Conscious Relationaships With Our Children

An Interview with Dr. Joe Dispenza

While Dhara and I were at the Wesak Gathering in Mount Shasta, we had the opportunity to talk with and interview Dr. Joe Dispenza. You might remember him from the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? He spoke about how it’s possible to create your day. (It was also interesting to find out that he knows our family in Yelm, Washington – it’s a small world indeed.) We wanted to get some of Dr. Joe’s ideas on being more conscious with our relationships in general and with our children in particular. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Joe and his interview in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? about creating your day, I have included it at the end of this interview.

LG: After listening to your lecture tonight about everything from “creating your reality” to actually changing our biology through changing our emotions, thereby becoming more conscious and aware, I can’t help but wonder how this might apply to us as parents and our relationship to our children?

JD: Well, that’s a great question. Children have an enormous amount of neurons, called mirror neurons, in their brains. And these neurons allow us to model or observe and then repeat an experience based on what we just observed. And so if a child observes someone being noble, more than likely he or she will develop those virtuous traits. If they observe someone being complaining and blaming and victimized, their mirror neurons will mold and shape based on what they’re observing. And if you’re giving mixed signals, children get very confused and they don’t trust or believe anything you say. They’re going to rebel against whatever you are saying because you’re not doing it. If you’re going to be a role model and teach them greatness, then you have to be willing to change yourself in the process. I have a very close relationship with my children and I make sure they know exactly what’s going on with me. That’s our base for them to begin their own form of change. Whatever it is, or what they dream or want. Children love that kind of relationship.

I never teach anything to my children that I can’t demonstrate. And I never talk to my children when there’s an emotional reaction. When they’re struggling, I never interfere and try to redirect their behavior. I stop whatever I’m doing and I turn around and I observe them, and I stare at them and I observe until they know that I’m observing them. When they stop and turn around and know what I’m doing, they become self-aware in the process. Then, when they’re no longer emotional, I say to them, “Hey, you know, I had a great day today, but I lost my presence at one point.” And then, invariably, when I’m sitting with them later, they’ll say, “Yeah, you know what? I lost it too today. And I’ll say, “Yeah! You know, I saw you.”

And they’ll say, “Yeah! I was this, or I was that, I was insecure, I was angry.”

And I’ll say, “Well, that’s OK. But here’s the question. If you could do it differently, how would you do it differently tomorrow?” Then we talk.

And so then they begin to modify their behavior, look at possibilities in that moment. That’s called change. I want them to speculate potentials as a result of their self-observation and their self-awareness. I want to make sure that those particular things that are based in their own curiosity, in their own sense of wonder, are never lost. I want them to stay children as long as they can, while they mature. Now, in an adolescent’s world, the human frontal lobe doesn’t finish developing until they’re 25 years old. While the frontal lobe is still formulating, it’s still molding, and so what that means is, most of an adolescent’s blood flow is going through their midbrain, their emotional centers, because they’re struggling to develop an identity. So when the blood flow moves to the midbrain, they’re reacting more than they’re thinking. A child learns how to pay attention, follow-through, and finishing tasks, and spontaneity, and practice. Practice is so important; they’ll develop some very strong fundamental characteristics that will be the basis of their personality throughout their entire life. The adolescents who are doing drugs, or who are addicted to pornography or video games, are setting up a future where they’re going to find it very difficult to pay attention to the rest of their life. The biggest thing about adolescents is they love role models that give them the freedom to be, which is what every adult wants. So giving them permission to expand and giving them permission to try things out, to me, is the most valuable thing for a teenager. And if they can scrutinize their behavior without emotion and learn to be able to change, then they’re actually thinking for themselves. My children know the limits of what they can do, but they’ve got a lot of room, and they know that I pay attention to them and I ask them questions that stop the program. I ask those questions that are hard questions, not just, “How are you doing today?” “Did you do your homework?” More like, “What do you want?” “Have you thought about this?” “Have you given any thought or idea to your future, and what are you thinking about your future?” “Do you have any thoughts about things you want to change about yourself?” I ask them a question that makes them think.

LG: What do you think it is about you that gives them the freedom to be who they are?

JD: Because I’ve allowed myself to balance, to be vulnerable in front of them. I’ve allowed myself to be human and tell the truth with them. And at the same time, I’m very passionate about myself and my life. We talk about hard things, but they’re only hard when you’re not talking about them. So what is it about me that allows them to be who they are? I hope, as a parent, I can demonstrate what I teach, that I can tell the truth when I can. That’s it for me.

LG: Do your kids ever complain and if they do, give us an example of how you handle it?

