Your Emotions Are Not What You Think

[music] Shanto Beay describes only three phrases of this powerful beauty prayer. I use this almost every day of my life at least once in my life because beauty plays such a powerful role in my personal life. You know when we think about beauty we often think of it as this aesthetic. So, we look at something, we piece of art or sculpture, mountains or the trees, we say, "Oh, that's beautiful. I'm looking out the window at the beautiful mountains here in Santa Fe right now. They they are they're beautiful." The Navajo took this one step further. They embraced beauty as a force of nature. Literally, a force of nature. Just the way physicists today describe four fundamental forces. They say gravity is a force of nature. the electromagnetic field. It's a force of nature. The strong and the weak nuclear force. Those are forces of nature. The Navajo agree. And they say, "By the way, there is a fifth force. It is the force of beauty." Now, I'm I'm just going to admit right now, this is I know this is very different to think of beauty as a fundamental force. But I also want you to know that you and I are changed in the presence of beauty. When we perceive beauty, there's a shift in the chemistry of our bodies. That shift sets into motion a cascade of events that create neuroplasticity bioplasticity genetic plasticity, and gives us strength. It gives us power to transcend what we see in our lives. The beauty prayer is designed to do just that. So the abbreviated version, let me give you the three lines. Then we'll break it down in terms of of what each line means. The three lines of the beauty prayer simply state the beauty that I live with. The beauty that I live by. The beauty upon which I base my life. The beauty that I live with. The beauty that I live by. The beauty upon which I base my life. What does that mean? The first statement is so powerful. The beauty I live with, what it says to us is that we do not have to create beauty to experience it. Beauty already exists. Our job is to seek it out. Our job is to find it. Now, it's not saying that everything that happens in the world necessarily is beautiful because honestly, you and I know that's not true. Not everything that happens is beautiful. However, it's saying that somewhere we can find beauty in everything that happens. Let me give you an example of this. And Mother Teresa is the example that always comes to mind for me. I have so much respect uh for Mother Teresa and her mission with the Sisters of Charity uh a hospice organization based originally in Kolkata that would go into the streets of Kolkata before dawn every day and they would find the people that had been cast out by their families because of their disease. They're called untouchables and they were cast out into the streets to die. and Mother Teresa and her sisters of charity, they would find these people. They would pick them up, take them back to the hospice. They would bathe them and dress them in white gowns so they were clean and had dignity in the last moments or hours of their lives. No matter how much longer they were in this world, they were clean and that they had white garments to honor them as they made the transition from this world to the next. What a powerful thing. Well, Mother Teresa would say in those streets of Kolkata, there were filthy streets amongst the filth and the dung, the cowdung and the stench and the garbage and the carcasses of other animals that were out there. She would see a flower growing in in the cowdung and she'd say, "Ah, in that flower I see beauty in the streets of Kolkata." It was already there. She had to allow for its possibility. When we live our lives with the expectation that beauty already exists everywhere, we are changed in the presence of that beauty. That's the first statement. The beauty I live with, the beauty that I live by is the next statement. And it simply is an invitation for us to allow beauty to play a role in our lives beyond being an aesthetic to allow beauty to become a force in our lives. Once again, when we allow for that potential, when we expect beauty somewhere in all things, we begin to see the world very differently. The third statement says that the beauty upon which I base my life. It is the invitation for beauty to become a foundation, a cornerstone, not on the back burner, not something casual that we embrace on occasion, but to recognize that beauty literally is a force in all things. and to allow that force to play a powerful role in our lives. I want to tell you from my own personal experience, when you accept beauty into your life in this way, you are changed. You're changed as a person. I'll I'll just be uh honest. I was in the interest of time, I was not going to share this and and I will. Uh many of you know I worked in the corporations as a scientist. I worked in the universities as a scientist and I left all of that in 1990 to write full-time to travel and to research these ancient traditions and cultures as a scientist. And when I left the corporations, I'd always been in big cities, you know, I'd been in big, beautiful cities that were convenient, close to work. Everything I needed was at my fingertips. And I asked myself when I left, I'm starting a new chapter in my life is what I said. Do I want to wake up every morning surrounded by convenience or do I want to wake up every morning surrounded by beauty? Well, I'd already done the convenience thing. Beauty won out. And this is the reason that I live uh in an inconvenient place in the high deserts of northern New Mexico. An hour from the nearest grocery store, four hours from the the nearest airport, and in one of the most absolutely stunningly beautiful raw magnificent natural environments that I could ever find because it makes my soul sing. It's where I'm at my best. So beauty has always played a powerful role in my life. And for that reason, I'm drawn to the beauty prayer. So this particular patterning of words that the Navajo use when we apply it in our lives there is a technique where we align our heart and our brain together where we become coherent in our bodies and it's in the presence of of that technique where that many of you have heard me share in other other traditions uh other programs I know many of you familiar with with my work the work of the Institute of Heart Math for example a pioneering research organization based in Northern California who who pioneered the techniques that they have allowed me to share with you as an independent author. It's in the presence of heartbrain coherence. When we drop these word codes into our physiology, in the presence of coherence, this is where they are most