Biology of Belief
How Intention of Thoughts Affect Life
Magic is Real
I believe a force, a power, a science exists which few people understand but many use to overcome the adversity of life and achieve outstanding success. I believe that our thoughts create reality and I believe that science can prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23
The issue is that our human family has not learned the true science of reality. The miseducation of humanity alters our perception and our world view. It's time we learn the truth. It's time we start asking what is reality? How powerful is our consciousness? And how can I use my powers in a good way?
When humanity learns to become conscious creators. When humanity learns the power of our thoughts, our emotions and our intention on over our actions, it will be the dawn of a new day.
As a child of God, as a child of the Cosmos, as a child of the Creator you are endowed with superpowers. Most of our family doesn't know that but now is a great time to learn. But Matt - you might be thinking - you're a crazy bastard. What are you talking about? If you are thinking that - you're right - I am a crazy bastard but let me explain.
Mind over Matter
Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.
The phrase above is famous. Why? Because our attitude, our approach to life is paramount to us manifesting the highest good for ourselves and for our family. Not only is our attitude important but our beliefs are important. Our beliefs about our reality have a physical material impact upon the world. We can witness the manifestation of this wisdom by examining scientific research data.
A study from Stanford University found that just thinking you’re prone to a given outcome can trump both nature and nurture. Researchers learned that simply believing a physical reality about yourself can actually nudge the body in that direction—sometimes even more than actually being prone to the reality.
These researchers were interested in two areas—endurance during exercise and satiety during eating. For the endurance part, they did genetic testing on the participants to see whether they carried variants of a gene that make a person more or less prone to tiring easily. They also had people run on a treadmill to measure their endurance.
Then, they randomly split the participants into two groups, telling one they had a gene variant that made them tire easily and the other they had a gene variant made them more prone to exercise endurance—the catch was that they’d randomly divided the participants into these two groups, so some were being given accurate results and others the exact opposite.
When the participants ran on a treadmill again, their endurance changed measurably—those who were told they had poor endurance genes couldn’t run as long (they stopped 22 seconds sooner), and had poorer lung capacity, and their bodies didn’t rid themselves of carbon dioxide as effectively. Those who were told they had better endurance ran a bit longer, regardless of what genes they actually carried.
Similar results were found for the part that focused on a hormone that signals satiety (or fullness) to the brain during eating, so is protective against obesity. When the participants ate a meal after hearing the (true or false) results of their genetic tests, their bodies performed differently from how they had before hearing the news: those told they made more of the fullness hormone actually released 2.5 times more than they had before.
And that was also reflected in how much they ate. “It was really a much stronger and faster physiological satiety signal, and this mapped on to how much more full participants said that they felt,” said study author Bradley Turnwald in a press release. People told they had the gene to produce less of the hormone didn’t show a huge change in their eating or hormone levels.
“The take-home message here is that the mindset that you put people in when you deliver genetic risk information is not irrelevant,” said lead author Alia Crum, who’s lab has been studying how mind affects the physical body for some time. “The mindset of being genetically at risk or protected can alter how we feel, what we do and – as this study shows – how our bodies respond.”
Positive Thinking Improves Health
Did you know Optimists recover better from medical procedures, have healthier immune systems and live longer? Both in general and when suffering from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and kidney failure (Annals of Behavioral Medicine, vol 39, p 4).
Recent scientific studies are being used to measure the effects of both positive and negative thinking with respect to disease and optimal health. Never doubt that negative thoughts have just as much power as positive ones. Negative thinking can slowly wear you down, resulting in a host of mental, physical and emotional problems and conditions; including poor self-esteem, depression and even illness.
It is well accepted that negative thoughts and anxiety can make us ill. Stress – the belief that we are at risk – triggers physiological pathways such as the “fight-or-flight” response, mediated by the sympathetic nervous system. These have evolved to protect us from danger, but if switched on long-term they increase the risk of conditions such as diabetes and dementia.
What researchers are now realizing is that positive beliefs don’t just work by quelling stress. They have a positive effect too – feeling safe and secure, or believing things will turn out fine, seems to help the body maintain and repair itself. A recent analysis of various studies concluded that the health benefits of such positive thinking happen independently of the harm caused by negative states such as pessimism or stress, and are roughly comparable in magnitude (Psychosomatic Medicine, vol 70, p 741).
