In 12-step communities there’s a saying, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” When I first heard the expression, I thought it meant secrets, along with the things you’re ashamed of, and/or the emotions and memories you’re trying to repress, will drive you to act out in your addiction. While that’s true, I’ve also learned recently that secrets can make you physically sicker. I don’t mean the stomachache when you’re hiding something from your best friend. I mean arthritis and cardiovascular issues.
In a meta-analysis, meaning a study that looked at numerous other studies, Marcus Mund and Kristin Mitte found those who repressed their emotions had significant associations with cancer and high blood pressure. There’s also a study from 1999 when Dr. Joshua Smyth assigned asthma and rheumatoid arthritis patients to write either about the most stressful event of their lives or about emotionally neutral topics. He and his colleagues found the patients who wrote about stressful life experiences had clinically relevant changes in health status at four months compared with those who wrote about emotionally neutral topics. The gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving, according to the authors.
Expression, not repression. Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
Meaning, just by writing about stressful events, by sharing their secrets, patients with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis were clinically, measurably, better off than people who kept their thoughts and feelings bottled up. The effects may have lasted longer than four months, but Smythe and his colleagues didn’t follow up to find out.
As someone who is extremely psycho-somatic, meaning I have a strong link between my mind and body, I already know this information. However, what is news to me is the measurable effects. Not only do people feel better emotionally when they express their internal landscape, but researchers have demonstrated their blood pressure drops, their heart rate decreases, and pain levels decline. That’s really freaking cool if you ask me. I love when science confirms something I know to be true anecdotally.
Why am I writing this post? I think it’s because there are likely people out there saying to themselves, “The past is the past. I’m over it. I don’t need to talk about it. Why dwell on something you can’t change?” For those people, my response is, “You can’t change the past, but you can change how it’s affecting your present. How it’s impacting your body. Expressing a stressful event, even if it’s just in a journal, will help you feel better physically. And you don’t have to take my word for it – researchers have found that to be true as well.”
Not only researchers, but spiritual teachers. In fact, mine says, “It is natural for all living beings to search for a way to express themselves fully. Sometimes this expression takes the form of crude physical pleasure, and sometimes that of subtle psychic pleasure.” He also says, “Repression directly affects the subconscious mind. Gradually the psychic structure is severely damaged, and finally the mind is totally changed. The result is that people are inflicted with a defeatist psychology and an inferiority complex.”
That doesn’t sound great to me. I’d rather be strong physically and mentally. I want to feel happy and free. Who knew that could happen with something as simple as writing in a journal for 15 minutes?
I dream of a world where we recognize repressing feelings and past events takes a toll on our physical, mental, and emotional health. A world where we understand it’s our innate desire to express. A world where we realize we’ll feel stronger and happier if we express what’s going on for us. A world where we understand we are only as sick as our secrets.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
You know how people keep saying life feels like the movie Groundhog Day right now? That comparison doesn’t resonate for me in terms of the movie itself because in the film, Bill Murray broke up monotony by learning the piano and wooing Andie MacDowell. In my life, it feels like I’m watching Groundhog Day over and over again because I already know what to expect each day for the most part: work, a walk, and a Zoom call.
I didn’t know until I started writing this post, but a definition of Groundhog Day, is “a situation in which a series of unwelcome or tedious events appear to be recurring in exactly the same way.” So from that perspective, yeah, I’m on board with life right now being Groundhog Day. If variety is the spice of life, my life is pretty bland at the moment. There’s a pinch of variety in terms of decorating my apartment for the holidays, and FaceTiming with my family for Hanukkah, but otherwise it’s pretty monotonous over here.
When I told my mom I wasn’t sure I had anything to write about this week, especially not in a positive or uplifting way, she told me a lot of people likely feel the way I do. They’re glum because they can’t celebrate the holidays with their normal traditions, and their lives are also an endless cycle of work, walks, and Zoom calls. I know folks are feeling optimistic because vaccine distribution has started so there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but honestly, I feel like a little kid because my response is, “Yeah, but how does that help me now?” It doesn’t.
I love this picture. So joyful! Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
And that’s true. It doesn’t. The question becomes what can I do now, in this present moment, to bring variety? In the middle of writing this post I pulled out my guitar for the first time in years. No agenda, no goal in mind like, “I want to be good enough to play in front of other people.” I just played for me, for the fun of it. I also conducted a science experiment where I mixed two drops of food coloring in oil and then poured the mixture into a glass of room temperature water. The result? Water fireworks because the food coloring separates from the oil and plummets to the bottom of the glass. My inner child loves science experiments and they definitely bring variety.
Often I look to the future to meet my needs: “I’ll feel better when XYZ happens,” and I get stuck on a certain strategy to meet those needs. For instance, “I need the pandemic to be over in order to experience variety again.” What I’m reminded through my nonviolent communication training is there are a thousand strategies to meet every need. There’s no one way or a right way. When I focus on the need itself, I’m able to brainstorm and find delightful strategies in the moment, like creating water fireworks. And sometimes the only way to meet a need in the present moment is to remember a time when the need was met in the past and relive it. The body doesn’t know the difference between the past, present, or future so reliving something can become a present moment experience.
I know this post isn’t like many of my other ones, but I share it because I want people to know they’re not alone. And secondly, it’s my wish that sharing my process can help someone else. And if not, at least I’ll have a reminder of that time in 2020 when I felt like I was losing my mind due to monotony and then played my guitar and watched food coloring metamorphosize in water.
