So transcending the impulses and instincts is the mastery of asking the right

questions in life to make us fully conscious.

Inside our brain, you have levels of the brain,

you have advanced parts of the brain that deal with thriving,

and you have more subcortical areas of the brain that are involved in surviving.

The areas that are the thriving area is primarily the forebrain

and the most outer part of the brain, and

it is sometimes called the executive center.

It is the prefrontal cortex.

And then the survival center, which is a subcortical area of the brain,

which is a lower level of the brain,

is the limbic system in the amygdala.

Some people call that systems 1, survival,

which where we feel and before we think, we have emotions before we think,

we react before we think. And systems t2,

which is the advanced part of the brain or more advanced outer part of the

brain, where we think before we emotionally react.

Most of our lives we fluctuate between these two.

Sometimes we're centered and we're thinking and not reacting.

And other times we're non centered, polarized,

emotional and feeling and emotional before we think.

Under emergency situations and survival situations,

if all of a sudden some predator was coming to eat us,

or we were having to chase some prey to get food

and we feared starvation or fear of being eaten, the

more lower subcortical area of the brain comes into line and it comes online,

it gets blood, glucose, and oxygen,

and it fires off with impulses and instincts.

An impulse is for seeking and acquiring the food.

And an instinct is for avoiding and separating and getting

away from the predator, being eaten.

So the fear of starvation, the fear of being eaten,

drive the survival area of the brain, the subcortical area of the brain,

and systems 1 is called fast responding,

because it has to be fast or otherwise we die.

And the other one is systems 2 thinking, which is slower,

which is methodical and contemplated, if you will, it thinks before it feels,

reacts. Both are needed in life.

But the majority of the time in our life,

we don't really have survival activities going on.

Although some people have a lot of challenges in their life and it seems like

that, but actually most of the time, it's not really life threatening.

It's challenging though. Now every human being has a set of priorities,

a set of values that they live their life by, that are unique to them,

like a fingerprint.

And whatever supports the value, or set of values that they have,

is represented as prey in the mind.

And whatever challenges the value set is represented as

predator in the mind.

So anything that supports our values represents food and anything that's

challenging our values represents predator in our mind.

And we have a whole area of our brain and nervous system

which is involved in the parasympathetic nervous system for impulse and eating,

rest and digest for support and the fight or flight sympathetic

side for, you know, escaping. And we have,

we're set up for that, for those emergencies, for starvation and food.

And, but most of the time we have food, we've got, we're not in survival,

we're in more self-actualized states or at least secure or states.

So we don't really live in that domain most of the time.

But certainly when we have the perceptions of something very supportive,

we'll get the, we'll imagine it being food in our brain,

our brain doesn't really realize it's not about the prey and predator.

Anything that supports or challenges you becomes prey and predator inside the

unconscious brain. It doesn't see,

it doesn't have access to visual information forwardly,

but it does have a response as if it is.

And it boils everything down to support and challenge or prey and predator.

So impulses and

instincts are survival responses. And the area of the brain, the amygdala,

has connections through the autonomic nervous system into our gut.

We have another part of the brain called the gut brain.

The enteric brain sometimes called.

And it is involved in gut impulses and instincts.

And what's interesting is that gut brain is primarily in the duodenum,

the small intestines, and it is involved in,

from the small intestines to the mouth,

it represents impulse because we want to seek food.

And the gut or the small intestines to the other end.

<Laugh> the anus, if you will, the back end, if you will, not the front end,

but the back end, is involved with instinct.

That's why we want to get rid of it and eliminate it.

So we have inside a relationship between gut impulse and gut instinct and the

amygdala.

And many people have confused intuition with gut impulses and instincts.

But when we are not under survival,

we have thrival states where we're feeling inspired and grateful and loving

and enthusiastic,

and we're certain about where our path is and we're present in our life,

and we're not polarized in our perceptions,

but we're really synthesized and centered.

Our intuition has led us there and we activate the prefrontal cortex,

as I said, the executive center, not the desire center of the amygdala.

And that's connected to our heart through the same autonomics and hypothalamic

pathways, it affects our heart.

