Light and Darkness (S13E47)

0:00Picture this. Total void. Absolute darkness. Nothing at all even exists. Then the voice of God thunders through the emptiness. Let there be light. And instantly there was light. Genesis 1, 3. In one moment, everything changes. Substance appears. Order breaks through chaos. Life becomes possible. Right away. I want you to tie that to who God is. Jesus steps into the story right from the first page of the Bible and says later on in John 8, 12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And John doubles down in 1 John 1, 5. God is light in him. There is no darkness at all. Light isn't something that God just created. It's who he is. It's his very nature, pure, powerful, full of information, heat and life. No shadows, no waste. Perfect fullness. This is a continuation of a conversation that we had on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. We talked about how when God says something, it's true all the

1:04way down from metaphor to mechanism, from mystery to medicine. It's all the way true from feelings to physics. And this is more of that information today. I want you to understand when God says that he is light. There's evidence from physics now that that might be exactly what he is. Now, let the way to that sink in. Okay. Just think for a second. Can you feel the power in the words here? I get chills when I think about that first moment of creation, light coming from nowhere at this behest of the word of God that all of creation blew into existence because he said it. Let there be light. Here's the pivot that hits home for all of us. Okay. So many of us are living in our own personal darkness right now. Not because God left us there, but because we've let our brains push us around instead of our minds, being in charge, like we were designed. We spend an endless rumination. We replay failures. We worry about tomorrow. We beat ourselves up with the what ifs. And

2:05it drags us into trouble, anxiety, stuck places and darkness. But the secret to actually flourishing in this life, friend, live in the light, redeem your thinking, transform your mind. Just like the Bible says in Romans 12, too, it commands. In fact, and rewire your brain in ways that help you instead of hurting you. That's the whole point of self brain surgery. And that's exactly what we're talking about today. So let's get after it. Hey, I'm your friend, Dr. Lee Warren. I hope your favorite internet may be real life brain surgeon. I'm so grateful that you're here with me on the podcast today. This is the place if you're new here, where we explore the intersection of neuroscience, faith and the human experience. We're looking at how we flourish best. And my premise is that it works best when you operate your nervous system, the way God designed it from the top down from mind to brain to body to life. I'm your friend, Dr. Lee Warren, a practicing neurosurgeon.

3:06I live in Nebraska. I'm the author of multiple books. My most recent one is called the Life Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery. And I hope you've read it. If you haven't read it yet, check it out everywhere, Brooks your soul. It's really the handbook for everything we talk about here on the podcast on the YouTube channel. And if you're new around here, we go deep on how our brains work, how our minds connect to something bigger than us, and how we can live with real purpose, even when life feels chaotic. Now, you'll hear me quote a lot of scripture, but I don't want that to put you off if you're agnostic or an atheist. I want you to understand, this is a science podcast. Okay. And we can talk about stuff. Even if we disagree about worldview, I'm going to show you some things that are true and work you through the way you can use the scientific method to follow a path of what's really true. And maybe just some places where science can't answer some of the big questions that life brings up. That's what I think other areas of discipline and thought are for things like theology and philosophy and other branches of things that aren't hard sciences become useful. So I'm going to show you all those things.

4:08And so if I quote scripture, don't let it by the if you're not into it, just just remember the words that I say, let them bounce around on your head. Maybe they'll be useful to you whether or not you agree with me that they about where they come from. Today we're bridging some ancient Hebrew wisdom on light and darkness. My 10th commandment of self-brains surgery, which is I must believe that thoughts become things and some mind blowing neuroscience and quantum ideas like excitons and polarotons that might explain how God actually speaks to our minds. By the way, somebody asked me a question on a YouTube comment the other day and said, Hey, when you say mind, sometimes I see traces in the Bible like mind, heart, soul, what is that all about? I just want you to know in the scripture that the authors commonly use three different terms, mind, heart, and soul. And they're sort of conflated depending on what the author is talking about in that particular moment, what aspect of this eternal part of us that immaterial part of us that I call mind, what they're trying to emphasize in that particular scripture. But mind, heart, and soul really all refer to the same thing. It's the stuff about you that's not made up of gray matter and white

