BOOK REVIEW: THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF
BOOK REVIEW: The Biology of Belief
by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD
“A life changing moment..”
When did you last pick up a book and enjoyed reading every page? Why did you pick up that book? What did you learn? What do you remember? What questions went through your mind as you read the pages? I often wonder about books and how they help us to explore our thinking, feelings and actions. Over the years, I have found enormous joy in reading widely. Some time ago, I came across “The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles” written by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD.
Why did I pick up this book? At the last lot of certification training I completed, this book was on the table as a ‘recommended read’. I passed by it and glanced at the cover wondering what was inside… opening inside, I read the prologue and the very first sentence is “If you could be anybody, who would you be?” Lipton goes on to share how his life transformed… “I had the opportunity to think outside the rigid parameters of belief that prevail in conventional academia… I experienced a scientific epiphany that shattered my beliefs about the nature of life.” I just read the first page and propelled myself into reading the book.
Lipton’s journey with the microscope started at the age of seven in his second grade classroom. Can you remember what you were doing in second grade? I remember playing in the creek near our farmhouse in northern New South Wales (Australia) and wondering how all the eels survived in amongst the large boulders that took up a lot of space in the water. A microscope came into my life when I was eleven!
I found the reference to epigenetics and the influence that our environment has on our gene activity fascinating and this is what excites my mind. In his book, Lipton draws a line in the sand and on one side exists the “New Biology” which suggests that life is a “… cooperative journey among powerful individuals who can program themselves to create joy-filled lives.” Imagine that! What do you suppose life can be like if you had joy – every day?
As I read Chapter 2 “It’s the Environment, Stupid” my mind began to imagine how protein – the stuff of life is assembled. Picture this – each protein looking like a slightly mangled malleable string of pearls where each bead represents one of the twenty amino acid molecules used by cells. Now the reason the string of pearls or string of amino acid molecules is malleable is because of flexible links or peptide bonds – and these bonds enable each protein to have a variety of shapes. In some instances the backbone of some protein molecules require helper proteins called chaperones. As I read further, I wondered how smart these proteins are in our bodies and how impactful our environment i.e. what we expose ourselves to, what we eat, how we exercise, what we think and so on really affects our health.
It doesn’t stop with proteins. Chapter 3 is about “The Magical Membrane” and just when my brain was still managing to process the structure and abilities of proteins, I found that membranes are even more fascinating. You see, when I studied biology, a membrane was a membrane. Now, I know that a membrane is much much more… Lipton refers to the membrane as a ‘brain’.
So how is the membrane like a brain? What I learned from the book is that the membrane is critical to the life of the cell and here is why. A healthy membrane allows molecules to move into the cell i.e. life sustaining food and without a healthy functioning membrane, a cell will die. Further along in the book, we find that molecules like people prefer environments that offer stability and the membrane acts like a gate and channel. Looking for an analogy in our own way of thinking about things, what do we allow in through our senses and what do we do about what we allow in? How healthy is our filtering mechanism? Does it need a tune-up? Are we aware when we listen for positives or negatives and how does that affect how we behave or the choices we make. Just stop a moment and ponder this. It is very powerful and can change the way we look at things and even how we act!
I recommend you read this book because the analogies to our own lives is powerful and that takes me back to the title of the book and the words ‘unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles’. How are you unleashing your unconscious mind and conscious mind so that you can live a dynamically harmonious life in an ecological and marvellous way? Where is your joy?
If you could be anyone, who would you be? We are running a FasTrakTM NLP Practitioner Certification training course 15-21 September in Brisbane, Australia. To transform your life and the lives of those around you enrol now and unleash your unconscious and conscious minds.
Master NLP Coaches, Gina and Glen Palmer
