Urgent msg re: cancer and "healing thoughts"

Rather than people being more logical (reasoning) and developing their faith in God, there has been for years an alarming trend where people "send healing thoughts" and "send vibrations" and so forth "toward" cancer sufferers and others with diseases or injuries. This really has to stop because it is part of the problem and not part of the solution. Here is the "why."

Without giving an anatomy lesson, think of cancer as the body's reaction to what it thinks is something wrong, an internal wounding or attack. So the cancer sufferer's body "thinks" that he or she is under attack, and the development of cancer is the "healthy" but inappropriate response to the perception or reality of attack. When you mentally "urge" someone's body to "heal," you are egging on the cancer response, not diminishing it. Yeah, oops.

To better understand, think about what we do know about the causes of cancer, and what we don't know. We do know some direct correlations between contaminants such as smoke from cigarettes or the breathing of asbestos fibers and the resulting cancers. This is because as I have explained, the body "thinks" it is under attack, because it really is. Cancer is then the inadequate response to something the body cannot naturally dispose of, such as the asbestos fibers. If you mentally "urge" someone's body-or your own-to "heal" itself, you are encouraging the stimulation of the very response that the body thinks it IS using to heal, which is cancer.

On the other hand, think about people who develop lung cancer but are not smokers, or maybe have not even been around second hand smoke. Why do they get cancer? They may have some other irritant that no one realizes that has finally reached a threshold point. It's impossible, really, to analyze every particle, compound, chemical or other matter that a person has breathed in their life to date. So there are many contaminants that singularly or in group also trigger a cancer response, even if they are as yet unrecognized as carcinogens, etc. There was a lot of talk about barbecue and wood burning in the science literature for a while. See, it doesn't have to be one thing. If a person was around mild doses each but multiple sources of irritants (for lack of a better word), the adding on effect can and does cause cancer. They then wonder how they got cancer because they weren't around any of the famous well known causes. Yeah, but they were around below the threshold levels of a few or many different irritant sources, and those added together makes the normal body feel it is under attack, and hence it responds with the development of cancer cells.

Let me repeat, it's not like evil cancer cells fly into a body and attach themselves. Think of cancer as the body starting a feverish campaign to manufacture its own bandages. Tumors and cancer cells can be thought of as the body's normal, healthy but ultimately futile effort to churn out more and more bandages. When you mental monkeys send "healing vibes" to people with cancer, including yourselves, you are urging your body or theirs to produce more "bandages," more futile causing cancer efforts to address the real or perceived irritants.

Researchers know that genetic miscues are a contributor to cancer. Again, genes are healthy and normal real building blocks of your body's existence. When a gene is miscued that means it is garbling instructions that it is receiving. Like if the factory manager is told to make 100 bandages and instead he hears 10000 bandages. THAT is the "problem" with cancer.

We know that thoughts have power, which is why the Bible forbids sinful AND even "foolish" thoughts. Thoughts directed at others are real and are thus a form of ESP, which everyone has to some degree. So when you think you are some sort of mental marvel magician and "spirit worker" and send "healing thoughts" to someone, it doesn't matter what you think of that person or even if your intention is supposedly pure. You are sending another irritant to the locations where the body is already fully involved in the production of cancer. You are speeding up the assembly line of the misunderstood bandages, not slowing it down. "Healing vibes" to someone with cancer or ANY illness is a grave danger. It's like you are sending more garbled messages to the bandage producing frenzied assembly line.

That, by the way, is a reason that those who voodoo or otherwise engage in sending "bad" vibes, like wishing cancer on someone, often finds it boomerangs. Cancer is the body doing natural and healthy things, but inappropriate or inadequate to the actual task. So if you send your "enemy" wishes that he or she "gets cancer," you are urging their body to be more effective in being healthy. LOL. And because you are using your mind and spirit to do bad things, you are providing your own and your supporters own "irritants" that can very well boomerang your intentions back onto your selves. People, I've been trying to explain this to you for years in order to save you grief, not because I'm lacking in items of conversation. Unlike you, I do not wish ill on anyone: even those who amply deserve it. I know that the consequences of injustice and sin will return to the person, either in their lifetime or at God's absolute judgment of them upon their death. So those of you who think people "cause" cancer, or, in turn, think that you can wish it onto someone, take a look at how well that has turned out for you, your loved ones, and the world. FAIL.

But my focus is really on those of you who in the frenzy of wishing to "do good" and "focus on cancer" during the so-called cancer awareness month, are really trying to do a good thing but don't realize the harm that you ARE doing. This is why, I repeat, God in both the Bible and the Qur'an forbids magical type of thinking, in addition to actual magical deeds. It's because you really don't understand the biological implications of the complexity of the human body and mind, say nothing of the spiritual goodness or not. Believing that you have the power to "heal" through thoughts, and not actual band-aids and iodine, is a total fail. This is why the second thing that God insists on is prayer to him, not "vibrations" to other people. Charity, not "healing vibes" when you don't even know how the disease or situation exists in reality. Pray for the well being in God's hands of the other person; don't "manifest" your trite and simplistic views of what is "good" and what is "not."

I was reading on the blog of a friend her thoughts about silence and sound. I like what she wrote but more to the point, silence is a crucial part of healthy life. Think of cancer as a cacophony of noise, clashing frantic internal assembly lines of trying to produce more well intended but inadequate "bandages." Your ill friends and family need more silence, not more sound, so everyone should silently direct prayers to God on the friend's behalf and not add to the fail noise that is going on inside of his or her's body.

It's so ironic that the generations that value "meditating" actually provide more spiritual and actual bodily pollution noise in the name of so called "healing" than any generation past. For your own sakes stop using your minds for stupid thoughts and turn them instead back toward God, in prayer, and each other in actual hands-on charity, which is where they should have been all along. By the way, I write this in honor and memory of the great Danny Thomas, who knew first hand where all good things and healing comes, through his patron St. Jude.

