UFOs are “probably the largest coverup we’ve ever encountered” says Representative Tim Burchett of the US House of Representatives

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The UFO/UAP issue is unique in that it encourages objective thinking from politicians on both sides of the aisle working together toward the goal of genuine UFO disclosure.

Their cooperation is not part of the World Economic Forum’s master plan. For global elites, I suspect it’s frightening to see the first tiny cracks in the wall of political hatred their members have erected to divide and control US voters.

But however the WEF feels, these few brave bipartisan DC officials have put political hatred aside for a higher purpose. They hope to discover a worldview truth that has likely been hidden within the byzantine power/secrecy structures of the US intelligence “services” since about 1947.

It’s become clear that we’re not alone… but that’s only if you’re a reader of the UFO literature. As with any field of complex cutting-edge enquiry, if you don’t read the literature broadly and critically, you won’t know what’s going on.

Bipartisan UFO/UAP work demonstrates once again why the left and the right need each other desperately.

Our need to move beyond political-hatred and work together is especially evident in present times as the self-appointed political “authorities” at the World Economic Forum (WEF) with their enormous dollar wealth are telling us frankly that they intend to end democracy, seize everyone’s private property, and create a centralized global digital world currency that they alone will control. This centralized digital currency will allow them to micromanage (through financial rewards and punishments) every person and corporation on Earth by monitoring their spending, savings, investing, online political speech, and personal/ corporate digital carbon footprints. (Click here for a detailed video overview of the WEF’s most recent meeting.)

The WEF is already gaining control of Western governments, placing their personally educated politicians in powerful elected positions while openly sharing their plans and bragging about the success they’re having. Of course they’ve got nice bits of wonderful sounding rhetoric and presumably the best of intentions, by and large. Future tyrants always do feel that their grandiose plans will save the world. That’s got to be how they justify violence, war, racism and every other form of top-down abuse.

The left and right need each other now more than ever.

We need each other’s conflicting worldview biases, we need each other’s opposite perspectives on economic and monetary policy, we need each other’s scientific biases including the many suppressed minority postulates and theories, we need each other’s incongruent perspectives on how to genuinely help the poor rather than enslaving them in debt, inflation, addiction, and the depressing grip of eternal victimhood through woke racism’s campaign of anti-logic and “fairness doesn’t work.”

An unbalanced, top-heavy approach to politics, science, and spiritual paradigms tends to bring disaster and collapse to a peaceful, loving society. This is because we live in a world (and universe) where the complexity of vital systems exceeds our mental capacity to understand the details, let alone our ability to measure, control and fix any of nature’s systems. With complex systems, balance is wisdom, and it’s achieved through listening carefully to everyone, even those who sound like fools to you. Especially those.

The hyper-complex systems of nature embody just about everything including the biochemistry and genetics of life, the balances of ecosystems, the delicate balance of competition versus synergy among all organisms including human societies and subcultures, the balance of free markets versus top-down regulation, the balance of taxation versus economic growth, the balance of inflation versus deflation, the balance of selfish ambition versus true altruism, and the natural ebb and flow of top-down spiritual worldview impositions by ruling governments versus grass-roots spiritual evolution from one age to the next.

Humanity’s inherent need of freely opposing views on our road to enlightenment and peace is so enormous that I would go so far as to suggest that Christians and other spiritual people need the views of atheists as much as atheists need the influences of certain carefully-selected Christian and non-Christian spiritual values.

When I think about it, atheists question everything. This approach leads a person to ask the right questions. (Ask many questions and you’re more apt to ask the right ones? Seems logical to me.) And of course, any scientist or investigator will tell you that asking the right questions is the only way to track down a stubborn truth in any field of study or in any science-based practice.

At the same time, Christians sense the importance of vital concepts like, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Even if you feel sure that God doesn’t exist, you would increase the odds of human survival by internalizing the second half of this moral and spiritual call to action.

Monopoly of power is the enemy of life on Earth because one group’s views are always unbalanced, irrespective of what the group believes and promotes. Diversity of opinion, like genetic diversity, increases our species odds of survival. That’s nature’s way.

Yet each side of US politics conspires against the other in pursuit of monopolistic power, thinking that a final political victory for their side will bring utopia. The opposite is true.

Total dominance by any group of humans regardless of what they promote (even if it’s democracy) would spell the death of democracy and the resurrection of totalitarian rule in the West.

Cycles of tyranny dominate Earth’s brief recorded history. If the WEF kills cryptocurrency and ends democracy as they intend to, it will probably take us “little” people a thousand years to regain a voice in any government on Earth.

While the best parts of Christianity promote a world where everyone loves her/his neighbor, and the WEF promotes a world where they control the non-stakeholders (us little people), whoever is currently hiding the bulk of UFO data and artifacts is withholding information that will someday, for better or worse, cause a worldview reset that’s based on hard truth.

I suspect that a worldview reset based on knowledge and truth about our non-human neighbors might likely benefit the planet more than the “Great” economic “Reset” that the wealthy elites of the WEF are openly conspiring to bring upon us.

Like the WEF, the people hiding UFO/UAP data need the political left and right to remain under the hypnotic spell of political hatred, each side hating the other with every fiber of their hearts, with all their souls, and with all their minds.

TV “news” on both sides of the aisle maintains this hateful situation for the WEF, as well as for their own corporate profits, bathing listeners in a mental stew of hatred with time-tested tools like word-selection bias, story selection bias, overt censorship, half truth reporting, and complete lies whenever possible. Both sides do this. It’s not just the “bad guys” that lie and cheat over the “news” airwaves. Your side is doing it, whether you know it or not.