Optimism seems to reduce stress-induced inflammation and levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. It may also reduce susceptibility to disease by dampening sympathetic nervous system activity and stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter governs the so-called “rest and digest” response – the opposite of fight-or-flight.
Just as helpful as taking a rosy view of the future is having a rosy view of yourself. High “self-enhancers” – people who see themselves in a more positive light than others see them – have lower cardiovascular responses to stress and recover faster, as well as lower baseline cortisol levels (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 85, p 605).
What is a Thought?
Thoughts are non-physical energetic vibrations. Thoughts can be conscious or unconscious, deliberate or automatic, and can range from simple to complex. They are often influenced by our beliefs, experiences, emotions, and external stimuli. The study of thought processes is a central topic in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
We know that thoughts exist because they take place in our mind but what is a thought? On a material level, it is obvious a thought is non-physical. It might be safe to say thoughts are non-physical energy waves. The term wave applies because all energy exist in the form of a wave. When we speak, a thought becomes manifest into the physical reality. Science describes these words as sound waves.
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. - Nikola Tesla
The Neuroscience of Thought
We’ve all experienced that magical feeling of being hit with ‘a brainwave’. That moment of newfound clarity, a shift in perspective, or a novel idea. And typically, it seems to appear out of nowhere. In between sips of coffee, while out for a walk, or simply indulging your dog in a good belly rub. While brainwaves can be a figure of speech to describe our thoughts, scientists and clinicians can use literal brainwaves, measured on the head, to help understand the functioning of the human brain.
There are 5 types of brainwaves. To measure them, neuroscientists use electroencephalography, or EEG – a fancy word that just means an electric brain graph to measure these states. Depending on your emotional state, a thought wave has a specific frequency.
Gamma Brainwaves
Frequency: 32 – 100 Hz
Associated state: Heightened perception, learning, problem-solving tasks
Gamma brainwaves are the fastest measurable EEG brainwaves and have been equated to ‘heightened perception’, or a ‘peak mental state’ when there is simultaneous processing of information from different parts of the brain. Gamma brainwaves have been observed to be much stronger and more regularly observed in very long-term meditators including Buddhist Monks [1].
All of us get gamma for a very short period when we solve a problem we’ve been grappling with, even if it’s something that’s vexed us for months. We get about half second of gamma; it’s the strongest wave in the EEG spectrum. We get it when we bite into an apple or imagine biting into an apple, and for a brief period, a split-second, inputs from taste, sound, smell, vision, all of that come together in that imagined bite into the apple. But that lasts very short period in an ordinary EEG. What was stunning was that the Olympic level meditators, these are people who have done up to 62,000 lifetime hours of meditation, their brainwave shows gamma very strong all the time as a lasting trait just no matter what they’re doing. It’s not a state effect, it’s not during their meditation alone, but it’s just their every day state of mind. We actually have no idea what that means experientially. Science has never seen it before. We also find that in these Olympic level meditators when we asked them, for example, to do a meditation on compassion their level of gamma jumps 700 to 800 percent in a few seconds. This has also never been seen by science. So we have to assume that the special state of consciousness that you see in the highest level meditators is a lot like something described in the classical meditation literatures centuries ago, which is that there is a state of being which is not like our ordinary state. Sometimes it’s called liberation, enlightenment, awake, whatever the word may be we suspect there’s really no vocabulary that captures what that might be. The people that we’ve talked to in this Olympic level group say it’s very spacious and you’re wide open, you’re prepared for whatever may come, we just don’t know. But we do know it’s quite remarkable.
The Physics of Thought: The Observer Effect
So how do the two worlds of mind and matter co-exist, collide and interact?
🙏“How much does one imagine, how much does one observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.” — Elspeth Huxley
One of the most bizarre premises of quantum theory, which has long fascinated philosophers and physicists alike, states that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality.
In a study reported in the February 26, 1998 issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of "watching," the greater the observer's influence on what actually takes place.
