BRAIN CELLS

Escape Your Mental Prisons

Patrick Prohaska

Copyright © 2019 Patrick Prohaska

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-7315-0294-0 (Amazon)

For Pete, who taught me that nothing ever happens unless I take action. And for everyone else who reminded me

when I forgot.

Special thanks to Carmen and Giovanna. You’re both awesome, and I appreciate all your support

and encouragement.

BRAIN CELLS: CONTENTS

Introduction: Self-Imposed Prisons

Cell Block 1: Living a Lie

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9 Cell 1: The Phony Persona 10 Cell 2: Bogus Limitations and Expectations 17 Cell 3: Defining Yourself through Others 23 Escape Plan: Authenticity 29

Cell Block 2: Delusional Beliefs

33 Cell 4: Believing is Seeing 34 Cell 5: The Hostile Universe 40 Cell 6: Expecting the Worst

Cell 7: Rampant Negativity 46 51

Escape Plan: Discernment 56

Cell Block 3: Feeling Worthless

61 Cell 8: Lack of Self-Worth 62 Cell 9: Shadow Projection 68 Cell 10: Self-Sacrifice and Martyrdom 72 Escape Plan: BodyLove 78

Cell Block 4: Victim Consciousness

82

Cell 11: Victim Identity Cell 12: Addiction to Chaos and Drama Cell 13: Commiseration Escape Plan: Optimism

83 88 93 98

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Cell Block 5: Hyper-Reactivity Cell 14: Triggers and Reactivity Cell 15: Trapped in the Past Cell 16: Stuck in Trauma Cell 17: Resentment and Envy Escape Plan: Resilience

Cell Block 6: Death Row Cell 18: Learned Helplessness Cell 19: Grudge Energy Cell 21: Toxic Masculinity Cell 23: Spiritual Ego Escape Plan: Personal Power Appendix: Universal Harmonics About the Author

102 103 108 112 116 120 125 126 131 135 141 145 150 161

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INTRODUCTION SELF-IMPOSED PRISONS

By my 50th year, the walls of the prison I’d built for myself were so thick I was literally suffocating. For months I’d found myself struggling for breath, especially when I’d try to sleep. I’d lay in bed at night thinking about my disgust with restaurant management. I’d fixate on an outrageous customer complaint, or on the latest whim of the owner, or on what witty thing I should have said in that last spat with the chef.

I was at the top of my career, general manager of a swanky restaurant/night club at the mythical intersection of Hollywood and Vine. But the drama, the stress, the massive egos of guests and employees alike, it was all too much for me. I wanted to walk away, as I’d done countless times in the past, but I had too much debt and ever-dwindling prospects in the restaurant industry.

Even when I did manage to fall asleep I still felt the walls collapsing in on me. I had recurring dreams of being

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trapped in a strait jacket, of being buried alive, even of being wrapped like a mummy and dipped in water, so that my cloth cocoon would slowly shrink as it dried.

That was just the beginning of a three-month panic attack, coupled with severe claustrophobia. Every breath was an ordeal, every elevator ride a glimpse of hell. Even drinking water felt like drowning. And in the end I was a broken man, yet again on the verge of homelessness, with no job, no health insurance, and a mountain of medical bills I couldn’t pay.

My only two options at that point were obvious – either take control of my life or die. I also suspected an ironic truth, that in order to take control I needed to jump into the abyss. I had to leave the restaurant industry and build something completely new, on my terms. I had to throw out all my assumptions about power, success, and happiness and look at the world with fresh eyes.

When the dust settled and I could see myself clearly, I realized I’d been wrong about just about everything. Other people were not to blame for my misery – I alone was responsible. No job, relationship, or achievement would ever make me happy – my happiness had to emerge from within. And no amount of bitching and moaning would ever change anything – it would only guarantee more of the same.

I had built my own invisible prison the same way everyone does – through my limiting thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and judgments about how the world works and my place in it. When it comes to our personal prisons, we’re all genius architects and skilled contractors. How do we do it? The process is quite complex, but in my lectures and workshops I often condense it into a brief summary like this:

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The world you experience is a direct reflection of your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, judgments, and memories. You project your reality through your mind, in conjunction with a collective of billions of other beings all creating their own realities that intersect with and interact with yours.

Let’s unpack that a bit. Thoughts produce individual waves of energy. Every thought you think generates an energetic pulse that propagates out into the universal matrix, and the Universe responds by reflecting that energy back to you in some form. For example, if you constantly stew and fret about your debt, the Universe reflects those thoughts back to you with seemingly endless opportunities to experience debt. In a sense, the Universe reinforces whatever you focus on. This is the basic gist of the Law of Attraction.

