And I used to take their pain,
Speaker:had them close their eyes and they were really "ow, pain", they couldn't move,
Speaker:it just couldn't put any weight on it and everything else. And I would say,
Speaker:"Describe the pain.
Speaker:What do you perceive?" Because you cannot have a sensation or a feeling without
Speaker:content in the mind.
Speaker:I've been interested in this topic for a long time.
Speaker:When I was in professional school,
Speaker:I actually did a presentation on the origins of pain.
Speaker:And that led me to studying all different topics.
Speaker:John Bonica's work, classical work on the area of pain and neurology,
Speaker:from New York, The Yellow Emperor's Classic,
Speaker:Chinese acupuncture to you name it. Even back into the great philosophers.
Speaker:What exactly is pain? What exactly is pleasure? Why are they there?
Speaker:What's it about? So I'm going to start with a quote.
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:a paraphrased quote of a ancient Greek philosopher
Speaker:named Anaxagoras,
Speaker:he's the one that really had an influence on my thinking of pain,
Speaker:since I was 23.
Speaker:He said that pain and pleasure are lopsided perceptions.
Speaker:Now,
Speaker:most of us when we bang our shin on a table or something
Speaker:and go "Ow"
Speaker:we create a stimulus on little nerve endings called
Speaker:nociceptors, which are pain nerve endings, C fibers they call them,
Speaker:that go up into the spinal cord from the dorsal root of the spinal cord.
Speaker:Go up the tracks of the spinal cord all the way up to the thalamus.
Speaker:And there there's a gating mechanism based on our cortical perceptions
Speaker:to allow us to either experience or not.
Speaker:And with that cortex, the higher brain systems,
Speaker:we have the capacity to take that stimulus and associate it with many
Speaker:different things. For instance, if I,
Speaker:let's take your thumb,
Speaker:put your thumb on a table and I slammed it with a
Speaker:sledgehammer and "Ow, ow,
Speaker:whoa!" You're just, you feel like you broke your thumb and smashed it.
Speaker:If you just take that out of, in that context, you'll probably think, "Wow,
Speaker:that's painful." You're angry, you're resentful, et cetera.
Speaker:But imagine if I was to take that thumb and put it there and I say, "Well,
Speaker:here's the deal. I'm going to give you a billion dollars cash.
Speaker:Tax-Free.
Speaker:A week traveling with the most admired
Speaker:celebrity you could imagine, or supermodel or superstar that you'd want to meet,
Speaker:and they would be your escort for a week,
Speaker:traveling around the world in private jets and going to all the villas and all
Speaker:the luxury places in the world.
Speaker:And you also had the opportunity to have a brand new mansion
Speaker:or something." I mean,
Speaker:I gave you and I stacked up all of the fantasies that you might've wanted in
Speaker:your life. I'm just making those up, those aren't really important to me,
Speaker:but just imagine all of those. Whatever you imagined and you associate it that
Speaker:"When I slam my thumb, I get all that."
Speaker:If you perceive more advantage than disadvantage to all those things,
Speaker:which may not be real true, but if you imagined it that way,
Speaker:you could actually go "Yes,
Speaker:slam that sucker!" And if I told you that I would make sure that any damage to
Speaker:your thumb would be repaired perfectly,
Speaker:and in three weeks you'd never even know it had a bruise,
Speaker:and a surgeon would take care of it.
Speaker:And you would have just three weeks of a little bit of aggravation from that,
Speaker:from that slamming. But you have,
Speaker:you got that now freedom to do what you want to do, your own private jets,
Speaker:your own this and that. I bet if you would do that,
Speaker:I bet your perception of that pain would be different.
Speaker:You'd be celebrating that pain instead of "ow".
Speaker:When I was in practice years ago, this is nearly 40.
Speaker:I had a patient with osteosarcoma,
Speaker:which is a eroding clastic disease that basically eats the
Speaker:femur heads on the femur,
Speaker:which is down in the hips and it eats away the bone and eventually you
Speaker:can't stand and it breaks.
Speaker:And the pain is pretty enormous according to what most people describe.
Speaker:And I used to take their pain, had them close their eyes. They were really "Ow,
Speaker:pain". They couldn't move.
Speaker:It just couldn't put any weight on it and everything else. And I would say,
Speaker:"Describe the pain.
Speaker:What do you perceive?" Because you cannot have a sensation or a feeling without
Speaker:content in the mind. You can not have fear without content in the mind.