When a quantum "observer" is watching, Quantum mechanics states that particles can also behave as waves. This can be true for electrons at the submicron level, i.e., at distances measuring less than one micron, or one thousandth of a millimeter. When behaving as waves, they can simultaneously pass through several openings in a barrier and then meet again at the other side of the barrier. This "meeting" is known as interference.
Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings.
To demonstrate this, Weizmann Institute researchers built a tiny device measuring less than one micron in size, which had a barrier with two openings. They then sent a current of electrons towards the barrier. The "observer" in this experiment wasn't human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum "observer's" capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.
Apart from "observing," or detecting, the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Yet the scientists found that the very presence of the detector-"observer" near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier. In fact, this effect was dependent on the "amount" of the observation: when the "observer's" capacity to detect electrons increased, in other words, when the level of the observation went up, the interference weakened; in contrast, when its capacity to detect electrons was reduced, in other words, when the observation slackened, the interference increased.
Thus, by controlling the properties of the quantum observer the scientists managed to control the extent of its influence on the electrons' behavior. The theoretical basis for this phenomenon was developed several years ago by a number of physicists, including Dr. Adi Stern and Prof. Yoseph Imry of the Weizmann Institute of Science, together with Prof. Yakir Aharonov of Tel Aviv University. The new experimental work was initiated following discussions with Weizmann Institute's Prof. Shmuel Gurvitz, and its results have already attracted the interest of theoretical physicists around the world and are being studied, among others, by Prof. Yehoshua Levinson of the Weizmann Institute.
What is Belief?
Belief is something that you believe or accept as true.
What is a Belief? A belief is a story we tell ourselves over and over again. A belief can be changed when one changes the story we tell ourselves. Belief is a mental attitude or state of mind in which an individual holds something to be true, real, or valid without requiring proof or evidence. Beliefs can be shaped by personal experiences, cultural upbringing, education, religion, or other sources of information. Beliefs play a significant role in shaping our perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and decision-making processes.
Where do Beliefs come from? Beliefs can come from a variety of sources, including personal experiences, cultural and societal influences, education and upbringing, and individual interpretations of information and ideas. Personal experiences can shape beliefs by providing firsthand evidence that supports or contradicts certain beliefs.
Beliefs vs Truths: For most souls beliefs are more powerful than Truths, especially when people are emotionally invested in their beliefs. For example, if someone strongly believes in a particular political ideology, they may be less likely to accept factual evidence that contradicts their beliefs. However, in most cases, truths are more powerful than beliefs because they are based on empirical evidence and can be verified through scientific methods.
Beliefs Alter Reality: Our beliefs affect our thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and decisions, which in turn can impact our experiences and the world around us. For example, if someone believes that they are capable of achieving their goals, they may be more motivated to work towards them and may ultimately achieve them.
Biology of Belief
The biology of belief is a term coined by Dr. Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist, former Professor at Stanford University, and author, to describe the relationship between our thoughts and beliefs and the functioning of our cells and overall health. According to Dr. Lipton's research, our beliefs can impact our biology at a cellular level.
Science of Epigenetics
One of the main ways this happens is through the process of epi-genetics, which refers to changes in gene expression that occur without changes to the underlying DNA sequence. Epigenetic changes can be influenced by a variety of factors, including environmental factors, lifestyle choices, and emotional experiences. Dr. Lipton suggests that our beliefs can also influence epigenetic changes and gene expression, ultimately affecting our physical health and well-being.
For example, if someone believes that they are inherently healthy and strong, this positive belief can lead to reduced stress levels, improved immune function, and overall better health outcomes. On the other hand, if someone holds negative beliefs and has a pessimistic outlook, this can lead to increased stress levels, compromised immune function, and increased risk of health problems. Overall, the biology of belief suggests that our thoughts and beliefs can have a significant impact on our physical health and well-being by influencing the functioning of our cells and genes. While further research is needed to fully understand this relationship, it highlights the importance of maintaining a positive mindset and cultivating beliefs that support our overall health and well-being.
The Mind Can Heal the Body
Did you know Optimists recover better from medical procedures, have healthier immune systems and live longer? Both in general and when suffering from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and kidney failure (Annals of Behavioral Medicine, vol 39, p 4).
