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 enlarge | Author: Gregg Braden
Publisher: Hay House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 4801
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1401916899
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.93
EAN: 9781401916893
ASIN: 1401916899
Publication Date: April 2, 2008
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 Putting our best foot forward August 4, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The hard-nosed skeptic will caricature Gregg Braden's "The Spontaneous Healing of Belief" as just another "New Age" book written about how we create our own world by merely believing. I want to defend Braden's book from such criticism, and I invite skeptical readers to study this interesting book with an open mind. It is not that belief provides the easy route to New Age enlightenment, it is that Braden's "belief" involves the hard work of purification as we learn to tune ourselves with something bigger than our narrow self interests. While Braden's treatment is not perfect, it is easy to find what he intends to say in the face of would-be criticism. Negativity will not have the final answer, even when it comes with a pretense of rigor. We must also put our best foot forward in a positive sense.
Braden (page xi) summarizes his understanding of scientific evidence: "Paradigm-shattering experiments published in leading-edge, peer-reviewed journals reveal that we're bathed in a field of intelligent energy that fills what used to be thought of as empty space. Additional discoveries show beyond any reasonable doubt that this field responds to us -it rearranges itself- in the presence of our heart-based feelings and beliefs. And this is the revolution that changes everything."
Braden (page 3) raises a troubling point: "What if we're living our lives shrouded in the false limitations and incorrect assumptions that other people have formed over generations, centuries, or even millennia? Historically, for example, we've been taught that we are insignificant specks of life passing through a brief moment in time, limited by `laws' of space, atoms, and DNA. This view suggest that we'll have little effect on anything during our stay in this world, and when we're gone, the universe will never even notice our absence."
Braden (page 16) writes: "It becomes abundantly clear that something -some intelligent force- is holding the particles of you together right now, as you read the words on this page. That force is what makes our beliefs so powerful. If we can communicate with it, then we can change how the particles of `us' behave in the world. We can rewrite the code of our reality."
Braden (page 20) writes: "The atoms of our reality either exist as matter or they don't. They're either here or not here, `on' or `off'." In the off position, Braden considers particles that are transformed into "invisible waves." Braden (page 21) writes that, "everything boils down to opposites: pluses and minuses, male and female, on and off."
Braden (pages 23-24) writes: "Everything is ultimately made of the same stuff. From the dust of distant stars to you and me, ultimately everything that `is' emerges from the vast soup of quantum energy (what `could be'). And without fail, when it does, it manifests as predictable patterns that follow the rules of nature. Water is a perfect example. When two hydrogen atoms connect to one oxygen atom as a molecule of H2O, the pattern of the bond between them is always 104 degrees. The pattern is predictable. It is reliable - and because it is, water is always water."
Braden (page 28) writes: "A fractal view of the universe implies that everything from a single atom to the entire cosmos is made of just a few natural patterns. While they may combine, repeat, and build themselves on larger scales, even in their complexity they can still be reduced to a few simple forms."
Braden (page 31) relates belief to the universal: "Every day we offer the literal input of our belief-commands to the consciousness of the universe, which translates our personal and collective instructions into the reality of our health, the quality of our relationships, and the peace of our world. How to create the beliefs in our hearts that change the reality of our universe is a great secret, lost in the 4th century, from the most cherished Judeo-Christian traditions."
Braden (page 41) writes on healing: "Beliefs have long been known to have healing powers. The controversy centers around whether or not it's the belief itself that does the healing or if the experience of belief triggers a biological process that ultimately leads to the recovery. For the layperson, the distinction may sound like splitting hairs. While the doctors can't explain precisely why some patients cure themselves through their beliefs, the effect has been documented so many times that at the very least we must accept that there is a correlation between the body's repairing itself and the patient's belief that the healing has taken place."
Braden (page 46) writes: "Just as the belief that we've been given a healing agent can promote our bodies' life-affirming chemistry, the reverse can happen if we believe that we're in a life-threatening situation."
Now it is clear that Braden's "belief" is not any belief, or a statement of faith. Rather, Braden describes belief as a synthesis. Braden (page 52) defines belief: "that it's the acceptance that comes from what we think is true in our minds married with what we feel is true in our hearts." Braden (page 53) writes: "Belief is our acceptance of what we have witnessed, experienced, or know for ourselves."