Linkage between mental thoughts and healing

There is a great link between the mind and the body's health and well being, and one does not have to be a new age kook to think that. I mentioned yesterday a concern that I had when I blogged about the tumors, some cancerous and some not, where some people are so unbalanced that they blame cancer on other people using freaky concepts such as karma, past lives and so forth. While these are ridiculous, dangerous and mean accusations (and show no more civilization than people in Africa who accuse schoolchildren of being 'witches') do not underestimate the connection between one's own mind and one's own matter. Here are a few thoughts that I hope are good guidelines for healthy mind to body connections.

We all know that there is an Eastern medicine known as acupuncture. Acupuncture theorizes that there are meridians (channels) in the body through which energy, called "chi" flows, much like currents of water within the ocean. An acupuncture therapist uses needles to intercept or manage the flow of this chi in order to remedy physical disorders or as pain management. Sometimes it works really well and other times it's not so helpful. That's because it correctly understands that there is a flow of energy in the body, and a body to mind connection, but it is not a precise physical phenomenon that can be medically relied upon, such as blood pressure. Everyone has blood pressure and it is reliably measured. Chi flow is more of a stance or position that the body has rather than a literal physical quality or quantity. Another example I can give is that it's like how the same pain feels different if you are doing well or if you are doing poorly. If you hit your finger with a hammer but you are otherwise in a splendid mood and good health it is painful but not devastating. But if you are sickly or depressed, that same hammer hit with the same force and potential pain can be devastating, even leading to a heart attack in the most extreme of situations. It is the same pain on the same nerve endings, but for someone who is doing fine it is an "Ouch!" while for someone doing poorly it could be "the last straw." This is an example of the real but unmeasurable and highly individual linkage between mind and body.

That is why people who have poor attitude or wicked thoughts can have a real literal impact on their own body or that of others. Many scientific studies have shown a correlation between mental outlook and physical health. However it is not as simple as being about someone's "mood." For many years people who are sad when they are sick are blamed and "studies" were cited that those who were feisty or "positive" were more likely to survive their illnesses. Many of those studies, though, turned out to be bogus. Not so long ago there were some articles detailing how it was an unfair added pressure on people to tell them that they should be strong happy campers when "fighting" an illness, as if they are somehow to blame for being sad. And in fact scientific studies showed that there was actually no difference in survivability between people who were sad by their illness and those who were more "positive" or combative. So while there is a linkage there cannot be a simplified formula to describe this linkage. This is the crux of what I am concerned about as people have some strange attitudes and misunderstandings about this body to mind connection. A poor attitude is not necessarily a sad attitude. A poor attitude might actually be a combative or overly energetic attitude.

Here is an example. I received a head wound (on my forehead) during a very sad time in my life. I did not get stitches and there was some discussion about whether I'd have a scar there, and my workplace doctor wondered about a little plastic surgery needed. What I did not tell anyone, though, is that very soon after my injury I spent a regular amount of time every few hours visualizing that area of wound "knitting and healing." So even though I was "sad" I was sending soothing and steady signals to the skin and muscle cells around the wound encouraging them to heal. I healed in no time and people were astonished that I had no scar at all only weeks after the injury. So while my "mood" was "sad" my mind to body linkage regarding this wound was soothing and positive. I did not have a combative attitude toward the wound or overly dramatic. Every few hours when I'd think of it I'd spend a few seconds in soothing thought about the wound knitting itself together using its normal biological functions and capabilities.

So one of my concerns is to convey to you that "being a fighter" and having a combative attitude toward your own body when you suffer from a condition such as cancer may not be of benefit and may in fact be detrimental. Virus illnesses and conditions such as cancer are, by definition, situations where the body is already under attack, from either a virus or the cancerous cells. If you stimulate your mind to be combative in turn you might actually stimulate rather than diminish that physical response in your body. If you are going to have a conscious attitude toward your condition or illness you should gain as much factual information from your doctor as possible and then visualize support for your body's hoped for natural response. I mean, with my forehead scar example, I'd hardly envision smacking around the scar more. I had a soothing and supportive attitude toward how the body naturally heals wounds. So I caution people who are interested in this topic to guide your mind in less dramatic and more natural and supportive responses according to what your doctor tells you your body is trying to achieve on its own (or with treatment) to regain health. Statistics show that "fighters" do not heal better than those who are sad or neutral. Giving up is another matter entirely and that is what I was conveying in the hammered finger example. Sometimes people just go through too much and their ability to be resilient and to heal is severely compromised.

I mentioned wicked thoughts up above. Let me go back to the acupuncture example. When I was learning kung fu of course all the young men want to know about the dark stuff, even if they'd never do it. For example there are stories of kung fu masters who had "the death touch" called Dim Mak or something like that. According to the legends and stories these masters could kill a person just by touching them with a finger strike on one or more certain spots on the body. Books treat it as a big secret taught over years to the elect, blah blah blah. My ex husband was curious enough to buy a Chinese book on the subject. It only took me one glance to see what it was, even though they would never discuss (if they even know) "how it works" in theory. It's negative acupuncture. Just as an acupuncturist can place a therapeutic needle to encourage and manage chi flow and to manage pain, it's obvious that some people somewhere would have the thought occur to them that they can use the meridians and chi as points of attack. So I believe that where the stories of "death touch" masters were true and not bogus legends that the way they achieved this capability (and get themselves hell for it, by the way) is to attack the points of the body where chi flow can be harmed or stopped rather than encouraged and healed or managed. It's really no different than a doctor who goes wrong and uses his or her medical knowledge to harm rather than heal.

It's then not a large step to realize that while death touch masters use a finger to touch or poke their victim in order to disrupt chi flow that some people can direct their malicious thoughts in that direction to harm another person. I myself have a lump on my right knee since 1996 that puzzled me because I could tell that the body "thought" it was being injured in that spot. I saw a dermotologist and had the lump removed since I had recently had surgery and was in a very alert mode, but the spot refuses to heal. Later I realized that the reason that spot of my knee "thinks" it is being harmed is because someone very close to me had continual angry thoughts of harming my chi in that area. And so it goes.