Recent scientific studies are being used to measure the effects of both positive and negative thinking with respect to disease and optimal health. Never doubt that negative thoughts have just as much power as positive ones. Negative thinking can slowly wear you down, resulting in a host of mental, physical and emotional problems and conditions; including poor self-esteem, depression and even illness.
It is well accepted that negative thoughts and anxiety can make us ill. Stress – the belief that we are at risk – triggers physiological pathways such as the “fight-or-flight” response, mediated by the sympathetic nervous system. These have evolved to protect us from danger, but if switched on long-term they increase the risk of conditions such as diabetes and dementia.
What researchers are now realizing is that positive beliefs don’t just work by quelling stress. They have a positive effect too – feeling safe and secure, or believing things will turn out fine, seems to help the body maintain and repair itself. A recent analysis of various studies concluded that the health benefits of such positive thinking happen independently of the harm caused by negative states such as pessimism or stress, and are roughly comparable in magnitude (Psychosomatic Medicine, vol 70, p 741).
Optimism seems to reduce stress-induced inflammation and levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. It may also reduce susceptibility to disease by dampening sympathetic nervous system activity and stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system. The latter governs the so-called “rest and digest” response – the opposite of fight-or-flight.
Just as helpful as taking a rosy view of the future is having a rosy view of yourself. High “self-enhancers” – people who see themselves in a more positive light than others see them – have lower cardiovascular responses to stress and recover faster, as well as lower baseline cortisol levels (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 85, p 605).
I believe a force, a power, a science exists which few people understand but many use to overcome the adversity of life and achieve outstanding success. I believe that our thoughts create reality and I believe that science can prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
💚If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. Mark 9:23
The issue is that our human family has not learned the true science of reality. The miseducation of humanity alters our perception and our world view. It's time we learn the truth. It's time we start asking what is reality? How powerful is our consciousness? And how can I use my powers in a good way?
💚When humanity learns to become conscious creators. When humanity learns the power of our thoughts, our emotions and our intention on over our actions, it will be the dawn of a new day.
As a child of God, as a child of the Cosmos, as a child of the Creator you are endowed with superpowers. Most of our family doesn't know that but now is a great time to learn. But Matt - you might be thinking - you're a crazy bastard. What are you talking about? If you are thinking that - you're right - I am a crazy bastard but let me explain..
💚Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.
The phrase above is famous. Why? Because our attitude, our approach to life is paramount to us manifesting the highest good for ourselves and for our family. Not only is our attitude important but our beliefs are important. Our beliefs about our reality have a physical material impact upon the world. We can witness the manifestation of this wisdom by examining scientific research data.
A study from Stanford University found that just thinking you’re prone to a given outcome can trump both nature and nurture. Researchers learned that simply believing a physical reality about yourself can actually nudge the body in that direction—sometimes even more than actually being prone to the reality.
These researchers were interested in two areas—endurance during exercise and satiety during eating. For the endurance part, they did genetic testing on the participants to see whether they carried variants of a gene that make a person more or less prone to tiring easily. They also had people run on a treadmill to measure their endurance.
Then, they randomly split the participants into two groups, telling one they had a gene variant that made them tire easily and the other they had a gene variant made them more prone to exercise endurance—the catch was that they’d randomly divided the participants into these two groups, so some were being given accurate results and others the exact opposite.
When the participants ran on a treadmill again, their endurance changed measurably—those who were told they had poor endurance genes couldn’t run as long (they stopped 22 seconds sooner), and had poorer lung capacity, and their bodies didn’t rid themselves of carbon dioxide as effectively. Those who were told they had better endurance ran a bit longer, regardless of what genes they actually carried.
Similar results were found for the part that focused on a hormone that signals satiety (or fullness) to the brain during eating, so is protective against obesity. When the participants ate a meal after hearing the (true or false) results of their genetic tests, their bodies performed differently from how they had before hearing the news: those told they made more of the fullness hormone actually released 2.5 times more than they had before.
And that was also reflected in how much they ate. “It was really a much stronger and faster physiological satiety signal, and this mapped on to how much more full participants said that they felt,” said study author Bradley Turnwald in a press release. People told they had the gene to produce less of the hormone didn’t show a huge change in their eating or hormone levels.