But of course, we think tens of thousands of thoughts every day, often on autopilot with no conscious awareness. Therefore, one individual thought is like a droplet of water in an ocean. It’s practically powerless, and when its energetic pulse is reflected back to you it barely registers. But thoughts that are infused with emotion or intention create a much stronger pulse. They produce a louder signal. While all of our thoughts have specific vibrational frequencies, our emotions give those thought waves amplitude. This is why for most people basic manifestation practices (such as reciting affirmations or constructing a vision board) never seem to work. Most people chant affirmations in a robotic and rote manner, but if there’s no emotion to boost the amplitude of those thought waves the energy reflected back is feeble, if not powerless.

Unfortunately most of us (the pre-50 version of me included) tend to feel our negative thoughts much more

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intensely than our positive ones, and so those thoughts carry more power. I know from experience how easy it is to become viscerally consumed with anger, shame, disgust, jealousy, or rage, and I suspect you do too. When you’re deep in pain, even if it’s only for an instant, it can feel like the entire universe is pain. But do you ever feel your positive emotions with the same intensity? Can you even imagine what that would be like? Pause for a moment and think of a time when you were consumed with anger or jealousy, and now imagine what it would be like to feel happiness or serenity with the same intensity.

A well-practiced thought becomes a belief (that’s the logic behind affirmations). And in turn, our beliefs determine which thoughts we prefer to think. Most of our beliefs are fed to us by authority figures – parents, teachers, people we admire, people we want to impress, and so on.

The human brain is remarkably malleable, and we humans tend to be wide open to suggestion, especially in childhood. Neuroscientists have shown that until about the age of eight, children live in a light hypnotic trance. Technically, their brains produce an abundance of Theta brainwave activity, rather than the faster Beta brainwave patterns associated with logic and linear thinking. As a result, young children are essentially ultra-absorbent belief sponges. Children live in a light hypnotic state and are very open to suggestion. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the beliefs absorbed in childhood were meant to keep us under control, to make us obedient and “good,” rather than to reveal the truth of who we really are.

Over time our individual beliefs coalesce into coherent systems. In Light Bridge I often refer to collections of inter-

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related beliefs that reinforce each other as mythologies. A common example of a limiting mythology is poverty consciousness, which consists of thousands of individual beliefs about the nature of money and your relationship with it. Because mythologies are coherent systems, they tend to be more rigid and deeply ingrained than individual beliefs. As we interact with other people and test our beliefs in the real world, we tend to cling to any evidence that matches our mythologies and filter out whatever doesn’t (this is called “confirmation bias” by behavioral psychologists).

Judgments are beliefs infused with moralistic notions of good and bad, right and wrong. For most people moralistic judgments either seem self-evident or they’re handed down by God, but I argue that much of our moral code exists merely to create social cohesion, and as social structures evolve, so must our morals. Sometimes our moral judgments are in alignment with objective reality (for example, murder is bad), but more commonly they’re skewed by unfair biases and stereotypes, or they reflect the agenda of those in power. Rather than practice or preach moralistic judgment, I advise discernment, which is a clear understanding of whether something is limiting or liberating. If you look at your beliefs objectively, you may come to realize that much of what you judge as morally good and proper is actually quite limiting, while much of what you consider wrong or bad could in fact be liberating.

When you have a well-developed set of thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and expectations about how the universe operates, through the Law of Attraction you magnetize opportunities and experiences that match those

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energies. These experiences are recorded in your memory, where they create self-validating evidence that your thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and expectations are the truth of your reality. And as you become more and more confident that your perspective is True with a capital T, through the Law of Attraction and related principles you attract even more matching experiences, and the cycle continues.

The mechanism for all this activity is the brain, which creates alignment between your internal beliefs and your external experiences. The main function of the brain is to ensure survival as we navigate the physical world. In order to survive we must be keenly aware of whatever dangers may be lurking in our environment, and so the brain is hardwired to anticipate danger. Your subconscious mind continuously scans your environment for threats so you can react immediately without needing to analyze the situation logically first. For example, when you’re walking along and see a snake out of the corner of your eye, you instantly jump away, long before you’re able to recognize that it was actually just a tree root or a rope.

