Just as we can create new experiences for ourselves, like my daughter
did, we can also gain control of a very important part of our lives—what we
commonly think of as our genetic destiny. As we go along, you will see that
knowing something about your genes and what signals them to be
expressed or not is crucial to understanding why you have to change from
the inside out.
Scientific dictum used to declare that our genes were responsible for
most diseases. Then a couple of decades ago, the scientific community
casually mentioned that they had been in error, and announced that the
environment, by activating or deactivating particular genes, is the most
causative factor in producing disease. We now know that less than 5 percent
of all diseases today stem from single-gene disorders (such as Tay-Sachs
and Huntington’s chorea), whereas around 95 percent of all illnesses are
related to lifestyle choices, chronic stress, and toxic factors in the
environment.^4
Yet factors in the outer environment are only part of the picture. What
explains why two people can be exposed to the same toxic environmental
conditions and one gets sick or diseased while the other doesn’t? How is it
that when someone has multiple personality disorder, one personality can
demonstrate a severe allergy to something, while another personality in that
same body can be immune to the same antigen or stimulus? Why, when
most health-care providers are exposed to pathogens on a daily basis, aren’t
doctors and others in the medical community continually ill?
There are also numerous case studies documenting identical twins (who
share the same genes) who have had very different experiences when it
came to their health and longevity. For example, if both shared a family
history of a particular disease, that illness often manifested in one twin but
not the other. Same genes, different outcomes.^5
In all these cases, could the person who remains healthy have such a
coherent, balanced, vital internal order that even when his or her body is
exposed to the same hazardous environmental conditions, the external
world does nothing to his or her gene expression, and so doesn’t signal the
genes to create disease?
It’s true that the external environment influences our internal
environment. However, by changing our internal state of being, can we