“The take-home message here is that the mindset that you put people in when you deliver genetic risk information is not irrelevant,” said lead author Alia Crum, who’s lab has been studying how mind affects the physical body for some time. “The mindset of being genetically at risk or protected can alter how we feel, what we do and – as this study shows – how our bodies respond.”
The Placebo Effect
Placebo treatments induce real responses in the brain. Believing that a treatment will work can trigger neurotransmitter release, hormone production, and an immune response, easing symptoms of pain, inflammatory diseases, and mood disorders. Oddly - for such an "advanced society" - the Placebo Effect remains an unexplained phenomenon.
The effectiveness of a placebo is tied to our perception of how sophisticated the treatment is. Even a placebos pill color can make a difference. For example, Placebo sleeping pills work best if they're blue. Red placebos are better as stimulants or pain relievers and yellow placebos make better antidepressants. It's wild science.
We can't write off placebos as fake psychological effects because placebos can lead to very real and measurable chemical changes in our bodies. They can cause the brain to release its own natural pain killing chemicals.
More and more clinical trial drugs are failing to pass the placebo test. It's as if the placebo effect is getting stronger. In one study, patients were even told they were receiving placebos and they still felt real results.
Measuring the Placebo Effect in the Brain
Until the last decade or so, modern medicine has considered it largely a nuisance — an annoyance to account for when designing clinical trials. But now scientists armed with results of new imaging studies are beginning to harness the effect for the additional boost it can provide for therapy.
A group at the University of Michigan has found that MRI studies indicate that the placebo effect alters the brain’s interpretation of the body’s signals. At Stanford, associate professor of anesthesia Sean Mackey, MD, has taken this idea one step further and figured out how people can control the regions in the brain activated by the placebo effect to reduce pain.
“What we are doing with MRI is using laser beam-like focus and controlling specific brain centers associated with our perception of pain and turning it down right at the source,” says Mackey, who also directs the Stanford Pain Center. “We may ultimately be super-charging the same systems involved in placebo.”
Why the Placebo Effect Works
The clear ingredient in a placebo is expectation. If they work, it's because we expect them to. Now the bigger question is why does that work? The answer is that our soul, our consciousness is multi-dimensional (meaning it exists here in the 3rd dimension as well as in the spirit world where our soul originates) which gives us the ability to manifest whatever we believe to be true. The well establish scientific phenomena of the placebo effect demonstrates the power of belief upon the body. It is the embodiment of the phrase mind over matter.
These scientific discoveries reveal that every thought and feeling we have is expressed physiologically throughout our bodies. Molecules known as neuropeptides link our thoughts and our emotions to every part of our bodies. This is why placebos heal in real medical trials. The emotion of stress, for instance, causes our bodies to release cortisol. High cortisol levels or chronic stress puts our health at risk. High stress hormone levels are linked to increased cardiovascular disease. Our thoughts and feelings even switch genes on and off. In a very real sense, we are what we think.
This information makes me wonder how powerful is the mind? And what is it capable of doing?
Spontaneous Remission of Cancer
The spontaneous healing of cancer is a phenomenon that has been observed for hundreds and thousands of years and after having been the subject of many controversies, it is now accepted as an indisputable fact. Spontaneous remission of cancer is defined as the remission of cancer without any treatment, or with treatment that would not be expected to cause a tumor to decrease as much as it does. The term is frequently used by physicians unable to adequately explain a patient’s complete reversal of disease. After all, conventional physicians are trained to view things in a reductive way, attaching one action—a single drug or procedure—to a response or outcome.
Dr. Lorenzo Cohen, a professor of general oncology and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, has found that exceptional patients — those who had advanced, incurable cancer and who subsequently became disease-free or lived longer than expected — had adopted an attitude of "activism" that includes taking responsibility for their health and actively coping with their disease.
He cautions that patients can become "active" in their life and treatment and still not survive. But his team's findings suggest that "'activism' in its different forms might have a role in survival or more importantly for patient coping," according to the study, published in the journal Supportive Care in Cancer.
Several hypotheses to explain this phenomenon have been published. Most of them propose theories relating to a trigger mechanism which stimulates the host innate immune system to generate an “autoimmune type immunotherapy” against tumor cells. However, the main challenge is to identify the exact nature of this trigger. From a large body of medical literature, it is evident that the phenomenon of spontaneous regression of cancer in general does exist and is worthy of more investigation in the future.