The brain is also hardwired to solve problems through the cognitive mind. And when there are no problems for it to focus on, the cognitive mind loves to create them out of nothing. How many times have you caught yourself imagining a future personal catastrophe? Or reliving a past argument so you can get it right the next time around? The cognitive mind loves to bask in conflict as an expression of its drive to solve problems. When the cognitive mind doesn’t have a conflict to fix or a puzzle to solve it gets bored, which itself becomes a problem to be solved (this is one of the many reasons why consistent meditation can be

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utterly transformational). The more strongly we cling to our biases and limiting

beliefs, the thicker we build our prison walls. I love a good metaphor, so let’s extend this one a bit. Within your self-imposed prison, other people’s opinions are the prison guards and your fears are the guard dogs. You may occasionally dream of escaping your cell, but then you wonder "What would my friends think? What would my family think? People will laugh and turn their backs on me. They might even react with violence." And so you stay locked in your cell, not quite sure why you suddenly resent your friends and family. Still, every now and then you sneak a peek over the walls and the fearsome guard dogs snarl.

So instead of escaping, you decide to make your prison cell more livable. A younger lover, new sheets for the bed, a better-paying job, and soon you’re content and comfortable. Over time you begin to compete with other prisoners for who has the most luxurious prison cell. You may even manage to decorate your cell so lavishly you declare yourself liberated. But you’re not – you’ve merely pushed your cell walls outward more than others have. We’ve all encountered people who brag about how enlightened and superior they are, blissfully unaware that such a declaration is one of thickest shackles the ego can fashion. The truly enlightened don’t care about other people’s opinions – they care about other people. They express their enlightenment through action and example, not through bragging and moral superiority.

So, if you don’t like the world you’ve created for yourself, how do you change it? Most of us try to force change to happen. We look at the world we live in, decide

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what we like and don’t like about it, and then begin making external changes. We move the chess pieces around on the board in front of us and beg or demand that other people play along. And we compete over limited resources, worried that if someone else has more, there’s less left over for us. This can be quite effective, and you can construct an amazing world for yourself if you have the resources and determination. However, forced victories often feel hollow.

If it really is true that you create your experience in the world through your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, judgments, and so on, then doesn’t it stand to reason that the world must shift as you embrace new thoughts and beliefs? Doesn’t it follow that by turning inward and taking control of your emotions, of your habitual thoughts, of your attitudes and expectations, you can sculpt your world into an exciting and liberating new form? And that you can tear down those prison walls once and for all rather than just gussy them up? How to do just that is what this book is all about.

A note about names All of the client interactions I mention in this book are real, but their names have been changed to protect privacy. Some of the people I describe are composites of two or more people with similar issues and experiences.

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CELL BLOCK 1

LIVING A LIE

Cell 1: The Phony Persona

Cell 2: Bogus Limitations & Expectations

Cell 3: Defining Yourself through Others

Escape Plan: Authenticity

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PRISON CELL 1 THE PHONY PERSONA

Our modern dilemma is simple: we live in a post-truth world, where mendacity is not just expected, it’s rewarded. And yet, you cannot truly enjoy fulfilment if you’re living a lie.

This section is all about authenticity – how to find your voice, speak your truth, and express your life on your terms. The opposite of authenticity is deception, so we also need to discuss how to navigate a world full of fakery, how to process the lies and half-truths of others with grace and dignity, and how to eradicate dishonesty from your own life.

Success, joy, and fulfillment come from living life on your terms, completely free of the phony limitations and expectations imposed on you by your parents, your cultural heritage, your friends, or society. Fulfillment does

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not come from living someone else’s dream or agenda, no matter how successfully you do it. Please note that I’m not advocating Ayn Randian selfishness and individualism, because I firmly believe that our deepest joy in life comes from being of service to others. So the questions becomes, how do you honor your dreams and desires and still uplift and support others?

One of the major problems of the modern age is that lying has become mundane. A couple of years ago Margaret called me out of the blue for an emergency session. She was stricken with fear, because she’d seen a report on a lie-for-profit website claiming that Arab terrorists were streaming across the southern U.S. border. This claim is plainly laughable, and yet she believed it. It was published on the web, and it lined up with her biases about “Arabs,” and so she was quaking with fear about a non-existent threat.

Deception is the scourge of the modern world. But even more troubling is the willingness of people to latch onto the opinions of others uncritically, and to spread them far and wide. We believe things not because we have verified them, but because they feel true. And they feel true because they match our biases and prejudices. Many of us have a very well-muscled us-vs.-them mentality, and we believe anything that confirms our darkest opinions of “them,” no matter how outlandish. If the source is one of “us,” we think it must be true. We believe misinformation when it comes from friends and authority figures, and there’s no authority figure more godlike to a small child than a parent.

