Surprisingly, the answer was provided over 400 years ago, by the cofounder of the Jesuit order, St. Francis Xavier. The truth was expressed in his famous quote: “Give me a child for the first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.” Xavier was aware of the fact that life-controlling behavioral programs, downloaded into a child’s subconscious mind during its first seven years, will shape the character of the rest of that person’s life experiences. While our personal wishes, desires and aspirations are a product of the conscious mind, 95% of life experiences are controlled by behavioral activity programmed into the subconscious mind.
Remember, Nature spends a lot of effort and energy in creating a child, and it doesn’t do so randomly or just on a whim. Nature wants to ensure that a child is going to be successful in its life before embarking on the process of birthing that child. Although a child receives genes from both its mother and father, the genes are not fully set into the position of activation until the process of development. The first eight weeks of a child’s development is called the embryo phase, and that’s just a mechanical unfolding of genes to make sure the baby has a body with two arms, two legs, two eyes, etc. The next period of life is called the fetal stage, when the embryo has the human configuration. Since it’s already shaped, the question is, what will nature do to modify or adjust this human in the next number of months before it’s born? What it does is this: Nature reads the environment and then adjusts the final tuning of the genetics of the child based on what’s immediately going on in the world. How can nature read the environment and do this? The answer is that the mother and the father become nature’s Head Start program. They’re the ones who are living in and experiencing the environment. Their perceptions of the world are then transmitted to the child.
We used to think that only nutrition was provided by the mother to a developing child. The story was, genes control the development, and the mother just provides nutrition. We now know, of course, that there’s more than just nutrition in blood. Blood contains information about emotions and regulatory hormones and the growth factors that control the mother’s life in the world in which she’s living. All this information passes into the placenta along with nutrition. If the mother is happy, the fetus is happy because the same chemistry of emotions that affect the mother’s system are crossing into the fetus. If the mother is scared or stressed, the same stress hormones cross and adjust the fetus. What we’re recognizing is that, through a concept called epigenetics, the environmental information is used to select and modify the genetic program of the fetus so it will conform to the environment in which it’s going to grow, thus enhancing the survival of the child. If parents are totally unaware, this creates a great problem—they don’t know that their attitudes and responses to their experiences are being passed on to their child.
The good news is once you become aware of where you are struggling in your life, you have an opportunity to define the limiting dysfunctional subconscious programs that are inhibiting your efforts! The profoundly important fact is disempowering subconscious programs can be rewritten using techniques such as self-hypnosis, habituation practices, and a number of new modalities collectively referred to as “energy psychology.”
I’m the first to admit that I wasn’t ready to be a parent and that I was ignorant about the importance of parents (versus genes) in child development. With 20/20 hindsight, there are many things as a father I’d like to go back and change. Now when I see my daughters and sons-in-law raising their children consciously, in a way that means that these children, unlike their grandfather, won’t have to rewrite a lot of negative programming, I wonder how I could have been so ignorant. I’m reminded of Bharat Mitra’s description of organic farming, which could also serve as a description of conscious parenting: “How beautiful. How natural. How simple.”
Once the subconscious mind is reprogrammed, replacing limiting beliefs with your personal wishes and desires, the subconscious mind working 95% of the day will get you to your destination unconsciously, without the necessity of applying any conscious effort. Does this really work? For over 40 years, I was truly working “hard,” yet failing, to achieve happiness and a true loving relationship. Twenty-seven years ago, I employed these scientific insights to rewrite my dysfunctional developmental programs. How did that work out? For the last 25 years, I have been blessed to truly manifest a joyous Heaven-on-Earth life experience with my wonderful partner Margaret.
For details on how to create the life you desire, I invite you to check-out the www.brucelipton.com website which offers a large number of freely available written articles, podcasts, and videos, revealing how you can reprogram and empower your life. The Honeymoon Effect book is a source that illuminates the molecular pathways connecting the mind and the body and offers an understanding of how to create and sustain a “Heaven-on-Earth” experience in every aspect of our lives. If you are interested in learning more about conscious parenting and birth psychology, please see the resources we have listed HERE, including the Nature, Nurture, and the Power of Love DVD.
With these insights, I wish for you a life of Health, Happiness, Harmony, and of course, LOVE.
With Love and Light,
Bruce