Speaker:You can not have pain without content in the mind.
Speaker:There's a representation and an association that's
Speaker:the moment you're perceiving pain. So I would have them,
Speaker:this lady go and describe her pain. Is it throbbing?
Speaker:Is it stationary? Is it moving? Is it again, stationary? Is it burning?
Speaker:What color is it? What smell does it bring? What sound does it have?
Speaker:And I would go in there and have her close her eyes and go and describe every
Speaker:detail and modality of sensation and submodality
Speaker:distinctions that just broke it down into just components.
Speaker:And whatever she would say, I would then take the opposite sensation,
Speaker:so she said, it's red and black, I'd say, okay,
Speaker:blue and white and say, it's you know,
Speaker:it's awful, it's ugly. I'd say it's beautiful and it's
Speaker:pretty. And what I would do is I would put her in her mind,
Speaker:the complete complimentary opposite perception and
Speaker:the box. And I would imagine her seeing this one,
Speaker:that's "ow" pain and this other one that represented the opposite pleasure,
Speaker:and whatever the modalities and distinctions she could
Speaker:I would come up with the complete opposite. And then I would imagine her,
Speaker:or she would have her imagine,
Speaker:that these two boxes are being slammed together and exploding each other and
Speaker:dissolving each other and birthing light,
Speaker:like a particle and antiparticle merging and making light.
Speaker:And I have her do this until there was nothing in her association she could find
Speaker:associated with the pain side and the other one was gone.
Speaker:They're just both just disappear, poof into energy.
Speaker:And she would have 75%, sometimes 90% reduction in pain.
Speaker:She could actually stand up and she goes, "Where's my pain?" I go,
Speaker:"It was in your representation in your brain." Now,
Speaker:if you've ever hit your shin, as I said earlier,
Speaker:and banged it on a table or something, you immediately went down and rubbed.
Speaker:It. "Ah, gosh.".
Speaker:And you probably cussed. You probably didn't say, oh, mcgillicuddy,
Speaker:you probably said some cuss words, something that you normally wouldn't say,
Speaker:that you normally repress in society.
Speaker:And the reason being is according to Melzack Wall,
Speaker:which is an old gate theory back in the 70s, that if you, mechano receptors,
Speaker:which are tactile receptors, that you touch your thing and rub it,
Speaker:those are large diameter neurons that go up into the thalamus and close the
Speaker:sensory perception of pain and shut it off where you can't perceive the
Speaker:pain. And if you then say cuss words or whatever,
Speaker:they release endorphins and enkephalins,
Speaker:believe it or not cussing serves a biological value because it releases opium
Speaker:opioids in the brain, enkephalins, endorphins, et cetera.
Speaker:And so what does is it makes you feel pleasure and shuts down the
Speaker:pain and modulates the pain. And all of a sudden you feel, "oh,
Speaker:that's a lot easier." So you rub it,
Speaker:you keep rubbing it like that and you keep going.
Speaker:And then what happens is those are changing the ratios of the transmitters.
Speaker:See every time you change your ratios of perception,
Speaker:you change neurotransmitters, modulators, regulators, and hormones in the body,
Speaker:all of the regulators, transmitters, hormones, et cetera,
Speaker:are all based on ratios of perceptions, not just pain perception,
Speaker:but any perception.
Speaker:If I make you associate a pleasure with something in visual,
Speaker:if you perceive it very visual, those transmitters of pleasure would go up.
Speaker:And if you saw something painful and disgusting it
Speaker:you'd have substances like p substance, which is substance P,
Speaker:which is a pain polypeptide or a series of transmitters.
Speaker:So your ratios of perception have a lot to do with the ratios of the hormones,
Speaker:transmitters,
Speaker:and regulators in the brain and the ratios of what nerves are activated.
Speaker:See when you stimulate some nerve ending, there are nerve endings for pain.
Speaker:There are no nerve endings for pleasure that so far they've found.
Speaker:Isn't that interesting? We have pain sensitivities,
Speaker:but we have modulators from the areas of the brain based on association to
Speaker:determine whether or not that pain is going to be pleasure or pain. If say,
Speaker:I can turn it in where if all of a sudden you found out that your husband was
Speaker:late and he had stains on his collar and you thought,
Speaker:"What the heck has he done?" And you immediately jump to the conclusion and
Speaker:perceive that he's been having an affair or something.
