The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits Paperback – April 1, 2009

I have been following Gregg Braden through the years and each of his books offer a new lens but always consistent with his core philosophies. Any time I read one of Gregg's books I am catapulted into a vortex of infinite possibilities,

The hard-nosed skeptic will caricature Gregg Braden's "The Spontaneous Healing of Belief" as just another "New Age" book written about how we create our own world by merely believing. I want to defend Braden's book from such criticism, and I invite skeptical readers to study this interesting book with an open mind. It is not that belief provides the easy route to New Age enlightenment, it is that Braden's "belief" involves the hard work of purification as we learn to tune ourselves with something bigger than our narrow self interests. While Braden's treatment is not perfect, it is easy to find what he intends to say in the face of would-be criticism. Negativity will not have the final answer, even when it comes with a pretense of rigor. We must also put our best foot forward in a positive sense.Braden (page xi) summarizes his understanding of scientific evidence: "Paradigm-shattering experiments published in leading-edge, peer-reviewed journals reveal that we're bathed in a field of intelligent energy that fills what used to be thought of as empty space. Additional discoveries show beyond any reasonable doubt that this field responds to us -it rearranges itself- in the presence of our heart-based feelings and beliefs. And this is the revolution that changes everything."Braden (page 3) raises a troubling point: "What if we're living our lives shrouded in the false limitations and incorrect assumptions that other people have formed over generations, centuries, or even millennia? Historically, for example, we've been taught that we are insignificant specks of life passing through a brief moment in time, limited by `laws' of space, atoms, and DNA. This view suggest that we'll have little effect on anything during our stay in this world, and when we're gone, the universe will never even notice our absence."Braden (page 16) writes: "It becomes abundantly clear that something -some intelligent force- is holding the particles of you together right now, as you read the words on this page. That force is what makes our beliefs so powerful. If we can communicate with it, then we can change how the particles of `us' behave in the world. We can rewrite the code of our reality."Braden (page 20) writes: "The atoms of our reality either exist as matter or they don't. They're either here or not here, `on' or `off'." In the off position, Braden considers particles that are transformed into "invisible waves." Braden (page 21) writes that, "everything boils down to opposites: pluses and minuses, male and female, on and off."Braden (pages 23-24) writes: "Everything is ultimately made of the same stuff. From the dust of distant stars to you and me, ultimately everything that `is' emerges from the vast soup of quantum energy (what `could be'). And without fail, when it does, it manifests as predictable patterns that follow the rules of nature. Water is a perfect example. When two hydrogen atoms connect to one oxygen atom as a molecule of H2O, the pattern of the bond between them is always 104 degrees. The pattern is predictable. It is reliable - and because it is, water is always water."Braden (page 28) writes: "A fractal view of the universe implies that everything from a single atom to the entire cosmos is made of just a few natural patterns. While they may combine, repeat, and build themselves on larger scales, even in their complexity they can still be reduced to a few simple forms."Braden (page 31) relates belief to the universal: "Every day we offer the literal input of our belief-commands to the consciousness of the universe, which translates our personal and collective instructions into the reality of our health, the quality of our relationships, and the peace of our world. How to create the beliefs in our hearts that change the reality of our universe is a great secret, lost in the 4th century, from the most cherished Judeo-Christian traditions."Braden (page 41) writes on healing: "Beliefs have long been known to have healing powers. The controversy centers around whether or not it's the belief itself that does the healing or if the experience of belief triggers a biological process that ultimately leads to the recovery. For the layperson, the distinction may sound like splitting hairs. While the doctors can't explain precisely why some patients cure themselves through their beliefs, the effect has been documented so many times that at the very least we must accept that there is a correlation between the body's repairing itself and the patient's belief that the healing has taken place."Braden (page 46) writes: "Just as the belief that we've been given a healing agent can promote our bodies' life-affirming chemistry, the reverse can happen if we believe that we're in a life-threatening situation."Now it is clear that Braden's "belief" is not any belief, or a statement of faith. Rather, Braden describes belief as a synthesis. Braden (page 52) defines belief: "that it's the acceptance that comes from what we think is true in our minds married with what we feel is true in our hearts." Braden (page 53) writes: "Belief is our acceptance of what we have witnessed, experienced, or know for ourselves."So there can be wrong beliefs when our reason is not in balance with our emotion, and so to arrive at something self evident (as Braden requires) involves an innate error recognition. It is this way that belief can be tuned with the universal, but this requires discipline. Braden (page 59) writes: "the universal experience that we know as feeling and belief are the names that we give to the body's ability to convert our experiences into electrical and magnetic waves."Braden (page 74) writes: "Simply hoping, wishing, or saying that a healing is successful may have little effect upon the actual situation. In these experiences, we haven't yet arrived at the belief -the certainty that comes from acceptance of what we think is true, coupled with what we feel is true in our body- that makes the wish a reality."In is interesting that Braden sees reality as a computer simulation, and it comes with belief codes that act as part of the universal computer program. This admission would seem to delight materialists and science fiction writers that venture similar speculations. But Braden's usage is metaphorical, and there is a serious caveat that permits a break from a mechanistic world view: we are able to re-program our poorly tuned beliefs, because instinctively we know that the simulation is only an illusion. Because we know that an appearance is an illusion we are able to escape the dictates of a computer program, and therefore greater reality cannot be just a simulation. Braden (page 137) writes that, "while our bodies are certainly in this world, the living force that expresses itself through them is actually based somewhere else, as the larger reality that we just can't see from our vantage point."Braden gives us many helpful hints on how to re-program our beliefs. Braden (page 159) writes: "To make a change in something as powerful as the core beliefs that define our lives, we need a trigger that's equally powerful. We need a reason to jolt us from complacency of one way of thinking into a new, and sometimes revolutionary, way of seeing things."Because we can break away from the output of a mere computer simulation, Braden's big reality involves a spiritual realm that rediscovers the wisdom of Buddha and Jesus. Braden (page 199) writes: "Jesus taught that we must become in life the very things that we choose to experience in the world." This corresponds to Braden's belief code number 27, and by now I hope you feel the jolt of this remarkable book.

