Rethinking Western Ways of Thinking (pt. 2)

I wanted to expand on last week’s blog, in which I told the story of my disappointment in western medicine and science.

However, this one turned out to be really, really long. So I’ve broken it down into parts for quicker skimming… I’ve given my top three examples to express the two major problems I have with science. They are labelled in bold. Pick and choose what you feel like reading about.

The truth is, I do frickin’ love science. Yet I believe there are two major problems with the scientific and medical communities: 1. Dogma, and 2. The tendency to uphold science as superior to the subjective experience.

First let’s talk about dogma. Dogma stems from our egos. Our egos take whatever it is we are attracted to or enjoy, and turn it into a personality badge. We wear our likes and dislikes like honor badges won from hard work or competition, as if they are evidence of prestige. Whether it’s our political associations, religious beliefs, or even what television shows we watch. We are dog or cat people, single or married, into books, comics, art, coffee, Game of Thrones, skinny jeans or motorcycles. People who aren’t into the things we like are on the outside, they just don’t get it, and we often treat them as inferior.

We let these things, these outside things that are not us but that we consume, enjoy, research, or think about, define us. And if we were to strip away all of our loves and hates, what then? Who, exactly, would we be?

When things become dogma we no longer see it as something outside ourselves that we enjoy, and instead we take it on as a defining piece of our personality. It then morphs into things we believe are better than other things, which morphs into beliefs about which people are better than other people. Cat people are better than dog people, science people are smarter than religious people, MDs are better than NDs, Atheists are smarter than Christians, Christians are more moral than atheists.

These beliefs can then morph even further into a fear of these “others” with different ideas and lives than our own. We fear them. But why? Are we afraid they will change us? Does their difference threaten us somehow? Perhaps we fear that if they were to change us it might change or break a part of who I am‘. Perhaps it threatens our identity.

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Take, for example, a close scientist friend whose wife senses a nature spirit in their yard. She feels its presence, especially when it is upset with her for something she changed in the yard. However, when she talks about this he roles his eyes and treats it with sarcastic tones. And yet his science cannot prove without a doubt that her experience is invalid. But he treats her as if that is the case, as if she is less intelligent for having these experiences and talking about them.

This is science as dogma. It is a belief that if we, with our limited human senses, can’t measure something, it isn’t real, and therefore we can treat each other with disrespect over it. It has become his religion, he wears his science as that personality badge, and he has to demean his wife’s experience because it is not accepted by the mainstream science that defines him.

Rather than simply accepting that the science world is his own truth, but that his wife has a different truth, he goes that further step of demeaning her experience. With a simple eye roll he let us all know that his own beliefs are somehow better or smarter. Yet she is an intelligent human being, and I very much trust her to be truthful. Who is he to claim her experience isn’t valid? He is holding his views and experiences of the world, his personality badges, as superior to her experience. Her experience threatens his view of reality, his view of himself, and his place within the scientific community’s dogma.

Take away the judgement and we are simply left to ponder questions… how does she know the spirit is there? What does she feel physically? What’s different from when it is there and when it isn’t? Are there others that experience this?

Open minded questioning, in my humble opinion, is true science. Isn’t the purpose of science to explain the mysteries of the world? Considering there are many, many people and even entire cultures that experience “spirits” and the like, why do we dismiss these things just because we don’t have the means to measure them… yet? Aren’t they mysteries we could further explore and try to understand, rather than claiming they don’t exist at all. And must we really take it that step further and claim that we are superior for believing they don’t exist? I mean this is the root of colonization, slavery, WW2… etc.

Whether you do or you don’t believe it exists, you have to believe, you cannot know your side is definitively true. Whether it’s science or religion, it’s still a belief system.

What science has revealed to exist in the world shouldn’t define the entire world that exists… otherwise we are finished, there’s nothing left to discover. If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe it only means we haven’t advanced our science enough, that our science is still primitive.

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An example from my own life:
Two years ago I needed an antibiotic for a bacterial overgrowth in my small intestine, a problem known as Sibo. It’s a proven, safe antibiotic that only affects the small intestine, and doesn’t damage your microbiome. Unfortunately the person who did the test, despite being a very common test done in most Gastro clinics known as a hydrogen breath test, was a naturopath. She couldn’t write the script, so she told me to take the test to any GI office. When I took it to my regular Gastroenterologist he yelled at me and told me that his office doesn’t perform those tests. So I called around town and found a large mainstream clinic that did perform them, and set up an appointment.

The appointment went very badly. At the time I hadn’t realized the huge amount of disrespect and animosity among many doctors towards naturopaths. I thought the first experience with my regular GI doc was just him being stodgy.

I started out by handing the doctor the breath test and explaining to her that my naturopath had performed a hydrogen breath test that was positive for Sibo, and I needed the antibiotic. The first words out of her mouth were “First of all I don’t believe in Eastern Medicine”.

“It’s a hydrogen breath test developed by western medicine. I know that your office performs these same tests”

“This test looks nothing like our tests, I can’t even read this test”.

The test was so easy to read I had been able to figure it out within a couple of seconds. Not kidding. Plus the numbers are the same for all breath tests. All she needed to do was look at the numbers.