potent, where they have the deepest effect. And the reason is very very interesting. The reason is because heartbrain coherence opens the door to a direct link with the subconscious mind. It's a hotline. It's like picking up that red telephone on the president's desk and calling another president. It's you picking up your heart phone and calling your subconscious. If you want to bring about meaningful change in the patterns of your life, you've got to access the subconscious mind. Some people have used hypnosis to do that. You can do that, but you don't have to do that. Maybe you're not around anyone that can help you with hypnosis. And you don't need to be because when you create that heartbrain coherence, you open the direct door to the subconscious mind. And when your subconscious begins to perceive the power of beauty differently, you are changed. Your body chemistry changes. Your neurons begin to wire and fire to reflect that perception. Your immune system is enhanced. Your longevity enzymes are awakened. You create more resilience to life. And you increase heart rate variability just from the experience that I'm talking about right now. And this is only one experience of one wisdom code. Okay? And this wisdom code is from the the DNA, the Navajo traditions. the wisdom codes. Once I began to understand this, I began to go back and look and and say, "How many other codes are there from from other traditions and this is the result of what I have now grown to call the wisdom codes collection. It is the collection of the the Sanskrit and the Upupanads and the Hindu and all these different traditions and the wisdom codes that have worked for them in their lifetime. So, I wanted to share this with you today uh because I want you to have this kind of information. I want you to have this to apply in your life. You have everything you need right now. If you never see me again, you have a very powerful wisdom code based upon the beauty prayer of the ancient DNA people. The technique that I'm going to share with you, it's really exciting. It all begins in 1991 with a discovery that surprised the medical community, surprised the scientific community, and it's the foundation of what sets you apart from all other forms of life in the world today. 1991, there was the discovery of about 40,000 specialized cells in the human heart. Now, they'd always been there. Obviously, they were simply recognized in 1991. They're called sensory neurites. They're essentially brainlike cells, but they're not in the brain. They're in the heart. And they function in the heart very similar to the way that these neurons function in the brain itself. Now, on your screen, what you're seeing right now, two things. I want you to see on the right hand side of your screen, you're actually looking at the neurons. This is what they look like. And and I put these here because I want you to see that this is real. This isn't a metaphor. It's not makebelieve. It's not, you know, new thought thinking. This is rock solid science that simply is not being shared in the mainstream. You're not going to see this in mainstream classrooms, textbooks, mainstream documentaries because it takes time for the discoveries to trickle down into the mainstream. Yet, we can use these discoveries right now in our lives for the reasons that we're talking about now to help empower us. The better you know yourself, the better equipped you are to deal with change in your life. And this this is a key component of empowering yourself in the change. Now on the left side of your screen is a schematic diagram of the human heart. And if you look closely, all those little light dots that you see, the light colored dots, those are the sensory murites. Look at where they're located. They're located all around the places where the blood enters into the heart and where the blood leaves the heart. The arteries and the valves all are regulated. I'm using that word intentionally. I'm not saying they're controlled. I'm saying they are regulated through these neurons, these sensory neurites. Well, this is where it gets really interesting because these neurons, as all other neurons, respond to you. They respond to your perceptions and the way you feel about your relationship to the world. Do you feel safe? Do you feel threatened? Do you feel fear? Do you feel a sense of well-being? The answer to that determines the signal that you send to these neurons. And that signal is going to determine how the blood is leaving your heart and entering your heart. But you already know this. You know this intuitively. If someone tells you information that is shocking to you, you might feel that sense of lightadedness, maybe a little bit dizzy. And the reason is because you have perceived information that you didn't know about. that may have a shocking consequence, maybe the loss of a loved one. Your neurons are going to shut down or open up the blood flow to your heart. It's shocking news. It will actually constrict some of that blood flow into the brain and you will feel that lightaded feeling. And this is the reason. It's also the reason that you can learn to regulate how you respond to that kind of information. So, I want you to see these neurons. Look at where they're located. And this is why it's so powerful. Now, I'm really excited. The image that you're looking at right now, beyond a schematic, this is the first three-dimensional map of the heart's nervous system. So, you're actually looking at at the image of the human heart. And if you look towards the top, the yellow, all the little yellow that I'm highlighting for you right now, those little yellow areas, those are where the sensory neurites are primarily located. It's the first time we've been able to map these uh physically in the living human heart. It's exciting. I'm sharing this with you now because we're going to begin accessing those neurons. And when we do, I want you to know that you're accessing a part of yourself that is unique to the human being. No other form of life can access consciously at will on demand the neurons in the way that you and I are about to do to selfregulate your biology to self-regulate. What's that mean? Self-regulation is what allows you to choose your response to the world around you. Remember, the better you know yourself, the better equipped you are to deal with changes in your world. So rather than reacting to what the world is giving you, this relationship between your perceptions, these neurons and where they're located in the heart empowers you. This is one of the highest levels of mastery that you can imagine. It empowers you to choose the way your body is going to respond. We're going to go through the tech