The Ancient Blueprint That May Shape Our Future | Gregg Braden

I remember Wayne Dyer once saying to me that he was thankful for those who said no, because of them, he was able to do it himself. And this is basically what I think that my guest today has done, geologist and computer scientist Greg Brayden. When he said climate extremes are the new normal, he challenged conventional science. And now what we're hearing about in the news every day is about these new normals. And Greg goes into detail in that with his book called Resilience from the Heart, among many other things we're going to talk about today. Welcome. Thank you for being here. It's so good to be back with you. I've followed your work for so long, hearing you talk about ancient civilizations, and they were discovered so much longer than we see in our history books, to now this climate extreme. I just want to say something about that, because one of the reasons we are living, the best minds of our time are telling us we're living in this time of extremes, it's caught a lot of people off guard because of the way we think. And we've been conditioned to separate science from spirituality, from art, from everyday life, and our ancestors never did that. So what you're seeing me do in the book and through these presentations in many ways mirrors an earlier way of seeing ourselves in relationship to the world and our bodies, and the capabilities that we have within that perspective, and I think that's what we're going to talk about today. Yes, and also, as you pointed out, that our ancestors also did not believe in a separation between our bodies and our minds. They believe that they are one. When I was writing some of my earlier books, I was led time and time again to a study that very few people have ever heard of, and I want to share it with your listeners. I think this is important. It's critical. 1932, Harvard University Medical School, so this is where this is happening. One of the researchers, his name is Bremer, showed his students a film that he had made where he documented the blood moving through an embryo of a chick, and you could actually see the blood moving through the embryo of the chick. He chose a chick because it's not attached to its mother, so whatever's happening is not dependent on the mother. It's happening in this chick. So here's the key. The blood is moving through the embryo, although the heart has yet to develop. There is no heart pumping the blood. So two questions come up. Number one, why is the blood moving if the heart is not pumping it? The answer to that is that fluids, in their natural state, want to move. In the ground, water, and in our bodies, blood will move of its own volition through what are called little micro-vortices, little spirals of motion. The heart helps, but it will move without the heart pumping. So that leads to the question that Bremer asked. If this is happening without the heart, maybe the primary purpose of the heart is more than simply pumping blood. What else does our heart do that we have yet to explore? And part of the answer to that was discovered in 1991. In 1991, scientists found in the human heart a collection of a little over 40,000 specialized cells called sensory neurites, which is a very fancy word for brain-like cells, but they're not in the brain, they're in the heart. A neural network in the heart, and these neurons, they are so brain-like, they can actually remember independent of the cranial brain. They can think independently of the cranial brain. They can feel and sense independently of the cranial brain. So there is one path. What is it that our hearts are capable of that we are only beginning to understand? Number two is it applies to my experience. Not only can we use it independently of the cranial brain, but we can tune our heart to work with our brain, tune the neural network of our heart to work with our brain. Two organs, a single potent neural network, and when we learn to harmonize that network and allow it to serve us in the way it was intended, miraculous appearing things happen to the body. To think that it's our mind that controls our heart. If anyone's ever had an emotion, they know that it's the heart. So think of this. So Harvard Medical School in 1932, they had to make a decision. Do we think of the human heart as more than a pump? And if so, that leads in this direction, or are we going to simply call it a pump that can be replaced when it wears out and maintained like a machine, and that will take us in this direction? And I think we all know pretty much where the medical model chose to go. And so now we're coming full circle back to understanding our heart is an amazing pump, absolutely, and that may be the least of what our heart does. Now, you studied indigenous cultures and so forth. How can we take this level of resilience that you talk about and use it to heal our earth? Earlier, I mentioned about you bringing about the extremes or the new normal, and that there is definitely a whole new sense of, as we see in the news, extreme weather patterns, extreme natural disasters and so forth. But that is the new normal. You have reframed that for us. Our ancestors, once again, had a greater vision than what we've been conditioned to accept. And they looked at large expanses of time, and they looked at cycles of time, because nature works in cycles, and our bodies work in cycles. Some of them we're very aware of, the cycles of night and day, a woman's menstrual cycle every 28 days, attuned to the moon, our sleep cycles, and some we're less aware of. And some cover huge expanses of time, so long that no one in a single lifetime remembers those things. Climate is among those things. So I want to be really clear. We definitely, I believe, in my opinion, we definitely have the opportunity to stop burning fossil fuels, to find clean, green, sustainable ways of living. And that opportunity has been with us for over 60 years. We've had the technology for over 60 years. To feed every human on the planet. To do that, to feed every human on the planet, absolutely. But when it comes to these cycles of time, we are reluctant sometimes to see them. So our ancestors, when they saw the changes, it was less about healing the earth because they didn't see the earth as broken. It was about them allowing themselves to move in harmony with the new cycles that were appearing. So what that means is that we're living a time of volatility. The convergence of three cycles in our lifetimes, climate, the economic cycles, and cycles of conflict that are all governed by natural rhythms, they are all converging in this little window of time. And that is contributing to the volatility of what's happening in our lives and our world. The problem is we've been conditioned to think of ourselves as separate from the world, and we're trying to solve our problems through separation and competition and conflict. When the best science and our ancestors told us very, very clearly, science is telling us today, that the fundamental rule of nature is cooperation, not competition. And that we are deeply connected to the world and ourselves, not separate as we've been led to believe. And as we shift, as we shift this thinking from separation to connection, from competition to cooperation, that opens the door to new opportunities of solving the problems. The answers are there. The key is for us to find the way to shift our thinking, to make it a priority in our lives, to help one another, and to begin thinking in terms of cooperation rather than competition. And that is, that's huge. That's the new normal. Actually, Greg is talking