Memoir Handbook #2: Cognitive Immunity
During a study abroad program in college, I had the privilege of a painting class with a married couple named Rose and Clare at Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy. I distinguished their names by acknowledging that Clare actually looked, smelled and seemed like a Rose but was named Clare. Rose was masculine, a little gruff, chain-smoked and was very direct.
She approached me one day as I painted the reclining model, pointed at my canvas and asked
“what were you thinking while you painted that face?”
I had been immersed in the canvas and unaware of myself. I was singing aloud to mixtapes of Sara MacLachlan with a Sony Walkman cassette while I painted, unconsciously training for the invitation to sing with a band that would come a year later.
I replied “I don’t think I was thinking!” In a surprised, ‘come to think of it’ way.
Rose replied by leaning in close enough for me to smell the cherished cigarettes on her breath.
She asked slowly and quietly,
“when in life are you not thinking?”
After a pause, she walked away. I can still to this day hear her South African accent. I was 19. It was my permission slip to explore meditation. She had liberated me. She let me know in an instant that I had a choice. I could stop thinking and be.
It was a huge canvas but I cut it down and framed the oil painting of the live model’s face to remind me of the lesson. It hangs beside my bed.
I could choose to think, or not. I could become aware. I would come to experience that thinking can be splintered, and awareness can be whole. Depending on the occasion, sometimes awareness was more suitable than thinking or vice versa. I could choose. That was the most important part, the choosing. Awareness of thoughts and knowing source material of thoughts cultivates what I now call cognitive immunity.
If you haven’t tracked thoughts through the process of silent meditation or even just stared at a body of water or a nice view, you may miss out on the art of taking responsibility for your loose threads of thoughts, and you may not be cultivating a robust mental immune system.
I can recall from a very young age, that I would consciously wait to begin a new mental segment of thought if something that felt necessary to track had been left undone or unmarked in my psyche. The same way I would clean a physical space like a counter, after a craft project, before moving onto the next. I was constantly drawing in childhood and a side effect of that engrossed interest while silent was the expanding awareness of my own cognitive function.
I sense this process keeps a mind clean, and less suggestible to lower frequencies. Obviously the use of substances could interrupt this, but I am not interested in diagnosing, recipes or a “how to”. Because there is probably a man fishing on a boat somewhere who just drank 12 beers and has impeccable cognitive immunity. And I don’t like the “how to” or “fix it” movement. Maybe I just simply don’t want to give up my morning coffee, but the truth is, I validate that you know your mind as I know mine, and manage the effect consumable items have on your mind.
Know Thyself
I think the point is that everyone must know their own system. Because I believe we have all had our cognitive immune systems hijacked for decades, by systematic, strategic placement of curated thought patterns that were created by three letter agencies and other dark forces. They had a plan and it was firmer than half the country’s cognitive immunity.
When I first mentioned this concept of cognitive immunity to Dr. Northrup, she pointed to my phone and said “write that down” as she ate small bites of her egg white omelette across from me in a hotel restaurant in Salt Lake City. It was the summer solstice. We were processing the night before, where we had been singing together onstage for the health freedom community in Provo.
She had received so many who were thrilled to meet her. As we walked to my car I thought ‘she must be so tired of people wanting to talk to her’. With that, a nurse called out “Dr. Northrup, may I ask you something?” as she slowed down next to us in her Land Rover. “Yah, go ahead.” Chris responded, as she sauntered toward the car and beckoned her over, resting her elbows on the woman’s car door. It is my favorite picture from that night. It is a picture of her infinite desire to be of service. That is Christiane Northrup. Keeping us keepin’ on. And so here I am expounding on the concept she suggested I write down.
So here we go.
If we are talking about immunity, we have to consider that exposure builds it. Not unlike the never ending kids’ party my Mom threw in our basement so we would all get chicken pox. My own development of cognitive immunity is rooted in an insatiable childhood curiosity about time, coupled with seeking outside exposure to validate or dispute the thoughts that seemed to come from an invisible source inside. I was not fascinated by the clock. On the contrary! I have to work hard to include the clock in my life. Ask my husband, he is probably waiting for me at the front door as I write this.
It wasn’t the clock for me, it was the moment, and sequence of events. That many things were happening at once, all around the world. That a baby was being born while someone else was dying. That it was still sunny in California while I was thinking about my aunt in San Francisco as I drowsily sank into my car coat and rode in my father’s backseat in winter darkness. It was different, but we were in the same moment. She was in the sunlight, I was the moonlight. I immersed in awareness of it, in a way that was similar to being in prayer.
I wanted to cognitively absorb many things happening at once to somehow clean my brain, my mind, and be present. And I wanted to seek “exposure” by finding matches in material form on the outside of me, as possible “proof” that the thought and awareness that came from inside me was true. For example, that two people in two different parts of the world could be vibrating together with the same feeling and not even know it. This was often expressed to my sister as wondering where your husband was and what he was doing. (I was like, 8.) The idea of two or more people far apart, while sharing an unspoiled present moment without being aware of it seemed seamless and holy, but proving it? WOW. That felt interesting.