This is why I want to caution people about their own mindsets toward their own or family healing. Forget even open hostility as I describe above. Subliminal feelings can interfere with your own or your loved one's healing. It is better if you do not have this type of thinking AT ALL. I really worry about the proliferation of reiki and other so called spiritual and mental cures. I believe that they are doing a huge amount of mostly unintentional damage. I know for a fact that "what goes around comes around" in that people who emit interfering thoughts and energies may find to their surprise that they do not just reach their target, but also rebound back to where they came from or to others in one's family, community, around the world, or in one's own "coven" (LOL). Leave medical matters to doctors and spiritual matters to genuine religions that believe in one true and good God. It could save your own life (to say nothing of your actual soul).

To Scientology believers and ex-believers

An Urgent message to Scientologists, Ex-Scientologists and Freezoners

In this very important blog message I am not going to focus on either the argument that there is indeed one True God, whose will is the antithesis of what is presented in Scientology, or am I going to address what I’ve previously explained is geological and other proof against belief in aliens, reincarnation and so forth.

Today I have an urgent message to explain to you the harm in even using the most “innocuous” and “helpful” technical tools. And I do not mean what Anon correctly argues, which is the tools are harmful “fronts” in order to suck people into an insane set of beliefs and rob them of their money at the same time. Instead I am going to explain how the tools are unwittingly harming the physical and mental health of even the most ardent Scientology believer.

Understand that the human body and mind are incredibly sophisticated and polished organisms, achieving an incredible capacity for life over the millions of years of evolution. It is easy to take the human body for granted and even look down on it. But that blasé attitude, or even of contempt for body capabilities and functions, is an affectation and unconscious consequence of prosperity. People who still have to fight each day to provide a meal and housing for their family tend to have a greater and more accurate appreciation for the human body than, say, a jaded surgeon who actually sees how remarkable the body is first hand. Appreciation for how the human body has evolved tends to be directly correlated to people who still have to rely on the marvels of the human body, and its survival instincts, for their day to day existence. So far from being full of flaws, the body and the mind are optimized for LIFE. Far from being full of issues, rejects, flaws and failure, the human body and mind are AMAZING in their near perfection for BEING ALIVE. Even a birth defect is not a curse! It is the body’s attempt at introducing a new survival trait, but one that ends up hindering rather than helping survival. That is the pattern throughout biological evolution. New genes and even broken genes and mutations come spontaneously into being “just in case” that development becomes a survival advantage.

Now, before I explain the danger of the Scientology technical tools, let me introduce one valuable analogy. Suppose you have an incredibly engineered high performance racing car. I’m no car expert but let’s say a Porsche. This race car example is a low slung beauty that can reach high speeds and be very responsive to steering. You love this car and use it for both day to day enjoyment and some race car “motoring.” But suppose that someone, a friend who has nothing to do with cars and no knowledge of cars, tells you that you could “do better” if you modify the car. The friend points out that you don’t drive as perfectly as AJ Foyt did, or Jimmy Stewart. Now you are not a professional and in fact, you had been pretty happy up until then, though you have the usual stresses of life (let’s say the car payments, or nowadays the price of gas). But the friend insists and waves a book at you with a volcano on the cover that looks like it has a big car exhaust coming from it so you figure the friend (and the book) must know what it is talking about. You give him your car to “work on.”

He hooks up some tin cans and meters and reads them, shaking his head. He tells you that your car is “stressed” and “traumatized” because it is so low slung to the ground compared to other cars, especially SUV’s. He tells you that if the car was not so worried and depressed about being so “short” that it would be “balanced” and “perform better.” He convinces you to get a Plexiglas hood (kind of what is on top of the Popemobile) and place it on top of the Porsche, so that the car is now five feet “taller.” He plugs the meter in and “confirms” that “now the stress of being low slung has been removed from the car.”

Next he frowns and says, “But the meter tells me that the car is traumatized by being measured by you. It does not like the fuel gauge. That gauge has a meter that sticks into its gasoline and that is irritating and traumatizing. You need to get rid of the gas gauge. A fully actualized car does not need to have its fuel measured. And if YOU were a really balanced and good driver, you would KNOW when it needs gas. So we must get rid of the fuel gauge!” (He does not tell you that the sensor strip that sticks in the fuel to measure the level was actually an irritating device invented by evil aliens to agitate cars, since you are not sufficiently advanced to have that knowledge). So he removes the gas gauge and the accompanying equipment, like sensors, that were attached to the fuel tank. (He does not notice that in doing so he left a hole behind where the gauge had gone into the fuel tank, so now gas fumes leak through a tiny hole where the sensor was once installed).

He hooks the tin cans and meters once again and nods at you encouragingly. He tells you that the car is “much better” and feels “clear” about being low slung and irritated by that bad aliens (oops, he slipped) fuel gauge sensor strip. He tells you that while the car is better, it still needs much more work. But you’ve paid him handsomely for the work done so far, and now you can take it for a spin and use the car until the next “improvement session.” You schedule your next session. But first he makes you promise two things. One is to spread the message that low slung cars should have Plexiglas hoods bolted on top of them and that fuel gauges and their sensors should be removed from cars to AS MANY OTHER people that you can. You have to agree to spread these “improvements” to as many car drivers and owners as possible. And second, if anyone, especially car mechanics, “disagree” with you, you must cut them out of your life and never talk to them again. This includes anyone in your own family who questions the Plexiglas hood or the removal of the fuel gauge and sensor instrumentation.

You drive off in your car. Maybe the gas fumes ignite and blow you up that very day. Maybe they don’t because through grace and luck there is enough ventilation that the hole you have now put in your fuel tank never sparks. You can’t get the car to drive as fast and smooth, especially in windy weather, because of the hood. But you figure that rather than taking a step backward, a DANGEROUS step backwards, you are just a beginner learning to wield this awesome car renovation power and that is why it’s not working as well as it was before you began your modifications. You convince lots of people to do the same, especially the young people. You don’t notice that as time goes on, some of them die because their cars blow up from the pinhole leak in the gas tank where once the sensors were. They run out of gas a lot, but your “friend” opens a set of “approved gas stations” everywhere with an emergency service for those “believers” who run out of gas and are stranded. He makes more money off of them. So rather than leaving gas gauges in the car, he makes money building gas stations every mile and has a “rescue service” that brings gas to stranded believers, but at a high price per serving. Others you have persuaded have car accidents as their hood top heavy cars tip over on turns, over bridges, or cause collisions because of reduced visibility. You don’t notice because you feel “empowered.” Even though your car no longer performs as it once did, you feel good because “you are in control” and “have the answers.” You sneer at idiots who are still driving their unmodified Porsches. You mock when you are with your friends the vacant stupid smiles on their faces because they “just enjoy driving their cars” and ‘don’t know that they could do better; they don’t know the truth!” You even take pictures of other Porsche drivers in embarrassing positions, or looking especially dumb, to show to other potential believers that this is how stupid and crass are the “unenlightened” Porsche drivers. Your friend teaches you how to make money for yourself and the organization.

