feel threatened. The status of their thought system and the importance of their value structure is being eroded within the larger context of a pluralistic society. So they fight. It’s a fight about survival of identity. If the fight was about the issues, and the resolution of actual social problems, they would not be surrendering their frontal lobes to reactive and irrational arguments and behaviors.

 

Calls for bipartisanship and “working together” to solve problems will fall on lizard brain deafened ears until a widespread realization occurs. That realization would be: It is in our best interest to solve the paramount problems facing our society. The greater threat to our group or any group, is to let our common problems go unsolved. 

 

More specifically everyone involved would need to take more responsibility to engage in some self reflection to see where they are stubbornly protecting their values over others. Remember, we are humans first, then male or female,  American, ethnic, religious, political, economic and other groups have their importance or place in the heirarchy and spectrum of human expression. Ultimately we actually need each other. Not only to define ourselves, but to survive and thrive.

 

Related articles

Lizard vs Modern Brain & Ancient Dilemmas
MSNBC’s The Cycle with Jonathan Haidt – awesome
Lizard Brain Convention, Coverage

Seth Godin’s post: “The Problem With Reassurance“, brings up an important issue.

English: American entrepreneur, author and public speaker Seth Godin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The resistant impulse is seeking to “protect” you when it is inapropriate or uneccesary. This is felt as some sort of urge or compulsion to take an action. The actions would be some sort of placating or avoidance or a convenient distraction. Whatever will “help” you avoid the unpleasant feelings arising. The big problem is: when we listen to LB and obey it, it reinforces that neuro-pathway and makes that behavior even more of a habit.

Not listening and not obeying may make your LB scream as Seth mentions. This is a viable path to quieting these impulsive demands from your lizard brain. However, it may not be convenient or socially acceptable to have your reaction displayed in the situation you find yourself. For these types of strong negative reactions we recommend using a preemtive process. By taking some time to discover and work with your lizard brain reactions and resistances before you enter a situation that threatens to overwhelm you, it puts you a couple steps ahead of the game. You can find out about these types of processes in our new book: If You Have Buttons… You’re A Robot – A Concise Guide to Tame Your Lizard Brain.

The end result is a much faster resolution to your specific issue.

Related articles

Quiet Your Lizard Brain

The Cycle, a new show on MSNBC featured a guest that deserves your attention. Jonathan Haidt is someone I have been following for 2 years now. He is a “moral psychologist”. His focus is on how we split into groups and the moral values behind the groupishness. In this video he talks about the moral values that divide the right wing / left wing politcs and why it’s wider than in the past.

Understanding the motivations behind those you oppose or agree with can insulate you from lizard brain reactivity. In other words, awareness of causes brings about a gap in which we can let our thinking brain have the reigns of our thoughts and feelings.

 

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This is a concise guide to taming your lizard brain just as Seth Godin suggests. We show you how. Not burdened down with a lot of theory and fluff, this guide walks you through 6 ‘shifts’. Step by step. These shifts are designed to cleanse your doors of perception, as well as release you from any traumatic residue or programming from your past.

The steps are a series of exercises designed to awaken the natural process of human development or personal evolution. Your brain has neuroplasticity which allows you to create new neuropathways as well as erase the old ones that give you so much trouble.

Further research, study and exercises can be found on the website of Tame Your Lizard Brain. You can also join a private forum / community where you can ask your deeply personal questions in written form or during live regular Q&A sessions. The privacy ensures a safe and anonymous environment to facilitate rapid resolution of your personal issues. Please join us.

The principles and tools in this book will give you the power to change. Stop waiting for something or someone to rescue you and use this power to rescue your own life.