Speaker:And then you find out that the reason he's late, it's not because of affair,
Speaker:is that there was a traffic fatality on the highway,
Speaker:a crash. And he was trying to save people's lives.
Speaker:He got out of his car and he went out and tried to help them. Now he's late.
Speaker:And he's got marks holding the person who was nearly dying,
Speaker:getting them to a place where he could get to the hospital.
Speaker:Then you all of a sudden, you think, "well, this is terrible, this is pain".
Speaker:And all of a sudden you find out new information and
Speaker:hug the person.
Speaker:The same particular stimulus now has a different association with it and now you
Speaker:are attracted instead of repelled.
Speaker:We have an area of the brain called the amygdala, which is a desire center.
Speaker:It has a nucleus accumbens from pleasure, if it's stimulated,
Speaker:and has another one, the pallidum for pain.
Speaker:And this amygdala is kind of a desire center,
Speaker:desire to avoid the pain and desire to seek the pleasure, avoid the predator,
Speaker:which could eat you, which could chew you up and make you painful, or the prey,
Speaker:which is food and makes you feel good.
Speaker:That's why people get consumption and eat a lot, to feel good.
Speaker:A lot of people who are in pain eat to try to feel better because it stimulates
Speaker:the nucleus accumbens.
Speaker:What's interesting is if you have perceptions of things that support your
Speaker:values,
Speaker:you can actually take the pain threshold and change it.
Speaker:If you have perceptions that see more challenges that represent predator,
Speaker:that pain can be heightened. You can take any stimulus and heighten it.
Speaker:You've probably had little ulcers in your mouth, and
Speaker:if all of a sudden you find something else that's stressing you,
Speaker:aggravating you, the pain even more aggravated, like
Speaker:But,
Speaker:if all of a sudden you get focused on something that's not even bothering you
Speaker:and it's actually invigorating, inspiring you and supporting you,
Speaker:the pain levels can change.
Speaker:Your pain and pleasure as Anaxagoras said are based on lopsided perceptions or
Speaker:ratios of perception, better put. So you can change your perceptions.
Speaker:When a pain stimulus comes in from the dorsal root of the spinal cord from some
Speaker:injury, what's interesting is,
Speaker:it has fibers that go immediately over to the other side of the body to avoid
Speaker:and get your arms and legs on the opposite side of the body of the contralateral
Speaker:side of the body to respond, to go out.
Speaker:But it also sends fibers up into the middle of the brain, or into the,
Speaker:up the spinal cord,
Speaker:into the brain stem and different levels of the brain all the way up to the
Speaker:cortex, all the way up to the thalamus and then the cortex, and also has,
Speaker:so it has, because sometimes it has to turn your head, from the pain,
Speaker:sometimes to blink, sometimes it has to respond and speak.
Speaker:So various levels of the brain are activated to get
Speaker:that you're perceiving.
Speaker:And you also have all kinds of different layers of the brain that are actually
Speaker:modulating and governing that response.
Speaker:And so depending on the associations in the brain,
Speaker:you can modulate that response and calm it down or accentuate it.
Speaker:You can dramatize it if you polarize it further and you can completely
Speaker:neutralize it and turn it into pleasure, if you stack up enough associations,
Speaker:like I said, the billionaire and the private jet, everything else,
Speaker:the slumber slamming of the thumb. And when I've asked people in seminars,
Speaker:if I slammed their thumb,
Speaker:but I gave him a billion dollars plus a private jet and a big home and
Speaker:everything else, they'd say "slam it baby, slam it",
Speaker:because the associations were more benefit than drawback and they'd endure it
Speaker:and not even think about the pain as much because they think, "wow,
Speaker:I've got these opportunities,
Speaker:amount of the work I would have to do to have that lifestyle,
Speaker:now I got I just to have a slam on the thing for a few weeks of discomfort."
Speaker:And that wouldn't even be discomfort possibly because the brain would represent
Speaker:it differently.
Speaker:We have the capacity to transform our perceptions of pain and pleasure. And,
Speaker:this is interesting. You have a thing called acute pain,
Speaker:which is usually from some sort of destruction of a nerve ending,
Speaker:or destruction of a cell that's causing, you know,
Speaker:release of inflammatory responses and we cause pain,
Speaker:but that's acute pain.
