I recently posted a link to a “skeptics” site on my Facebook page. I did so primarily because this site underlined my expectations about how buzz words, like epigenetics and telomeres, will be used by marketers who barely scrape the surface of the knowledge base needed to really understand what those words mean. I got some negative feedback as a result of that post, because some people interpreted it to mean I did not believe in a mind-body connection and one person even used the word “demonize”, which, while it’s a cool word, is a complete misinterpretation of my stance.
Such is the danger of the internet. You write one thing and it is taken out of context and pontificated (another favorite word of mine) upon, without ever bothering to look at any of the other work, or comments the person has done or said. This is a valuable lesson for me, since it underlines my need to remember that everything I say or write in public has to be geared to the first time listener.
That listener will not have read our book The Immortality Edge. That person will not have read my many posts and blogs on how meditation positively affects the health of the telomere. They will not have read the posts and newsletters I’ve written about the negative effects of stress on the telomere. That person will not have seen the articles on children raised in an orphanage, or kids who are bullied, where several years of life are lost due to the mental stress. That person will not have seen any of my Youtube videos, much less my in-person presentations at the Longevity Now conferences. They will not have heard my mentions of Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Belief, or of Abraham Hicks teachings.
They also will not have read the many newsletters, blogs and chapters based on the works of Nobel Laureate, Elizabeth Blackburn and her colleague Elisa Epel – almost all of which documents the effects of meditation and stress on your biologic time clock; the telomere.
And they certainly will not have read the following, which is rather personal. I coach a small group of people on success-related topics (yes, my own little Mastermind) and this is one of the very early writings from 8 or 9 years ago. I share it with you, so you know where I stand! Here it is:
Magnetic Resonance
Somewhere around 1987, I sat in a large auditorium at Georgetown University. I was surrounded by other young, impressionable undergrad minds, deep in the process of “getting into med school”. Many of us were unsure of ourselves and unsure of our futures.
I certainly was.
But each, in our own way, was determined to do our best to get the carrot at the end of that stick, so no matter what they threw at us, we’d deal with it.
That feeling rapidly went out the window, when the Prof who was going to ‘teach us computers’, showed up.
His name was Leddy, I think, and he was billed as one of the inventors of the MRI. (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, for you non-medical types)
Now, Dr Leddy was probably a decent fellow and certainly brilliant. And in truth, he enriched mankind beyond what most will ever imagine. Yet I suspect his name will be forgotten in antiquity and I also suspect he had (has) no clue of what he achieved. I am not sure he even cared, as he pushed onward with his research. Inventors are like that. Once one thing is done, it’s on to the next, almost before the final screw is tightened and the final coat of paint has dried. Ask me how I know.
The sad truth is, that Dr Leddy was SO SMART, he could not communicate with human beings. He might as well have been from another planet! What he said was unintelligible and made no sense and he was teaching us – get this – a long defunct computer language known as BASIC!
It was so basic, he could not reduce his mind to the level of human communication needed to teach it.
Perhaps the words “idiot savant” are too strong, but you get the idea.
We all wound up across the river in Alexandria at Radio Shack, where we probably could have learned BASIC, but most of us were so flummoxed (Sorry, you’ll have to look that one up!) by the experience, that no one learned anything and we all got a “B” anyway!
And yet, the MRI has gone on to become one of the premiere discoveries of the 20th century, lending incredible diagnostic power (almost too much, since we all now know we have spondylolisthesis, or stenosis, or compressed discs somewhere in our spines!) to modern medicine.
As a matter of fact, new uses are continuously being developed for this tool and most likely will continue, until Medicare reimbursements push us to the next big thing!
But I am not here to talk about diagnosis or imaging.
I am here to talk about magnetism and resonance.
I wonder if our dear Dr Leddy would understand what he proved? Somehow, I think not.
He actually proved what success authors have been saying since the dawn of the telegraph and probably long before.
He proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that the human body is a magnetic, electrically charged energy field. He proved that magnetic resonance, or if you will “natural harmonics”, exist in our bodies.
And where has the MRI been most useful, in even its early iterations?
The brain and spinal column, e.g. the nervous system.
And when someone dies, their physiologic processes of their individual cells do not stop for some time. What happens at the earliest stages of death is the loss of the electrical charge across the cell membranes (e.g. the way cells communicate!).
Brain death, for instance, is the loss of the electrical activity of the brain, not the absolute death of the body!
Now, this does not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that “thoughts are things”, but it does lend fire to the argument that the human body and especially the brain, might act as a transmitting and receiving station. That thoughts indeed could be “things” and that thoughts could potentially be projected and received.
Do you think there is a doctor out there who does not believe that the mind is capable of healing the body of anything… we just don’t think it will happen in our lifetimes!
If one believes this — and deep down, even the most dyed in the wool naysayers would probably admit this, if only in the silence of their own rooms, to only themselves — then one might go so far as to use some of the phrases that pre-date the MRI by decades or even centuries.
Things like, “thoughts become things” and “as man thinketh” and the more modern, Law of Attraction, begin to “smell” more like science, and feel more like truth, and look more valuable, and sound more plausible than ever before. The current work of Dr Bruce Lipton is really just a brilliant application of Quantum Physics to ancient mentalist theories. I have no doubt the scientific mechanism for these theories will be found in the long suffering science of epigenetics.
The key point is understanding the importance of spending the only currency you have absolute abundance of and absolute control over, the currency of your thoughts, becomes even more important than ever.
So I remind you of your homework.
Envision what you want, lend it your emotion, and write it and say it out loud 2x a day and with real feeling and belief (faith) that you can and will have it.
I will ask for volunteers to read their goals out loud at the next meeting. I do not need to hear all of them or everything. Indeed it’s fine that much of it remains private. But all aspects (especially, those involving numbers!!!) should be clear, concise and read with conviction.
Or, said another way, what you say and feel should resonate with what you want, so you can magnetize it and draw it to you (if I were a success author, I would say ‘draw it unto you’ to give it that “religious” flavor… lucky for you, I am just Dave!).
At the very least it will activate, or should I say magnetize your limbic system, to seek out examples of what you want in the world.
I look forward to our next meeting!
Dr Dave
P.S. but I still don’t think I can “think my way to blonde hair”! Also please note, this was written in 2005, long before the explosion of telomere biology and epigenetics became popular.