John Matzke
John Matzke was just 30 years old when he was told that he had only 18 months to live. At 6 feet 4 inches tall, with blue eyes and broad shoulders, Matzke cut an impressive figure. He’d been a football player at Dartmouth College, where he studied geology. That was also where he met his wife, Lyn, who worked in town. In 1973, Matzke and Lyn moved to Wisconsin to run a small homestead, where they grew organic vegetables and raised chickens and a pig. Just seven weeks after the birth of his first son, in 1974, Matzke noticed a lump in his armpit. A biopsy showed that the lump was malignant melanoma, a particularly fatal form of skin cancer. He would have that tumor and then a few others removed by surgeons.
By 1984, the cancer had spread to his lung. Having served in the Army’s Fifth Armored Division in Ulm, Germany, Matzke went to the Veterans Administration hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, to see his oncologist, Joseph F. O’Donnell. Knowing that his patient’s chances of surviving the cancer were slim—and would only lessen with each passing day—O’Donnell urged him to undergo immediate treatment. The oncologist told Matzke that once melanoma invades an internal organ like the lung, the invariable outcome is death—usually within months—without immediate treatment. Even with treatment, his outlook was guarded. Only half of all melanoma patients with lung metastases are alive 30 months after surgery.
But Matzke didn’t follow his doctor’s recommendation. Instead, he took a month off to strengthen his body for the treatment that he knew would most likely be a grueling ordeal. He went on long hikes in the mountains, he ate healthy foods, and he meditated. He also spent a lot of time picturing himself healthy and visualizing good strong blood cells destroying the cancer in his body.
Matzke later flew back to Vermont, where O’Donnell repeated the chest X-ray to document the size and location of the tumor before starting treatment. But instead of the large cancerous lesion in Matzke’s lung, he saw . . . nothing. O’Donnell recalls, “When John came back a month later, it was remarkable—the tumor on his chest X-ray was gone. Gone, gone, gone.”
Call it remarkable, call it miraculous—such spontaneous remissions are as fascinating to physicians and scientists as they are rare. Doctors would like to understand cases like Matzke’s, who was given just 18 months to live but would survive another 18 years. And although a recurrence of the cancer—this time in his brain—would eventually claim his life on November 8, 1991, the fact that his lung tumor disappeared completely begs for an explanation.
Alice Epstein
Alice Epstein, a mathematician and sociologist, was diagnosed in 1985 with cancer of the kidney and told she should have her left kidney removed right away. One month after having her left kidney removed, the cancer spread to both her lungs, and she was informed she had just two to three months to live. Like Matzke, she was advised to undergo immediate treatment. Epstein, who says she had a “cancer-prone personality,” then turned to psychosynthesis, which she describes as a “combination of psychotherapy and spiritual therapy.”
It helped her overcome depression, difficulty expressing anger, and suppression of her own needs in order to please others—traits she and some psychologists believe are characteristic of the cancer-prone personality. Although she never received any medical or surgical treatment for the deadly cancer invading her lungs, six weeks after starting psychosynthesis, her tumors began to shrink. Within one year, they had disappeared without a trace. That was 22 years ago. Epstein, now healthy and 80 years old, tells her story with good-natured grace. But she acknowledges that despite contact with many other people with cancer, she has not met anyone who had a spontaneous remission as she did, despite their efforts.
Anita Moorjani
Anita Moorjani was taken to the hospital in a coma after seemingly having finally lost her battle against lymphoma. She had open lesions, large tumors all over, and she wasn’t expected to live for more than a couple of hours.
She reported having a near-death experience during which she was shown that she has more to accomplish in her life and was given the choice to return to her body or proceed with her death. If she returned, she would be cured of cancer and be free to spread the positive message of her experience. She chose to return and the doctors were completely baffled when, within days, they found no trace of cancer in her body, continually testing and retesting her due to their disbelief.
Miracle Healing
Pinning down spontaneous remissions has been a little like chasing rainbows. It’s not even possible to say just how frequently such cases occur—estimates generally range from 1 in 60,000 to 1 in 100,000 patients. Many cases, when subjected to close scrutiny, prove not to have been remissions at all. But genuine cases do exist, and throughout the history of medicine, physicians have recorded cases of spontaneous remission.
