Connected with the question of how Rebirthing works on the brain are several questions of how the brain's conditions affect the operations of the Mind.

What's going on in the brain when the Mind works optimally, on a positive level?

If Thought Creates, what does the brain need so its Mind thinks positive thoughts and thus creates a positive Universe?

Are the conditions of the brain affected by how foods influence energy level?

Does the brain react to certain foods, directly, as allergens?

These questions are important because they lead to the fundamental question:  Can our Thought create a positive Universe even though we eat foods that usually upset the brain and thus lead to disordered thought?

I believe that until your life is running the way you want it to run, until you have all the energy you need to do everything you want to do, until you're working at a job you enjoy that's making you the money that you need, until you have a satisfying love relationship, until you typically feel vigorous, healthy, and pain-free, you shouldn't put any food into your body that isn't healthy for you!  It will simply distort your mood and attitude, it will affect your energy level, and it will make getting real satisfactions from work and life even more difficult.

When I first became involved in Rebirthing, I was very amazed, actually dumbfounded, to see Rebirthers eating foods that are really not awfully nourishing as they intoned various affirmations, like "Everything I eat turns to perfect beauty, health, and energy."

Leonard, for example, often joked about how happiness is eating a pound of chocolate chip cookies every day or eating a pint of licorice ice cream every day, and he did, indeed very often, eat things that most of us agree would qualify as junk. 

I well remember another Rebirther who still had an extremely bad case of what is known as teenage acne, although he was in his late twenties.  He routinely ate a great deal of dairy products each day and made a point, in fact, of having a hot fudge sundae or a malted milkshake at least once a day.

I finally asked, "Tim, don't you think that that much dairy stuff is bad for you, not to mention the sugar and the chocolate?" 

His reply was, "Only if I think it's bad for me.  My thought is creative, and so long as I don't think that eating a chocolate malted milkshake hurts me, it doesn't."

My reaction to all that is somewhat scornful.  I'm not especially tolerant of these ideas because I believe they're on par with whistling in the graveyard.  We're deluding ourselves.

Were we each of us, indeed, Masters in the sense of the few Hindu and Buddhist saints who apparently are Masters, we might be able to exist on a diet of only sugar candy or even on a diet of only air, without suffering, illness, or distorted thought.

But I know I'm not a Master.  Not in that sense.  And I also know that I'm unlikely to become a Master in that sense so long as I'm walking around with negative thoughts and feelings inside of me, negatives which cause me to resist doing what "works" re diet and exercise.  I'm essentially condemning myself to keep such negatives operative if I insist on putting junk food, non-nutritious substances, in me, so that I'm not truly nourishing my brain and I'm not maintaining a high energy level.

Rather than abuse the power of affirmations by saying something untrue, scientifically, I urge you to use affirmations to support and further your willingness to take good care of yourself.

So, rather than affirming something silly like, "My body thrives on junk food," or AThe more chocolate I eat, the healthier I become," let go your underlying scarcity consciousness and low self-esteem by affirming, "I totally enjoy nourishing myself on a diet that's 85 percent raw fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds."

You deserve to nourish yourself so you can develop your highest spiritual qualities.  Give yourself the energy you need to keep your thought positive!

If your brain is subject to sudden arrests of its energy or raw materials for good thoughts, it may re-experience similar pre- or peri-natal lacks and go back into its old negative scarcity thoughts.

To keep your Thought pure and positive, your brain has to have a constant supply of the energy and nutrients it uses in manufacturing thoughts and it has to feel secure that that supply comes from an infinite abundance.  The satisfied brain experiences a balance between intake and output of energy so that Thought remains consistently positive.  And the single item that most easily provides such balance is your diet.  When you decide what to put in your mouth, you're essentially deciding if you want to think positive thoughts or negative ones.

So, if energy is a problem for you, change your diet!  I recommend you read and follow the book, Fit for Life, written by Diamond and Diamond.  Take care of your energy problems by putting foods into you that you don't need to use a lot of energy to digest.  That way, you end with a surplus of energy to devote to making your life what you want it to be by making your Thought positive.   

