CHAPTER 6
Where Are These Programs Coming From?

You are already perfect.
— Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len

I love the field of neuroplasticity. It’s empowering. It states that your
brain can be molded like plastic. And it can be reshaped and rewired by
you — a self-directed neuroplasticity. This helps explain how 
Ho’oponopono works.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, in his latest book, You Are Not
Your Brain, written with Rebecca L. Gladding, MD, virtually any habit
can be changed with the help of a four-step process. You can now end
your self-sabotage or any other poor habits. You can break free.
I interviewed Dr. Schwartz. This medical doctor, psychiatrist, and
researcher exudes high energy, has deep faith, and loves his work. He was
an adviser for Martin Scorsese’s fi lm, Aviator, about Howard Hughes.
Now Schwartz is helping people like us learn to rewire our brains so that
we can get the results we want and become the people we long to be.
At the heart of his breakthrough approach is the understanding that
you are something other than the material. That’s why you can be
separate from your brain, be mindful of it, and actually rewrite it.
Schwartz is a man of science, who also wrote a mesmerizing science-
based book in 2002 called, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the
Power of Mental Force. Yet he is also a spiritual man and isn’t afraid to say so.
He doesn’t declare where thoughts come from but suggests some of
them serve you and others are deceptive brain messages. The latter you
can learn to hear but not obey. I told Schwartz that in most of my books,
such as The Attractor Factor, I call limiting beliefs what he calls deceptive
brain messages. Both are thoughts that don’t serve your highest goal.
Schwartz explained that in his work with obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) patients, brain scans revealed that they were obeying messages
firing in their brains that were hurting them. It wasn’t a problem with the
patients, though; it was a problem with their brains. With new skills, they
could learn to retrain their brains. (Dr. Schwartz wrote about OCD in his
first book, Brain Lock.)
But this is true for all of us. Our brains may not always be helping.
The message for us is that no matter what the struggle, you can change it.
It’s learning how that’s challenging. Schwartz’s four steps are a universal
solution that applies to everything — you name it — things such as Black-
Berry or iPhone addiction, compulsive shopping, bulimia, junk food
addiction, cheating, procrastination, and how to stop going back to your
toxic ex.
In other words, those thoughts popping into your head, such as,
“This Ho’oponopono stuff is BS!” aren’t coming from you but from your
brain.
Schwartz calls them deceptive brain messages — but until you separate
yourself from them, they feel like you. Cleaning helps you erase them
from memory. Cleaning helps you circumvent them so that they no
longer fire off.
In short, here are the four steps from Schwartz to help you get a
handle on this:
Step 1: Relabel:  Identify deceptive brain messages and the uncomfortable
sensations; call them what they really are.
Step 2: Reframe:   Change your perception of the importance of the
deceptive  brain  messages;  say  why  these  thoughts,  urges,  and
impulses keep bothering you. (“It’s not me; it’s just my brain!”)
Step 3: Refocus:   Direct your attention toward an activity or mental
process that is wholesome and productive — even while the false and
deceptive urges, thoughts, impulses, and sensations are still present
and bothering you.
Step 4: Revalue:  Clearly see the thoughts, urges, and impulses for what
they are — sensations caused by deceptive brain messages that are not
true and that have little to no value.
You can exercise your body, and you can exercise your mind. I’ll call
it Brain Yoga for now. This information teaches you to be the pilot of
your brain and not a passenger letting it fly you into walls. Books and
research by such neuroscience pioneers as Schwartz excite and inspire me.
They prove that you can have what you want with persistence, intention,
and strategy.
More importantly, you can get to a point where you are here. You
are fully experiencing this moment, able to hear the Divine whisper its
intentions and inspirations, and able to act on them without hesitation
or fear.
Until then, clean, clean, clean.