And one day you are driving and “BANG!” Your car explodes from gas fumes and you are dead. And before you know it you are facing God and find yourself in hell, because you are responsible for all the others you persuaded to remove their fuel gauges and leave the sensor gas tank holes unplugged.

Friends, your bodies and your minds are like the Porsche car and driver. These stupid technical stress tests and E-meters and other tools used by Scientology are used to numb, warp and overcome your body’s own healthy functioning and survival instincts. The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you are teaching your body’s white cells not to react to disease. The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you are taught to micromanage the body functions that you are focusing on, and reduce blood flow to the parts of your body and mind you just are not focused on. The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you are ignoring signs of pain or disorder that the body is trying to send to you so that they can be addressed and fixed while there is still time to treat a disease. The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you are trying to cleanse out hormonal and other bodily functions that you must have in order to survive by suppressing them thinking they are “bad.” The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you reinforce mental and bodily pathways that are unfavorable to survival, and allow atrophying the pathways and bodily functions that allow you maximum health and survival potentiality. The more you are taught to numb and not react to “stresses” the more you are stressing the bodily cells and nerve endings that you are focusing on “distressing,” since you are hindering them from doing their jobs. For example, adrenaline flow becomes hindered because some of the symptoms of adrenaline are viewed as “stressful.” So your body does not produce adrenaline when it should and/or it has to send the adrenaline to inappropriate places in your body, where it acts like a toxic acid. The more you are “purging” and “cleansing” the more you are sending your gas fumes out of the tank and into the car into random spots. The more areas you “remove stress from” the more you spray your brake fluid into the spark plugs, your oil into your fuel tank, your exhaust fumes into the passenger compartment, your windshield wiper fluid into your trunk to spew over your possessions and emergency tire changing kit. Of course your spare tire no longer matters or works because you were told that the E-meter indicates your spare tire was “too fat and therefore stressed” so you let the air out of your Porsche’s spare tire.

There has never been any validity to any “biofeedback” or other technical device. In fact, they are all harmful. They “feel good” because you think you are empowering yourself. I could have gotten the same effects if I told people that all stress comes from canned pineapples. Once people think that the stress in their life comes from canned pineapples, they feel empowered. They can avoid that aisle in the store. They can demonize the number of the aisle where canned pineapples are found at the local supermarket. They can “wisely” and “sagely” tell others of the evil of pineapples. They can sell special hemp aprons that are “anti-canned pineapple wave detectors” so that when people go into grocery stores they can wear these aprons if they must walk down the aisle where the canned pineapples are from. They feel less stress about their real problems, because now they are distracted in the war against canned pineapples (and the top guys make money off the aprons and other tools). When the canned pineapple people go out of business ,you nod wisely knowing you defeated some aliens. And you feel much less stress and when you do feel stress, you know it is the stress of the warrior, the one who “knows the truth” and “must fight the fight against the evil canned pineapple alien proliferators.” And then one day the true problems in your life that you had been feeling legitimate stress over strike you down and perhaps kill you, because you neglected, and even fought, your own body and mind’s attempts to warn you of the problems.

Technical devices destroy your body and your mind’s workings. I use the pineapple example for a reason. Traditionally the pineapple is a historic sign of hospitality and greeting. It tastes great and provides vitamin C. Stress tests and E-meters and other devices are just like taking a healthy symbol of hospitality and demonizing it. They make as much “sense” as declaring that a fruit that is a sign of health and abundance is a “hidden demon” in the body “causing stress.” When you fall prey to these so called technical tools you might as well declare war on breathing, white blood cell counts, vitamin C, hospitality and the chi flow within the body. I include the chi flow example for the benefit of legitimate Chinese medicine practitioners. They especially should appreciate what I am saying, as the use of Scientology devices is like telling the chi that it should not flow in the natural places it has always flowed in the body because chi “causes stress.” I mean, gosh it is so unfair, the chi flows where it has for millions of years, but other parts of the body are “deprived” and so let’s take the chi from where it should go and send it to the rectum to “expel it” in a “purging way.” I wish I was exaggerating or joking but I’m not.

The stress test in the street is the beginning of telling your body to become dysfunctional, rather than correct it. The stress test is the beginning because it doesn’t just hook you into an expensive scam, but it is the beginning of dark and evil indoctrination that survival instincts of the mind and body are “stressful,” “wrong,” and “should be overcome.” Let’s give the example of the widely laughed about “silent birth.” You fools! What if the body has evolved over the years so that the woman shouting during childbirth releases hormones and body chemistry that both mother and child need for good health! You idiots! All you think about is your daft “the baby should be born into comforting silence.” Well what if nature evolved so that “comforting silence” suppresses the release of healthy biochemical secretions? Panda watchers learned something about this when they watched the National Zoo panda mother give birth and the tiny baby squirted out and actually hit the wall. Everyone was horrified, but they learned that this happens to stimulate breathing. Likewise the giraffe baby drops like six feet to the ground when he or she is born. Nature evolves each organism so that the mother gives birth the “right way” just as she does. So a woman who might scream and rant during childbirth might have a natural detector that her muscles and hormones must go into a higher gear to safely deliver the baby. Quiet is not always “pleasant” and “stress free.” Stress tests and E-meters and whatever other stupid devices are used by Scientologists and other cults are the front line to disconnecting a person from his or her own properly functioning body and mind. The first time you answer one of their stupid questions you are being tacitly brainwashed into applying judgment calls to bodily and mental functions. These are judgment calls that humans are too ignorant to have. Because they are cult driven they are demented agenda driven, and thus pineapples and fuel gauges become “bad” and ignoring your body’s proper function and diverting its good health toward warped purpose is “good.” RUN don’t walk away from this crap.