JD: I haven’t seen my children complain any more. They don’t normally do that. I don’t really hear them complain. I love it, we talk of possibilities and we can talk about some amazing things. My daughter called me a while back and said she wanted to have an unlimited shopping experience. When she comes to visit me, we go to Abercrombie, to The Gap, and I sit in the chair, and I say, “Nope, not today. No. Yes. No. NO!” So we do this thing, and she does this fashion thing, and she’s a cute kid, but she says, “Dad. Listen. I want to have an unlimited shopping spree. I want to have no boundaries.” And I say, “Well, you know how to create that.” My kids know how to create reality.

So she worked on it every day. Every day she worked on it and kept tossing it out there. A couple of weeks later she calls me, drunk in the experience, she’s intoxicated in joy. And I said, “Gig, what’s going on?” And she said, “You’re not going to believe this. Sit down for this.” And I said, “What happened?” And she said, “I went shopping at the Promenade in Santa Monica with one of my best friends, we go to this store (I don’t know the name of the store but it’s one of her favorite stores), and the owner of the store recognizes the girl I’m with and says, ‘Oh, I know your father really well.’ He whips out the company credit card and says, ‘Here, girls. Use this. Have fun.’ ” And I said, “So what was it?” She said, “Well, I’ll tell you this. We spent over $7,000 that day.”

Now, I want her to have this experience because she applied her mind. She’s attractive, she’s exotic-looking, she’s charismatic, but I don’t ever want her to rely on those traits to get somewhere. I want her to rely on her mind. She’s beginning to understand that, because she could very easily fall into those programs that define females. Not that they are the only programs, there are also equal programs that define men. But I don’t want her to use her beauty for her break. I want her to use her mind. That’s why I set up those things for her and now she’s on to her next phase, and she’s getting real close. And she’s intoxicated again as she gets closer.

LG: Do you ever find it necessary to discipline your children?

JD: Yes, but in a very unusual way. I’ve never really formally sat down and cracked the whip with my children. I just set up experiences for all of us to participate in. My son is an incredible creator. But you know they have their own way of doing it. My daughter is very abstract and very artistic, way out there, my son is very focused and very intentioned. And single-minded. And so they have their own ways of doing it but they get it done.

I Create My Day

“I wake up in the morning and I consciously create my day the way I want it to happen. Now sometimes, because my mind is examining all the things that I need to get done, it takes me a little bit to settle down and get to the point of where I’m actually intentionally creating my day. But here’s the thing: When I create my day and out of nowhere little things happen that are so unexplainable, I know that they are the process or the result of my creation. And the more I do that, the more I build a neural net in my brain that I accept that that’s possible. (This) gives me the power and the incentive to do it the next day.

“So if we’re consciously designing our destiny, and if we’re consciously from a spiritual standpoint throwing in with the idea that our thoughts can affect our reality or affect our life — because reality equals life — then I have this little pact that I have when I create my day. I say, ‘I’m taking this time to create my day and I’m infecting the quantum field. Now if (it) is in fact the observer’s watching me the whole time that I’m doing this and there is a spiritual aspect to myself, then show me a sign today that you paid attention to any one of these things that I created, and bring them in a way that I won’t expect, so I’m as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things. And make it so that I have no doubt that it’s come from you,’ and so I live my life, in a sense, all day long thinking about being a genius or thinking about being the glory and the power of God or thinking about being unconditional love. “I’ll use living as a genius, for example. And as I do that during parts of the day, I’ll have thoughts that are so amazing, that cause a chill in my physical body that have come from nowhere. But then I remember that that thought has an associated energy that’s produced an effect in my physical body. Now that’s a subjective experience, but the truth is, is that I don’t think that unless I was creating my day to have unlimited thought, that that thought would come.”

 

Joe Dispenza, D.C., studied biochemistry at Rutgers University in New Brunswick , N.J. He received his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree at Life University in Atlanta , Georgia , graduating magna cum laude. Dr. Dispenza’s postgraduate training and continuing education has been in neurology, neurophysiology, and brain function.

Often remembered for his remarks on creating his day in “What the Bleep”, Dr. Joe is a student of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, a contemporary school of ancient wisdom located in the United States, where he learned to create his day and has personally experienced how the brain, consciousness, and intent work together to create reality in many forms, whether it be a day, an event, an object, or a future.

Dr. Joe’s new DVD series, Your Immortal Brain , looks at the ways in which the human brain can be used to create reality through the mastery of thought.

For more about Dr. Joe Dispenza, visit www.drjoedispenza.com