Do not be
conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its
external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire]
renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may
prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God,
even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight
for you].
ولا تشاكلوا هذا الدهر. بل تغيّروا عن شكلكم
بتجديد اذهانكم لتختبروا ما هي ارادة الله الصالحة المرضية الكاملة.
Romans 12:2 Amplified
Bible (AMP)
I believe that I can experience
God’s good and pleasing will for my life when I:
·
Surrender to God
·
Let The Holy Spirit work in me and direct me
·
Constantly read the Bible and meditate on God’s word
·
Pray without ceasing
·
Get my thoughts, behaviour, and attitude and boundaries aligned with
God’s word
·
Clean up (detoxify) my mind
In the next 10 devotions I will
share with you 10 steps to clean up or detoxify the brain. I am learning to
apply them.
These steps
are adapted from a book by Dr. Caroline Leaf, a Christian author and other
teachings I learned.
Step 1: Consciously Control Your
Thoughts
It is
essential that you learn about your mental processes and get actively involved
in changing them.
Demanding
unrealistic performance from yourself and others puts your mind and body in
stress mode and this has a negative effect on your health. We need to depend on The Holy
Spirit living within us in order to be able to live the Christian life.
When you
receive a thought, filter it. If it is helpful accept it, if it is not helpful
reject it. You should: ask, answer and discuss your thoughts out loud with
yourself.
Never
let thoughts wander through your mind unchecked. If they are toxic they will
eventually make you sick. Thoughts are real things with substance and need to
be controlled.
Until
you have your thoughts and attitudes under control, no amount of knowledge,
skill, or medication can help you truly detox. You will need courage and
perseverance to confront and control your thoughts and to build healthy
boundaries for yourself and in your relationships.
One of
the real dangers of toxic thoughts is that they build toxic memories. The first
step to stop building toxic memories is to filter the thoughts in the early
stages. Toxic memories can be replaced by reprogramming and replacing them with
pleasant memories. This will require many recordings of the pleasant memory
until the negative memory is erased.
Research
shows that intelligence is not static but can be enhanced (or reduced) by your
neurochemistry. You control your neurochemistry by your thought life; therefore
you can make yourself healthier and smarter and more able to listen to the voice of the Holy
Spirit.
Step 2: Frame Your World with Your
Words
The
words that you speak are electromagnetic life forces that come from a thought
inside your brain and have a big impact on your thoughts and your health and
attitude. The words are influenced by your 5 senses. The 5 senses form the
connection between the external world and your mind’s internal world.
When you
make negative statements, you release negative chemicals, which lead to
negative memories that grow stronger and become negative strongholds that
control your attitude and life.
Your
positive words have to be backed up with honesty and integrity, -what in
psychological words is called congruence. What you say and do on the outside
must reflect what you think on the inside.
When you
start speaking positive words out of positive thinking, you grow a beautiful
new memory over the painful old one. The old memory will not go away but will
be dominated by the new one.
You can
be “transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Romans 12:2
If you do not do this process with integrity and congruence, then the
positive statements will fade in time and the negative stronghold will gain
supremacy again. It is congruent thinking that creates necessary changes in the
brain.
Step 3: Express Those Emotions
If you
repress and hide toxic emotions, the time will come when those buried emotions
will suddenly come pouring out, and of course, it will happen at the most
inopportune time, because buried emotions are not controlled, thoughtful
emotions.
Signs of
suppressed emotions (beside illness in your body), include:
Irritability,
short temper, over-reactivity, anxiety, frustration, fear, impulse, a desire
for control, perfectionism, self-doubt.
Realize that The Bible tells us
“In your anger do not sin” Ephesians 4:26 and ‘an
angry person stirs up conflict, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins.’ Proverbs 29:22. We need to be able to
express our emotions in a controlled and effective manner.
Don’t
deny your feelings. Acknowledge them, face them and deal with them in a positive way as soon as you can. Expressing
emotions in a healthy way is an important step in detoxing the brain.
Step 4: Take Responsibility and
Take Control
The mind is like a flow of
information as it moves among the cells, organs and systems of the body.
Information flow is metacognitive (beyond consciousness), yet it impacts the
conscious level.
Research shows that the metacognitive level is responsible for 90% of
what’s happening in the mind, and the cognitive level is responsible for only
10%.
Your individuality implies and
carries with it the taking of responsibility for your actions: you must
consciously force the metacognitive and cognitive levels to interact. You can
do this by consciously thinking about what is in your mind which allows you
literally to access the psychosomatic (body-mind) network where your
memories are stored and redirect them. Start by bringing your awareness to past
experiences and conditioning, and then lay the groundwork so that you can grow
new memories over the old ones. Ask God to help you through prayer.
"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,"
Proverbs
23:7
Our action has to be:
bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
2
Corinthians 10: 5
Step 5: Dream On!
Detoxing your brain doesn’t only
take place when you are awake. When you are dreaming, different parts of your
body/mind are exchanging information, and your glial cells are cleaning up your
memory networks.
(Glial cell: A supportive cell in the central nervous system --
the brain and spinal cord. Glial cells do not conduct electrical impulses (as
opposed to neurons, which do). The glial cells surround neurons and provide
support for them and insulation between them. Glial cells are capable of
extensive signaling in response to a diversity of stimuli. Bidirectional
communication exists between glial cells and neurons, and between glial cells
and vascular cells. The four main functions of glial cells are to
surround neurons and hold them in place, to supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons, to insulate one
neuron from another, and to destroy pathogens and remove dead neurons. They
also modulate neurotransmission.)
We all dream, it’s a physiological
process. The reality is that many of us suppress our dreams because of the
emotions they evoke. Yet our dreams challenge us to sort our emotional lives.