Another quick comment on depression et al

Society has an obligation to have a positive view toward life, a positive belief in God and the "hereafter," and a positive view toward babies and children. When society has these three things there is a safety net that works as a powerful antidote to depression and other emotional imbalances. Society has totally failed the past two generations. What many have believed is "freedom" has been the dissolution of the healthy safety net that is not only the obligation of society to provide but also the abandonment of the truth in favor of "relativism" with a morbid twist.

Prior to the 1960's except in a few "avant guarde" families it was virtually unheard of for an American child to be born without belief and instruction regarding God at the earliest age. Nearly every child, rich or poor, was raised with knowing "Jesus" by sight, by name, by love and by trust from their earliest years. Even if that child grew away from the faith as an adult, that inner certainty of a personal God stayed with him or her and was a buffer from potential depression or other disorders. Likewise every child in the generations before these past two generations knew that babies were precious, again, whether the family was rich or poor. This is not to say that there weren't harsh treatments in disfunctional families, but the difference is that babies were rarely the subject of resentment and certainly not abuse as we see today. Dad may have ranted and raved in some households but the babies were never faulted and that same dad would work long hours in grunt jobs to provide a safe home for that baby. And the third point is that it was an exciting time of continual medical research because all life was sacred and people thought each age was golden years of breakthroughs: vaccines, insulin, antibiotics, geriatric medicine, prenatal care, prevention of heart disease and so on. Children born in every generation previous to these two generations grew up knowing God and feeling his love, knowing that "baby ruled the roost," and surrounded by optimistic and exciting pro-life medical, health, and nutrition developments. For example when I was young, one of the great scandals of the time was the outing of poverty in Appalachia. The war against hunger in America was a huge thing when I was young. But medicine, like society, took a dark twist and turn to have a morbid taint and away from the true progressive medicine that each generation until these past two generations enjoyed. Now medicine is a dogged and grim battle against cancer (while still refusing to understand the true causes), crisis reactive (HIV, various flu threats), how to grind out more and more abortions, and the massive drugging of the vast majority of Americans using powerful drugs that often do more harm than good. Oh, and plastic surgery.

Can you see the contrast? It is appalling to me. I literally do not recognize the world and it's not because I'm some sort of square unprogressive sour old prude. To the contrary, I see people have willfully beaten to death their own joy and thrown it away as a society. Everything that was stable and good about life has been demeaned, dirtied and discarded: love of God, love of babies and medicine in the service of the greater good. I'm telling you and I swear this is the truth, a dull normal day in mainstream America 50 years ago would seem like heaven compared to a day today. And you wonder why so many of you have depression, anxiety, mood swings, paranoia? I've not even gone into the usual physical sources that I've written about before because it's so important that I paint this accurate portrait for you of the philosophical and psyche damage and scarring that has taken place in America (and much of the Western world) because of the lack of the three foundations I described above. The damage is truly terrifying and the bottom has not yet been hit.

It's going to sound somewhat incongruous to now tell you that you have to be positive about life after just giving you such a jarring wake up call to how twisted and destructive our own society has become. We don't need sci-fi horror stories about mad robots taking over because worse has already happened. The LIVING have turned against life.

That is one reason that many of you suffer from the ailments I've described above. Your bodies, minds and emotions are crying out for what you don't even realize you've been cheated of, which is the affirmation of life. It's not like this generation is the smartest that ever lived and have "wised up" to "reality" and that is why it's so dark and depressed and anxious. To the contrary, this generation was raised by the most pig ignorant selfish self-medicating generation that ever lived on earth, and they have robbed this generation of the basic intelligence of the goodness of life and how to cope with the challenges that life can bring. Thousands of years of wisdom and familial development have been thrown into the garbage can and spat upon.

I have the counterintuitive hope that many of you who have suffered from depression, anxiety, ADHD, mood swings and other disorders will actually be the vanguard of recognizing how there is nothing "wrong with you" except that you've been cheated out of what your generations of ancestors worked so hard to cherish and pass on to you, which is the goodness and affirmation of life and how to live it even in the toughest of circumstances. I'm hoping that if it is not too late that many of you who have suffered from these problems will be the drivers of the turnaround so the next generation is not as polluted and cheated as this generation has been treated.

I hope this helps. I know this is not a cheery action list, huh? But it is so essential that you understand what has happened so we can stop the downward slide into total decay and darkness of thought and deed.

I hope people read my previous post and have started working on the getting more regular sleep even if you can't get to sleep yet problem! The more I read about what "sleep aids" are doing the more you must try to get back to the pure form of working with sleep like you would any other activity, which is organization, discipline, practice and experimentation. It's one of those "things we can easily start to try to do that can have huge beneficial effects."

In depth discussion of a Jesus healing event

Matthew 8:28-34

When he came to the other side, to the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs who were coming from the tombs met him. They were so savage that no one could travel by that road. They cried out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the appointed time?” Some distance away a herd of many swine was feeding. The demons pleaded with him, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And he said to them, “Go then!” They came out and entered the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea where they drowned. The swineherds ran away, and when they came to the town they reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs. Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their district.

***
This is a very well known miraculous event in the life of Jesus and has been frequently been discussed and sermonized since there is a great amount of information to glean from these just seven sentences of narrative. Homilists often point out how demons recognized Christ’s true identity without him saying a word, and this is true. They also knew they would be driven out of the human sufferers by Christ, again before Christ even said a word. But I want to teach you about two observations you can make that do not receive as much emphasis or understanding in the more common preaching.