The inter cardiac area of the heart becomes synchronous and we have an open

heart. So if we balance our perception, we open the heart.

If we imbalance our perception and see positives without negatives or negatives

without positive and have impulse and instincts, we feel it in the gut.

And so we have gut impulses and instincts or our intuition takes us into being

inspired and opening the heart. So one is systems 1,

as I've said for fast emotional reactions and survival,

and one is systems 2 for executive function, wisdom and love.

So we have the capacity to listen to below the diaphragm,

into our gut and have survival responses,

or listen to our heart and have thrival responses and be inspired by our life.

But it all boils down to our perceptions. So

let's really think this through now.

If you perceive something and it supports your values and

you perceive more conscious upsides than downsides,

you're conscious of the upsides, unconscious of the downsides,

conscious of the positives, unconscious of the negatives,

conscious of the pleasures, unconscious of the pains,

conscious of the advantages, unconscious of the disadvantages,

and you have a subjectively biased interpretation of

is supporting your values, your gut impulse is going to come online.

Your parasympathetic nervous system is going to come online.

You're going to get ready for rest and digestion. You're going to eat,

want to eat it and consume it like it's prey and you're going to want to consume

it. And that's your impulse center.

And if all of a sudden you perceive something, because it's all perception,

the quality of our life's based on the perceptions we have about our life.

If we perceive more drawbacks than benefits, more

more negatives than positives, more pains than pleasures,

we're conscious of the downsides, unconscious of the upsides,

we then activate our sympathetic fight or flight response and we have an

instinct to avoid it, to protect ourselves. And we

because we want to take it in. And one we close off, we want to avoid it.

So we're basically an automaton reacting to our perceptions of our reality

around us when they're subjectively biased.

Now there is no event in life that's positives without negatives or negatives

without positives. All events have a balance of yang and yin.

But we don't see it.

And when we don't see it we have these subjectively biased interpretations of

our reality with these perceptions and then we become impulsive and instinctual

and then we're in survival mode.

And if we stay in survival mode we can run down,

because we have no resilience, no adaptability.

Maximum resilience and adaptability, and in a sense presence,

occurs when the autonomic system is balanced, when our

And if we don't balance our perceptions,

then these polarizations of our mind will actually drain us. Literally,

our mitochondria, which increases ATP and energy is shut down.

Survival mode can eventually wear us down.

Hans Selye talked about if the adrenaline keeps going and keeps going and keeps

going and trying to run after prey or avoid predator,

eventually we have adrenal fatigue and adrenal shutdown,

and eventually we have no energy.

But this impulsive and instinctual state, if it stays is chronic.

It basically runs our body down. It runs our immune system down.

Almost every area of our life is impacted and downwardly affected.

And every time we have a perception that's positive without negative or negative

without positive, it's stored in our subconscious mind. And

our subconscious mind stores all of those subjectively biased interpretations,

our impulse and instincts,

and stores all epigenetically coded impulses and instincts

that keep us in the animal behavior, this primitive kind of response.

And we are now under anxieties and fantasies and we're emotionally,

we're sensitive, hypersensitive to whatever's going on in our life.

And we're externally driven instead of internally driven.

Because anything we infatuate with occupies space and time time our mind,

anything we resent occupies space and time in our mind,

and we're literally run extrinsically.

And we feel like we're kind of a victim of our environment all the time,

instead of a master of our destiny.

We're living in a sense survival and by duty,

responding to external circumstances because we've taken a stance that that's

positive or that's negative.

And the moment we take a stance that something's positive without negative or

negative without positive we're in victims of circumstance.

The moment we actually are accountable in our perceptions,

take a moment to reflect, not deflect information,

because if we're infatuated with something and looking up to it and we minimize

ourselves and are too humble to admit what we see in them is inside us,

we have a deflective awareness,

we disempower our life and we have that thing occupy our mind.

And if we resent something and we're too proud to admit what we see in that

inside us, again,

we're disowning the part and each of the disowned parts are disempowering and

draining us because we're not embracing all of us.

We want to be loved for all parts of us,

but we're not embracing all parts of us,

we're denying parts of us because we're too humble or too proud to admit what we

see in the things around us, inside us.