Some people will ask, “If it feels true, isn’t that my intuition? Shouldn’t I trust my intuition?” My response is

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that your intuition is always stunted when you’re gripped by fear, shame, anger, or outrage. Therefore you need to learn the difference between a triggered emotional reaction and true intuition. In other words, much of what you feel is based on limiting subconscious beliefs, biases, and prejudices, not intuition. And until you’ve shifted your limiting subconscious beliefs, your intuitive sight will always flow through vision-warping goggles.

When you’re well-practiced at parroting unverified rumors and innuendo, it becomes much easier to tell intentional lies. And when you’ve told enough intentional lies, you begin to believe them. Any well-practiced thought eventually becomes a belief, and so a well-practiced lie becomes a delusion. And in some cases, the self-deception can come to feel so natural that mendacity metastasizes. Some people are so comfortable lying that telling the truth feels awkward and alien, and therefore they lie even about the most insignificant things, when telling the truth would cost them nothing.

Metastasized mendacity is epidemic in the political arena. It’s not universal among politicians, but the power to slander and destroy wielded by the power-hungry is immense, and it’s a tool that honest politicians who strive for authenticity are often unwilling to use. And so the liars win.

Basking in falsehood doesn’t need to be so overt and obvious as what Margaret experienced. Most people live their lives enmeshed in subtle weave of fakeness that’s designed to make other people like and respect them. We wear masks in order to both please and appease others. That is, we misrepresent who we are, and what our interests are, and what we’ve done in the past, and how

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much we weigh, in order to be liked and accepted. We also do it to prevent others from turning on us. We feel that if people saw our true face, if they knew the truth about us, they’d either attack or run away screaming and never look back.

There are certain arenas, such as gender identity, where the stakes are so high that some people go through life never revealing their truth to anyone, not even themselves. Having been conditioned by a lifetime of threats, acts of violence, rejection, ridicule, and humiliation, they unconsciously decide that living a lie is the only way to feel safe.

This happens at the cost of authenticity. If you lack authenticity, you block yourself from living life on your terms, and you deny yourself connection with others who love you for who you are. You end up attracting into your circle of friends and into your romantic life people who love you for your false persona, but not for you. You attract flatterers and gossips. When you casually misrepresent even the most insignificant things, you connect only with people who like you for your mask, and you drive away those who prefer the honest you. When Margaret took a close look at her circle of friends, she realized they were all frightened conspiracy theorists, and the fears they all shared with each other were bouncing around in their own private echo chamber.

This problem is compounded when you attract friends and romantic partners who are also hiding behind a false persona. Consider this simple scenario: you and your best friend both secretly love superhero movies. But you’re so used to being ridiculed that you feign disgust the topic comes up. Your friend then concludes you hate superhero

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movies, and so she rolls her eyes as well. And thus you go through your entire friendship avoiding something that could give you both immense pleasure. But to get your fix, you both sneak off from time to time to watch superhero movies in secret, and so the lie gets compounded.

It’s even worse when you both pretend to enjoy something you dislike, because you think the other enjoys it. Imagine you hate superhero movies, but you endure watching them for the sake of your friend, who also secretly hates them.

I admit this is a silly example, but it extends to everything in life – sex, gender, life goals, passions, hobbies, and so on. Re-imagine the two scenarios I just described, but involving a married couple and oral sex.

Misaligned desires are especially common in scattered families. Do you endure annual holiday traditions that you secretly dread when you celebrate with your family? If you ask, you might find that no one else in your family likes them either.

The bottom line is this – if you’re wearing a mask in order to please and appease others, and if they’re all wearing masks to please and appease you, then where is there room for honesty and authenticity? Where can intimacy emerge? True intimacy requires vulnerability, a willingness to expose your true self. There can be no intimacy when face-to-face contact is blocked by masks, no matter how pretty they are.

Imagine living life free of your masks. It may be scary at first, but when you’re honest about who you are and what you like and dislike, you begin to attract people and experiences that match your authentic expression. Yes, some people will drift away, or even viciously reject you,

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but when this happens you’re just making space for new friends who are in better alignment with your core personality. Authenticity helps you clarify who your true friends are. This principle holds true in business as well – when you authentically express who you are you connect with clients, customers, and business partners who are in alignment with your core persona.