Such cases involve not just cancer but conditions like aortic aneurysm, a deadly ballooning of the heart’s major artery; Peyronie’s disease, a deformity of the penis; and childhood cataracts. These cases cause doctors to scratch their heads in wonder at what brought them about. But most of the attention on spontaneous recovery continues to focus on cancer, which takes the lives of over half a million people in the United States alone each year.
Although researchers say it is impossible to determine from a single patient what factors contributed to a spontaneous remission, Matzke’s case provides a tantalizing clue that the immune system may sometimes be at work. During his month of meditation and healthy living, white rings developed around his skin tumors, causing what doctors call a halo sign. These findings are considered evidence that the immune system is attacking melanocytes, the pigmented cells in the skin that are the source of this cancer. While most doctors say it is impossible to know just what causes the immune system to kick suddenly into action and induce a remission in any individual patient, Matzke’s case underscores questions that researchers would like to answer: Did his month of hiking, healthy eating, and meditating somehow strengthen his immune system? Did some as yet unidentified factor make his lung tumor mysteriously disappear?
Other mechanisms besides the immune system may also play a role in spontaneous remission, according to Caryle Hirshberg, coauthor of Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography and a consultant for the Institute of Noetic Sciences . The bibliography provides the most comprehensive review available of the published literature on spontaneous remissions. Reports included in the bibliography indicate that some cancers regressed after they outgrew their blood supply and underwent necrosis, or tissue death. This observation led researchers to develop antiangiogenesis drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels. Bevacizumab, the first angiogenesis inhibitor approved by the FDA, is in use now to treat colon cancer. Other patients improved when they experienced changes in their estrogen, thyroid, or growth hormone levels. Some patients improved after marked temperature elevations, with or without infection. Finally, a number of reports suggest that some emotional, spiritual, or mind-body connection may have induced a spontaneous remission.
Cultivating Grit & Will Power
What's more integral to success: innate talent or hard work? Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and a recipient of a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2013, argues it is neither inspiration nor perspiration.
The Military Teachings Positive Thinking
The US Army teaches soldiers to maintain a positive mental attitude (PMA) in all circumstances, especially when conditions are difficult. A PMA can help soldiers focus on the good, make things better, and build a community that can accomplish its mission. An Army program instituted more than a decade ago continues to improve its processes and scope, providing attendees with valuable coping skills for life’s hardships.
Ready and Resilient Program manager Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Gilpin said the Master Resiliency Training class was initially created just for Soldiers.
“MRT was developed around 2010 for Soldiers coming home from deployments needing a way to deal with problems,” said Gilpin. “The Army created this program to help them work through issues.”
Once the Army began implementing the program, adjustments were made to improve it to make it applicable to not only Soldiers, but also civilians and spouses. Gilpin said these changes focused on much more than the effects of deployment.
“Over the years, it’s turned into the program we have today,” said Gilpin. “It teaches 14 skills that address multiple ways of dealing with everyday life problems, not just ones that are Army-related.”
MRT is an 80-hour course offered multiple times a year. The most recent one, which completed Feb. 11, had 26 graduates go through a series of skill training designed to teach how to have a positive mindset.
The Physics of Sound
There are several ways we express thought: we use our minds to visualize, we make are, we write or type and we speak. Speaking words out loud is a powerful phenomena. When you think of sound waves, you probably think of invisible vibrations moving weightless through the air - not carrying any mass. Physicists have found evidence that particles of sound carry tiny amounts of mass. That means they can produce their own gravitational fields - which could be a big deal for our understanding of space.
MetaPhysics of Sound
The ancient mystics of the East taught that different sounds form different patterns, creating the endless variety of shapes, sizes, and densities that are manifest all around us. They also regarded sound as a power that could be harnessed to create positive change. The Hindu and Buddhist sages, for example, repeated specific sound formulas, or mantras, to bring about a host of powerful effects, both external and internal. They taught that by reciting mantras to a specific deity, we can create within our consciousness the same vibration as that deity's. In essence, they saw the sacred words of the mantra as conduits that would bring spiritual energies into the world.