5:11matter in your brain. It's the mind, the eternal part of you. So buckle up. This episode is going to turn the lights on in your life. Let me talk for just a minute about the way that ancient Greeks thought about God's and what God was all about and how the Hebrews thought about it and the kinds of things that Greeks and Hebrews valued in those ancient days. I just want to build on this light theme with a little history lesson that really matters for your brain today. The ancient Greeks idealize the absence of effort. They thought that their gods were lounging around on Mount Olympus and perfect effortless bliss that a real God wouldn't have to work. And to them, any kind of work or struggle was a sign of weakness if you were talking about God's. But the Hebrews saw it completely differently. They idealized the absence of inefficiency. They said God doesn't avoid work. He just works with perfect purpose. And that's why in Genesis, you see God creating, speaking, separating, and then resting because the job was done right the first time. Now, when I think about how many hours we waste in our lives right now scrolling or worrying, even

6:11when we think we're relaxing, we're really just sometimes being inefficient and we're wasting times in a way that doesn't make us feel rested. And that's why our brains are so wired up all the time. We can't sleep because we're endlessly scrolling and chasing that dopamine hamster wheel. And it's not very efficient. But I'm just telling you, there's a way we could move forward efficiently in the light if we thought about it a little bit differently. And just think about that for a second. If we're talking about efficiency as it relates to light and darkness, the Hebrews understood something that science later confirmed. Darkness isn't the opposite of light. It's simply the absence of it. You see light is substantial. It comes in colors and hues and carries information at the speed of light, which is the fastest speed we know about until we discovered quantum entanglement. We talk a little bit about in my new book, the life changing art of self brain surgery. We know now that light carries heat. It powers life through photosynthesis, and it literally propels the universe forward. But darkness is empty. It's void. There's nothing there

7:13to do the doing. Light is fullness, the ultimate building block of everything that exists and the glue that holds it all together. And even scriptures that reference darkness in terms of spiritual matters, don't think evil. Think emptiness. Light is wherever God is. So in our hardships, our pain, when we invite him into those spaces, the light begins to come into our lives. We can see the steps ahead more clearly. We can feel something again. Pain and grief and loss and hardship aren't necessarily evil, but they are certainly absent of light. It's how it feels, right? Like there's no light there. And that's the idea. In him, there is no darkness at all, which is very comforting when we're hurting. The physics backs us up. Photons are both wave and particle. They form the foundation of matter and energy itself. And like sunlight hitting a plant and turning it into growth, that's the power of photosynthesis is the same power that's available to us spiritually and neurologically through understanding what the light really is. Now, once you understand

8:14in neuroscience, there's this idea, this principle that neurologically most of us are stuck in brain driven darkness, our lower brains hijack us into rumination loops that create anxiety. Our default mode network keeps us endlessly chasing this me show of all the ways that I got messed up in the past and that my life was hard in the past and I got hosed in the past. And all the ways I'm going to fail or get hosed in the future, that's our constant loop. And it leads to this progressively darker life. If we don't learn how to manage it, anxiety, depression, self sabotage. And in a world where we have more mental health resources and medications than ever before, we're seeing the opposite of what we should be seeing. If that stuff was the answer to human flourishing, we're seeing more suicides, more mental health treatment, more people taking medications and less and less flourishing. But here's my tent commandment and action. Thoughts become things. This isn't metaphysics. It's neuroscience. Your thoughts fire at light speed. They release neurotransmitters and they literally reshape your brain through the miracle and the magic and the mechanism

9:18of neuroplasticity and the good news. You can redeem those thoughts. You can transform your mind and you can rewire pathways that help you instead of hurt you. You don't have to ruminate in ways that destroy you over time. You can ponder and contemplate in ways that help you over time. And that's why I always tell you on this podcast to do the work. Just don't just think about stuff. Don't just ruminate and ponder and worry that you're not measuring up. Do the work. Do the five minute self brain surgery exercises. Get the book. Work through the 15 operations. Work through the 10 commandments. Do the work. Talk to your therapist. Get engaged in your own life. That's how you step out of your personal darkness and into flourishing. Did you know three out of four US homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even though contaminated water looks clear, it could put you at risk for devastating health concerns, including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, cancer, surprisingly, standard fridge and picture filters do very little to remove most contaminants. And bottle water contains microplastics. So what's the solution? Introducing

