Creating a Sacred Space for NeuroPositivity Being

“There is never a crowd on the cutting edge”.

-Esther Hicks for Abraham

A sanctuary is a place of reserve, of preservation and of safety. We find safety in a sanctuary. It’s a place for the preservation of something highly significant, like personal freedom or rare birds.

A sanctuary of positivity is a wholly new concept simply because we haven’t yet revered positivity. Positivity is something we squander, waste, and disregard as something like a fleeting experience we hope we might get, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of several other things on our schedules which we think will make life interesting. 

The Zeigarten principle in psychology tells us that we have lean of 9:2 toward the negative. We have come to learn that this is because of evolution, because of our development as human species. Think about that for a moment. We have nearly conditioned out, in our evolution, the capacity for positivity. Yet it has persistently remained in our DNA. Not only has it remained, but it is responsible for the creative, ongoing, emergence of the progress of the human species.

Positivity is a primal essential to ongoing creation and evolution. Without it, we die.  Without it we die not only sooner, we die less well, with greater misery, and loss of meaning.

Think about it. This precious human resource, responsible for human progress and the evolution of inventions, great art, great music, great social movements, is the natural human resource that engages, emerges and allows the flow of creativity. It is this precious resource that we have nearly succeeded in bringing to extinction, and yet it has survived.  It is hard to imagine the human race without positivity, even though we have paid really so little attention to it. Positivity is the ground of flourishing.

How is it that such a great natural resource has gone so unnoticed and taken for granted?  We have done it with animals, we have done it with the rain forests, we have done it with energy resources, and we have done it with human life. The fact that our evolutionary lean is 9:2 in favor of the negative is a staggering realization that we could have come so far. Yet, it is has not been so long ago that one American president said that we would land a man on the moon in 10 years, and we did.  Had that not been said and done in what positivity is, there would have been no man on the moon.

Could we say with great intention that we will change the world in 10 years, dedicated to positivity, bringing such a sanctuary to its presence that it becomes revered as the force that puts a man on the moon and ushers in a new world of consciousness not possible in a ratio of 9:2?  In our lifetime, we intend, by making a sanctuary for positivity, to change that ratio to 4.5: 1, to cut it in half. There is no imagination capable of knowing what that would mean.

If we think of our own lives, it is not difficult to remember times when we have nearly extinguished it in our own lives. And for sure, we know people who have pretty much extinguished positivity in their own lives. The statistics of suicide are more staggering than concentration camps, if we read the larger part of them as the loss of positivity, and that is what they essentially are. What does the current epidemic of depression tell us about where we may be headed?

But positivity seems so frivolous over against the really serious issues in the world. So does a tiny tree frog coming to extinction, until it dawns on us that it is a signal of a world in a crisis of survival.  9:2 is not frivolous.

We know so little about the concept of keeping a positive space and that its implications are greater than putting a man on the moon.  It is not enough to meditate, go inward and find peace. Peace, as important as it is, can put you to sleep, just as it does to many who try to meditate.

Peace is part of it, but the larger space is made of the elevation of higher states that we can simply call positivity. This is a sanctuary that renews and motivates us to live and to create.  We need positivity to create, to evolve, now even more than ever. It is time that this 9:2 ratio change and that our very human DNA change along with it.  This sanctuary of positivity is about nothing less than evolution.

UpSpiraLife sanctuaries are spaces in human life that we are just beginning to understand. Positivity isn’t associated with a sanctuary because we don’t yet believe all of this is so important. But the research isn’t just mounting exponentially. The research is already there. Slow to be translated to human experience, but the research is there. The UpSpiraLife group is the first positive 12 step group experience to emerge from that research, if not, in fact, the first significant on-going group experience.

The importance of meditation is that it sets the stage for the appearance of positivity, it makes way for it. Meditation sets the stage for gratitude, love, joy, peace, and hope. Inner peace alone does not sustain on-going creation and evolution. Positivity does. The purpose of meditation is to bare the human stage for the emergence of those inner states of positivity that live and create and evolve. It is meditation that sets the stage for positivity and it is positivity that enables flourishing to happen.

UpSpiraLife groups are sanctuaries of an evolving awareness that we are wired for positivity and we need it to flourish.  As important as meditation can be, it is only a predecessor to the sanctuary of the UpSpiraLife group.

In meditation we shut out a noisy, busy world to find peace. In an UpSpiraLife group, we shut out negativity and dwell in the positive. Shutting out negativity, in a space of time, is as essential as shutting out noise and distraction. It is something like getting on the new high-powered antibiotics. If you cannot shut out negativity and reduce it, you cannot experience flow and you cannot flourish in your own way in your own life. You cannot create from inside a field of negativity. The creative act is the first step out of the negative field.

The experience of positivity, in an extended UpSpiral of positivity, means inevitable growth into and through transitions of knowing self and other, the roots of consciousness.  The old ego will work harder in the face positivity than it will to distract the meditator with a barrage of thoughts. The growth of positivity in an UpSpiral of life means leaving a deadening ego behind and creating a new one. Positivity knows more of what it deeply wants and moves more quickly and powerfully that the meditator who has enough peace to get through the day. The tired ego of negativity will fight positivity with a greater ferocity than it fights meditation with distraction. But the experience of positivity is so empowering and non-linear that it will not give up if it is reinforced, sustained, and supported over time.

Good meditation will always eventually lead to the inner states of gratitude, love, joy, peace, and hope. But it is a long road to these internal realities from meditation. It is with these states that the UpSpiral sanctuary-the UpSpiraLife group- begins.

We have to create these weekly one hour spaces where we do something that we do not do anywhere else in our lives- be positive with others and share that consciousness for one hour. We have to create these spaces and know how important these one hour sanctuaries are. We just don’t get it yet, but if we persevere we will get it. What we don’t get is that what these groups do in creating neuro-positivity, positive neuropathways in the brain, doesn’t just happen. We have to be reminded in a space of shared consciousness that changes how we think, that changes the very structures of our brain and its consequent structures of reasoning.

This sanctuary of positivity does not exist anywhere else in our lives. It is a wholly unique sanctuary that over time, alters what is like an addiction to negativity. It is not something that we can do alone. We need the shared consciousness of others because the power of positively shared consciousness is enormously powerful in affecting how the brain works, especially the balance and inter-relationship of the left and right hemispheres

This is an experience of positive emotions that is an experience of brain integration.  Positive emotion equals brain integration. Emerging neuro-positive brain integration equals positive emotion. In this sanctuary of positivity, from week to week, we will come to realize that positive emotion equals mental integration.

We are changing our DNA, we are changing the 9:2, to 7:2 and then to 6:2, and one day we will change that ratio to 4:1, and Losada’s butterfly of chaotic creation and novelty will be let loose, one UpSpiraLife group at a time over time.

We are creating sanctuaries that are preserves of positivity that we don’t get anywhere else in our lives. Because positivity and the UpSpiral are so challenging and so threatening in their simplicity in changing our lives and threatening the old ego and a million neuropathways of negativity, we will want to leave before the miracle happens, but we will stay if we realize that if we can put a man on the moon, we can change the 9:2 ratio.

These UpSpiraLife groups are sacred spaces of “freedom” for “rare birds.” Treasure them and fan these small flames into fires of positivity that will burn around the world.