Likewise, the Kabbalists taught that the Divine Word, the speech of God, creates and sustains both the heavens and the earth. Again, they believed that the various objects in our universe were different because a specific and unique combination of letters of sacred speech sustained each one. And like their Eastern counterparts, some Kabbalists taught that when a devotee calls upon one of the names of God, the specific influence associated with that name is released.
The Power of the Divine Voice
The power of the divine sound is also a theme in the Jewish and Christian traditions. Genesis tells us that creation began when God spoke the words, "Let there be Light."
Echoing the immortal words of the Hindu Vedas "In the beginning was Brahman with whom was Vak, or the Word, and the Word is Brahman," the Gospel of John also says that sound is the author of all things: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.. . . All things were made by him."
Another Christian text, the Gnostic manuscript known as Trimorphic Protennoia ("the triple-formed primal thought"), describes the awesome powers of speech, pervading all things and latent within each of us. In this text, a divine figure "in the likeness of a female" says, "I am the Invisible One within the All....[I] am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they know that a seed dwells within."
The Science of Cymatics
Cymatics is the study of visible sound and vibration, a field that explores how sound waves interact with various media to produce patterns and structures. The term "cymatics" comes from the Greek word "kyma," meaning "wave." The science of cymatics investigates how sound vibrations can shape and influence physical matter.
Cymatics were discovered by Dr. Hans Jenny after he became curious of the effects that sound could have on fluids, pastes, and powders. His experiments with sound and vibration, where he used various substances like sand, liquids, and pastes placed on a metal plate, demonstrated how different frequencies created specific, often intricate patterns. He quickly noticed these patterns weren’t merely an "unregulated chaos” but instead formed a uniform pattern based on the dynamics of the sound and the amount of the substance that is used. These are gorgeous fractal geometries, but is that where it ends?
Some people argue that higher frequencies actually have the ability to harm or heal. From a frequency perspective, I’m not entirely sure if this is the case. However, music has historically had an effect on the listener(s). I’m sure most of us can relate to feeling an immediate shift in mood when you hear a certain song. Whatever relationship you have with the song (love, hate, indifference, etc) will determine the direction your mood will go. So psychologically, this not only has merit, but is proven.
Masaro Emoto Sound Research
Masaru Emoto was a Japanese businessman and author who claimed that human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water.
Holographic Brain Theory
According to the holographic model, the mind/body can't distinguish the difference between the neural holograms the brain uses to experience reality and the ones it conjures up while imagining reality. Both have a dramatic effect on the human organism, an effect so powerful that it can modulate the immune system, duplicate and/or negate the effects of potent drugs, heal wounds with amazing rapidity, melt tumors, override our genetic programming and reshape our living flesh in ways that almost defy belief. This then is the first message: that each of us possess the ability, at least at the same level, to influence our health and control our physical form in ways that are nothing short of magic. We are all potential wonder-workers, yogis and psychics.
The second message is that elements that go into the making of these neural holograms are many and subtle. They include the images upon which we meditate, our hopes and fears, the attitudes of our doctors, our unconscious prejudices, our individual and cultural beliefs, and our faith in things both spiritual and technological. More than just facts, these are important clues, signposts that point toward those things that we must become aware of and acquire mastery over if we are to learn how to unleash and manipulate these talents. There are, no doubt, other factors involved, other influences that shape these abilities. [2]
How Powerful Are Your Thoughts?
Why is Belief important to Chesed Torah?
Belief is considered an important concept in the Torah, the central text of Judaism, because it forms the foundation of Jewish faith and practice. Jewish tradition emphasizes the importance of belief in one God, who created the world and oversees its affairs. This belief is expressed in the Shema, a prayer recited daily by Jews around the world, which affirms the oneness of God and the importance of loving and serving Him. Belief is also seen as a way to deepen one's spiritual connection and to cultivate a sense of purpose and meaning in life. In the Torah, belief is often linked to actions, as the commandments and laws are seen as a way to demonstrate one's faith and commitment to God. Additionally, belief in the coming of the Messiah, a central tenet of Jewish belief, is seen as a way to inspire hope and optimism in the face of adversity. Overall, belief is an important concept in the Torah because it provides a framework for understanding the nature of God and the universe and forms the basis for Jewish faith and practice.
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