10
The Meeting of the Minds

For many years I researched, developed, and tested a theory that delineates what the mind is, and how we think and build memory in order to learn.1 I describe this theory, the Geodesic Information Processing Theory, as the science of thought, which I have applied in many ways with my patients and in my research over the past thirty years.2 Based on this theory, in the following chapters I am going to explain how easy it is for us to get caught up in incorrect thinking patterns when we do not monitor what enters our minds. You will also begin to understand how mindsets become mindsets (which are really entrenched memories with emotions attached, thus the equivalent of an attitude) and influence our perceptions.

If you look at this schematic of the Geodesic Information Processing Theory, you will see that your mind is divided into two parts: the nonconscious metacognitive and the conscious cognitive. You will also see a section that is called the symbolic level, which represents our senses and what we say and do. Across the bottom strip of the model you will see text boxes that represent what is happening in the brain, or the neural correlates, as a result of the mind in action.3

When you are thinking, choosing, and forming thoughts or memories, your mind is “in action.”4 The mind is separate from the brain and changes the biology of the brain.5 A mind in action changes the physical structure of your brain biology. This process is called neuroplasticity and is something I have been studying for the past thirty years. Although the idea of neuroplasticity was rejected in the 1980s, when the prevailing wisdom was that the brain could not change (a damaged brain would always be a damaged brain), it gained validity in the mid-1990s and is now discussed throughout the scientific community.6

The brain only changes, however, because of the action going on between the nonconscious and conscious mind. As you think about what you are listening to, smelling, touching, tasting, or looking at, your nonconscious and conscious minds kick into high-energy action and your genes respond by switching on and off, making proteins that form into treelike structures called dendrites, which are memories.7 You literally wire thoughts into your brain, thereby transforming the biological landscape of your brain.

“Magic Trees of the Mind” Golgi Stain

The more you think about something, the more developed your memory concerning this thing becomes. In fact, over a period of twenty-one days, short-term memory becomes long-term memory.8 It takes another forty-two days (two more twenty-one-day cycles) to automatize that long-term memory and turn it into a habit.9 This means it takes a minimum of sixty-three days to form a habit, not twenty-one as is often quoted.

There is an interesting interplay that takes place between the incredibly fast nonconscious mind, with its trillions of memories, and your slower, more evaluative, but equally powerful conscious mind. The conscious mind assesses the incoming information from your five senses, yet it does so through the lens of four to seven embedded thoughts that have moved from your nonconscious into your conscious mind at any one moment.10 Current events are examined in terms of existing and related memories. What you have already built into your mind determines how you will understand and make decisions about new information.

In the following chapters I will explain my theory in more detail, ending with an analogy that will show you how it applies to the food we choose to eat.

Nonconscious Metacognitive Level of the Mind

The nonconscious metacognitive level of the mind, which is on the far left of the graphic above, is incredibly extensive. It is beyond the constraints of space and time and operates in a quantum way: unlimited, interrelational, and simultaneous.11 It is where your stored memories interact in a dynamic fashion, setting up your belief systems and shaping your uniqueness, which I term the I-factor.12

Essentially, your I-factor is the perfectly created you. It is your uniqueness as a human being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26) and all the choices you have made, which have created genetic changes, consequently adding layers to the core of who you are. These layers enrich you if they are Holy Spirit–led layers, or they diminish you if you choose to believe the enemy’s lies. Who you choose to listen to is vitally important in terms of the quality and level of truth you build into your nonconscious mind. Where your mind goes, your brain follows.

The nonconscious mind is responsible for somewhere between 90–99 percent of your mind’s activity.13 For example, out of the 10 million bits per second processed through the eye, only a maximum of 50 bits per second are processed consciously.14 The nonconscious mind operates twenty-four hours a day, at fantastic speeds, about a quintillion (1018) bits per second at a synaptic level and an octillion (1027) bits per second at a microtubular level, for the whole brain.15 Indeed, the mind is truly magnificent. It is the orchestra conductor, operating in the brain in the form of rhythms and frequencies, which communicate among its biological components like a beautiful piece of music.16

The nonconscious mind drives and influences the conscious mind, which means it is the dominant part of your mind.17 Once a thought is planted and becomes a habit in your nonconscious mind, it will shape your perception of anything related to that thought. This interrelated nature of the mind gives a whole new level of meaning to James 1:21: “The implanted word [will] save your souls.” What you have stored in your nonconscious mind will shape your perception of reality.