here in this video about this. Take a look at Greg talking about the new normal. The best minds of our time, in fact, tell us that you and I are living the emergence of a new normal, a new way of thinking, and a new way of living to reflect the changes in the world around us. While this new normal may not be acknowledged in mainstream media or in classrooms or textbooks, you know it's happening because you're seeing your life change in ways that you simply have never seen in your life before. One of the keys to embracing the opportunities of our new normal lies in a question that we've asked and been conditioned to ask of ourselves for our entire lives. The science of 150 years has steeped us in the belief that we are separate from ourselves, separate from one another, separate from the world around us, separate from a higher power. It's this language of separation that has led to many of the extremes and the crises that we're seeing today from the way we deal with the economy and the way we deal with shortages of natural resources and food, the way we share medical supplies in times of crisis with those, our brothers and sisters throughout the world. It's all been based in this language of separation. In the story of separation, we've been conditioned to ask this question, what can I get from the world that exists? Well, now the best science of our time is telling us that that belief of separation is no longer true, it never was. That the best science is actually showing us we are based upon a world of cooperation and mutual aid at the very essence of nature, is cooperation and mutual aid in ways that we simply didn't allow ourselves to see in the past, that we're deeply connected to our own bodies, to one another and to the world around us. And with that knowledge, it means that the question that we've asked in the past must change. Rather than asking what can I get from the world that exists, the new question now is what can I give or what can I share, what can I contribute, what can I offer to the world that's emerging? And the way you answer this question changes everything. If you find yourself in a job or a career that simply doesn't make sense any longer, or entire industries now are collapsing and disappearing and people are left wondering what am I going to do next? The way you answer this question holds the key and makes the difference between you simply surviving in the times that we're living now, our time of extremes, and thriving in a time of extremes. I live in northern New Mexico and a good friend of mine, a neighbor, found himself in precisely this situation. He was a builder of homes. People didn't need homes in 2008 and after, after the housing market collapsed. But they did need to be able to care for themselves. And Ken asked himself, Ken is my friend's name, he asked himself this question. He said, what do my friends and family and neighbors need now? They don't need homes. He said, but they need a way to grow their own food that they can rely upon, that they know is safe, that they know is inexpensive. He took his skills as a builder. He prototyped, designed, and built an entire system of modular greenhouses. They're raised bed greenhouses, self-watering, self-heating. They're covered. They can be grown. They can be used to grow food. Any temperatures, anywhere in the world, any time of year, they can be 12 inches square and fit on a patio in a high rise in New York, or they can be four feet by eight feet, side by side in rows where we have a lot of land in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. The point is that Ken simply changed the question, recognizing the new normal is emerging and that the skills as he had used them in the past were no longer needed. He said, what can I give? What can I offer? What can I share with the world as it is now? And when he did that, he embraced one of the strategies that is outlined and detailed in the book, The Turning Point, Creating Resilience in the Time of Extremes, my book that I designed for you to help precisely through the kinds of changes that we're seeing in our world today. Okay, so we just watched this and you've talked so much about the cooperation instead of competition. So what is the good news here? What is the good news that says, that you have to tell us? Because we know what's happening and it can be devastating, but how do we connect this all together? The new science. You know, I think the science is important and I just want to just say a word about science itself. I'm a scientist. I was trained as a scientist. I think science is good. Science does not have all the answers. In many places it's incomplete and I think we have an opportunity now to marry the best science of the 21st century with the wisdom of 5,000 years of our ancestors, marry those two great ways of knowing into a single wisdom that's more than either could be alone. That I think gives us the evolutionary edge to transcend, not just survive, but to thrive and transcend the time of extremes to become better people and create a better world. So I'm optimistic. I've never been more optimistic about our world, my life, our nation, all nations, and I'm also a realist. And I am under no illusion of the tremendous amount of work that it takes to shift from a mindset of competition, conflict, and separation to cooperation, mutual aid, and connection. And that shows up in everything we do. It shows up in our relationship with our families, with our loved ones, with our friends. It shows up at work. It shows up in the way we think about ourselves on these really deep levels. It's such a powerful fundamental shift in thinking. So it does take a tremendous amount of work and the great prophet Kahlil Gibran made a statement about work that I think of almost every day. My mom shared it with me in 1966, and it's been with me from that point forward. She gave me the book and underlined this. Kahlil Gibran, he said, work is our love made visible. Work is our love made visible. So the work that we have in front of us and the opportunity for us to demonstrate visibly our love for ourselves and our world by creating something new and beautiful and powerful and sacred and sustainable. So I am optimistic about the world. That's a long answer to a short question. No, I'm so grateful for that, and there's so many questions that I want to ask you about that. But in this moment for you, Greg, what is your I am statement? When I hear the words and when I say the words, because of my scholarly work into the most cherished and ancient traditions, I am is a declaration to the universe where we claim within ourselves the things that we have stated to others that we choose to be and that we choose to embody in our lives, where we actually, it is a command into the matrix of the field of the universe where we claim the very things in our lives that we say with the words that we want in our hearts. So it's the opportunity to actually embrace the deepest truths of our existence and the limitless capacity for love and compassion that we have as we go through these changes. So that is the I am for me. I got from your entire body of work as I was looking through it is that I am cooperation. And it's a beautiful way of looking at coherence with the universe, people around me, and the field. Thank you. Thank you so much for another opportunity today and I hope we got through that list of questions. Oh, we did. We did. Of course. Thank you so much. And I encourage you to watch the replay of my interview with Greg Braden or share it with your friends by going to Gaia.com. Until next time, I invite you to stay inspired.