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11:28Okay, I've watched this in my own life. I've watched it in the operating room. You change your thinking, you change your brain, you get better at getting better. That's the ninth commandment of self brain surgery, by the way. Now I want you to look at this interesting principle from quantum physics. If we go a little bit deeper, what if it turns out that light is how God communicates with our immaterial minds and souls consciousness isn't just squishy brain tissue. In fact, although the neuroscientists will continue to tell you that consciousness is a product of human brain activity, nobody's ever been able to prove that. And I'll say the reason they haven't been able to prove it is that consciousness doesn't come from brain activity. Now, alertness does, okay? Your ability to be awake in your body and be interacting with the environment around you, that requires a healthy brain. But consciousness is not the same thing as alertness. That's going to be proven by neuroscience eventually. That's the way I look at it. I think that's what the Bible says about it. Consciousness is not just about brain activity. It's something transcendent. The bridge between the mind

12:30and matter, though, quantum phenomenon now are being discovered called excitons and polaritons. These hybrid particles where light excites electrons in matter like brain material and create stable light matter particles. This is crazy stuff. It's out there on the edge of quantum physics. But people are now starting to seriously look at this research. It says that might be how people communicate in prayer with God. And it might be how immaterial mental activity turns into brain activity inside your head. This might be the bridge between mind and matter. These particles call exciton polaritons. You can read about that. If you Google exciton polaritons, there's all kinds of research out there about it. They haven't yet tied it to prayer, but people are talking about it. And I think it's fascinating. In brain cells and in microtubules, these molecules exciton polaritons could be the mechanism that turns divine inspiration into real physical change. It could be the mechanism of how intercessory prayer affects other people's brains and bodies and lives. God's light sparking

13:30your thoughts, your prayers into action and into efficacy and somebody else's life. The Bible is full of this kind of thing. Creation starts with light, the burning bush, the pillar of fire, and Jesus says the light. And there's even modern research on bio photons. These tiny signals that our cells might use to communicate with each other. Now, I want you to think about praying and meditating on truth. And sometimes you're doing that. You're meditating, you're thinking, you're praying. And suddenly you feel this peace or clarity that makes it feel like the light in the room is getting brighter. That could be a moment of excitons and polaritons communicating with the immaterial part of you and God and doing something in your brain that's clarifying your vision and lifting some of the darkness out of your eyes ability to see what was reality all around you. God's light excites your soul. You see this what the Bible says and him there is no darkness at all. Now, I'd love for you to think about this with me for just a second. I want to

14:30tell you a story about a woman named Sarah. This is not a real name, but I'll call her Sarah. This is somebody that I took care of in real life. She had a benign spinal cord to me that was crushing the nerves, making it hard for her to walk. She was having terrible pain and weakness. Just darkness and her mobility in future because as that tumor grew, she was getting weaker, weaker, and weaker. It was threatening her continents. It was affecting her ability to have children. It was affecting her ability to walk and it might have been threatened her life eventually. And she understood the neuroscience. After surgery, her brain would have to rewire brand new connections down her spinal cord through deliberate neuroplasticity. We talked about the fact that after I took the tumor out, she was still going to have to learn how to walk again. And that was going to require her mind and her brain to engage with her spinal cord and use neuroplasticity to help her muscles learn to walk again. And she was having all kinds of negative thoughts and feelings about that. She was all up in her head and worrying about it. And you know what she did when she started feeling doubt and she started realizing that that doubt and those negative voices

15:31were going to derail her rehab and possibly inhibit her ability to learn to walk again. Even if I did my part, she chose to fill her mind with light instead. And I'll never forget I went to the pre-operate Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio to see her before surgery and she was holding her Bible. And she handed it to her daughter as I got ready to take her back to surgery. And I said, what were you reading? And she said, oh, I've been working on memorizing Psalm 119. That's the longest chapter in the Bible. It's the longest chapter and it's all about God's word being a lamp to your feet and a light to your path. She wanted to memorize that and she said those words out loud as she went off to sleep and she still had them on her mouth as we took the breathing tube out of her after surgery. And she used Psalm 119 to help her rewire her brain and her body and her life. And she walked again and she made a full recovery. She was reciting that Psalm to help her hold on to the light when life was making her feel like she was washed in darkness.

