John U.
My 1998 accident is the event that precipitated my journey away from the limited civilization. I was hit at 75 mph by a one-ton van in a construction zone. Knocked 200ft down the freeway – of course he had no driver’s license or insurance. I drove home the 5th day, got out of my vehicle and fell to the ground. The lower part of my body didn’t work. I crawled through the garage – through the kitchen – through the front hall. When I got up the stairs and crawled up onto the bed I laid there for one and a half hours shaking violently. I was thinking I would be paralyzed. It turned out I was numb from the waist down. For two years, I had multiple nerve and soft tissue damage. I was only able to get upright for very short stints for the first two months. Mostly, I drove to Madison to run my 15 full-time crew company – doing bids and making schedules.
After two months, I tried to take a screw out of my taillight bulb and started shaking. I knew then I was in for a long healing process. Some of my so-called friends said I would never run again or climb a tree. Physical therapy was out of the question. Next, my wife left me for someone in our past. More hurt and pain on top of more hurt and pain. Divorce was ugly. I held the purse strings as the judge made me aware of. I had to come up with half of everything in cash to keep my home and business, which I had worked hard to get and keep.
I won’t go any deeper into the blame game on all the atrocities that happened in the ten-year period. Except, physically it took me two years to start hiking, the fourth year to start running and the fifth year to climb trees and play basketball again. I was under so much stress and pressure that my regular health had really suffered – many hospital stays and loss of weight.
I consciously decided to change my way of thinking in order to control my biology, which is Bruce Lipton’s creed in the book, “Biology of Belief”. He along with other non-western medicine “thinkers” are my guides. My point is that you can choose what you see. You can filter your life with rose-colored beliefs that will help your body grow or you can use a dark filter that turns everything black and makes your body and mind more susceptible to disease. You can live a life of fear and or live a life of love. You have a choice! But, I can tell you that if you choose to see the world full of love, your body will respond by growing in health. If you choose to believe that you live a dark world full of fear, you body’s health will be compromised as you physiologically close down in a protection response.
Learning how to harness your mind to promote growth is the secret of life, which is why this is called “The Biology of Belief”. Of course, the secret of life is not a secret at all. Teachers like Buddha and Jesus have been telling us the same story for millennia. Now science is pointing in the same direction. It is not our genes but our beliefs that control our lives. “Oh ye of little belief”. Living in love and living fear create opposite effects in the body and mind. There is nothing wrong with going through life wearing the proverbial rose-colored glasses.
In fact, those rose-colored glasses are necessary for your cells to thrive. Positive thoughts are a biological mandate for a happy, healthy life.
In the words of Mahatma Ghandi.
Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny
That is why we want to become value creators instead of producers. Value producers reiterate the same old values over and over masking the burden of life causing stagnation and rut-like life styles. We want to be value creators – creating new values never seen before by the limited civilization. Creating new values is what truly gives us the exhilaration for life replacing the stagnation and ruts of life. And also leading to the exhilaration for conscious life, which enables us to be happy and full of joy. In turn this new happiness and joy does not ebb but continues to grow and grow. It is limitless. I’m back and I choose love over fear.
John U.
Wisconsin Core A-Team