She then explained that she had serious patients with real problems like stomach cancer, and that they didn’t “treat people for bloating”. And she refused to give me my antibiotic.

This is just one example of my many experiences with the dogma of western medicine. There is no room for anything to exist outside the limited information they’ve been taught, and they sneer at outside people like naturopaths, even when these people are using the same western research and science used in their own clinics.

The doctor that finally gave me the antibiotic didn’t believe that I had Sibo either, and rolled his eyes right in front of me when I handed him the breath test. But then he went on to say that the antibiotic I was requesting really seemed to help people with IBS. Keep in mind this antibiotic ONLY works in the small intestine, and, it’s an ANTI-BIOTIC, as in it kills off overgrowths of bacteria in the small intestine and that is the ONLY thing it can do. It literally doesn’t even effect any of the rest of the body – staying only in the small bowel. Maybe many people with IBS actually just have Sibo???

Besides these experiences, it’s also been incredibly hard to convince any of my doctors of the modern research done on Sibo, most of which has come out of the Cedars Sinai Clinic in California – a western med research clinic whose research shows that many if not most cases of IBS are actually Sibo.

This clinic also recently developed a blood test that tests for an autoimmune condition responsible for some very severe cases of Sibo. Yet I could not convince my GI doc to let me get this test either. I once again had to go to my Naturopath for that. Btw, it was positive.

Do you see my frustration? I have an autoimmunity towards a protein that the body needs to heal the nervous system of the small intestine. I have a science based western med test developed by MDs to prove it. I knew about the test because I love science and have researched this stuff. But I could not find one GI doc in all of Colorado who is up on this research, or even willing to look into it or to take my test seriously – because it is outside what they already know. Their egos are threatened by it.

BTW, If you are interested in more information about the cutting edge science of Sibo, the science that most Gastroenterologists are completely unaware of and do not want to even look at, here’s a link:

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/research/labs/pimentel.html

Mainstream medicine is like my scientist friend that refuses to accept there may be more than what they already know – and we’re not even talking about spirits and stuff we can’t see, but actual science and research. These doctors wear the badge of western medicine, and that definition has boxed in everything they’ve already learned. God forbid they take into consideration something a naturopath recommended, or new research. In my experience medicine seems to be controlled more by tradition and politics than by scientific data.

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Take another example, William Bengston. William, or “Bill” is a guy who loves research and science. While in college he became friends with a psychic, Ben. As a science-loving person himself, Bill wanted to study Ben, especially because he had a very high rate of accuracy. Ben, however, didn’t want to be studied.

Bill ended up working alongside Ben and spent years helping him heal people with his hands. They cured all kinds of illnesses but eventually their relationship ended when Bill, as a faculty member of a prestigious University, began devising research studies and experiments to test and document these abilities.

Since then Bill’s experiments have proven over and over again that anyone, even people who are complete non-believers in this kind of “hogwash”, can cure mice of cancer. Bill’s energy healing experiments are so strong that the cancer-ridden control mice have to be removed to another city before healing begins, otherwise the controls are often healed as well.

His research shows we can cure cancer with our hands. Where is the Nobel prize? Like my friend’s wife, he has been treated with less respect, probably because his findings do not make a large company any money, and are very much outside the dogma of mainstream science. I am actually quoting from his book when I previously stated that “science seems to be controlled more by tradition and politics than by scientific data.”

Unfortunately, he hasn’t been able to gain the funding to do any of this type of research on humans… yet. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try it out yourself.

https://bengstonresearch.com/

I highly recommend his book, The Energy Cure.

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So when I say I had to release western medicine and science, it was this dogma, this personality badge, that I had to release.

I had to realize three things:

1. That what was right in front of our eyes to experience and measure was not all there was.

2. That being open to the existence of more did not have to threaten who I am. That I can still be a valid person, with a soul and everything, even as I open my mind to the existence of things like Qi, yard spirits, and energy healing.

3. I’d hit the ceiling of medicine and science of what is going on with my body. The research into Sibo is so new, it isn’t mainstream. And when I was hit with chronic fatigue that I think is related to my adrenal glands, that is a whole new world that our science hasn’t even touched yet.

It’s why people like this guy in the article below have had to do their own research and even create their own surgeries! I mean come on, when people are so desperate for answers they start inventing their own surgeries you know that our medical science is simply not up to par. Come on, doctors! Open up your minds and start finding us some answers!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/27/health/doug-lindsay-invented-surgery-trnd/index.html

I think outside the mainstream there are many scientists who see the world with wonder in their eyes and curiosity in their hearts and go to work unveiling the mysteries we find ourselves living in on this planet, in this universe. I think that in order to be a brilliant scientist you truly have to be able transcend the concepts that are in place and imagine what-if scenarios that others fear. What if Qi is real? What if the entire universe is made up of energy? What if our thoughts create our worlds? What if people can heal cancer with their hands and minds? How could we measure that?

These are the true scientists, because without them we’d be boxed in, believing that we already know everything there is to know about the world, and how boring would that be?

Treat the world and everything in it with curiosity, because it is curiosity that wants to know just what a nature spirit is, or just what is causing these IBS symptoms in so many people. It is only through respectful curiosity in the subjective experiences of humans, beings, and everything around us that that we make new discoveries, advance ourselves and our civilization, and evolve.