The first thing to note is that the demon’s highest priority is to stay inside a living body, and so they beg Jesus to allow them to go into the swine. Sometimes you better understand reality of the physical and spiritual world by noting what the demons did not ask for. They were subservient to Jesus yet they did not ask that they be “cured” of being demons. If God can do anything, why would not the demons ask Jesus to change them into “good spirits” or something other than demons? This is because they could not. A demon is the condition of being contrary to life as determined by God. In other words, think about the colors yellow and green. Green could not ask Jesus to now be yellow because “green is the name given to that condition of color” while “yellow is the name for that condition.” Another example is that a cold virus could not ask to be a flu virus because the name “cold virus” is given to the virus that causes colds, while a flu virus is the name given to the virus that causes flu. Calling a cold virus a flu virus would not make it any less a cold virus. Calling green yellow would not make the wavelength absorption that produces green change to the wavelength absorption that produces yellow. Now Jesus could change the object’s fundamental nature so that it changed color from green to yellow. And Jesus could change a cold virus into a flu virus. But demons are not changeable because they are not a living being that has a set of characteristics that can be changed. Demons are the “state of being demonic” in tendency and priority. Because Jesus, empowered by God, could converse with demons it is natural that humans tend to anthropomorphize demons and think of them as a living being that has a “spirit body.” But this is not true. Demons are like being cold. If a person is shivering in the cold wind and becomes cold the person is cold, but cold is not a living spirit form. Coldness is a state of being, not a living being. Coldness is real, since many people feel it, it can be measured (thermometer) and people die from it frequently. Likewise demons are real, and can be observed, measured and felt, but they are not living beings, not even a “special case” of being spirit beings. Demons are not living beings (nor are they undead beings) because they are not beings at all. They are a state of being. In other words, they are a state that a being can possess, just like being cold. So in this example, if the two homeless people had come running from the tombs (where they lived) begging Jesus to cure them of cold, Jesus could easily, and without miracle, make them warm by giving them shelter, blankets and hot soup. The difference is that the people themselves, their true character, would have been the ones requesting warmth since they would be normal people who happen to be cold. But when a demon possesses a person the demon does the speaking for the person. That does not, I repeat, mean that the demon is a living or undead being. But it is such a powerful state of being that it takes possession of and reorganizes the person’s body, mind and spirit (though not soul). Think about if “cold” was speaking on behalf of a person who was cold. “Cold” would ask Jesus to make it snow, or have the chill wind blow harder, and “cold” would not care about the body that it was killing, since it’s “job” and it’s only state of being and point of reference is to be “cold.” Cold is cold. So this is a valuable insight for you into understanding demons. Demons are not little devils, or the undead returned, or alien spirits (LOL) or mini-fallen angels or any other anthropomorphizing being you could hypothesize. Learn to recognize demons and their influence by thinking of them as being a condition or state of being such as “cold” or “green.”

The cold example is the best to use because like I said; if a person is endlessly and severely cold he or she will die of hypothermia. So cold that is unlimited is a dangerous condition.

This is one reason that non-Catholic “exorcisms” are unbelievably dangerous and wrong headed. People who think that demon possession means that a mini bad spirit is “inside” of another person are totally wrong in their perception of the problem. Just because one “drives out” a demon does not mean that it was a “being that is inside” the person, even if a person thinks they are conversing with it. The minds of humans are wonderful and clever, but limited, especially when looking at themselves or each other, because they almost have to anthropomorphize everything they see, especially if it seems to have dialogue or a set of characteristics. So while Catholics themselves, and the rituals also have the sound of, thinking of demons as “beings” they are incorrect, but understandably so because the Bible is not a complete textbook to all the universe’s manifestations and causes. When a person has a “demon” the person is under the control of the state of being demonic. The condition of being demonic does the speaking and thinking for the person, and has only continuation of being demonic as it’s only characteristic. If you get confused keep thinking back to the cold example, which is why I gave this example to you, since it gives great clarity and insight. A demon is like a person being subsumed by the condition of being “cold” so that “being cold” is the past, present and future and only “option” and “priority.” The answer is always “cold” if you tried to dialogue with a person who is possessed by “cold,” if such a thing existed, which it does not. So a demon is a state of being that is being a demon. Therefore the first thing the demons ask of Jesus, who they recognize as the Son of God, is to go on being demons but with the pigs instead of the men. It is like in our example if hypothetical “cold” state requested of Jesus that “cold” goes and makes someone else “cold” since “cold” has no choice or options because cold is the state of being cold.

Jesus agrees that the demons can “Go then!” The demons enter into the swine and the swine immediately hurl themselves over a steep bank into the sea where the pigs drown. I bet you are now recognizing something that you did not before when you’ve read this miracle. People assume that the demons drove the swine into the sea. But this is not true! Demons only care about being demons because they are not beings but the state of being. How do we know this? Let’s use again our “what if instead of this they said that” logic. Notice the demons did not ask to be sent to hell. If they are demonic beings and that is their “true home” and if they take pleasure in pain, why not ask Jesus to send them back to hell rather than expel and/or destroy them? That is because they are not beings who have “places where they live.” Demons are the state of being of the organism they control, just like being cold. So if a demon is here and recognizes that it is going to be expelled by Jesus (Jesus doing so in order to free and save the person afflicted just as warming a person freezing to death but unable to ask for help) the demon is going to “want” to go from here to there since it is simply transferring a state of being. A state of being that is transferred from a person to person, or from person to pig, would not “think” to ask to “go home to hell” or be changed because it is only a singular state of being, like on and off. So the demon would not “want” to “make” the pigs leap into the sea because demons do not desire nor manipulate circumstances other than the inevitable outcome of their being the state of “demon.” As long as a person is cold, that person is cold. The cold is “expelled” when the person is warmed up sufficiently that the person is no longer cold. A demon “exists” so long as the demon exists, and when it is expelled it is gone, just like the state of being cold.

Think about what being “cold” is by definition. Cold is the state of being where molecules of the body slow down in their vibration so much that life can no longer exist. Hot is the condition of very fast vibrating of molecules and like cold, outside of the human body’s level of tolerance, too much of being hot too can destroy, either as fever or as actual burning. There is a range of temperature, that state of being, that humans function with health within. There is no acceptable or healthy “amount” or “level of demon” that a human can contain however. True demon possession is “on” or “off” or to be precise “possessed” or “expelled.” True demon possession can be compared to the state of being deathly cold only, where the coldness is at the non-life sustaining level and that is the only option. Having an actual demon (and not just behaving very wickedly) is the same as being in the state of being so cold that life cannot take place in that body. Again, remembering I am only using an analogy and all analogies are flawed in their use to some extent, although this one is a very good and tight analogy because it leads you along to a completer understanding in its valid parallel of logic. So just as the state of being “demon” equals, in our parallel, the state of being “so cold that it will kill the body” you can now better understand what state of being the demon “measures” in its on/off way. The “state of demon being” is anti-life. I’m not making a political or moral statement; I am still being scientific here.

