When I first came across the Innate Health understanding (there's a lengthy, 4-part story about that here, if you're curious), things changed for me considerably, and I saw pretty much all of life quite differently.
Except mental health conditions.
See, I'd done a psychology degree, gone to medical school, worked as a doctor (even considering Psychiatry at one point) and basically been indoctrinated into the medical model of mental health so comprehensively, that when I heard people like 3Ps Psychiatrist Dr Bill Pettit saying things like,
“There's only one cause of mental illness, and therefore one cure”
…well, I just dismissed it out of hand. Because I (i.e. the Giles Ego Construct 📦) knew for a fact that it was more complicated than that. I'd read textbooks, had training, hell, even got qualifications that supported a much more granular view!
I also, very understandably, subscribed to the widely-held view that things like depression were caused by a deficiency in brain serotonin, because—again—that's what I'd been taught, over and over again, and I never thought to question it. (It's not true.)
The first time I listened to Dr Bill Pettit being interviewed on a podcast, I switched it off half way through, somewhat disappointed that 3 Principles teachers I trusted were having conversations with someone who was clearly deluded, when it came to mental health.
😂
Ha ha! I can laugh now, having met Bill, been on courses with him and immersed myself more deeply in the Innate health understanding. Because I can see how the simplicity—the ‘one cause’ aspect he talks about—doesn't so much replace, or negate the complexity that we see in human behaviours & symptoms, it just lies upstream of it all, giving rise to it all.
Still, my poor medically-trained Thought System couldn't seem to get past the difficulty of biochemical changes in the brain surely causing different thoughts, feelings and behaviours? (I'd drunk enough alcohol in my life to have seen how that works! 😆)
It couldn't be the other way round, could it? Thought couldn't cause changes in our biology… could it?
Until one of those 3 Principles teachers I trusted pointed out something as simple as embarrassment, or anger—i.e. thought/feeling constructs—causing profound physiological changes within us.
🤷🏻♂️
I recently came across this joyfully cheeky little episode of the Sufi Comics strip, that—in a slightly different context—spells out the same thing:
When I slowed down and reflected that a room full of people could have a range of reactions to all sorts of situations, all of which could easily be accompanied by physiological changes, it just started to loosen my sense of ‘rightness’; of ‘knowing for a fact’ that things were indeed the way I'd been taught for so many years.
Who was I to say that repeated habits of thinking couldn't affect biochemistry over time, or cause long term organic changes in the body and/or brain, or even switch genes off and on?
I still don't know, but I'm a lot more comfortable not knowing these days.
I certainly don't proclaim to know much of anything ‘for a fact’ any more, and I have to say, life's become a lot less aggro, since!
✌🏻
Giles
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Giles P Croft
You could fit the sum total of everything I don't know into the infinite void of the universe.