And this is all stored in the subconscious mind. We're all,

they're reacting and responding to anything that reminds us of these same

situations.

Anytime we see a positive without a negative it's stored in the subconscious

mind and anything that reminds us remotely of that will trigger that same

response, and we're vulnerable. And we can create addictive behaviors that way.

Or anything that's challenging us more than supporting us,

and we see negatives without positives, it becomes now a subdiction,

if you use that term, an addiction or a subduction.

And we now anxiety disorder, because anything that reminds us of it,

we've got this anxiety going on.

So we have fantasies and anxieties running our life,

fantasies and nightmares running our life because of these stored imbalances.

So as long as we have these polarized perceptions,

we're basically externally driven and we're not in command of our life.

So the question is, is how do we transcend that,

return back to the executive function?

The purpose of the executive function is to dampen the polarities and govern

and mediate and bring those into balance and return us to balance.

The brain is a homeostatic mechanism trying to bring the autonomics and

physiology all into balance. In fact,

every symptom in your body is a feedback system to try to get you back into

balance, but it's misinterpreted sometimes. And because of that,

we don't realize that it's actually part of our wellness instead of our illness,

but we've been so programmed that certain symptoms are illness instead of

actually a feedback system, guiding us back into our authentic self,

our well state.

But the second we balance our perception by asking new sets of

questions; What's the downside to the thing we think is up?

And what's the upside of the thing we think is down?

And bring our perceptions back into the mean, the balance state.

We immediately get the blood, glucose, and oxygen going into the forebrain.

Our intuition is constantly trying to make us aware of both sides.

So if we're infatuated, our intuition is trying to point out the downsides.

'Too good to be true.' 'Watch out.' 'This guy's not what we think.' Or to,

there's got to be a benefit to what's happening,

there's got to be meaning of why this is happening in my life' for the things we

resent, dislike.

And it's trying to homeostate us back into balance and our intuition,

which is not our gut instinct. Don't confuse the two.

Our intuition is a negative feedback system,

bringing us into homeostasis to try to bring the executive center,

the authentic self, the full balanced state, into operations,

so we have a poised state, where we think before react.

But we sometimes don't listen to our intuition. We don't trust that.

We don't ask quality questions to balance ourselves and we let the external

world run our lives. And we're basically in survival all the time,

which runs us down and fatigues us and drives us batty and makes us start to

give up on life and futility instead of utility.

But the moment we ask quality questions;

what's the downside of the thing we think has got upsides?

What's the upsides of what we think is downsides?

And bring our mind back into balance and bring our perceptions into balance.

Not only does our executive center come online and our prefrontal cortex get

blood, glucose, and oxygen, but our heart opens,

and we get inspiration in our heart,

we get enthusiasm in our body, we become grateful,

we open our heart to love again, we're inspired by what is possible,

we become present and certain about our objectives.

When we're emotionally polarized, we don't have certainties in life.

We have uncertainties. And as a result of that,

we tend to offload decision to other people and become victims of external

worlds and become part of the herd on the outside.

Instead of actually being heard from the inside and getting our message and

mission and vision and our inspiration out into the world.

So the quality of our life's based on the quality of the questions we ask,

and the most powerful questions that we can ask are the ones that liberate us

from all these lopsided perceptions, the subjective biases,

and become objective and become neutral,

where we have resilience and adaptability. Because when we're infatuated,

we fear it's loss and we have a fear. We're resentful,

we fear it's gain and we have a fear. When we're neutral,

we don't have a fear of gain and loss.

The master lives in a world of transformation,

not the illusions of gain and loss. The mastery of life,

the path of mastery is actually this pursuit that

us to where we have a poised mind, a present mind, a purposeful mind,

one that is objective in nature, reasoned,

thinking systems number 2, and actually thinking before reacting,

and in a state instead of poisoned, poised.

The moment we ask the right questions and liberate ourselves from those

emotional subjective biases and become objective in our awareness

and see what is the mean between the polarities,

the excess and deficiencies of positives and negatives,

and start to see things as they are, not as we subjectively bias them to be.