Just as our hypothetical “man who is possessed by cold” would be under the influence of a force that only “cares” about being too cold to live, the state of being “demon” is a state of pure reflex where all behavior is contrary to the continuation of life. See, these two guys that Jesus encountered were not robbers who had their hideout in the tombs and terrorized the community in order to rob and bully them. That would be two wicked people who perhaps commit unspeakable crimes, but are not demoniac. Demons who possess these two men by definition force them to a state of being that is “anti-life.” They are forced to “live” where only the dead live (the tombs of the town) and they exist in the continuing state of being demonic, which causes all actions to be in a demonic state, with no concern for their own welfare. Robbers sit down and have a good meal with the proceeds of what they took from people. They are wicked but still working within the boundaries of life affirming actions, at least for themselves. True demonic possession is the state of being in a condition of non-affirmation of life.

So the demons request of Jesus that he allow them to go to the pigs and possess them. Think about this. Why would they request of Jesus to go to the pigs, and not just flee from Jesus in terror into the pigs all on their own? Would that not be logical? Why do they have to ask first? The answer is that because demons cannot occupy animals. Animals, either savage or tame, are free from demons. The demons could only enter the pigs if Jesus gave them permission. If they could have entered into animals, they would have fled from Jesus with no word spoken and done so by getting the heck out of Jesus’ way and assuming that it would be OK to be in the pigs. But that is assuming a world where demons could exist in animals and we know that it is not possible or true. First of all demons are the state of being based on a consciousness that does not exist in animals. God created animals without sin or a set of values by which they must live in order to thrive. God created infrastructure (the planet, rocks, and soil), the plants and the animals to live and not to have “choice” about being in favor of their living and thriving or not. All things that God created are good, including humans in the beginning. So to use a psychology expression a demon would not find “a hook” within a plant or animal attach itself to and create that state of being since that state of being is not possible in an animal, plant or rock. Life would never have continued on this planet if demons could possess animals because you can see that a bias toward not life affirming activities in animals would have killed them off even faster than habitat loss, disease, climate change and so forth. The logic of eating, drinking water, finding shelter, mating and raising young would have been repeatedly broken. So there is no reason or ability for a demon to ever possess an animal (despite what you may think of the nasty pit bull down the street!) Seriously, even poor animals bred to be killers or trained to be vicious would on their own revert to life affirming behavior. At the very least they would try to survive. True demonic possession is the state of being in a totally non-life affirming condition. So the demons had to seek permission from Jesus in order to enter into the pigs. Obviously the swineherds were standing nearby to witness this, and you’ll notice the demons did not ask to leave the tomb living guys alone and go into the swineherds for a while instead! The demons recognize Jesus as being their anti-state and therefore know he will not permit their continued possession of the two men or any other humans before any conversation even takes place. Jesus is the opposite condition of the state of being demonic. So the only option for the state of being demonic to continue was to ask Jesus to allow them to go into the swine instead of the humans.

This is where my defense of pigs and all other animals begins, ha. Putting aside the prohibitions about clean or unclean animals, everyone understands that all animals are good because they are created by God in the beginning and all that is created by God is goodness. It is the pigs that under the possession of the two demons that throw themselves into the sea. The demons created the non-life affirming state of being in the pigs and so the pigs did the opposite of what they would naturally do (which is life affirming) and they hurled themselves into the sea. Now I am not saying they turned into conscious pig heroes and sacrificed themselves for the greater good, ha! But I am using kind of a negative hypothesis to show you that animals exist in a constant state of being life affirming, uninfluenced by demons or other spiritual pressures or dilemmas that exist among the conscious “post Garden of Eden” humans. This is another reason that animal worship and idolatry is plain wrong and strongly and consistently rebuked by God throughout both the Bible and the Qur’an. It is actually an “insult to animals” to assign a spirit, either good or demonic, awareness to animals. That is because this implies a “choice” whereby if animals are acting consciously that means they can make choices. That is an insult to them because all animals are created by God to only function in a life affirming way… they would never make a “power” or “spiritual” based choice because they already exist in a perfect state as created by God.

Since, therefore, the swine, as all animals, lack the “hook” to be demonic and continue to live, they immediately perish. As perfect “life affirming” beings, animals would perish immediately upon having a demon. This is why God does not permit it to happen and created them without that capacity to be possessed by demons or otherwise spiritually afflicted. This is why Jesus allowed the demons to go into the swine, knowing that the swine would perish (and so the demonic state would be closed in these two cases and the condition of being demoniac erased) and also so that the Apostles and other bystanders could learn from this what I am telling you about here, plus the other understandings that have traditionally been sermonized. Of course the people whose livelihood depended on the swine were not so interested in the spiritual lesson and they begged Jesus to leave their district!

