Letters to the Editor
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Minding our health
Only health and taxes produce such a response of anecdotal evidence. These are the fundamental bases of faith. Are we victims of a supernatural authority, or are we able to control our lives against the cultural needs of acceptable social behavior?
We each exist in a hypnotic state and we depend on that state for survival. We are aware of no more than ten or twelve objects at any time. During the moment of awareness and concentration we automatically respond to suggestions not related to our awake state.
We are creatures of belief, of conviction, and compulsion because we need to survive by repeated learning responses as successful social aceptable behavior.
This is the standard of our concept of who we are.
What we believe is right until it is no longer successful. Belief is not a cloak that we wear. It is intrinsic to the way our brain functions.
Christian Science, alternative beliefs, or Shamanism will not effect biological functions. Belief in any religious system is a 'feel good' behavior that substitutes victimization for purpose in any event that is beyond the control or understanding of the individual.
Hypnotism can influence body functions under neural control, but it cannot change the morphology or the physiology of the systems. It is effective within the capabilties of the body. If an organ is diseased, hypnotism may change pain sensitivity but the relief must not be interpreted as a change in the disease itself.
It has the same limitations in all diseases: hate, bigotry, fear, love, acceptance, and altruism.
If you don't believe this, it proves my statement.
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On Health Insurance
It is one thing to have the money for health insurance, and not spend it, and quite another if you simply don't have the money.
If you have the money and get sick they're going to take it from you until the treatment is paid for or your money is all gone. If you don't have it you qualify for medicare assistance and at least have a chance to receive care.
If you run out of money in the middle of treatment you're in an even worse predicament--or your spouse will be if you don't make it. Then they have to cope with both your loss and probably losing everything you spent your life accumulating. I can't tell you how much pride there is in being able to say when my wife was ill my insurance allowed her to receive the very best care available.
You will also find there is sympathy for the indigent in the medical community, but not for those who are simply irresponsible. If you are a family member with an uninsured relative you also want to look at it. The worst thing is have somebody you love get sick and watch them die because they can't afford treatment, or it is delayed so long it's too late. You also want to consider Long Term Care Insurance in this way if you have an aging parent.
I wouldn't wait for the election either to get coverage, and I sure as hell would make sure to vote Democratic and have everybody you know vote Democratic. I don't know what more reason is needed.
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What a surprise
Expectations and wishes for "cures" get out ahead of the data with studies of the effects of meditation and other practices. Gee, that never happens in medical research does it?
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Dear Anne Harrington -
I think Ken Wilber made - I can't find the quote - a very neat summation of the fact that medicine uses double blind research precisely as a tacit acknowledgement of the reality of the placebo effect; that is, the reality of the mind/body effect. I'm not so sure I'm hearing that from you.
Then there is the AMA-recognized disease (1956) of alcoholism, most successfully treated with mind/body interventions.
By the way, you speak of cures by faith. Faith, along with such notions as belief and morals appear to not be the central vehicles of healing in at least the case of alcoholism. So-called spirituality - that is, egolessness - is. Faith, belief and morals, centering as they do around ideas of the spirit, of egolessness, rather than the experience of egolessness itself, are in the mind, the ego. They are egoful ideas of egolessness. Add in willpower - "I'm going to FIGHT this thing!" - and you have what certainly to the recovering alcoholic is an unhelpful mix. What works, rather, is a paradoxical approach of simultaneous holding on and letting go, that you use the old willful ego to, one day at a time, put the desire to not drink in your heart, and then you let it go. You forget it. If all goes well, you don't drink today.
There's no magic here. Put the desire to get shitfaced in your heart and let go to it and lo and behold, you're crocked. I thought of it as like when you forget a word or name and wrack your brain for it, and then you give up. Later the word or name pops into your mind. (I was surprised to find that a hundred years ago Harvard's William James cited this same example in "Varieties of Religious Experience." I don't think of them as religious. Atheists have them too.)
In any case, as egolessness effects electroneurochemistry - that is, the body - perhaps is will be found to effect more of our health.
You talked about groups for breast cancer sufferers. Perhaps studies couldn't be replicated because of, as they say, karma yoga. That is, you do your egolessness to do it, not for any outcome. Breast cancer focuses the mind, certainly, but not so much on egolesness. Perhaps these first groups happened to be less self-conscious than subsequent attempts. Not that I begrudge Bill Moyers his cameras and coverage.
I'm not so sure I hear you studying the combination of traditional and alternative medicines. It's as vital that science weed out alternative horseshit as that it has already included the many alternatives that really work. The jury still remains out on many more possibilities.
Best,
(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")