Speaker:That's a real biological thing that we can trace it down a nerve to a place
Speaker:where there's some sort of inflammatory response, heat, swelling, and pain,
Speaker:et cetera. But you also have chronic pain,
Speaker:there's no biological reason for the pain,
Speaker:but we have pain that is because we have more associations and
Speaker:advantages than disadvantages. It's called glial pain.
Speaker:And glial pain are ten to one times the number of neurons in the brain,
Speaker:they're there to modulate and regulate the nerves.
Speaker:And they respond to our intentions and attentions.
Speaker:And if we have an intention to actually get advantages over
Speaker:disadvantage that prolong the pain, we will keep the pain going.
Speaker:I had a lady in at the Miriam Hotel in Dublin, and this is so cool.
Speaker:So she had, was referred to me by another doctor there and
Speaker:she said that she's claimed that she's had pain her whole life. I'm went,
Speaker:"Okay." Ever since she can remember. And I go,
Speaker:"Okay." And all her life she's had pain. I said, "Okay.
Speaker:So what's the benefit of your pain?" She goes, "Well,
Speaker:there's no benefit to the pain." I go, "I know,
Speaker:I know that's what your perception is, but let's,
Speaker:what's the benefit of the pain? Cause nobody's going to chronically keep pain.
Speaker:Nobody's going to do anything without an advantage, without over disadvantage.
Speaker:So if there's no biologic, she'd been to specialists,
Speaker:no biological reason for the pain, they've ruled it out.
Speaker:They can't find any source of pain, but she's got pain. And I said,
Speaker:"So no one is going to continue to do something unless they perceive more
Speaker:advantage than disadvantage. Everything is strategic." So I said,
Speaker:"So what's the advantage you're getting out of the pain?" She goes,
Speaker:"I can't think of any." I said,
Speaker:"Look again." "I don't know." "Look again." And after
Speaker:prodding her for about probably 7, 8 minutes,
Speaker:all of a sudden she came to a realization. She said, "Well, people listen to me.
Speaker:They do things for me." "Okay, great. What else?"
Speaker:"They feel sorry for me." "Good.
Speaker:What else?" So if you tell people about your pain,
Speaker:they're attentive to it? At least some of them,
Speaker:some people are." "Yeah." And we just kept asking,
Speaker:"What's another benefit of the pain?"
Speaker:And all of a sudden she just got tears in her eyes. And she said, "Wow. I
Speaker:just, all of a sudden thought about when I first had it,
Speaker:I just remembered a moment when I first noticed the pain." She had a sister
Speaker:who was really good-looking, very active in school and academic,
Speaker:and sports wise, an exceptional girl.
Speaker:And the parents gave her a lot of attention because
Speaker:getting good grades and, you know,
Speaker:winning things in sports and Ms. Popular, and she was like,
Speaker:you can't do anything wrong kind of thing. Well, the girl, her sister,
Speaker:person with pain, could never compete with that.
Speaker:So the way she got attention was injury, pain,
Speaker:stomach ache. And that way she would get the attention from the parents,
Speaker:and she found out that she was doing,
Speaker:and all of a sudden she remembered that and she looked at me and she said,
Speaker:"Do you think it's really possible that I've been doing that all my life?"
Speaker:And I go, "Yep. So what's the benefit of the pain?"
Speaker:Huh, and all of a sudden she started crying and she goes,
Speaker:"Wow, could I have actually done this?" I said, "Yeah." She says,
Speaker:"Nobody's ever asked me this question, what's the benefit of my pain." I said,
Speaker:"I know.
Speaker:And what would be the drawback if you got out of pain?" I asked her that one
Speaker:too. I said, if you got rid of all your pain, what's the, you'll have a fantasy.
Speaker:People have a fantasy.
Speaker:We've got to realize that many philosophers have
Speaker:are like on a spectrum. Others believe they're isolated.
Speaker:My observation is that they're pairs of opposites, kinda like Heraclitus said.
Speaker:And these pairs of opposites, if you, the more, let's just imagine this.
Speaker:Let's say you meet somebody that you're highly infatuated with.
Speaker:And you've got this fantasy about who they're going to be.
Speaker:You're conscious of the upside. You're unconscious of the downside.
Speaker:And the pleasure of being with them,
Speaker:imagine if all of a sudden they disappeared and
Speaker:right? Some other male or female, took them away from you. The pain of,
Speaker:you would feel pain of the loss.
Speaker:You'd have grief and sensations of grief because of the infatuation.
Speaker:But if you resented them and somebody took them away, you'd be relieved.