Jesus is clearly seen here as, to use a popular scientific expression, anti-matter to demons. Jesus is the perfect state of not being demoniac. Demons cannot exist in the presence of true Jesus. They need his permission even to flee. Jesus gives permission during this miracle (more properly called a healing) so that the Apostles can learn and teach what they saw. Notice that Jesus did not have to do anything in this case to expel the demons. If they had not “spoken up” to “ask permission to go to the swine” Jesus would have expelled them right out and they would have been expelled into non-existence. Remember a demon is a state of being, not an entity that would pack its nasty little suitcase and go to another person or float around looking for victims. It feels that way and language in the Bible uses some of that imagery, but that is why Jesus provided examples, such as this one, where people can observe a truth that is too complicated to put into human words (yet remarkably simple to live by in the pious life).
I wrote this in order to convey two points, which I have pretty much completed, which is to teach about the true nature of demonic possession and to illuminate the goodness and “built in” life affirmation of all animals, clean or unclean, predatory or grazer, simple one cell or top of the animal kingdom in complexity. Without going into detail, perhaps to address in future blog postings, I will mention a few other points to consider. One is that there is true demonic possession but it is much rarer than people think. The second is that being insane is not the same as being possessed. Third is that when Jesus expelled demons he was really expelling demons and this was not code word for curing mental illness. When the Gospel relates that Jesus cured many people, in the thousands, this was a mixture of people with physical and mental ailments (even though mental illness was not recognized as such during those times). So Jesus did encounter and cure people with mental illnesses. However the examples related in the Gospel of demon expelling are indeed demons being expelled and not just the out of date and quaint labels put on mentally ill people. Here’s how we know that. Mental illness is not usually the stark raving running around psychotic type. It is the eroding of wellness through what we know today as post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and so forth. While it was no where near as prevalent then as it is today (since society and survival were much more straightforward then and there was not a survival reward for neurosis) it obviously still was common enough. It was common enough that it did not merit mentioning in the Gospels. Remember Jesus cured blindness and restored walking to “many” and even more dramatic cures that were not enumerated in the Gospel either! So if the Apostles and disciples grouped even dramatic cures such as those together in order to say “many throughout the region” and numbers implying the thousands, obviously they did not mention the many cures by Jesus of the mentally infirm. What they did mention was where Jesus brought their attention to true demonic possession so they would recognize and know its qualities and characteristics. The nearness of Jesus, as you can see in the example of the two demons, is often enough to effect a healing and a cure. Many who listened to Jesus were cured of their emotional and mental afflictions without him having to do a specific miraculous cure. Jesus was totally unique in this because he was born from being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s presence with the permission of God is enough to bring about many healings and cures. We know this because when Jesus designated St. Peter as his rock with the key and the Holy Spirit descended in Pentecost, even the falling of St. Peter’s shadow on someone could bring about a cure (Acts 5:15). So if St. Peter’s shadow falling on someone as he passes by could bring about a cure you know that the very presence of Jesus brought many cures of particularly the mental, emotional and spiritual kind of illnesses. So I want to make clear that there is a difference between true demoniac possession and severe mental illness.

Something else you need to think about is that people can “create demons.” This is actually where demons “come from.” Notice this is very different than saying mentally ill people or their illness cause demons. No, rather, collective wicked behavior does at some point “congeal,” for lack of a better word, into demoniac possession. There is a critical mass of mental and spiritual mindset whereby individual or group sinful, cruel or wicked actions create traction in the world of human’s perception whereby the types of demons encountered by Jesus come into being. This is a whole huge and obviously important topic that needs to be analyzed on its own, perhaps in future blogging. But people often ask, “If God is good where does evil come from?” or “Why does God ‘allow’ Satan and demons ‘into’ the world?” Both questions are totally understandable and deserve answers, but they come from a set of assumptions and understandings that are weak and invalid. Both the Bible and the Qur’an describe demons and their attributes and they know there is connection between the wickedness of man and the actions of demons. This is true, but people need to know that they are not as weak as they think and that they can expel demons and prevent their very creation if they understand how deviation from God by humans brings demons into existence and power in the first place. Remember as I explained, animals cannot be possessed by demons, so there is a billion or so years of life on earth without demon presence. Guess who is the one species of living being that is associated with the existence of demons? I think you know! Demons are not fallen angels who are running around on earth with day passes that lets them out of hell. They are permitted by God to exist because they are an “output” of humans, kind of like smog. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung came very close to understanding this. He was a Christian who hypothesized that Nazi Germany was “possessed by the Nordic god Wotan.” Now of course Jung did not believe in an actual pantheon of gods but he recognized that a national possession of some sort took place and he found the closest “match” of characteristics when comparing Nazi Germany traits to those of the mythological Wotan. Jung has been consistently “demonized” (LOL) by many Jewish psychology professionals for “excusing” or “providing an excuse” for Nazi Germany, but this was not his motivation nor where he could have gotten to if he pursued this question further. Jung came close to recognizing that a separate ruling entity had congealed in Nazi Germany that was not only the numeric total of wicked deeds, wicked “policy” and “group or gang mentality.” He was trying to get to an important and very valid observation about the origin of a collective demonic possession, but he was too distracted by his many other theories and projects to really do justice to this potential discovery. Also it was not a subject that he was rewarded for exploring. However if he had, might he have not described patterns that later one must think about with Cambodia, Rwanda, and now certain parts of Kenya and see if there had not been similar symptomology.

Just to bring the subject to a close, I know many will cite scripture that demons are spirits that are disobedient to God and/or that they exist to punish and torment humans. Yes, those are things that demons “do” as a natural outcome of their state of being. Their state of being, like being cold, can be interpreted as punishing, tormenting, and disobeying. A child who wanders out of the house in the freezing cold and dies could be viewed as meeting those criteria too, but that would be a totally inaccurate reading of the situation. The “cold” in this case would be acting contrary to God’s will and being “disobedient” (freezing and killing a child, all children being loved by God), is being “punished” by the cold (the child having wandered away from home without the parents), and being “tormented” by the cold (what a sad and awful way for a child to die). So one could say that “cold” is disobedient to God, punishes a human child, and torments a human child, yet that would be giving “cold” an agenda that it does not consciously possess and it does not address the origin of “cold.” Likewise, the fact that demons are not fulfilling God’s plan for goodness, torment, and punish humans does not mean that God created demons, nor do they exist for expressly those purposes. Those actions are inevitable outcomes of the state of being of demonic possession. So to eliminate the influence of demons and protect people from their influence in the world one needs to understand their origins and source of reinforcement, just as one needs to examine responsibility in babysitting, provision of heating, and the adverse affects of weather in the example of the cold that killed the child In the above example. The cold is a natural force. But the unheated poor person’s house, the open door and the underdressed, unsupervised child are actions that are under the influence of humans. Demons likewise come into being as a natural force that is congealed into collective dark power by the actions and spiritual attitudes of humans.

I hope you’ve found this discussion and spiritual direction useful.