So there can be wrong beliefs when our reason is not in balance with our emotion, and so to arrive at something self evident (as Braden requires) involves an innate error recognition. It is this way that belief can be tuned with the universal, but this requires discipline. Braden (page 59) writes: "the universal experience that we know as feeling and belief are the names that we give to the body's ability to convert our experiences into electrical and magnetic waves."
Braden (page 74) writes: "Simply hoping, wishing, or saying that a healing is successful may have little effect upon the actual situation. In these experiences, we haven't yet arrived at the belief -the certainty that comes from acceptance of what we think is true, coupled with what we feel is true in our body- that makes the wish a reality."
In is interesting that Braden sees reality as a computer simulation, and it comes with belief codes that act as part of the universal computer program. This admission would seem to delight materialists and science fiction writers that venture similar speculations. But Braden's usage is metaphorical, and there is a serious caveat that permits a break from a mechanistic world view: we are able to re-program our poorly tuned beliefs, because instinctively we know that the simulation is only an illusion. Because we know that an appearance is an illusion we are able to escape the dictates of a computer program, and therefore greater reality cannot be just a simulation. Braden (page 137) writes that, "while our bodies are certainly in this world, the living force that expresses itself through them is actually based somewhere else, as the larger reality that we just can't see from our vantage point."
Braden gives us many helpful hints on how to re-program our beliefs. Braden (page 159) writes: "To make a change in something as powerful as the core beliefs that define our lives, we need a trigger that's equally powerful. We need a reason to jolt us from complacency of one way of thinking into a new, and sometimes revolutionary, way of seeing things."
Because we can break away from the output of a mere computer simulation, Braden's big reality involves a spiritual realm that rediscovers the wisdom of Buddha and Jesus. Braden (page 199) writes: "Jesus taught that we must become in life the very things that we choose to experience in the world." This corresponds to Braden's belief code number 27, and by now I hope you feel the jolt of this remarkable book.
Scientifically Based July 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
"The Spontaneous Helaing of Belief" by Gregg Braden is a powerful and scientifically based book.
Amazingly everything that exists emerges from a simple 'Reality Code' and this code can be changed/upgraded by intent/choice.
Recent scientific evidence is confirming that the universe does in fact work like one big 'consciousness computer' This consciousness computer is programmed by means of the language of human emotion & focused belief. As a result our feelings about ourselves & our world are most important as a basis for constructing a new reality.
"The Spontaneous Healing of Belief" is a highly recommended book & to think of ourselves differently is the beginning of spontaneous healing.
Better read together with a New Energy novel "Nexus" by Morrison & Singh, deep, soulful, inspiring & transformational.
Amazing Book July 17, 2008
If you want to know more about your subc.I heartily recommend these CDs
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
The Master Key System
Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World
The Science of Getting Rich
The Science of Mind
Think and Grow Rich: Original Version
 Muddled and confusing July 8, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I finished this book about a week ago and have been deliberating it's content trying to post a suitable review. Quite simply: it seems as though there was a germ of a really good book in there somewhere, but it never materialized. It seems as though Gregg is just trying to replace one mental box for another, that in order for one to program the universe to ones liking, one must alter or change or abandon their beliefs in favor of a new system of beliefs, which in the final analysis seems to be at the very least - pedestrian. It's a new version of make new beliefs or rather, make believe. Gregg's use of scientific proof's is quite sloppy as well and very often unsupported.
It is my considered opinion that it is the dispensing of ego driven belief systems, intellectualizations and judgments that will allow us to begin to experience the wholeness of life and creation; as a very wise being once said "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
A disappointing journey.
The Fluff Master at work again June 28, 2008
16 out of 21 found this review helpful
I really do not like what Gregg has to say. See my other reviews on 2012 Odyssey and The Divine Matrix for more specifics. Gregg always borrows heavily from others and gets tripped up in the synthesis, this book is no different.
Let's start with the title. It sounds like another book that was already published. In fact 'Spontaneous Healing : How to Discover and Embrace Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself' was written by Andrew Weil and released in April 2000. From the beginning we see Gregg trying to ride the coat tails of a very solid book from a much more solid authority than himself. This is a pattern with Gregg. He makes statements that are fluffy (insufficiently conceived or lacking meaning) and then attempts to anchor them by closing his words with a truth or near-truth. In this case through the borrowing of the title he is attempting to pass off his words as meaningful by associating them with another, much better, book.