Speaker:So when you resent somebody and you stack up associations that are more pain
Speaker:than pleasure, and you see more drawbacks and benefits, if they leave you,
Speaker:there's a relief. If they come near you, it's a pain.
Speaker:Being around them is a pain.
Speaker:But if all of a sudden you're infatuated with somebody,
Speaker:if they leave you there's pain. And if they get around you, there's pleasure.
Speaker:Because of associations you make in your brain.
Speaker:And I've been teaching in the Breakthrough Experience, my signature program,
Speaker:I've taught for 32 years plus,
Speaker:that I can change any form, you can associate anything with anything.
Speaker:You can change a heaven into a hell or a hell into heaven as John Milton said,
Speaker:by asking quality questions to make you conscious of the unconscious
Speaker:information that you're not aware of.
Speaker:And when you actually bring it into balance, you transcend pain and pleasure.
Speaker:You actually experience love. I know that sounds crazy,
Speaker:but I've been doing it for years.
Speaker:The second you bring your perceptions into perfect balance there's a feeling of
Speaker:order, there's a feeling of appreciation and love there.
Speaker:So I think what the brain does is actually tries to modulate and homeostate
Speaker:the perceptions that are pain or pleasure,
Speaker:and to try to bring it back into balance so you can be authentic because
Speaker:otherwise when you're in pain, you can justify your aggression,
Speaker:and if you're in pleasure, you can justify your passiveness.
Speaker:And these are two expression repression.
Speaker:Some philosophers thought that pain and pleasure are just expressions and
Speaker:repressions of perception. And I really believe that's true.
Speaker:So if I take and ask you,
Speaker:what's the drawback to somebody you're infatuated with and calm it down,
Speaker:the fear of loss of them goes down.
Speaker:I've been doing that on 4,000 cases of death with grief,
Speaker:with my Demartini Method, it's amazing watching it.
Speaker:And if I take the thing that you resent and I showed you the upsides,
Speaker:all of a sudden, the fear of them coming in your life is gone.
Speaker:So the pain of them coming near you has disappeared.
Speaker:And the pain of them leaving you has disappeared.
Speaker:Which means that you can take and ask quality questions and ask these questions,
Speaker:answer, make new associations in the brain, and change the transmitters,
Speaker:because the ratios affect the transmitters, the
Speaker:the physiology, and the response,
Speaker:and literally fill in gaps where the normal stimuli
Speaker:sets up reflexes and synaptic reflexes, and transmitters.
Speaker:You fill in those gaps so that you can't sensate that pain.
Speaker:It's really amazing.
Speaker:So the reception of the pain in the brain itself can be overruled,
Speaker:just like mechanoreceptors and saying cuss words can fill in with transmitters
Speaker:or make that other transmitter from the stimulus not there and you can actually
Speaker:neutralize the pain. So what I'm really leading to here,
Speaker:is what Anaxagoras said, and even John Bonica from New York,
Speaker:he said that pain is a private sensation of hurt, it has no, you might say,
Speaker:objective data to support it other than you have nociceptors that show
Speaker:inflammation. That doesn't mean that you have pain. Cause you've,
Speaker:they have done studies where people have the same amount of inflammatory
Speaker:response and tremendous differences in the gradation of pain.
Speaker:Some don't even respond. I had a guy named Buddy,
Speaker:Buddy Westinghouse, magnificent gentlemen. He was an ex rodeo star.
Speaker:He had no fingers left, cause he yanked his fingers off.
Speaker:He had a little bit of a thumb, that's about it.
Speaker:He yanked all his fingers off from rodeo.
Speaker:And he had broken ribs and he had skull fractures and he had, gosh,
Speaker:all kinds of things. His wife, Lily,
Speaker:was what they call a pusillanimous, and he was a stoic.
Speaker:You could hit him with a sledgehammer and he wouldn't feel the pain.
Speaker:He had minimized it. And you touch her, just touch her she goes, "Ooh",
Speaker:she was exaggerating the pain. Very common people in marriage,
Speaker:you'll find there's some people that are more exaggerated and more minimized in
Speaker:pain. The stoic that minimize it. And the pusillanimous that bring it on,
Speaker:the wussy's as they call them. And so it's,
Speaker:what is we have different set points for these pains and thresholds based on
Speaker:ratios of perceptions based on how we've seen life.
Speaker:If we have a fantasy about how life is, and life's not matching it,
Speaker:we can be depressed and in pain. And by the way, the same depression,
Speaker:reflexes and pathways are similar to being injured.