Cause there are no events that are left or right, or good or bad,

or positive or negative. They're just events. And we with our minds,

subjectively bias them and make them positive or negative

get caught in moral hypocrisies trying to escape one and get the other.

You don't need to get rid of half of yourself to love yourself.

You don't need to go and get only one sided to love yourself,

both sides of you serve.

And when you see both sides and embrace both sides of yourself and others and

life and the events in your life,

you liberate yourself from a lot of the draining and your fuel and energy goes

up. And when you're in that state,

you're not narcissistic looking down at people, putting people in pits,

you're not altruistically looking up at people,

sacrificing for others on pedestals,

you're actually back into equanimity within yourself and equity with other

people.

And you have a sustainable fair exchange relationship with people and you have

utility instead of futility and you thrive instead of survive.

And you start to be inspired by a vision,

that prefrontal cortex is connected to the occipital region,

V5 V6 of the occipital region, where visual associations are.

And we become more illuminated by a vision of possibility.

And we flourish instead of perish.

Because our amygdala doesn't have access to that visual system.

So we lose our vision in futility instead of utility with an inspired vision.

So transcending the impulses and instincts is the mastery of asking the

right questions in life to make us fully conscious.

Because when we're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides,

unless we ask a question, what are the upsides,

or if we're we're conscious of the downsides and unconscious of the upsides,

unless we ask questions, what are the downsides or upsides?

We're not going to have a balanced orientation.

So that's why the quality of our life is based on the quality of the questions

and the highest quality questions are the ones that bring equanimity to the mind

and liberate us from the emotional impulses and

the little amygdala down below.

And lift us to live by our prefrontal cortex.

And that's where we get inspired with a vision. And as I said,

you have a vision. Now you see clearly what you're, you see past your obstacles,

you can see clearly again. By the way,

every time we have a problem or an obstacle in our life,

it's because of missing information.

Claude Shannon in his information theory showed that all random,

all disorder, all chaos, all,

you might say entropy in life, the disorder in life,

is nothing but missing information. It's not knowing how to do it.

And whenever we do and we divide our consciousness into conscious and

unconscious halves, we're not fully conscious.

And when we're not fully conscious, we're missing information.

But once we see the information,

ask the right questions and become fully conscious,

we liberate ourselves from the impulses and instincts that make us live in

survival. And I'm a firm believer,

I've had the opportunity to teach the Breakthrough Experience program,

which is my signature program for years, 33 years plus,

I've seen people with every imaginable event that they think is something that

they're elated with or infatuated with or highly depressed with and resentful,

I mean, torturous, ecstatic events in their life that they've labeled,

that they haven't seen the balance to that runs their life. And by the way,

irrespective of space and time,

anything stored in the subconscious mind is going to continue to run your life

until you bring it into full conscious, balance it and liberate it. I mean,

I've seen people that are still angry 70 years later over something that

happened 70 years earlier, because they haven't seen a balance to it.

And they're running the story, and you become this,

you create this narrative and story of your life that you think is real that's

not. It's a false narrative about your life. You become victim of your history,

all that, instead of actually seeing things and going, thank you.

Anything you can't say thank you for in life,

and aren't be grateful for in life and don't love in life and don't be inspired

by in life, and aren't enthused about it in life and are not present with,

and can't be present with it and trying to avoid it or seek it all the time,

runs your life.

And it's going to run your life until you appreciate and love it basically.

So what happens is if you want to transcend the impulses and instincts,

it's simply asking the right questions and getting into the forebrain and

getting the executive center active and get back into reason and get into

thinking before emotionally reacting.

Because in fact the things you think are really survival oriented are just your

own subjective biases, they're not really threatening in most cases,

we think they are, we give them power,

but ultimately everything is on the way in life, not in the way in life.

Unless you're truly in a car crash or these kind of things. But these are very,

this is only seconds in our life compared to our whole life. And they're real,

in those cases you need that amygdala.

Thank God you've got that amygdala for those emergency situations,

but that's not 99% of your life. And so 99% of your life,

if you get used to just running the story and narrating yourself into subjective

biases and having unrealistic expectations that aren't met and being angry about

life and creating cytokine storms in your physiology and immune depressions and

things,

then you're no wonder you're going to be giving up on life and frustrated on

life.