16:32She memorized the word of God, word for word, and she walked out of that rehab hospital completely healed and never had trouble again. Isn't that amazing? She used scripture to help her hold on to the light and fight the darkness. She didn't just survive. She thrived because she chose light over darkness every single day. And you can do that too for him and we're going to learn that today as our five minute self brain surgery exercise. Because this is your operation. I give you every episode to help you do something practical to take these things we talk about from do it from thinking into doing. It's not just a thinking podcast. It's a doing podcast. Okay. We'll call this Operation Light Switch. This is your practical prescription to redeem your thinking, transform your mind and rewire your brain. So the first step is I want you to identify some place in your life that feels dark, scary, someplace where you're ruminating loops of negative thinking. You hear these voices over and over and they keep you stuck. Now, be honest with yourself. Write some of them down. If you can or dictate into your phone, if you're driving, if you're hearing my

17:34voice and you can't write something down right now, use a voice memo or just think it enough times that you won't forget what is an area where you're living in some darkness and you'd like to bring the light into that. So step two then is invite the light in. Choose a strong truth. Go to scripture John 812, Romans 122, the first few verses of Psalm 119, find something to anchor yourself and let that be your little real stat, little switch to bring the light up into that part of your life and in your mind and your brain and your body. And then step three, memorize and recite that verse or that affirmation or whatever it is that you want to use to combat that darkness. Start small, say it out loud every morning, name the thing that feels dark to you and say the truth over it. And every time doubt creeps into that part of your life, say that phrase, say that scripture, invite the light in till God you want to see the light in that part that feels so dark. And you're going to what's going to happen? You're going to engage neuroplasticity. Hebs law is going to kick in. You're going to become automated in saying that thing instead of rehearsing that darkness.

18:40And you're going to start to see the light come back in. That's the self brain surgery that's going to help you find the light in places where you feel dark. And step four is to take some efficient action. Remember light, the Hebrew idea is that God works through efficiency, not through absence of work, but through efficient action. So set a 10 minute timer, sit quietly and visualize God's light, filling all those dark places in your mind, pray specifically for rewiring, ask God to help neuroplasticity work on your behalf here and take one small step forward towards the change and the light that you want to walk in and away from the darkness that's been imprisoning you for so long. And step five, add that quantum faith layer. Believe that God's light is exciting. Your neurons right now, friend, and see those excitons and polarotons bridging heaven to your brain. And then journaling in your journaling time and your op notes and the records that you're keeping as part of your self brain surgery practice, journal that one thing that you can feel shifting that you can see the light coming up into from hurt to help every day.

19:45If you do this every day, you're going to watch inefficiency leave. You're going to watch fullness arrive. You're going to see the light replace the darkness. And this is where neuroscience and faith smash together, friend. You've got everything you need. It's all there. You just have to call the light into it. Listen, you're not stuck. You've never been stuck. You've never been stuck with the brain you have. And you've never been stuck with the past that you thought had the power to define the rest of your life. It doesn't. Trauma is not the thing that happened to you, friend. It's not. It's your response to the thing that happened. If that response isn't serving you well, if you're not flourishing, it's time to change your responses. And this is one of the ways to do it. The same voice that said, let there be light. You're speaking to you right now. Now listen, I want to wrap this up with you and just leave you with a powerful encouragement from that first let there be light all the way to Jesus declaring that he's the light of the world. God is calling you out of brain driven darkness and into the flourishing of neuroscience and faith smashing together. That's working in your favor. Redeem your thinking. Transform your mind.

20:49Rewire your brain. Live in the light and don't forget. You can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is, friend, you can start today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren. I'm so grateful and proud of you for spending this time with me today. Thank you for doing self brain surgery with me. If today's episode lit something up and you smash that subscribe button and get my new book, The Life Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery, go to my website, Dr. Lee Warren.com. You can get the newsletter. You can sign up for my School of Self Brain Surgery there. Everything you need. If you ever wonder if we've got a free resource that might help you in some way, check out school.wlwornmd.com. All of our free resources are there as well as some of our courses that you can purchase or there's a couple of them that are free. And you can find something to help you at school.wlwornmd.com. I'm Dr. Lee Warren. Do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button. Make sure you share this episode with somebody that you feel like would need some light in the darkness. And you can beat the light for them today. So until next time, I'm just reminding you, live in the light. God bless you, friend. We'll talk to you soon.