In The Spontaneous Healing of Belief Gregg Braden tackles the great questions of life: who are we, and what are we capable of creating? He draws the analogy of an all-encompassing computer program to explain how the universe works and what our part in its working may be. And he says that, like a computer programmer, people must understand the code that causes the computer to produce the results they choose. Without the correct codes, results are likely to be something other than the individual wants.For example, discussing fractals, Braden offers the code: "If the universe is made of repeating patterns, then to understand something on a small scale provides a powerful window into similar forms on a grand scale." Following that, he offers "belief is the `program' that creates patterns in reality." Thus, he leads the readers into the central thesis of this book: To heal your life and recreate your life, heal your beliefs.It is his premise that humans are capable of creating miracles. We become less than capable only when we accept the limits that we ourselves have created. To identify and restructure those beliefs that underlie our self-imposed limits, he includes a series of exercises that make change of belief almost inevitable.What I enjoyed most about this book is Braden's synthesis of the findings of scientific studies and the teachings of philosophers and medicine workers throughout history. He masterfully creates coherent linkages between the teachings of the masters, such as Jesus, the Buddha, and Rumi, and what scientists are telling us about the structure and function of the universe. While this could be a dry, dull recitation, Braden's gift with words creates a stunning, compelling vision of human potential in a highly readable and enjoyable format.There is so much to ponder in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief that it deserves several readings. It rests on my bedside table for rereading and rethinking my own self-imposed limits.Highly recommended!

Gregg Braden offers good reasons to rethink one's belief systems and recognize that changing a belief can actually be much easier and faster than we are led to believe. The experiments and science supporting the work, is fascinating.Here is a quote from page 102 about changing our point of view: "The new belief happens automatically in the presence of the experience that gives us a reason to embrace it." The author's writing can be a little too wordy, and sometimes leans pretty heavily on computer analogies to explain his concepts, but it's worth wading through, for the content.

I loved reading every single word in this book. Revelation exploded off of each page for me and I can truly say that I understand the adage that states, when the student is ready the teacher appears! I now consider Gregg Braden my teacher, a spirit guide of sorts for these modern times. Because of this wonderful book, I now understand how immeasurably powerful I am and that I truly create my own reality and most importantly, I know how to allow the reality I want to come into existence! I now have a clear understanding of the universe and how to speak its language. I, too, am a master programmer and I have already begun to experience miracle after miracle as a result of reading this book, JUST this week! In my honest opinion, this book is a must read for every single person on our planet. Thank you Gregg Braden. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the depths of my soul!