When you’re hiding behind a thick layer of masks, it’s easy to become overly judgmental. You become willing to reject, ridicule, and even punish people who express genuine authenticity. This is especially true when others are authentically enjoying something that you secretly desire for yourself, but are ashamed of. This is shadow projection, which we’ll discuss later in the book.

We misrepresent ourselves for many other reasons that go beyond wanting to be liked or appease others. Sometimes we lie to manipulate, or to control, or to make money. The lie-for-profit website Margaret was addicted to spreads false information for two main reasons – for political power and to rake in the cash. And it’s very effective at both, but only if you allow yourself to be manipulated by its lies. When you strip off your masks and declare to the world who you authentically are, it probably won’t cut into the mendacity industry’s profit margin, but it will help you to recognize or at least question deception when you encounter it.

Some people have built very lucrative careers spreading lies and gossip, so whenever you’re confronted with a conspiracy theory or allegation you haven’t verified, ask yourself, “Whose agenda does this serve?” With a lie-for-profit website such as the one Margaret visited, their agenda is not your happiness, but your pocketbook and

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your vote. Take a moment to ask yourself how much time, energy,

and effort you put into seeking the approval of others. When by default you embrace a false persona in order to be accepted and to fit in, you’re living in the unspoken energy of “I’m not good enough as I am.” So how much time do you spend trying to prove yourself to people who really don’t care? How much energy do you waste trying to prove your parents wrong, or to prove them right? How often do you twist your logical mind into knots trying to justify parroting someone else’s interests and opinions? How much of your life is someone else’s dream?

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PRISON CELL 2 BOGUS LIMITATIONS

& EXPECTATIONS

I grew up in a small Catholic town in rural Kansas, the type of place where everyone felt compelled to know everyone else’s business. There wasn’t much room for diversity, and people who didn’t fit in were marginalized in both subtle and explicit ways. We’d all police each other’s behaviors and interests for the sake of social cohesion, without ever questioning the truth of our assumptions or why we held our values in the first place. Those of us who didn’t fit in either moved away and never looked back, or we gave in and agreed to mold our lives to match other people’s standards.

Once, when I was eleven or twelve years old, I overheard my parents gossiping. They were sitting on the couch in our living room, ignoring the television that was

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forever on, focused instead on salacious innuendo about a teacher at my school.

“If he’s a homo he shouldn’t be teaching,” my dad said. There was no anger or disgust in his voice. For him, it was a straightforward statement of fact.

“I’m going to call the dean and give him a piece of my mind!” my mom responded, angry enough for the both of them.

I slunk away without them realizing I’d been there. It was just a two-sentence snippet of longer conversation, but it sparked so much anxiety in me that I still remember it vividly today. What did it mean for me? Even then I knew I was destined to teach. Would I never be allowed to live my dream? Could anyone just blow up my career with an angry phone call? What other professions were off-limits?

One of the major themes of the healing and coaching work I do now is to purge the phony limitations that were imposed on us by others. What makes them phony is the fact that they’re based on the false assumptions and unfair biases of the people who insist on them. When I overheard that conversation I was old enough to question its validity. But unfortunately, we absorb most of our phony limitations long before we know enough to ask whether they make any sense. In early childhood our parents are god-like figures, so surely anything they say must be the truth of our world.

From the moment we’re born we’re trained to become manageable and obedient, to know our place and accept our boundaries. Many of these boundaries are essential for safety and survival. But most of them were taught to us by people with a personal agenda. The most obvious example involves gender roles and gender conditioning, in which

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we’re made to fear stepping out of our boundaries through threats of violence, ridicule, rejection, humiliation, and so on. Where I grew up doctors were men and secretaries were women, and any man who wanted to be a nurse (or, heaven forbid, a flight attendant) was laughed at, if not shunned. And under no circumstances could a woman ever be elected President.

Once we embrace the boundaries that have been marked out for us, we in turn enforce them on others, never questioning whether they’re fair and just, or even whether they make logical sense. When I was in high school I felt humiliated every time I had to use an umbrella. Umbrellas are for girls, I’d been taught, and real men walk proudly in the rain, unless it’s a deluge of Biblical proportions. What a silly and ridiculous belief! But for years I suffered in water-logged clothing while silently sneering at the dry guys around me, simply to fit someone else’s warped vision of manhood.

Since then I’ve come to realize that you can be, do, and have anything you desire, within the limits of the physical human body and the confines of a civil and just society. So please ignore anyone who tells you otherwise, whether they’re spouse, a parent, a friend, a politician, a guru, or even a religious scripture. Choose to live life on your terms, always with an eye on the greater good but free of bogus limitations imposed on you by others.