The nonconscious mind is connected into the spiritual part of who you are.18 What this means is that God has already provided answers to our issues (including what to eat, how to eat, and for any kind of eating disorder). Everything we need for our future is already completed (Isa. 46:10), and it’s all good (Gen. 1:31). The answers are already accessible to us through the Holy Spirit (John 16:13).

In fact, the past, present, and future are not fixed variables in your nonconscious mind, which means it is not bound by time. Essentially, the nonconscious mind works on quantum principles, which do not follow the normal rule of time in classical physics. The past, present, and future affect each other—much like what happened with Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Déjà Vu.19 By implanting the Word in your soul (mind), you affect your past, present, and future!

Yet we need to choose to implant these spiritual realities in our nonconscious minds to “save [our] souls” (James 1:21). Once we begin to do this, we will truly comprehend how the work of the cross created our future: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer. 29:11).

The Conscious Cognitive Level of the Mind

The conscious level of the mind, which is represented in the middle of the schematic above, is responsible for roughly 1–10 percent of our mind’s activity.20 It is much more sedate than the nonconscious mind but equally as powerful. For instance, it operates at only 50 bits per second through the eyes as compared to the total of 10 million bits per second.21 It is dependent on the nonconscious mind, which is the source of our individual uniqueness, and is therefore influenced by what is stored in the nonconscious mind.22 The conscious mind only operates when we are awake, and it is the part of us that is consciously and deliberately thinking and choosing.23 We have the ability, with our conscious mind, to change and reconceptualize embedded memories—this means we can change and overpower toxic eating habits.24

Remember, 2 Timothy 1:7 says that we do not have a spirit of fear but of love and power and a sound mind. The core of the design of our conscious and nonconscious levels of mind is based on these latter qualities. We are essentially designed to think and choose well; we are made in the image of a powerful, loving God! This is called “the optimism bias” in science.25 Because of this bias, memories can be willfully redesigned in a positive direction.26

This powerful ability to redesign or reconceptualize our thoughts, however, can only take place when these memories move from the nonconscious mind into the conscious mind—that is, when we become aware of our thoughts. As the Scripture says, we need to bring all thoughts into captivity (2 Cor. 10:5).27 We have to choose to change our minds.

Our conscious mind operates on a “one thing at a time” sequential basis, within the context of classical physics principles. The conscious level of mind is therefore bound by space and time. This space-time framework enables us to fully direct our attention, focus our reflections, and apply repeated, diligent, and rigorous effort to a particular issue (including what we eat), which leads to true learning.28 This is called the Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE) in quantum physics.29 I know this may sound like a highly complex and strange phenomenon, yet it is essentially what is happening as we repeatedly pay attention to and process information. Constantly thinking about something or listening to something creates genetic change, and learning takes place. This can happen with everything: when we are constantly exposed to messages about fast food, for example. These new thoughts become entrenched and implanted into our minds.

The QZE aligns with Proverbs 4:20–22. In this passage, the author cries out, “My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart; For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh” (emphasis added). Having a healthy mind, body, and spirit begins in the mind, when we start implanting healthy lifestyle patterns of thinking in our nonconscious mind and choose to act on them through our conscious mind. This is a truly hopeful scenario that shows God’s loving grace and mercy. When we understand how we wired in an unhealthy mindset, we can wire it out and replace it with a healthy and life-giving mindset. And this ability to change the landscape of our brains goes for all thoughts, not just food thoughts! God really did design us with the amazing ability to renew our minds (Rom. 12:2).

The Level of the Senses

The symbolic output level, the third section on the schematic of my theory, incorporates the five senses through which we express ourselves and experience the world. These senses are the bridge between the external world that we inhabit and the internal world of our mind.30 We experience the events and circumstance of our lives through our senses, including what we taste, what food we smell, what food and food marketing commercials we see, what food advertisements we hear, and what foods we touch. Our senses are therefore a food battleground, and we have to choose what we will allow inside our mind.