Over time I collected examples. Tribes that had been in different parts of the world made up similar names, long ago, for constellations. Movies that matched these private, inexplicable childhood experiences. Grand Canyon. Sliding Doors. Crash. Beware while watching - it contains exposure to the Hollywood dream spell. Testing cognitive immunity is not without remaining aware of predictive programming.
I insisted on awareness within parameters, closing loops on what I termed mentally “floating” before leaving a mental space and entering into a new activity or interaction. This is what “floating” and closing loops of “loose threads” looked like: a little kid, still in an airport gate even though her family had flagged her down and left for the new gate. There I still was, looking out the window. But I wouldn’t jump up, like a normal kid would, when I registered that my family was gone. Even though I had a little burst of fear in my belly that I had been left, perhaps hearing their call to attention in an echo, I’d still calmly look out the window to close the loop before going to find them. I could not be mentally interrupted. I was engrossed.
Even now, my kids can’t figure out how I go right to a book’s location without having alphabetized all of my shelves. Or they will say “whoah, she’s in deep space”. They aren’t as familiar with the categorized, invisible realm I occupy. Doesn’t everyone? Maybe not.
While I am aware spacing out can be a defense or coping mechanism of the traumatized, I think conscious use of it is a way to build cognitive immunity. Building a relationship with your own mental space and capacity prevents contamination of your mind! I hurt for kids not knowing how to space out through a car window at trees or water or houses while tracking their thoughts, because they are staring at synthetic, curated images on a screen.
This childhood inner activity fertilized Cognitive Immunity. I understood the concept of healing the mind with the mind. I knew my way around and I was in charge, for better or for worse. As I got older, I consciously decided on “immunity exposure” to things I didn’t want myself but wanted to know about, wanted to sense my response to, while keeping a firewall of protection. I also maintained a list of things I would not expose myself to, even if they were widely accepted, like porn. (ew.)
Stand Guard Your Mind
I chose choosing. I think of my mind as something for which I stand guard. I developed an ability to observe and experience things without being hypnotized by them. This fortifies discernment. When I read Napoleon Hill’s Outwitting the Devil, I sensed it explained my invented childhood mind activities.
In it, he explains that evil and darkness seek a person who is not in charge of their own cognition and therefore susceptible to capture. It explained why I always kept boundaries around my “floating.” It was intuitive protection of my own mind. This wasn’t perfect or foolproof. It didn’t make me immune to mass hypnosis, and I believe I was still absolutely tempted and captured by a dark culture and it’s hidden narrative. However, I was spared from fame and everything else I wanted while worshipping the world in my twenties and early thirties. I was still immune, even though I came close to decades of an isolated ambition path.
Simplified, I am suggesting you not only listen to your inner voice, you must search its source. Expose yourself and boost cognitive immunity by listening to your feet on the pavement when you walk or run. Optimize hearing from God by reading Scripture and clearing your mind to contemplate it.
Careful with the phone. Sometimes it’s better to walk without it or write a moment on your heart instead of taking a photo. The life inside of you is enough and God is communicating with you. Feel your body. Breathe into the center of your head. And be as careful about what you expose your mind to as you are about what you put in your body.
This may be easier for the ones who did not get inoculated with the covid shot. Those of us who avoided the shot were mentally hunted down and we still avoided harm - it boosted cognitive immunity. I think we were presented with the apple and we declined.
I know it’s bold, but I think everyone who chose the shot did so because of lowered cognitive immunity that gave way to a collapse point in their personality dominating the decision. As in; denial and wanting to belong, to be seen as good, giving way to keeping a job that is not nearly as valuable as your health.
Lowered cognitive immunity caused prioritizing doing something utterly crazy (having yourself injected with an experimental serum, without knowing its ingredients) in order to be seen as “sane”. Resulting in allowing one’s sanity to be defined by the outer culture, instead of from the spiritual safety within. As Dr. Northrup said, they got vax-“sane”-aided.
I’d rather cultivate balance within through my trust in God and the development of my cognitive immunity. I don’t give a spit what anyone thinks of me. Those of us who seek natural immunity don’t need that kind of approval. Pressure from a pervasive, toxic narrative promotes a high functioning cognitive immunity, not unlike being around someone who has the flu and not getting it - because your immune system did it’s job.
Update: April 4, 2024
I recently listened to the entire hour of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Dr. Michael Nehls on his new book The Indoctrinated Brain.
It felt fortifying to hear him discuss the scientific proof of a mental immune system, having explored the concept here in this essay out of a creative and personal need to make sense of the madness I was seeing around me.