Be advised: the more turbulent and disturbing your dreams, the more work you
have to do on your thought life. Dreams not only have content but feelings as
well. Any badly built memories are cleaned up at this stage as well.
The critical first step to using your
dreams to detox your thoughts is simply to remember them. Capturing the dream in some form
such as writing it down as soon as you wake up can be enlightening and help you
to control your thoughts.
Step 6:THINK 4-Give-Ness
Forgiveness enables us to release all these toxic thoughts of:
- Anger
- Resentment
- Bitterness
- Shame
- Grief
- Regret
- Guilt
- Hate
Most importantly as long as these
unhealthy toxic thoughts dominate our mind, we will not be able to grow new healthy thoughts and memories.
Dr. Don Colbert (author of Deadly
Emotions) says forgiveness is like an emotional shower: it cleanses and
frees the entrapped soul.
Forgiveness in his (and others) view is:
- Not making excuses for someone’s behaviour, but it is
forgiving despite behaviour.
- Not ignoring pain or hurt, but it is choosing to let go of the
person who hurt you.
- Not letting someone off the hook, but it is leaving that person in
God’s hands.
- Not a weakness, but
it is a sign of great courage.
It is often said that forgiveness
leads to the ability to love. We cannot love if we have not really forgiven and released those who
have wronged us.
Scientific research shows that
love is good for our health. Ongoing results of the “Forgiveness Study” by
researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that those who develop an
ability to forgive, have greater control over their emotions and are
significantly less angry, upset and hurt, and consequently much healthier.
Step 7: LOVE - TUNE INTO YOUR
HEART
Getting in touch with your heart and
learning to live in the love that flows from it are definite ways of healing
toxic thoughts and emotions. When you experience emotions such as love,
appreciation, care, and compassion these create physiological changes leading
to improved health and increased longevity.
The heart has the ability to pull every
other system in the body to its own rhythm. When the heart is at peace and is
filled with love, the entire body under the direction of the brain feels peace
and love as well.
The best way to communicate with your
heart is to:
· Think of all the blessings in your life
· Develop an attitude of gratitude
· Spend time with people who bring you
joy and happiness
· Focus on happy memories or anticipating
happy events
· Listen to the message from the heart
without clouding it with fear
When you feel the love of God and
people, health travels from the brain to the heart in electrical signals and
then through to the rest of the body.
Step 8: Hugging
A vast body of research shows that
touch releases endorphins and enkephalins from the area of the brain called the
periaqueductal grey (PAG), and which breaks the feedback loops. Studies show
the benefits of touch, not only for depression, but for illnesses that have
physical symptoms as well. Good touching releases the body’s natural chemicals
in a healing process that optimizes your feeling of well-being.
Step 9: Laughter
Many studies show why laughter
deserves to be known as ‘the best medicine’. It releases an instant flood of
feel good chemicals that boost the immune system. Almost instantaneously it
reduces the levels of stress hormones. For instance a good laugh can make
cortisol drop by 39%, adrenaline by 70% and ‘the feel good’ hormone endorphin,
increases by 29%. Other research shows how laughter boosts your immune system
and protects against respiratory tract infections.
Step 10: Diet, Exercise,
Relaxation, and the Spiritual Aspect
I invite
you to repeat the following prayer for yourself:
Abba Father,
thank You for Your abundant blessings and love. Lord, help me to
stop leaning on my own abilities and to depend totally on Your wisdom and power
through The Holy Spirit working in me. Heavenly
Father, please continue to teach me to renew my mind so that I can be
transformed to be Christlike, to feel Your joy, to live Your good and pleasing
will for my life.
O’ Lord, help me to think
positive, noble, admirable, lovely and admirable thoughts and strengthen me
through the Holy Spirit to be congruent and to ‘walk my talk’.
Help me
Lord to be able to express my emotions to my brethren in an effective
constructive way that is according to a win-win approach.
Lord, help
me to master my subconscious mind, to be able to read the programs written on
the software of my mind and change it through conditioning and writing of new
programs. Help me to keep doing this until I begin to function out of these new
paradigms based on your teachings, commandments and wisdom.
Lord, let
my dreams be an opportunity to hear Your voice and to renew my thoughts and be
transformed to the image You hold of me. My heavenly Father, while I sleep
tonight open my ears and seal Your instructions. Help me to see, feel, and
believe the transformation that You are planning for my entire life.
Jesus, help me to apply what
You teach us to pray ‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive those who trespass against us’. Help
me to THINK forgiveness ALL the time.
Father, Your love always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres. God, Your love never fails.
Surround me Lord with believers who love me, build
my faith, care for me, bring me joy and happiness and show me compassion and
appreciation; and strengthen me to do more for them. God
fill me with Your love and Your Holy Spirit so that I can love You, and others,
the way You want me to.
Lord, fill my heart with
laughter and my tongue with songs of joy in appreciation of your blessings and
for healing and feeling great.
Lord, I know that my body is
the temple of the Holy Spirit. I ask in the name of Jesus that You teach me and
strengthen me to do Your will in taking care of it, because it is Your
commandment and because You have put all these commandments out of Your love
for me.
God help detox my brain. God
change the way I think in my heart so that I can change. Guide me and
strengthen me to seek Your face and get to know You and Your thoughts; bringing
all my thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ. I pray in Jesus’ mighty name, to Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.
O LORD, be gracious to us; we long
for you.
Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress.
يَارَبُّ ارْحَمْنَا. إِيَّاكَ انْتَظَرْنَا، كُنْ
عَضُدَنَا فِي الصَّبَاحِ، وَخَلاَصَنَا فِي أَثْنَاءِ الْمِحْنَةِ.
Isaiah 33:2
Jesus loves you
In Him,
Wagdi Henein
