Neuroscience of manifestation

Imagine the brain as a circle containing neurons represented by the many small dots but for the real brain they are billions. The lines joining the dots are the neuro connections and its through these connections that our brain is able to generate thoughts, feelings and sensations depending on the patterns of the connections. The region of the brain that is critical for thinking is the cortex, the outer layer of the brain which is the largest part. The region of the brain that is responsible for planning, conscious attention and decision making is the prefrontal cortex located at the front of the cortex. We shall call it the executive as its role is to supervise the activity of the rest of the brain. It is the you that is reading this article right now and is becoming aware of their own thoughts and emotions at the seat of consciousness.

The bottom section of the brain is the limbic system, this is the oldest part of the brain with a strong similarity for all mammals.  It consists of various structures such as the hippocampus, amygdala and brain stem. These structures are responsible for generating emotions and producing signals and neuro chemicals that are sent to the body through the spinal cord to regulate the body functions. For a simplistic understanding of the limbic system i have divided it into three functions, that is pleasure, calm and distaste which are emotional states it produces.

Assuming that you are in a stressful external environment, you are in a state of lack, you are suffering or stressed by work. You are confronted by that annoying ex-partner, your boss is hounding you at work or you just lost your wallet. Distressful signals will come from the external environment and pass through your senses and are first received by your sensory neurons that decode their form and shape. Your sensory neurons will produce an image and send it to internal neurons in the cortex that process the signal by making sense of it in relation to your memories producing a thought and sending it the limbic neurons that generate emotional states. Note that the pattern of internal neuro connections creates a thought experience and if their path leads to distasteful sensation in the limbic system the individual will have a negative feeling. The limbic system will release a distress signal causing the body to release cortisol and adrenaline which will cause the heart rate to rise, breathing to become heavier and muscles to tense. This state creates a stressful sensation which feeds back to the limbic system of the brain making it aware of the body's unpleasant physical state of anxiety. The signal is then transmitted back to the prefrontal cortex which pays attention to the source of this distressful condition thereby repeating the thought circuit that caused it in the internal neural network and causing the same distasteful emotion in the limbic system leading to subsequent distressful physiological effect on the body.

In short the negative thought patterns of the cortex cause the limbic system to produce negative emotions, causing the body to become distressed, further causing more negative emotions and more negative thought patterns resulting in more physiological distress.

This heightened stressful cycle that the individual is trapped in could degenerate into disease as the body can only handle stress for so long. Stress is only designed to be experienced when the person detects that they are in a state of danger so they can aquire the energy required to fight or flee but only for a brief moment. If the individual is in a constant state of distress due to over thinking he will gradually deteriorate into depression and disease.

This cycle could repeat itself indefinitely resulting in higher stress and anxiety if it weren't for the prefrontal cortex executive center which makes the individual aware of his negative internal thought patterns and consciously  makes an intention to change them. This may be difficult  because the negative thought patterns of the cortex have been executed so many times that they exert a force like gravity to move along the path of least resistance. The executive therefore has to conjure up the will power to oppose the negative patterns of the nervous system and move along different thought patterns that lead to positive emotions.

The negative patterns of the nervous system don't only manifest internally but externally as well because the body becomes primed to act in line with the brains thinking patterns. Actions that are in line with repeated neural circuits therefore happen automatically in the form of habits without thinking. These actions affect our external environment in such a way as to return us to the familiar environment. For instance you will often find yourself waking up at the same time everyday, eating the same kind of food, using the same route to work, using the same methods at work, calling the same people, meeting the same friends after work, going on the same social media platforms, visiting the same hung outs and going to sleep at the same time. The combination of these tiny habits create the totality of results in your life for instance your prospects for getting a better job, meeting a new partner or improving your health. If your habits are negative then you will produce negative results in your life and your perception of your life will also be negative as you will only see negative triggers in your external environment. Your environment will not change because you are thinking equal to your environment.

Your neural circuits also act like filters of your external environment, so if your internal circuits have been having constant thoughts or contemplation about a particular thing chances are its the first thing you will see in your external environment. For instance you will hardly notice that repair shop you have been passing everyday until your car breaks down. Your car breaking down creates many thoughts and ideas  of how to fix it and your brain starts to perceive the solutions in your environment it was previously thinking about. Similarly if you are accustomed to thinking negatively about your problems and how they are going to be difficult to solve for instance you are going to be late for work, you might get hijacked on the highway or you are going to get a ticket, you begin to see people, places, events in your external environment that match these things. And this can make you feel like you are really having a bad day and like everyone is out to get you feeding your anxiety more and repeating the distressful cycle of your internal nervous system.

There therefore two factors that cause your external environment to manifest your thoughts and those are your habits and your perceptions. By intentionally altering one or both of these we can therefore change our external environment. If you are used to hanging out with a particular self destructive group of friends for instance causing you to drink and smoke, stop the habit. If you are used to drinking a lot of coffee before going to sleep and staying up late browsing social media causing you to make up feeling groggy, stop the habit. If you are used to passing that fast food shop on your way from work and cant resist that junk food that is having a long term effect on your health, you need to rewire your thinking brain to stop the habit.

For perceptions if you see life as being difficult, people as being bad and money as being scarce then similarly this is what you will see in your external environment. You can start by changing your perspective to life from negative to positive by seeing the positive side of things. Every situation has a positive and negative side and that which you focus on is what grows and fully manifests itself. This does not mean being in denial or ignoring the negative side of things but interpreting the negative side in a positive way. All it takes is a small change in mindset to see a difficult hardship as a challenging opportunity and seeing yourself as having the potential to turn any difficult situation around.