That's why the quality of your life's based on the quality of the questions.

Now I've spent the last 50 years of my life studying human behavior and doing

what I can to try to help maximize human awareness,

potential and help people live extraordinary,

inspired and magnificent lives in all areas of life, spiritually, mentally,

career, financial, family, social, physical.

I've delved into every imaginable thing that can help people empower that.

And I'm certain that the quality of your life is based on those questions.

And I've been accumulating questions along the way, because if somebody says,

you know, why is this happening to me? Instead of, how is this what's happening,

how is it helping me fulfill my mission in life?

One question makes you the victim. One question makes you empowered.

How can I afford to do something? Instead of;

how can I get paid handsomely to do what I would love in life?

The quality of your life's based on those questions.

If you ask amazing questions, you get an amazing life.

So I've set up hundreds, in fact,

thousands of questions that I've accumulated over the years to help people

navigate through the missing information,

to help them see a transcendent awareness, where they actually are not,

they have an overview effect. You know,

when astronauts go into space and they go up into the farthest reaches of our

atmosphere and they look back at the earth, they can't judge it.

They just love it. There's no judgment.

It's a celestial perspective and they feel love.

It's almost like an unconditional love,

a broad mindedness where things are neither positive nor negative.

And they graced by it. And they have an awe-inspiring eureka moment,

which is what happens when the autonomic nervous system comes into balance and

you have a synchronous brain firing and a gamma burst in the brain of

EEG waves, then you see things from eureka awe inspiring Aha,

and you're going, thank you.

And that's why the executive center's also called the gratitude center.

But when you're not,

and you're in judgment and you're narrow minded and down in the under view

effect, and you're making things black and white and very fundamental,

you're going to be non resilient,

you're going to be fearing the loss and fearing the gain of things.

You're going to be basically living in the terrestrial world,

the world of trial. And you're basically in the underworlds, the hells,

if you will, the bowels of the underworlds instead of the heavenly view

of the sky. And I believe that our broad mindedness is essential.

And that's why quality questions that broaden the mind and make you see both

sides of things, liberate.

There are no positive or negative events in life until we choose to limit them

to being so. There's always yin and yang and yang and yin in events,

and willing to go through and find them is the key in mastery.

And so that's what I spent the last five decades working on,

helping people do that. I teach a class called the Breakthrough Experience,

which is a double, two day weekend experience for most times.

Sometimes I do it during the week, but most of it's during the weekend.

And I do whatever I can to help people find out what their highest value is,

where they're objective. Because when you're living by your highest values,

your self worth goes up, the blood, glucose, and oxygen

you become more objective. If you try to live by lower values,

which is because if you're trying to subordinate to people around you,

you live in the, you activate the amygdala,

and you're back into subjective bias reality.

So the key is to basically live by priority, delegate lower priority things,

stick to what's most meaningful, go after what's inspiring to you,

fill your day with high priority actions.

You're less likely to be in the amygdala,

more likely to be in the executive center.

More like to see both sides of things,

be able to embrace both sides and you'll love yourself,

you'll love the people around you, you'll love your life,

you'll love your goals, your real objectives in life.

Not fantasies that you be searching for and then feeling that your life's a

nightmare, because it's not matching a fantasy.

I've always said that depression is a comparison of your current reality to a

fantasy that you're addicted to.

And the nightmare is the subdiction that you're trying to avoid,

because you're fantasizing about this addiction.

I just wrote a blog on the addictions and subdictions that distract us with

impulses and instincts. But the second you go and ask quality questions.

As I mentioned in the Breakthrough Experience,

I developed a method called the Demartini Method.

That method is nothing but questions that you ask yourself to transform

the apparent chaos that you're perceiving in survival,

and to get you into thrival mode and see the order.

There is a hidden order in your chaos,

and it's available to you if you ask the right questions.

And so I designed those questions to liberate people from the baggage and

bondage that they get trapped in that weigh them down and drain them in their

amygdala for those fight or flight responses and rest digest responses of

instincts and impulses.

