The Gift in You: Discovering New Life Through Gifts Hidden in Your Mind by Caroline Leaf Read Free Book Online

seen in how different twins are in their likes and dislikes and behavior and life choices and even in their susceptibility to disease. So twins have different experiences because of a factor, over and above the genes, that is called epigenetics . Epigenetics provides another scientific way of understanding how we are each so different. It tells us that externally-driven changes - like how we think and our reactions to the events of life - will influence the behavior of our genes. 6
    As we reviewed in Chapter 7, there are seven different areas of the brain stimulated (see page 46) when we process a thought, resulting in seven different types of thinking:
Intrapersonal – introspection
Interpersonal – interaction
Linguistic – words spoken and written
Logical/Mathematical – scientific and strategic reasoning, order, planning
Kinesthetic – movement, experiential
Musical – instinct, reading between the lines, musical talent
Visual/Spatial – imagination, seeing in the mind’s eye
    As we learned earlier, while all of us operate with all Seven Pillars of thought - the strength of each pillar is different for each one of us.
    As we loop through the specific order of our gifts, the information goes through stages of processing. Like a photo has to be processed, our thoughts have to be developed into full-blown understanding or we won't use them properly.
    It is good to process healthy thoughts using our gift, but when toxic thoughts are fully processed they can cause serious harm. Because they are negative they upset the electrical chemical balance in the brain because of the stress they cause. Along with a fixed structural change that now influences your thinking, they also bring a whole bunch of emotional and chemical toxic waste. This in turn starts hampering your gift in processing the good stuff, and the toxic thoughts will want to dominate and grow and influence your perceptions unless controlled. In Parts Three and Four we will explore this in more depth.
    Let's first get a better understanding of how the gift develops:
First, we receive the information from our five senses.
Second, we build connections to this information from existing information and memories – helping our minds make sense of new information.

Inside the Brain
Third, we consolidate this information in the “trees” (neural networks) in the cortex of our brains.
Fourth, we confirm this information and decide if we feel it is true.
Fifth, we integrate the information into the networks of the memories.
Sixth, we apply the information to the present circumstance.
Seventh, we close the open loop.
    Until we move though these levels of processing, the thought won't be fully processed or have meaning. Obviously, this happens incredibly fast so you won't "feel" all these things happening; you will normally only be aware of the first two types of thought and perhaps the last one in your order (that you will determine from your Gift Profile coming up).
    However, as you are looping through the Seven Pillars of thought in your particular order (your gift), you might start noticing how you "think through" information. This is a good thing to become aware of because it will help you identify when you have a gift-blocker in action. If there are any disruptions along this pathway in the form of gift-blockers, then you won't think it through properly. This in turn will affect your attitude and the decisions you make.
    That's why uniqueness of consciousness, the fact that you are totally different from anyone else and can do what no one else can, is considered one of the most difficult things to explain - it's often termed the "hard question" in science. 7
    But if we take Proverbs 9 and principles from Scripture and pair them with ground-breaking brain science on which my "gift" theory is based, we can begin to explain this "hard question."
    How does the order of the Seven Pillars of thought link to the processing of thought that is the same for each one of