Dr Matt’s Newsletter August 28, 2023: Conference on Spiritual Experiences, Rock n' Roll Heaven, and negative efficacy in HIV with clean needle exchange programs.
Supporting healthy social interactions and a diversity of health choices
This newsletter contains the following three topics
1) Conference on Near Death Experiences this week, from Thursday August 31 to Sunday September 2nd, Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, and the Near Death Experience of David Williamson.
2) Music of the Week: Rock n Roll Heaven: The life, music, and spiritual experiences of Pete Townshend.
Townshend had a spiritual experience in 1967, hearing the “voice of God”, and turned away from drugs and alcohol towards a spiritual practice which he follows to this day. The Who's rock opera and Broadway musical, Tommy, reflects some of this spiritual journey, and it is playing this coming January at a small local theater company in Lorton, Virginia, Lorton Workhouse Performing Arts.
3) Research of the week: HIV and IV drug use. A high quality study found that people using clean needle exchange programs had dramatically higher chance of testing positive on the “HIV tests” when compared to people who never used them.
Yes, you heard that right, the exact opposite of what one would expect if HIV could be transmitted by viruses in reused needles. This combines with the study reviewed October 26th on sexual transmission which showed exactly zero partners turning HIV positive despite 282 “couple years” of follow-up. I discussed this in more detail, along with recorded interviews of Peter Duesberg and nurse Kevin Corbett, on July 25th. Today I include two interviews with Celia Farber from Children’s Health Defense’s “Good Morning CHD”.
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Yours truly, one moment at a time.
Matt Irwin
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Music of the Week - Rock n Roll Heaven: The life and music of Pete Townshend
Did you know that Pete Townshend had two spiritual experiences that led him to swear off drugs and alcohol, and after that the Who’s music often had spiritual messages that were “hidden in plain sight”? Yes, this is the same Pete Townshend who was known as a wild rocker and who used to smash his guitar on stage at the end of their shows.
Below are two examples, with more to follow later: Townshend's solo hit "Let My Love Open the Door", and “Tommy - Overture”.
“Let My Love Open the Door” is an example of how the spiritual message is hidden in a popular rock n’ roll tune. He explained in an interview, with some embarrassment, that it came out sounding like a simple love song, but his message was about “universal love”. Put in more religious sounding terms, "My Love" is actually "God's love" such as what he experienced in a random Hotel in the suburbs of Chicago in 1967.
Pete Townshend: Let my love open the door
Conference on Near Death Experiences in Arlington, Virginia tomorrow through Sunday.
Many health, education, and mental health professionals can use it for continuing education credits if your organization allows some flexibility. If you plan to attend let me know. Here is a link to the conference schedule.
Pete Townshend and the Who: Tommy, Overture - Live in 1989.
Just as with many classical operas, the overture offers snippets of music that will happen throughout the opera. It ends with the birth of Tommy while his father is missing in action during World War One. The Youtube video introduces the story, but it also makes lively listening while reading the NDE of David Williamson.
Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and the Near Death Experience of David Williamson.
Two days ago, August 28th 2023, marked the 60th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This reminded me of a Near Death Experience told by an African American man, David Williamson, whose anger was literally killing him. He “died” during a rather severe heart attack and during the attempts to resuscitate his dead body, he had a profound experience. He describes it as “perfection - I came to understand that my mind, body, and ego was dead… but I was actually light, energy, soul, spirit and awareness.” My avid readers will be reminded of the experience of Ingrid Honkala when she drowned just before her third birthday, described in the video interview from my newsletter on August 6th.
Prior to this experience, David constantly fed this anger and gave it strength, partly through group narratives he had adopted from people around him. He says they were trying to help protect him with these narratives, but the anger actually made his body inhospitable to life. He eventually couldn’t even eat, because his digestive system wouldn’t tolerate food, and one day his heart gave out with a total cardiac arrest.
He had experienced extreme racism while growing up in North Carolina, and he had a very common reaction of returning the anger and hatred in kind. He also amplified it with his internal narratives, but his near death experience changed his perspective overnight. After all, he argues, our spirits are the only thing we take with us, and they don’t have ethnicity, race, gender, or economic status. “In that state I understood that the identity stuff was gone. We are all orbs of light. We are not these bodies.”
Similar to Rajiv Parti, described in my Newsletter on February 11th, he perhaps exaggerates the negative psychological and spiritual world he inhabited before his NDE. Rajiv talked about how cruel he was to his son and family, and how incredibly materialistic he was: wanting the largest house on the best street in the most expensive neighborhood in his home city of Bakersfield California. He was driven to become the head of anesthesiology at his hospital, working late hours and exhausting himself while neglecting his family. However, both Rajiv and David had a lot of positive qualities, and maybe all they needed was a bit of reinforcement, just like the rest of us - myself included :-).
After Rajiv’s near death experience he exchanged his mega-house for a smaller one and changed his work as an anesthesiologist from surgical anesthesia to helping people heal from chronic emotional and physical pain. He also encouraged his son to follow his own instincts, instead of forcing him away from them.
David Williamson recounts similar changes, including some that happened immediately as he regained consciousness. He spoke with the resuscitation team that had just shocked him with the defibrillator and, to their surprise, his very first words were to check on them to see if they were alright.
He describes in some detail how differently he handles negative emotions now. He says the thoughts and emotions can become like a “bias that sits in you so long it is hard to get it out.” “We tend to become the emotions instead of just feeling them completely, and letting them pass.”
Thich Nhat Hanh had a very similar perspective, as described in my Newsletter on April 15th in his talk about the “music of mindfulness”. He taught that we can learn to hear and listen to the anger, but let our present-moment mindfulness be the part that is in charge. David says “I revisit the same frustration at times, the same hopelessness. But am I going to stay in that emotion – become anger, become hate? No! I will process it and let it move along.” .. “I have a ‘reset’ to shake the narratives off of me.”
David Williamson’s Near Death Experience
https://rumble.com/v2zjpga-david-williamson-shares-his-near-death-experience.html
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