Speaker:So we're literally registering pain in our life because we're comparing our
Speaker:current reality to a fantasy.
Speaker:If we have a fantasy about how life's supposed to be and life doesn't match it,
Speaker:that's pain. If we have a nightmare and we've exceeded it, that's pleasure.
Speaker:Our thresholds are altered that way.
Speaker:We have a hedonic pathway and anhedonic pathway,
Speaker:pleasure and a pain pathway you might say,
Speaker:and they're all based on ratios of perceptions.
Speaker:So if I could take somebody that's got a chronic pain,
Speaker:like an osteosarcoma and knock it down 70 plus percent,
Speaker:90%, some cases.
Speaker:And I trained her on how to do that so when she was in a situation cause pain
Speaker:medications wasn't doing it.
Speaker:Pain medications were not really getting the whole picture because sometimes we
Speaker:have strategies.
Speaker:I had two people that both had cancer,
Speaker:and I worked with them in my office one time. And they were having,
Speaker:one had osteosarcoma and one had lung cancer and the one could barely breathe
Speaker:and the other one is in incredible pain, the other one's pain from breathing.
Speaker:And we had a major blowout communication system because they hadn't been,
Speaker:they'd been resenting each other for 52
Speaker:years, 53 years, almost.
Speaker:They hadn't made love in 53 years. Can you imagine that, being married?
Speaker:They were together because of religious beliefs.
Speaker:They didn't want to get divorced because they thought they're going to go to
Speaker:eternal damnation or something, some crazy thing like that.
Speaker:And they were still together,
Speaker:but they were resenting each other and they're both in pain,
Speaker:they both had cancer.
Speaker:And we sat down and got all the stuff out and had a big hash out in my office.
Speaker:Took few, took a while, and boy,
Speaker:and their pain threshold and their symptoms just subsided right on the spot.
Speaker:It was amazing.
Speaker:And they were told they had about two to three weeks to live both of them.
Speaker:And then they made it six more months. They did die,
Speaker:but they had six more months of communication.
Speaker:So our perceptions have an impact on, we have the capacity to alter it.
Speaker:Remember, you can't have fear of the unknown,
Speaker:you have fear of the content of your mind.
Speaker:You can't have resentment of the unknown,
Speaker:you have resentment of the perceptions and content of your mind.
Speaker:And you're not going to have pain without representation in the brain.
Speaker:And if you identify what that representation is and
Speaker:perception associated with it, you change your threshold.
Speaker:You may not completely eliminate the pain, of a physical, active pain,
Speaker:a crushing bone, for instance, but you can absolutely make a change in it.
Speaker:And that's been shown and demonstrated. I mean,
Speaker:people used hypnosis for decades,
Speaker:century where they go in there and change the representation of the brain and
Speaker:all of a sudden they don't feel certain things or they do feel something.
Speaker:So I just want you to know that you have the capacity. Now somebody might say,
Speaker:well, what, okay, so what's the purpose of pain and pleasure?
Speaker:This is a great question. I believe that pain and pleasure,
Speaker:support and challenge, ease and difficulty, you know, cooperation,
Speaker:competition, are both necessary for growth.
Speaker:Imagine you had nothing but a prey, food, that was pleasurable to eat,
Speaker:and there was no such thing as a predator,
Speaker:you would have a hedonic path that would be excessive.
Speaker:You could go into gluttony and fatness and gain weight and get obese,
Speaker:and then have certain symptoms in the body that would eventually wake you up and
Speaker:realize that's not the path, that's too much pleasure.
Speaker:You could also have something that's predator without prey,
Speaker:and you would end up having, you know,
Speaker:emaciation starvation because you'd never get to eat.
Speaker:But what's been shown in the food chain of biology is that you need pleasure and
Speaker:pain. You need support and challenge. You need the hedonistic and anhedonistic,
Speaker:you need to prey and the predator to keep you fit.
Speaker:Maximum fitness, maximum productivity, maximum fulfillment,
Speaker:the meaning,
Speaker:the mean between the pairs of opposites is the center.
Speaker:And I've defined love as being the synthesis and synchronicity of all
Speaker:complimentary opposites,
Speaker:because I've been doing the Breakthrough Experience for 32 years,
Speaker:and I've shown people how to balance out their perception with my Demartini
Speaker:Method. And the moment they balance it,
Speaker:they come to a point where there's tears of gratitude and they feel, thank you,
Speaker:I love you.
