Becoming Whole: How to Use Your Brain to Strengthen Your Integrity

When people use the word integrity, they usually mean “being true to one’s moral principles.” This is certainly an important kind of integrity, but there is a second meaning of the word integrity: “the state of being whole or undivided.” You could say that “wholeness” is a kind of integrity one shows to oneself. And on the road to true fulfillment and enlightenment, you can’t show integrity to others unless you first create it within yourself. In other words, you must find some way to be fully integrated within yourself.

The fourth step of my Brain Education system is called “Brain Integrating.” The goal of this step is to help people integrate all the various parts of their brain, so that they all work together toward the person’s highest potential. This integration works in two directions: vertical and horizontal.

Vertical Integration: Synchronizing Your Three Brains

Brain Integrating begins with the awareness that we all have three distinct brains, or “layers,” working within our central nervous system. They are all reflective of our evolutionary past, parts of our brains that were necessary or advantageous for our survival. They include the primitive brain, the limbic system (or the “emotional” brain), and the neocortex.

Each of these brains is successively more complex, with each one leading to higher forms of cognitive process. The primitive brain, which is associated with the brain stem, is sometimes called the “reptilian” brain because it is all about instinctive reactions to stimuli. Unconscious functions like heartbeat and metabolism all rely on messages from the brain stem to keep going, and, for the most part, these are not things we can control with the conscious mind.

The limbic system, sometimes called the mid-brain or “emotional” brain, controls our emotional responses. Like the primitive brain, these emotions are based on our responses to stimuli in our environments, but in this case, our conscious mind has much more effect on them.

The neocortex, in contrast, is the rational decision-making part of our brain. It is the part of the brain that creates our beliefs and preconceptions about the world, and it is the birthplace of our self-awareness and self-control.

The problem with these three brain layers is that often their functions do not agree. If you are in an emergency, for example, you may want to act in some rational way (i.e., based on the thinking generated in your neocortex) to deal with the situation. However, if the primitive brain turns on the “fight or flight” response, you will have a hard time thinking straight and will probably want to run away.

For many, this problem is not just relegated to emergency situations. On a day-to-day basis, stress and unhealthy emotional patterns undermine the neocortex’s ability to perform at its best. In other words, parts of the brain are fighting with each other instead of working together. In previous steps, you learned to gain some control over stress (Step One, Brain Sensitizing) and emotions (Step Three, Brain Refreshing). In Brain Education Step Four, you learn to bring it all together, integrating all the parts of the brain to work in tandem.

Horizontal Integration: Balancing Your Left and Right Brains

As you may know, we also have two sides to our brains, the right and left hemispheres. Generally, the left brain processes strictly logical activities, like mathematics and problem solving, while the right brain is more concerned with creative and intuitive functions. People often make the mistake of thinking that one or the other of these is most important. A scientist, for example, might only value rational thinking, while an artist might prefer flights of fancy to logical approaches to life.

I believe that both are very important and that we should strive to create balance between the two hemispheres. Since our modern educational systems tend to develop the left brain more, many people need to allow their right brain to develop, although for some it could be the other way around. Exercises in the Brain Education Step Four seek to create that balance through coordination of both sides of the body and by encouraging creative ability to blossom.

Becoming the Best Version of Yourself

Brain Integrating is a very exciting step in the Brain Education system because it offers hope that people can recover abilities and talents that they have ignored or underappreciated. You are not simply your thoughts, habits, memories, emotional responses, triggers, and biases. You not simply the sum of the three parts of your brain, but their combined potential. Through Brain Integrating, you will be on the path to becoming the fully integrated, completed person you were always meant to be.