Negatives about food are part of our earliest imprints.  They're a major part of our Parental Disapproval Syndrome, and they are also often thoughts our mothers had about eating when they were pregnant or even when they conceived (we shared those thoughts as the neurohumors basic to those thoughts of hers entered our placental circulation).

One such negative is the idea that I can't get enough of any pleasure to be satisfied.  And another such negative is the idea that I need certain artificial pleasures to make up for not being able to get other important and real gratifications.  Tastes and certain quantities of special foods are often such pleasures that are misused as substitutes. 

I see scarcity consciousness behind the idea that junk foods are okay to eat routinely.  I see the Parental Disapproval Syndrome and the refusal to do what's good for me.  I see all kinds of confusions between necessary nutrition and addictions or compulsions.

For example, the overweight woman who has a love affair with her refrigerator and gets up twenty times in the course of an evening to go get a little snack, especially a junk food snack, is not eating a fully nourishing diet. She may also be feeling a lack of contact and gratification in her personal relations.  She may be trying to make up to herself for what she regards as a state of love deprivationCperhaps she thinks if she had somebody she thought she loved, who loved her, she would be too excited in her infatuation to eat or she would be better inclined to stay away from food addiction.

Whatever her motives may be, by eating junk food, which is addicting, she condemns herself to the addicted compulsion to consume more.  And she probably won't get other satisfactions she wants until her thought is cleared of her addictions.  She's cheating herself by indulging herself.  She won't stop wanting until she stops using.

One of the scientific truths in psychology and physiology is that one satisfaction can't make up for another.

For example, if I suffer from not taking in enough calories, if I'm hungry, I can drink water, lots of water, enough water to distend my body and fill it, but that still isn't going to undo my hunger.  It isn't going to satisfy my hunger.  I need to put calories in in order to satisfy hunger.

Similarly, if I am getting tired and sleepy, if it's been twenty hours or more since I last slept, then I may be able to drive myself, to push myself, especially if I put some high calorie foods in to give me a boost of quick energy, but ultimately the only thing that's going to satisfy my craving for rest and unconsciousness is sleep.  Beyond a certain level of intoxication with fatigue products, eating won't do it and even moving around won't do it, although it's true that we can temporarily change our energy distribution by moving around.  (If you're finding yourself getting sleepy or bored before your customary bedtime, stand up and do a couple of quick deep-knee bends.  Nobody needs to see you doing them.  You can look as if you're picking a pencil up, as if you're looking for something on the floor.  The little bit of exercise is enough to stir up your liver, to release some glycogen, which gets converted to glucose and moved into the cells, and all of a sudden you have energy to do things with.  It's energy you've withdrawn from your Asavings account" in the glycogen stores in your liver.)

Most people who don't have enough energy to do what they need and want to do are eating a diet of manufactured foods, foods that are cooked, foods that are created out of other basic raw products.  When you mostly eat cooked foods, especially a diet high in flesh foods and refined carbohydrates, your energies fluctuate up and down.  Your brain reacts to these changes, affecting your mood and your attitude so you may find it really hard to get things started or to keep at them until you get them done.

In that connection, for those of you who think that refined carbohydrates are a fast way of getting an energy fix, let me point out that you pay the price for that quick fix in a rebound phenomenon that ends up lowering energy further, and you're also assaulting the integrity of your pancreas and your liver.

Why do that to yourself?

Get your energy from natural sources, not from man made sources.  Pieces of fruit or a handful of nuts and seeds provide energy that you can take in at a slower rate than a jolt of sugar; they don't disrupt the normal physiological functioning of your pancreas and your liver.

By simply changing your diet to one where eighty to eighty-five percent of whatever you eat is raw, fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, you will find that you have an immense amount of energy available at your disposal.

Probably because of pre-natal imprints as well as later ones, many Westerners habitually operate in crisis consciousness and also are highly concerned with physical appearance.  Many such people decide that the only way they're going to make their lives start "working" is by becoming slim and beautiful and stylish.  So they go full tilt at a weight loss diet that will be abandoned once the desired weight level is reached.  While losing weight, their Thought is often pre-occupied with scarcity, with not getting enough food, with being hungry.  Then, typically, once weight goals are reached and new clothes are bought, these people go back to the same former eating habits that originally led to undesirable weight gain.  As they gain the weight back, their Thought is often pre-occupied with scarcity, with not being attractive enough to deserve or get enough love.

