Day 232 of 365 - The Dilemma of the Visible and Invisible
An article I read this morning brought me again to a dilemma I experience a lot around this blog theme of health and vitality. It was describing how science has evolved in the last couple of centuries to embrace different levels of understanding, but how our global culture still operates mainly from the perspective of science from a couple of centuries ago.
Everybody is somewhat familiar with Newtonian principles which look at life, the environment and the universe in a mechanistic way. We've learned a lot from scientists taking things apart into smaller and smaller components and studying how they interact. This created the belief in determinism, that we can predict how something will behave by knowing all its parts. For the most part, that's how a lot of us, including me, look at health and health care for example. We identify what the 'broken' components are in a body system and we try to fix them by replacing them or overriding them, either by taking something out or adding something in.
Many of my posts around health have been written as somewhat prescriptive 'how to' recommendations or practices. For example eating in a certain way can reduce inflammation, which can reduce disease symptoms in our body. The impact of our actions can be measured, via lab results or other kinds of testing, to show us whether or not we are succeeding.
In the last century, scientists have formulated newer theories, mathematically based, like chaos theory which considers the bigger impact of very small changes. Think of the idea of the global weather impact of something small on one side of the planet ultimately creating a big effect on the other side. Astronauts have witnessed this via their observations from the space station.
Then there is quantum physics, which describes atoms, and reality, as interactions of invisible energy fields entangled with one another, rather than the tiny concrete parts previously considered. We might be able to believe this at the subatomic level, because we can't actually see it, but it's much harder to conceive of in a broader view of the world or our own existence as human bodies.
New chemistry is concerned with the role of vibrational energy impacting molecular interactions. Life controlling signals originate both from physical chemicals and immaterial energy waves. This kind of science helps explain the mind-body connection, for example, the measurable effect of meditation on brain chemicals and their subsequent influence on bodily functions. Included in this is the new biology of epigenetics, discussed in other posts, which recognizes how applied consciousness can shape our biology.
This still seems deterministic, in a way. The next step, of what is called noetic science is more challenging. It is all encompassing, emphasizing that the physical characteristics of everything and everyone are controlled by immaterial energies which are part of the universe's energy field. From this perspective, our soul or spirit, as an aspect of that universal energy, is in harmonic resonance with our physical bodies. This is the creative force behind the consciousness that shapes our physical reality.
This brings me to my dilemma, which is really my vacillation in beliefs between the visible and the invisible, the concrete and the spiritual. To relate this to health and vitality, consider the reports of spontaneous remissions of serious health conditions. Sometimes these have been reported as miracles, such as people visiting spiritual healers or holy sites. Sometimes they are reported as results of energy work, such as a tumor being visibly shrunk from Qigong, observed via ultrasound during the treatment. Sometimes they are reported as effects from intensive meditation retreats where people have learned to mediate their brain wave states for long enough periods to change their body chemistry and mitigate disease processes.
I believe all these things. However, in my day to day life, my primary approach to my health and vitality continues to be more the concrete strategies than the spiritual or energetic approaches. Sometimes I wonder what it would take for me to be a purist, to do an experiment involving tipping that balance, whereby I would put the majority of my emphasis on the latter rather than the former. I am curious enough that I suspect it will happen at some point in the remaining years of my life.
Everybody is somewhat familiar with Newtonian principles which look at life, the environment and the universe in a mechanistic way. We've learned a lot from scientists taking things apart into smaller and smaller components and studying how they interact. This created the belief in determinism, that we can predict how something will behave by knowing all its parts. For the most part, that's how a lot of us, including me, look at health and health care for example. We identify what the 'broken' components are in a body system and we try to fix them by replacing them or overriding them, either by taking something out or adding something in.
Many of my posts around health have been written as somewhat prescriptive 'how to' recommendations or practices. For example eating in a certain way can reduce inflammation, which can reduce disease symptoms in our body. The impact of our actions can be measured, via lab results or other kinds of testing, to show us whether or not we are succeeding.
In the last century, scientists have formulated newer theories, mathematically based, like chaos theory which considers the bigger impact of very small changes. Think of the idea of the global weather impact of something small on one side of the planet ultimately creating a big effect on the other side. Astronauts have witnessed this via their observations from the space station.
Then there is quantum physics, which describes atoms, and reality, as interactions of invisible energy fields entangled with one another, rather than the tiny concrete parts previously considered. We might be able to believe this at the subatomic level, because we can't actually see it, but it's much harder to conceive of in a broader view of the world or our own existence as human bodies.
New chemistry is concerned with the role of vibrational energy impacting molecular interactions. Life controlling signals originate both from physical chemicals and immaterial energy waves. This kind of science helps explain the mind-body connection, for example, the measurable effect of meditation on brain chemicals and their subsequent influence on bodily functions. Included in this is the new biology of epigenetics, discussed in other posts, which recognizes how applied consciousness can shape our biology.
This still seems deterministic, in a way. The next step, of what is called noetic science is more challenging. It is all encompassing, emphasizing that the physical characteristics of everything and everyone are controlled by immaterial energies which are part of the universe's energy field. From this perspective, our soul or spirit, as an aspect of that universal energy, is in harmonic resonance with our physical bodies. This is the creative force behind the consciousness that shapes our physical reality.
This brings me to my dilemma, which is really my vacillation in beliefs between the visible and the invisible, the concrete and the spiritual. To relate this to health and vitality, consider the reports of spontaneous remissions of serious health conditions. Sometimes these have been reported as miracles, such as people visiting spiritual healers or holy sites. Sometimes they are reported as results of energy work, such as a tumor being visibly shrunk from Qigong, observed via ultrasound during the treatment. Sometimes they are reported as effects from intensive meditation retreats where people have learned to mediate their brain wave states for long enough periods to change their body chemistry and mitigate disease processes.
I believe all these things. However, in my day to day life, my primary approach to my health and vitality continues to be more the concrete strategies than the spiritual or energetic approaches. Sometimes I wonder what it would take for me to be a purist, to do an experiment involving tipping that balance, whereby I would put the majority of my emphasis on the latter rather than the former. I am curious enough that I suspect it will happen at some point in the remaining years of my life.
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