Speaker:So I'm gonna make a statement here that I believe that the purpose of pain and
Speaker:pleasure is to train us to be authentic and to
Speaker:appreciate and to love and to make sure that we're moderated in our
Speaker:behavior and have wisdom, the old Cardinal virtues of the Greeks,
Speaker:to allow us to see things as they are, not as we subjectively biased them to be.
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:when we're out in the wild and we are seeing prey and we've got to eat it like
Speaker:an animal, we accelerate with a subjective bias,
Speaker:the adrenaline stimulation to run after that animal and catch it.
Speaker:And if we see predator, we accelerate the adrenaline again to run away from it.
Speaker:So in survival modes, in our amygdala,
Speaker:we automatically skew things into pleasures and pains
Speaker:and to avoid being eaten, pleasure and pain.
Speaker:So we have the capacity with our executive function,
Speaker:the medial prefrontal cortex,
Speaker:that area sends fibers down and glutamate and GABA transmitters,
Speaker:and goes down and moderates those and calms down those distractions,
Speaker:cause the thing you infatuate with and seek, or the thing you avoid and resent,
Speaker:occupy your mind as a survival mechanism.
Speaker:But the second you're living by your highest values,
Speaker:doing what's really meaningful doing what's inspiring to you,
Speaker:those calm down and the degree of pleasure and pain,
Speaker:calm down and center themselves. And what's interesting, the very center,
Speaker:the amygdala, the very centers for pleasure and pain,
Speaker:the pain center and the pleasure stimulus
Speaker:they're there moderating the pain so we can literally neutralize it.
Speaker:So if we're living by our highest values, doing what is most meaningful,
Speaker:doing something, we love doing something that inspires us naturally,
Speaker:something we can't wait to get up in the morning and do,
Speaker:we will reduce the extremes of pleasure and pain,
Speaker:the fantasies and nightmares of life. And remember the more the fantasy of life,
Speaker:the more life compared to it, is miserable. So that's a pain.
Speaker:So anytime you separate that, that's what Anaxagoras said,
Speaker:it's the separation of the distinction of pain and pleasure that gives these
Speaker:responses and the lopsided perceptions.
Speaker:So if we moderate those and neutralize that, the executive center,
Speaker:the forebrain,
Speaker:the most advanced part of the brain modulates and moderates the polarities of
Speaker:perception. That's why if you see, when you have pain and ask,
Speaker:how specifically is this pain helping me fulfill what's most meaningful to me
Speaker:and answer that question,
Speaker:I guarantee you that pain will drop as you're sitting there answering that
Speaker:question. And if you have pleasure, ask,
Speaker:what's the downside of the pleasure? You can neutralize the pleasure.
Speaker:Your intuition is constantly trying to make you conscious of the unconscious
Speaker:information
Speaker:that's trying to moderate and neutralize things so you can maximize your
Speaker:fitness, maximize your fulfillment.
Speaker:So I believe that pain and pleasure are feedback mechanisms guiding us to the
Speaker:most authentic, inspired, purposeful life,
Speaker:to do something we really love with the people we love.
Speaker:It's acting as a mechanism to help us fulfill that.
Speaker:It's not just survival oriented.
Speaker:It's also survival scaled up to thrival. If we're living in survival,
Speaker:we're going to be sitting there and having probably the pain and pleasure's run
Speaker:us and be run by the outside world.
Speaker:If we actually moderate it by doing something that's deeply meaningful and
Speaker:connecting both pain and pleasure to meaning, that's the key,
Speaker:the Stoics did that, they premeditated on the so-called evils,
Speaker:the pains that could go wrong with an objective to prepare for and mitigate the
Speaker:risks, to balance out the rewards, the rewards of pleasure, the risks for pain.
Speaker:They brought them into balance,
Speaker:and then they pursued their action and they got greater results.
Speaker:People that are only looking at fantasies and then unprepared for the
Speaker:nightmares,
Speaker:get distressed and people that are prepared for both sides get eustress.
Speaker:And eustress is wellness promoting and moderates the so-called pains and
Speaker:pleasures. So our brain, our physiology,
Speaker:our nervous system,
Speaker:is set up in such a way that we have the capacity to transform our life.
Speaker:And that's the beauty of this whole thing,
Speaker:it's not what happens to us on the outside, it's how we perceive,
Speaker:what we decide to do with it, and how we act upon it.
