It is a premise of The Percept Method that Stage II of stress perception (data reaching the cerebral cortex) is vital and important. Why is it so important for this stress information to be transmitted to your brain? What actually happens in your brain when it receives the informational stress data?

When stress perception works, you make use of the enormous power and reservoir represented by your conscious and unconscious minds which embody those one thousand billion (1,000,000,000,000) neurons working for you. Take a typical situation: your stress feelings are telling you that you are in a complex predicament. You have a problem, and you are only in the earliest stage of beginning to identify it. You don’t know how to proceed. You don’t see any way out. You don’t see any alternatives, and you don’t have an

. What awaits you when you allow your stress perception to be completed,

action plan

i.e., when the informational transmission about your complex predicament is received by your brain?

1. Your information is ?rst greeted by what you need out of 1,000,000,000,000 (one thousand billion) neurons which can be activated to work on your behalf.

2. Information about your predicament is further greeted by whatever you may need out of all of your neurons’ powerful interconnections—their allies. Each of those neurons interconnects with 1,000+ synapses multiplying their power exponentially—one thousand trillion connections in the cerebral cortex.

3. You have now brought to work on your behalf the most highly developed structure ever conceived in the universe.

4. It is a premise of The Percept Method that something sound, good, and productive goes on in the brain when stress perception is allowed to complete its work. One of those marvelous things is that when the cerebral cortex is reached, natural calming from the modulating centers is activated. This begins to soothe you and alleviate the noxious sensations that are making you uncomfortable. Nature can modify the noxious sensations better than you, because it knows that fundamental work and data processing is going forward, so there is no longer the need for your body to keep up the same degree of exquisite discomfort. The discomfort has served its purpose and the intensity of discomfort is no longer necessary, so Nature can begin to calm the body in a natural way by diminishing the intensity of the stress feelings.

5. If you sedate yourself before Stage II of stress perception is complete, you paradoxically do not achieve a natural calm. Instead, you have prompted your stress feelings to intensify, escalate, and heighten, because they have not completed their perceptual

STEP I: On the Meaning and Signi?cance of Stress

6. However, when Nature produces the calm, it is as if Nature is saying “since this information was able to reach your cerebral cortex, your highest brain center, I know that problem solving work is taking place; therefore, you no longer need the same intensity of toxic sensations that you were experiencing previously.” In marketing terms, when a salesman hears footsteps approaching, he can stop leaning on the doorbell.

. The cerebral cortex’s modulating centers begin to calm your stress after they “know” what is going on, i.e., after contact is made between the information and your cerebral neurons.

Relaxation the Natural Way

Nature can begin to relax the intensity of stress and ease its strenuous efforts, because it knows that once your cerebral cortex has been reached, the vast power of your being, a portion of those 1,000,000,000,000 neurons, is going to begin the problem-solving work, even though no alternatives or solutions are yet in sight.

7. When your stress information and the neurons of your cerebral cortex are in contact, your retrieval system can be set in motion. You have now allowed the message and your neurons to make contact, but they don’t know exactly what you want to accomplish, unless you consciously make inquiry. Your inquiry gives direction and focus where previously there may have been confusion or chaos.

Imagine being in the ?nest department store in the world. Salespeople in all departments are waiting to serve you, but they need your inquiry or instructions or requests. You can actually feel quite deprived in the midst of plenty, if you don't express your intentions.


Imagine being in the ?nest department store in the world. Salespeople in all departments are waiting to serve you, but they need your inquiry or instructions or requests. You can actually feel quite deprived in the midst of plenty, if you don't express your intentions.

How do you do that within your own brain? You do it in much the same way you would in that department store—you express your intentions in order to get some service. You make an inquiry; you ask a question; you let your desires, requirements, or bewilderments be known.

Most of the power of the 1000 billion neurons in your brain resides in your unconscious mind and is held in quiet reserve. If Nature had the unconscious mind working continuously at full pace, it would burn your body out. It would be like the power of a Boeing 707 Jet engine at full speed housed in a Volkswagen chassis. The power would tear the chassis apart. For that reason Nature does not activate the full power of your unconscious mind; it only activates the particular part you may need at a particular time. Because it doesn’t know your conscious request, it stands by and awaits your instructions, requests, or inquiries. If all the “lights” in your brain were activated indiscriminately without your direction, it would be called a “nervous breakdown.” In other words, if all of the mind’s power, knowledge, data, and replies were to inundate your consciousness (unbidden, indiscriminate, and not utilizable), this would constitute a nervous breakdown.