Greggs thesis here starts out by examining the ideas of those (Seth Lloyd, John Wheeler, John Barrow) who compared the workings of the universe to a computer program or simulation (ala Matrix). He says that the universe is a running computer program composed of bits (atoms) and that this concept of bits (polarity) has influenced, or corrupted, our entire mental programming. If we can realize that not everything is good or bad, and if we can swap our old beliefs for new ones (cosmic belief code), then everything will be better.
Since Greggs background is as a computer programmer, not a scientist, these 'facts' he generally conveys accurately. And he uses these facts as a foundation upon which to build a less certain train of thought. Through the book he ends up building up 31 Codes of belief which are an attempt to explain how the universe works.
Ok, so why would I have concerns about what Gregg has written here? This does sound like a technically enlightened self-help book for the awakening minds of the 21st century right? Here is what I don't like and why and the reasons why Greggs wares actually prevent people from progressing on the spiritual path.
First, I don't like Greggs writings in general, and this book specifically, because he is not saying anything new. Read your favorite spiritual book by any ancient author. Pick the words of Jesus for instance and you have everything Gregg is saying here with more clarity and in a less complicated way. Check out the Sermon on the Mount or the Tao Te Ching as examples.
Second, Gregg seems here to be changing positions from his earlier works like The Divine Matrix (and the Lost Language of God) where it was emotion, not belief, which was absolutely primary to reordering your reality. In a section where he misquotes the Nag Hamadi scrolls he claims that the unification of two (specifically thought and emotion, like this is his grand discovery) will allow you to move mountains.
Third, he does not realize that when he is fitting the writings of others to his own concepts that he is often missing the core of the original quoted message. Did you realize that when Gregg borrowed the verse from the Nag Hamadi scrolls to try and prove his concept of joining thought and emotion that he missed something really, really, big? Neither did Gregg. Let me explain.
The unification of 'two' to 'move mountains' is primarily the union of polarities in general (ALL polarities), not the union of 'thought and emotion'. This is HUGE! It's a breakthrough in our orientation to the world and Gregg completely misses it! How do I know the interpretation I see is correct? Because it is repeated in other places in the same Gospel of Thomas (verse 22) Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
Jesus is saying that if you can look beyond polarities, of any kind, you will enter the Kingdom. Don't get stuck in male or female, good and evil, right and wrong. This single verse should have been the crux of the entire book. Gregg was so close but missed it.
My other main concern with the book is his emphasis on belief. If we change our old beliefs from being based on polarity and get a new set of beliefs then we will be ok. However, at some point on the spiritual journey you realize that beliefs are something that you lean upon, something that you believe 'in' that is still `out there'. You can believe in this or that being, this or that orientation. But until you really do away with polarities (including the world of separation of 'you' and 'everything else') you still need belief to hold you up and keep you going. The latest belief becomes the latest support that you cling to in order to give reality a sense of meaning. So what's wrong with having good beliefs?
After some advancement on the spiritual journey you realize that you can change your beliefs. But if you really progress you realize that to a certain extent belief fills in the gaps from what you know. Belief becomes this big box where you can put all the unknowns. But belief is still something `else'. The real solid spiritual foundation comes from knowing, Gnosis, not from belief.
To *know* the shepherd, reality, whatever you want to call it, is the only sure foundation in life. To know that the kingdom of the heavens is within you is the only `rock' of `salvation'. This is the Yoga of all the great saints and sages.
Belief is in the intermediate school of spiritual life. Gnosis is where there real substance starts to come in. I don't think the word Gnosis ever appears in this book. I don't quote the New Testament Paul very much but he understood the Gnosis when he wrote in Philipians 3:10 "That I may know him..." Knowing, not believing, is where it's at.
The paradox is that real faith is not based on belief. Real faith is having enough experience with *knowing* that you can actively anticipate how the unseen will unfold in your life. How? Because you have seen it before and know that you are always taken care of.
And hence this book, which can only take you to beliefs, to change your old beliefs for new ones, better ones (still stuck in the world of polarities), shows me again why this author has nothing really new, or meaningful, to say.
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