I previously concluded that we contain, within ourselves, a creative force comparable to that creative force, or higher power, that people often look to the sky for.

The effects of our own psyche in this process are profound.  I have found that my negative outlook was CAUSING me to have negative experiences by preventing me from acknowledging any kind of positive experience.  The world is not treating me particularly poorly, since I believe that it tends to do so, I interpret my experience negatively, fulfilling the prophecy of my own belief.

When I realized that my negativity was my own, and not the world's, I shifted the creative power inside of me, consciously acknowledging my life's blessings and expecting and seeking out more.  And lo and behold, I began again to have positive experiences.  And powefully, insightfully positive experiences that reinforced the lesson learned.

This shift in my outlook occured about 1 and 1/2 to 2 years ago.  I am currently learning the same lesson over again.  I expect I will do so repeatedly for the rest of my life.

I am under no illusion that simply "believing in yourself" can solve all your problems.  The experience of excessive health complications, bureaucratic inefficiency and outright ignorance and theft by doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceuticals is difficult, to state it modestly.  My conditions are few and mild (even my CH), but for the past two years I have watched my girlfriend battle the health system and be tossed mercilessly from operator to operator and unsympathetically charged on technicalities.

Nevertheless, I would be willing to bet large sums if I had them that hundreds if not thousands of CH sufferers and millions more would find their lives transformed if they could make this seemingly simple and apparent insight.  I'm sure many of you have had a similar experience and would agree.

I finished my first rant by saying that we are all creators, and this essentially is what I meant.  Our INTERPRETATION of our experience is a creative act, and if we interpret that experience pessimistically, it will make stronger the true negativity of our experience and overshadow any positive aspects, creating a vicious circle.

This I claim is the true power of human creativity.  Uncontrollable external conditions aside, we have the power to CREATE HAPPINESS.

By looking outside of ourselves for help or good fortune in such situations essentially removes us from the place from which we can solve our own problems, and puts the responsibility of creating positive experience in our lives on a Higher Power whose workings we are already spinning backwards into a negative light.

While our psyches are clearly injured by our own pessimism, our physiology is no less affected.  Stress, anxiety, depression, and other negative psychological states, by traditional Western medicine deemed reducible to bio-chemistry and treated through neuro-pharmacology, can sometimes be caused, or at least compounded to unreasonable levels, by self-defeating attitudes which set a person up for negative experience.

It has been known by countless cultures throughout the world that negative psychological states are due to imbalances in (spiritual) energy. By "known", I mean that, according to their belief systems, this was considered a truth, and all actions, like treating illness, factored it in implicitly.  Yin-Yang, the dual forces which comprise Qi (chee, the universal energy/life force) are a well-known example.

The idea I am getting at is that physiological, and thus physical, ailments can be caused by energy imbalances which in turn can be caused by negative experiences/feelings.  Psychologists, and especially child development experts, pretty universally agree today in a model in which personality development can be imbalanced in one direction or another based on the varying degrees of physical and psychological needs fulfillment one might experience.  This is a nice academic, secular, and mechanistic way of expressing the same idea embodied by the concept of Qi.

Needs fulfillment works for many science-ologists because it explains personality disorder by examining the lack of fulfillment of what are basically animal needs.  First are the essentials of food and water, warmth, then mother bonding, trust, then on to the varying degrees of physical and emotional independence.

Freud's basic insight, expanded upon later by many others, was that any imbalance in the development process may disrupt the balance of the psyche and lead to later neuroses.  Neuroses which, as pointed out before, though often bio-chemical (implying present from birth), can also be psycho-physiological (implying caused by unbalanced development).  And the latter imbalances, as mentioned before, can augment over time, be compounded by the experience and outlook of the developing individual.

Many cases of such neuroses can and have been treated without medicine.  Many more could be.  The human mind's ability to reconcile with past experiences which may have caused trauma and pre-positioned one to experience the world negatively is incredible.  This has been shown through psychoanalytic methods (like Freud), and recently, and I believe more powerfully, through humanistic, existential, and experiential therapies, in which people are empowered to create their own experience through reinterpreting the external world, and ultimately are empowered to take control of their life back from the animalistic tendencies which have been trying to correct the imbalances created in the past.

The important point I'm trying to get at is the misconception, the imbalance actually, of the interpretation based on an internal/external dichotomy.  When I place too much emphasis on the external (I was created by a force other than myself this way, so there is nothing I myself can do to change that) I deny myself control of my own inner life.

Likewise, when a physiological problem, like CH, is interpreted as externally created (rather than internally, as in trauma experiences which are reacted to differently by different people depending on their ability to respond to that experience) we are forced to find external treatment. 

For example, it is believed that CH is at its root neurological; an improper distribution of hormones or intake of essentials chemicals due to an essential and incidental malfunction of the particular neurological function.  Because the cause originates with chemical system directly associated with it, and that chemical system is regulated outside (externally) of one's conscious control (that is, not in the mind, not internally), its treatment likewise must be outside of one's conscious control.

I do believe that within the overwhelming percentage of our brain and DNA we have the power to solve all of our problems, internal and external, but that is a radical belief.  For now, imagine just this: that for many ailments, especially mysterious one's such as CH, there is the potential that the origin is internal, that is, in the psyche, rather than external, or in the body.

If you've read all the way here and are still with me, I am surprised, pleased, worried (about you), and impressed (with myself).  I have to organize myself and formulate how to express my next series of thoughts on how all this relates directly to CH.  Please respond! To any part of this! Please! I'll continue this thought process in a new thread (so each section, written independently, can be viewed and responded to independently.

Peace
Brian

Brian,

Part one concluded with this:

brian wrote on Jan 26^th, 2009 at 5:07am:



And so far we have this concluding part II:

brian wrote on Jan 28^th, 2009 at 2:43am:




brian wrote on Jan 28^th, 2009 at 2:43am:


Ok.