So they can get on with their life and live intuitively and inspired,

pursuing a mission in life and not be caught in these passionate frenzies.

And the moment they act those questions out and identify those answers and

answer those and be accountable, accountable means balance your brain,

and all of a sudden do that, they're freed.

I always say there's nothing your mortal body can experience that your immortal

soul can't love and liberate.

There's nothing you've been through in your life that's ecstatic or traumatic

that can't be brought back into equilibrium and wake up equanimity.

Equanimity is a state of grace. It's a state of a spiritual awareness.

It's the state of equanimity where you're equal minded.

You're not exaggerating or minimizing yourself. You're equal to other people.

You're not judging them putting them on pedestals or pits.

You're putting them in your heart. You wake up the heart.

You feel utility because you're now in a sustainable fair exchange mode in

relationship to these people. So that's why in the Breakthrough Experience,

I teach the Demartini Method to ask you very precise questions,

a science on how to liberate those emotional baggages that you

carrying around that are stored in the subconscious mind that are weighing you

down that are causing these impulses and instincts,

which means you're externally run instead of driven.

So therefore they're the ones that are causing some of the fantasies and the

nightmares instead of actually having true objectives that give you Liberty.

So I'm interested in helping people do that because I,

I see people constantly trapped in this situation where they're locking

themselves in on these redundant narratives and

their history and holding onto fantasies.

And they're not actually getting grounded, not being objective,

not living by priority. And I love helping people get back onto priority,

get back onto living by their highest values,

first defining what they are and prioritizing their life and living by it.

So they can be more objective, thrive, not survive, live in systems 2,

not system 1, live with intuition and inspiration, not impulses and instincts,

and go after something that's deeply meaningful to them instead of going and

being eccentrically distracted by the world on the outside. I said on the movie,

The Secret when the voice and the vision on the inside is louder than all

opinions on the outside, you begin to master your life.

So that's why I tell people to do the Breakthrough Experience because I can give

them a tool on that.

I can take show you how to take people off pedestals or pits,

show you how to own the true you and embrace both sides of yourself.

Not have to get rid of half of yourself to love both sides.

How are you going to be loved for who you are if you're not being who you are?

And show you how to actually be that individual,

love that individual and give yourself permission to go and pursue

what's really important to you in your life.

And show you how to manifest things because your inner most dominant thought

becomes your outermost tangible reality.

And your innermost dominant thought is an expression of what you value most,

where you're most objective.

So I tell people to come to the Breakthrough Experience

tools. Because it's one of the most inspiring things

is give them that information and watch the transformations,

see the eyes open up, see the gamma goes off, gamma burst in the brain,

see people all of a sudden love things they haven't been able to love before,

including themselves,

and start setting real objectives and real goals in real time to have real

outcomes.

So if that's of interest to you and let me give you an opportunity to go out and

do something amazing with your life.

If you've been sitting there frustrated and tied down and locked down and feel

like you're stagnant and you're not getting where you want to go in life,

please let me help you. Because I love watching it.

The most inspiring thing I get to do in my life is to help people transform the

obstacles in their life and to help liberate themselves,

to get on with their mission and do something extraordinary and not be bogged

down in the impulses and instincts.

You don't need to be in survival all day long. Occasionally it does occur,

but that's not how you want to live your life.

You want to live your life self-actualized. You want

You want to be in the forebrain. You want to be at the forefront of your life.

You want to be leader, not a follower.

You want to superordinate and ordinate instead of subordinate

your life.

So take advantage of the Breakthrough Experience and maybe listen to this little

presentation again,

because I'm absolutely certain that the information that I just shared with you

is practical. It's scientifically duplicatable. There is a science to it.

You can get a result with it and I want to teach it to you because I know it'll

make a difference. It's changed thousands and thousands of people's lives.

And so that's why I want you to take advantage of that opportunity.

So I look forward to seeing you at the Breakthrough Experience.

Please listen to this again and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you for being with me today and have an incredible week,

but please mull over these information because I know that this information will

help you,

but come to the Breakthrough Experience so I can actually show it to you,

teach it to you. So you have it for the rest of your life.