Phony limitations go hand-in-hand with phony expectations. Not only are we told what’s forbidden, but what we must do to earn the respect and approval of others. You’re expected to graduate college, get married, have children, hold certain jobs, and so on. When I first became a healer I was often ridiculed by old friends and

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acquaintances who knew me as a rational-minded restaurant manager. Get a real job, they’d say, and quit this silly nonsense. One former colleague even said “When you’re done embarrassing yourself give me a call.”

As I mentioned in the last chapter, we’re driven to both please and appease our friends. The resistance expressed by people you crave respect from causes you to embrace “responsibilities” that are out of alignment with your authentic desires and passions. It’s true that there are responsibilities we’re expected to fulfill as part of living in a social collective – paying taxes, voting, vaccinations, wearing clothing in public, and so on – but beyond these social norms many of our “responsibilities” are really just unexamined expectations imposed on us by others. You may bristle at having to pay taxes or wear clothing in public, but the benefits for everyone far outweigh the cons for yourself.

How often have you denied yourself something life-affirming because of an apparent responsibility? You deny yourself that company retreat because a family member might have an accident while you’re away. You can’t go on a journey of self-exploration because your romantic partner might feel jealous or left out. You can’t buy that awesome print you love because you might have an unexpected expense. As Richard Bach wrote in the book Illusions, “The best way to avoid responsibility is to say ‘I’ve got responsibilities’.”

Sometimes we embrace phony limitations and expectations out of fear of dishonoring our parents, our family history, or our cultural heritage. We live in fear of bringing shame to our family by living out of harmony with their desires. And often we do things not because we

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want to, but because it’s tradition. Now, this is nice if it invokes a feeling of connection and communion within your family or clan. But when you engage in activities you dislike merely because your family expects it of you, you have given your power away.

Some of us are so deeply imbued with the phony limitations and expectations of others that we essentially live as a marionette, dancing a jig as they pull our strings. And rather than living life on our terms, we end up living on theirs. Remember Margaret, the woman who was prone to browsing lie-for-profit websites? Part of what made her susceptible to propaganda was her willingness to give herself over to someone else’s agenda. Because she was uncertain of her core personality and of what her honest beliefs were, she went through life allowing others to tell her what to do and what to believe. Unfortunately, propaganda websites are never shy about telling you what to think and who’s to blame for your problems.

In her earlier years this malleability essentially made Margaret a puppet in the hands of her parents. She went to the college they chose for her. She majored in English literature because they told her she’d like that the most. She rejected the lover her parents didn’t like and instead married the one they approved of, even though he bored her to tears. “You’ll grow to love him,” they insisted, but she never did. She was even allergic to whatever foods her mother didn’t like to cook. And whenever Margaret expressed an interest her parents disapproved of, they’d simply shake their heads and say “That may sound good, but that’s not you.” And after a while she believed them. Having grown up in such an environment, it’s no wonder she’d become so susceptible to other people’s opinions.

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Within our personal ethical codes, we carry with us at all times extensive catalogs, tens of thousands of items long, about what we’re allowed to do and what’s forbidden. And many of those prohibitions and expectations are not meant to help us live vibrant and fulfilling lives, nor do they create camaraderie and mutual respect with others. Most are meant to keep us in our place, and to not challenge the authority of those in power. So just as I recommended in the last chapter, I suggest examining your personal ethical codes and for each one ask yourself “Whose agenda does this serve?”

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As the founder of both Light Bridge Academy and Qharisma Coaching, Patrick Prohaska has helped thousands of clients and students shine with personal power, joy, and authenticity. Patrick is the creator of Light Bridge, a revolutionary system for healing and personal transformation that blends Law of Attraction life coaching principles with belief sculpting and energetic activations. Through Light Bridge Academy Patrick offers training in the Light Bridge technique, and has established a certification program for professional practitioners. He has a Bachelor’s degree in history of science, and a Master’s degree in the religions of ancient India, and has studied countless healing systems including Ayurveda, Reiki, Theta Healing, aromatherapy, and more. Patrick is the author of several books on personal empowerment. Patrick lives in Southern California and is available for lectures, seminars, and workshops around the globe. For more information about Light Bridge and the other powerful courses, workshops, and live events Patrick offers, please visit Patrick’s official website at www.patrickprohaska.com or feel free to email him directly at patrick@patrickprohaska.com