Speaker:So if we go in there and take advantage of this information,
Speaker:it just might transform your awareness of the pains and pleasures in your life.
Speaker:The next time you're in pain, play with this, maybe watch this video a few times
Speaker:so some of that sinks in and inculcate and experiment with it,
Speaker:because I've seen people that have been,
Speaker:I had a lady that was live at a seminar in my to 7 day program,
Speaker:the Prophecy 1 Experience, where
Speaker:I'm helping people become prophets of their destiny instead of victims of their
Speaker:history. And in that program,
Speaker:a lady literally started to get up from under a table,
Speaker:she lifted her foot under a table and ripped the top of it,
Speaker:about two and a half inches, about literally about three
Speaker:It was a bloody mess and she screamed and they ran and got
Speaker:ice and they got, you know, towels and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker:And while she was doing that, they held the skin,
Speaker:put the skin back on it and just kind of held it down and put pressure on it
Speaker:because she didn't want to run and walk. Somebody else did it for her.
Speaker:And we did I said,
Speaker:this is the perfect opportunity right now to demonstrate this.
Speaker:And at first people thought that was kind of cruel, but I actually took that,
Speaker:identified what the pains were right there on the spot, found out the opposites,
Speaker:did the exercise right there and calmed it down 35%,
Speaker:literally in a matter of minutes.
Speaker:And the lady was blown away and her husband was just blown away. She says,
Speaker:I can't believe the pain's down.
Speaker:And so by the time people got back with everything else we were already starting
Speaker:to reduce the pain perceptions, because we stacked up new associations.
Speaker:So don't let the outer world run your life,
Speaker:let the voice and the vision on the inside.
Speaker:Let the wisdom that you gain on the inside,
Speaker:moderate the extremes on the outside, and then you're in command.
Speaker:Otherwise the world around you is going to run you. And know this,
Speaker:my observation is people that get cocky and manic and get elated and
Speaker:get addicted to fantasies and get really elated,
Speaker:'pride before the fall' is the old saying,
Speaker:are more likely to injure themselves and have that.
Speaker:And the pain is there to bring into their life,
Speaker:to calm down their addiction to fantasies and pleasures.
Speaker:Pain is actually your friend, it's not your enemy if you put it into context.
Speaker:And so,
Speaker:just wanted to give that feedback today and give you some insight on what pain
Speaker:and pleasure is and the purpose of it.
Speaker:I think it's trying to help you be authentic.
Speaker:It's helping you do something you really love to do.
Speaker:And if you want to get a book,
Speaker:get a book called The Brilliant Function of Pain by Milton Ward.
Speaker:He shows that without pain, your life isn't going to do too well.
Speaker:Might read that.
Speaker:I used to give all my patients that little book and give them a summary of it to
Speaker:make sure they understood the importance of pain. Pain,
Speaker:and pleasure are both necessary. That's why they're there,
Speaker:to help you fulfill your mission in life. Now, just a little reminder here,
Speaker:I have an upcoming program,
Speaker:a masterclass called Discover The Hidden Order That Unites and Empowers Us
Speaker:All. And this is going to be something that I know you're going to want to hear.
Speaker:This is going to blow your mind because what I've been doing in the Breakthrough
Speaker:Experience programs and other programs is showing people how things are that go
Speaker:on in their life that they think are mistakes, how they're not,
Speaker:and what's the hidden order of why they're manifesting their life. You know,
Speaker:disorder is simply missing information, unconscious information.
Speaker:If you answer the question and take the entropy and turn it back into negentropy
Speaker:and find the hidden order of it, and the reasons why,
Speaker:you transform your life from mystery to something even more
Speaker:profoundly, where you're taking command of your life and living by design.
Speaker:So this powerful program,
Speaker:this masterclass Discover The Hidden Order That Unites and Powers Us All.
Speaker:I know you're going to love. So I look forward to seeing you, that's coming up.
Speaker:All you have to do is, and if you sign up for it,
Speaker:you're going to get a free gift called Awakening Your Astronomical Vision.
Speaker:Please take advantage of this.
Speaker:I know you're going to get a lot out of this course.
Speaker:If you got something out of today,
Speaker:you're going to definitely get something out of this program, that I'm doing,
Speaker:the masterclass. I look forward to seeing you there, sign up now,
Speaker:take advantage of it. And thank you for being with me today.