As I've traveled around the world, I've been especially struck by how slim and erect people are in must Asian countries where flesh foods are not eaten as heavily as they are by Westerners and where grains are used differently.  They eat mostly natural foods instead of processed ones.  The medical conditions associated with junk diets and subsequent overweight aren't a big problem in those countries, for example, they don't have the same incidence of heart disease or of certain cancers as is found in Western countries.  Also, overweight does not seem to be a problem for most AsiansCeven those who aren't too poor to buy much food.  Their customary diet is closer-to-natural and is  sufficiently satisfying so they don't overeat in the effort to gain some missing nutrient.

Every time I've flown back from Asia either into one of the western European countries, especially the United Kingdom, or into an American airport, I've been just amazed by how many ugly, fat people I've seen.  I'm not talking about a certain amount of plumpness, maybe ten or twenty pounds of extra weight.  I'm talking about the people who waddle past weighing a hundred or more pounds more than their frame is built to carry healthilyCpeople who are almost grotesquely overweight.  I can't believe they're happy and satisfied with life.

They are probably allergic to certain foods that Westerners usually eat daily, addictively, so that they wouldn't feel Afed" if they didn't get themCfoods like wheat, eggs, milk and cheese, pork and beef, and sugar.  Like all addictions, the more they eat, the more they want, so they become gross over-eaters.  Desire for these allergenic foods can only stop after they're no longer consumed and the withdrawal symptoms have passed.

When new patients first come to me, usually during our first hour or two together, I ask if they have such symptoms as fatigue, joint pain, restriction of motion, or frequent panic states or mood swings.  If so, I suggest they consult a physician or laboratory that does good, reliable, highly scientific testing for delayed food allergies to determine if certain foods contribute to such physical and psychological problems.  They can then eliminate from their diet all offending foods to which they're allergic and create a diet which genuinely nourishes then so they can keep their Thought positive.

I often recommend Immuno Laboratories in Fort Lauderdale, FloridaCThey have an excellent and comprehensive diagnostic testing program and provide prompt service on mailed-in blood samples.

                I usually check up on that at subsequent sessions, asking if they have contacted the doctor to determine delayed food sensitivities yet.  Once they know which foods are offenders, I ask if they're staying on a clean diet, and I encourage them to give themselves at least six weeks of strict compliance before taking even a minor break.  I often prepare special affirmations for them like the ones in Appendix J.  I firmly believe we can't think straight if we don't eat straight.

I have not yet met any individual who is conscious and sensitive and happy, yet who consumes a rich diet and uses caffeine, nicotine, and sugar.  The people I know who eat junk food and mostly cooked foods every day are generally chronically lamenting the state of their life.  The only happy people I've known have been abstemious and simple in their food choices, leaning toward living food, and avoiding the common household poisons, especially sugar.

You need healthy energy to think positive thoughts that will re-create your life.  So be good to yourself and stay on a healthy diet.

When people argue that that's going against the idea that thought is creative, my response has to be essentially the same as before: 

We are not yet any of us Masters.

So let's give ourselves a break and give ourselves a chance.  Eat right.  Eat only the foods that are nourishing to your body, not foods that ultimately offend your body, not junk foods that you are most allergic to.

Mind you, these may be "perfectly decent foods."  But if you're allergic to them, they're not for you.  Most people in the U.S.A. are allergic to wheat, eggs, milk and cheese, corn, oats, peanuts, citrus fruit, and the family of vegetables that includes the tomato and potatoes and eggplants and peppers.  If you don't want to pay a lab for a comprehensive test for your specific delayed food reactions, at least try to eliminate these foods for six weeks and see how much better you feel and how much happier you are with your life.

Finding out what foods you are allergic to and eliminating them from your diet is probably the easiest, fastest way to change your mind.