This is your brain on liberty

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 by: Mike Bundrant
Tags: liberty, brain, John Adams

(NaturalNews) Ron Paul recently reminded us in his farewell speech that liberty requires certain attributes from the people. In this article, I will highlight those attributes, then tie them to the scientifically researched brain networks that make those attributes possible.

Then, based on clear medical research, I will show you how to consciously engage and disengage those brain networks and prove to yourself that you can embrace liberty in your personal life as a matter of choice.

When all is said and done, two clear paths will emerge, one toward personal liberty and the other toward fear and enslavement. This will bring home Ron Paul's point that we embrace liberty or face destruction, making it not only a national, cultural choice, but an individual one, based on your own mind and body.

Attributes required for liberty to exist among people

From Ron Paul's final speech:

Benjamin Franklin claimed "only a virtuous people are capable of freedom." John Adams concurred: "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

A moral people must reject all violence in an effort to mold people's beliefs or habits. A society that boos or ridicules the Golden Rule is not a moral society. All great religions endorse the Golden Rule. The same moral standards that individuals are required to follow should apply to all government officials. They cannot be exempt.

For liberty to exist, morality must exist. Free people have the power to live productively and in harmony, or to take advantage of, hurt and destroy each other. Mature and moral people do not need a nanny to make sure they do the right thing! Immoral people, on the other hand, cannot be trusted with freedom. They will ultimately take advantage of others and destroy a society.

Morally corrupt people are the ones who need taskmasters.

Brain networks that promote liberty and choice vs. personal enslavement

How does all this relate to your brain? If you think for a minute, every cultural issue or choice has a basis in the individuals that make up the group. The morality (and thus, the potential to live with liberty) of a nation comes down to the morality of each individual. The morality of each individual has a lot to do with the brain.

Neuroscience has discovered the executive function of the brain; that which coordinates, regulates and integrates the different structures and systems of the brain to allow us to make sense of our world, to learn and make choices among various options. Executive functioning in the brain also gives us a smooth, ongoing sense of ourselves with our own personality, goals, values and skills.

Your sense of yourself as a conscious being with moral values and decisions to make comes from the executive functioning brain. Research is starting to show that moral reasoning is indeed tied to executive functioning. The more developed your executive functioning, the more developed your moral reasoning.

If there is one brain network a freedom loving person should understand, celebrate and nurture, it is executive function. Executive function is your brain on liberty!

The bad news about executive function in the brain

Executive function can sabotaged. Conscious decision-making can be hijacked by the survival response, for example. If a person experiences intense fear, many higher order functions are bypassed as the survival response kicks in. Through the lens of intense fear, you find it hard to read a situation accurately because the capacity to make sense of things, and ultimately your sense of self, is reduced. Therefore, conscious decision-making is impaired.

There is ample evidence that much of the modern world is living with a chronic, elevated survival response. In other words, millions of people live with chronic stress and fear. For them, the survival response is not an occasional reaction to a physical threat, but an ongoing reality. Life has become a stressful, fearful event.

How do you compromise someone's executive functioning and interrupt their conscious, moral decisions in an ongoing way? Induce chronic stress and fear.

How to activate your brain's liberty network

As reported in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American magazine, medical researchers were blown away when Dr. Marcus Raichle demonstrated via fMRI scans that brain networks can be switched on and off at will.

By engaging in certain kinds of cognitive tasks, the brain's "default mode" network can be turned off and executive function turned on. It comes down to directing your conscious awareness in a particular way.

This activities that turn on executive functioning are similar to awareness practices. Consciously attending to the external world and being in charge of your attention is what it takes to activate the part of the brain that is capable of living with liberty.

For some time we've offered Natural News readers a free brain development program that educates you about executive functioning and shows you specifically how to activate it, and reduce chronic fear and stress. You'll feel the difference first hand.

You can find that program here. There is no cost or obligation - not even a need to type in your email address. No one will know you came and went.

Two paths

The path to enslavement is one of fear and autopilot reaction, where
your conscious choices are limited by your own mental and emotional
blinders, as well as by those who induce fear to gain more control.

The path toward liberty is a moral path that relies on your highest functioning brain network. To pursue this path, you should learn to operate in a state of internal peace, where moral choices are clear. This gives you the freedom to make conscious decisions that expand freedom for yourself and others. This is your brain on liberty!

About the author:
Watch the free video The AHA! Process: An End to Self-Sabotage and discover the lost keys to personal transformation and emotional well-being that have been suppressed by mainstream mental health for decades.

The information in this video has been called the missing link in mental health and personal development. In a world full of shallow, quick-fix techniques, second rate psychology and pharmaceutical takeovers, real solutions have become nearly impossible to find. Click here to watch the presentation that will turn your world upside down.

Mike Bundrant is co-founder of the iNLP Center and host of Mental Health Exposed, a Natural News Radio program.

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