instinct is self-preservation. There’s a healthy balance between its needs and
those of others, its attention to itself and to others.
When we’re in survival mode in an emergency situation, it makes sense
that the self should take priority. But when chronic, long-term stress
chemicals push the body and brain out of balance, the ego becomes
overfocused on survival and puts the self first, to the exclusion of anything
else—we’re selfish all the time. Thus, we become self-indulgent, self-
centered, and self-important, full of self-pity and self-loathing. When the
ego is under constant stress, it’s got a “me first” priority.
Under those conditions, the ego is primarily concerned with predicting
every outcome of every situation, because it is overfocused on the outer
world and feels completely separated from the 99.99999 percent of reality.
In fact, the more we define reality through our senses, the more this reality
becomes our law. And material reality as law is the very opposite of the
quantum law. Whatever we place our awareness on is our reality.
Consequently, if our attention is focused on the body and our physical
realm, and if we become locked into a particular line of linear time, then
this becomes our reality.
To forget about the people we know, the problems we have, the things we
own, and the places we go; to lose track of time; to go beyond the body and
its need to feed its habituations; to give up the high from emotionally
familiar experiences that reaffirm the identity; to detach from trying to
predict a future condition or review a past memory; to lay down the selfish
ego that is only concerned with its needs; to think or dream greater than
how we feel, and crave the unknown—this is the beginning of freedom
from our present lives.
If Our Thoughts Can Make Us Sick,
Can They Make Us Well?
Let’s go one step further. I explained earlier that we can turn on the stress
response by thought alone. I also mentioned the scientific fact that the
chemicals associated with stress pull the genetic trigger by creating a very
harsh environment outside of our cells and thus creating disease. So by pure