A Perfect Circle

The Geodesic Information Processing Model operates as a perfect circle. Information from the events and circumstances of life (including marketing messages about food and the latest diet fads) comes in through our five senses and is received by the conscious cognitive level. This incoming information activates the four to seven related memories/mindsets to move from the nonconscious level to the conscious level of the mind. These existing mindsets/belief systems/clusters of thoughts with their intertwined emotions or attitudes, as I mentioned earlier, shape how you perceive and think about the incoming information. As you pay directed and focused repetitive attention to this thought, a short-term memory is built. Over time (sixty-three days, to be precise, as mentioned earlier) it will become an automatized memory (a habit) and will move into your nonconscious mind, dynamically influencing your conscious mind. And so the perfect circle goes on.

The Mind versus Big Food

A frightening example of this circle is food marketing. Marketing campaigns firehose information into your conscious mind through your five senses. This sensory information is designed to grab your attention with emotional and visual effects that fire up the senses, which, in turn, excite the brain. This excitement occurs as your mind tells your brain what to do with the incoming information, establishing the ideal conditions for building memory. In addition, the repetition factor in food marketing through various media such as billboards, radio, displays in retail centers, magazines, newspapers, books, and the internet on a continual basis will succeed in planting and automatizing these memories into your nonconscious mind—but only if you choose to pay attention to them with your conscious mind. This is precisely because whatever you pay attention to on a regular and continual basis becomes automatized as part of your long-term memory store.

Indeed, because your nonconscious mind drives your conscious mind, whatever you implant in your nonconscious mind influences your conscious mind within the context of the circle discussed above. This circle acts as a continual feedback loop, promoting whatever eating patterns you have planted in your mind. The more the circle focuses on a particular thought, the stronger that thought grows.

Getting Ads Stuck in Your Head?

What does this look like in real, everyday life? Here is an example: you take your kids to school along the same route each day, you see and hear the same food-related radio advertisements, billboards, and fast-food establishments on a daily basis. Every day, these purposefully designed and emotionally laden food advertisements follow the circle between your nonconscious mind and conscious mind, and their messages are reinforced in a rigorous, disciplined way. By the sixty-third day, these food messages have turned from short-term memories into long-term memories. In other words, this repeated exposure to food marketing causes learning to take place, which eventually becomes part of your long-term memory; it has been automatized into a habit. You have actually changed your brain structure, which is neuroplastic, through changing your gene expression with your thoughts.31 This process is the Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE) I discussed earlier. You have built a memory/mindset of I am hungry now. Fast-food places sell yummy food. Suddenly you are feeling hungry, or your children are complaining that they want something to eat, and the first thing you think of is that cheeseburger that was advertised on the radio!

Yet we can consciously override these food habits embedded in the conscious mind and rewire them, as I discussed earlier. Many individuals in the scientific community and business world tell us that we cannot change who we are or overcome bad habits, that we are essentially victims who have brain diseases. However, if we line up science with God’s written Word and our scientific interpretations are led by the Holy Spirit, we will be able to see a glorious world where we can change and can overcome whatever is thrown our way. By our choices, we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:37). Each time we make a choice, we collapse probability into a reality. We make something that has not yet happened into a real physical thought, which in turn impacts every one of our approximately 75–100 trillion cells. This collapsing of probabilities through our choices is called the observer effect in quantum physics; it is happening all day long as we are doing life.32

The example above highlights the potential power of food marketing, and the need for us to constantly be on our guard (1 Cor. 16:13). If we are not aware of the impact of our environment, we will unintentionally be collapsing probabilities into realities—realities that have very real consequences. That cheap fast-food hamburger you are eating was a probability that collapsed into an actuality on the first bite.

We must continually monitor what passes through our five senses. Whatever you think about will grow, and what you grow is what you do (Prov. 23:7). Essentially, whatever you are paying attention to and thinking about becomes part of the memories/mindsets in your nonconscious mind, influencing the choices made by your conscious mind. Indeed, the real tragedy of the food marketing example is that this disciplined and repeated memory-building process should be applied to our thinking, our schoolwork, our jobs, and other healthy pastimes—not the consumption of processed, MAD, food-like products.

Unfortunately, one of the most stubborn mindsets we have to contend with tells us that we are too busy to do the mental work to change our eating habits and too busy to prepare meals at home. We will explore this hurry sickness next, with a view to uprooting it from our minds. We will also look at the link between hurry sickness and television viewing and explore the effects that television has on our food mindsets.