I dream of a world where we focus on the present and what we need in the moment. A world where we remember there are a thousand ways to meet every need. A world where we understand we don’t have to put our happiness on layaway and instead we can do something to change our mood right here and right now if we choose. A world where we indulge in little joys.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I had a conversation with a friend this weekend and was reminded that believing in materialism is a choice. We in the West take it for granted that materialism is the most scientific, rational way of being and that conversely, spirituality is unscientific and irrational. But is that really true?
First, some definitions. Materialism is the theory or belief that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. Spirituality is the theory or belief that there is more to life than meets the senses, and more to the universe than just purposeless mechanics. It also involves believing in a higher form of intelligence or consciousness.
Spirituality can be studied and one way to do so is through psychic phenomena. For instance, the feeling that someone is staring at you. Did you know that numerous scientists have run experiments on exactly that? The basic setup is a starer sits a few yards away from a staree. The starer flips a coin that determines whether or not they will stare at the staree. The staree then responds that yes, they are being stared at, or no, they are not. In a total of 33,357 trials of this experiment, the overall success rate was 54.5%, meaning 54.5% of the time, the staree guessed correctly. Left purely to chance, the success rate would have instead been 50%.
Isn’t this image great? Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash
As you can likely infer from the number of experiments – more than 33,000 of them – the setups have varied. Some people were separated by windows, some were stared at over a one-way video circuit, and some had a person sit in an electromagnetically sealed chamber! Yet despite the scientific proof over and over again showing extrasensory perception is real, skeptics say the experiments are flawed or fraudulent. They have no evidence to their claims but they hold on to their perspective anyway. I ask you, were all 33,357 trials “junk” science? Why is it so hard to believe psychic phenomena is real? It’s only hard to believe if you’re a hardcore materialist because in that worldview, psychic phenomena cannot exist.
People are welcome to believe what they want, but let’s not pretend materialism is the most rational and scientific way of being when science itself shows there’s more to life than what can be sensed with the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. Let’s also not pretend science and spirituality are silos when in fact, they can support one another, and also some spiritual teachers (like my own) welcome science.
My spiritual teacher said “science is indispensable for human progress.” And also that, “[W]e should probe for solutions to problems through the proper cultivation of science. . . No matter how complicated problems are, we have to evolve the necessary scientific means to meet the challenge.”
Science can be interlaced with spirituality. They don’t have to be separate. They can support one another and spirituality can motivate science. Aren’t people curious about the world? About the mysteries of creation? If we keep beating the drum that materialism is all there is, we miss out on explaining what is currently unexplained. We sell ourselves short and limit ourselves as well as our own understanding. That doesn’t seem very scientific to me.
I dream of a world where we understand materialism is only one way of looking at the world. A world where we realize spirituality can be just as scientific as materialism. A world where we use spirituality to propel scientific innovation and solve the greatest challenges facing us today.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about logic and intuition. I notice that for the most part people seem to advocate one or the other.
On the logic side, science and rationality are worshipped. Some people disregard anything that cannot be proved scientifically. If there’s no randomized controlled trial, the thing is full of crap. This is why people say homeopathics are snake oil, despite the loads of anecdotal evidence that say otherwise. Maybe what’s happening is our scientific instruments aren’t sensitive enough yet to measure homeopathics.
I like this picture because it represents division, but at the same time unison.
Also, the thing about randomized controlled trials is they’re imperfect and there is often conflicting evidence. In radiology, for instance, a subject I am very familiar with as writing about CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds is my primary source of income, there’s a huge debate about breast cancer screening. A study from Canada recently stated breast cancer screening causes more harm than good. The researchers argue breast cancer screening leads to overdiagnosis, or diagnosing tumors as cancerous that may not become problematic. In other words, diagnosing cancer too much.
On the other hand, there are also randomized controlled trials stating the opposite, that breast cancer screening causes early diagnosis, i.e., catching a cancer early, and not overdiagnosis. Advocates vehemently argue the true harm to women is from these scientific studies that scare women into believing they don’t need their regular mammograms. Who is right?
For those who eschew science and rationality, there’s a belief in the infallibility of intuition, that intuition is always right. Except, that’s not always true and not everybody’s intuition is equally valid. How many times have we watched a contestant on The Bachelor declare they know they’ll receive the final rose? That “their gut” tells them they’ve found the love of their life and then the person ends up being wrong? Clearly there’s something going on here.
My spiritual teacher defines intuition as a reflection of Consciousness, or Spirit. He also says that meditation leads to a clearer reflection of Consciousness. In that context, it makes sense why people can be off when they say they’re using their intuition; either the person is really tapping into their ego, or their reflection to Consciousness isn’t clear. Perhaps it’s like a mirror and some people have smudges all over it so they can see some of the reflection but not all of it.
I have a tendency to completely accept something a person says if they say it came from their intuition, especially if it can’t be scientifically proved. However, people, me included, are wrong sometimes! I have a brain so I need to use it!
My spiritual teacher also says:
The highest treasure of human beings, distinct from other creatures, is their intellectual superiority. Had there been no intelligence in humans, they would hardly be different from other animals. This philosophical consciousness will lead humanity to greater intellectuality. And this constant pursuit of intellectuality leads one to its furthest limit, where intuition begins. – Shrii Shrii Anandamurtii
Intuition is valued, of course, but so is intellect. Maybe it’s time I start using both logic and intuition. Maybe we all need that integration.
I dream of a world where we don’t accept something as true just because someone said they had a feeling about it. And at the same time, I dream of a world where we understand some things are beyond logic, some things don’t make sense and they may never will. A world that’s not logic versus intuition, but a world that relies on logic and intuition.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.