We should all wake up and refuse to watch any TV programming that makes our brains feel political hatred, fear, or outrage towards supposed “idiots.” Instead we should strive to communicate respectfully across the political divide so we can work together toward the common goal of human survival, long-term, never requiring anyone to abandon their political biases but rather understanding that they truly have valuable opinions and experiences that we desperately need in order to balance our own limited ideas and limited experiences.

The political left promotes great truths, the political right promotes great truths, both sides make colossal mistakes that are sometimes identical to the mistakes of their opponents, but neither side remotely resembles the “idiots” and “demons” that TV “news” paints for us.

In the video below, a Republican lawmaker from the House of Representatives, Tim Burchett, gives us his remarkably open-minded Christian perspective on the UFO/UAP coverup. It’s a great interview.

Here’s the gist of UFO “disclosure” by the US Department of Defense for anyone who missed the recent congressional report…

Senator: “Whaddaya think of them UFOs?”

DOD official: “We have absolutely no idea what they are. And the proper term is UAP, numbskull.”

Senator: “But they’re shutting down our…”

DOD official: “We have no knowledge and no desire to learn about UFO’s shutting down nuclear facilities.”

“Y’all can’t read?”

“Senator, we’re not permitted to read about UFO history. Shut up now and give us a decade of tax money. We’ll assume that UAPs are human technology for now. And one other thing. We’ll need legislation out of this body to shut down independent UAP research. That’s vital to our mission. The DOD will NOT tolerate interference from US citizens trying to compete with us on this issue.“

“The government can’t tell us the truth about anything, and I’m in the government.” – Tim Burchett.

In the video above we have a Christian lawmaker from the South who believes that some UFOs are the work of an alien civilization. He uses a Bible text from Ezekiel to support the idea.

His words would shock me if my own spiritual journey hadn’t been fairly similar.

As best I can predict, Mr. Burchett’s attitude foreshadows the direction that all Christianity will eventually take once the UFO/UAP truth comes out, assuming it ever does. This evolution of Christianity is likely to happen because honesty and integrity matter a great deal to the majority of modern Christians, especially the fundamentalists. On the other hand, the emotional appeal of an unchanging dogmatic traditional Christian worldview will be difficult for many Christian fundamentalists to overcome, partly due to financial concerns of Church administrators, but largely due to everyone’s worldview inertia. We all “know” we’re right about our worldviews, even when reality suggests otherwise.

I get the impression that many of us still consider ourselves Christians despite having gradually rejected the notion that the Bible is infallible and inerrant (though we may all be wrong). Right or wrong, it seems that some of us have allowed ourselves to elevate our view of God from the morality of the material Old Testament ET warrior gods (the Elohim or “powerful ones”) to the transcendent, loving Supreme Being described as a loving parent in some New Testament passages.

I have an opinion related to this aspect of Christian worldview evolution: I hope that every Christian who continues to believe in a Supreme Being following ET disclosure will hang on to the belief that our Supreme Creator is more than human in every way, not somehow inferior in one convenient way that just happens to conform to the secular dogma of an impersonal universe.

Let’s think about this…

The greatest thing about a human being, the biggest mystery and most impressive part of our existence, is that we have a personal identity that brings us a sense of free will, the ability to choose and act, the experience of primary agency as an undetermined cause with feelings and desires that bring depth, texture and meaning to everything we decide and try to do. It’s not merely that we are conscious, it’s that we experience genuine personhood.

The great historic failures of organized Christianity during the brutal “colonization” era have, I think, caused secular minds to hate the idea of a personal Supreme Being or Beings. They insist upon an impersonal Universe ruled by chance alone.

But as the existence of advanced non-human beings gradually penetrates our materialist culture forcing even secular people to look a bit higher, all of us, Christians included, seem to want something Impersonal at the top. Secularism seems to have given all of us in the West a tendency to replace the misconception of a personal ET Warrior “God” (from the Old Testament) with something impersonal. Some Christians say that the term “God” should be replaced by an impersonal word like “Source.”

Wanting an impersonal “Source” rather than a personal “God” is understandable, I guess. It even sounds street-smart if you imagine yourself in the shoes of an evangelist who hopes to fill Churches again.

But this emerging concept of an impersonal “Source,” as best I can determine, drives a knife into the heart of Christianity. As I see it, the main message of Jesus was probably not an overall worldview or even a “forensic plan of salvation,” but simply the reality that God is like a loving father whom anyone can talk to. This message is a radical departure from the angry beings (the Elohim) variously depicted as “God” and “gods” in the Old Testament.

Our secular bias appears to want a “God” who is inferior to us in one big way: he/she/it must lack personhood. The logic seems to be that this almighty “Source” is so infinitely great that personhood, humanity’s greatest transcendent attribute, is the single category of being where we must declare ourselves superior to the Highest, because the “Source” is ostensibly impersonal. You can’t talk to it and expect it to listen, understand, and feel anything towards you.

To me, this is “scientific” materialism in a bit of a disguise: the impersonal Universe of secularism remains while conceding that there’s something out there, but it’s a thing not a sentient Being.

Something in us Christians who have explored the UFO literature a bit and are convinced that advanced non-human beings are real… something in us wants God to become this impersonal “Source” rather than the Loving Father of the Nazarene.

Though I personally rejected the Old-Testament warrior version of God after 9/11/01 showed me the perspective of the ancient Philistines under attack, and though I have recently read three fascinating books about the misinterpretation of the word “Elohim” in the Old Testament, I still sense the nature of God through this sort of reasoning…

If humans have logic, the Supreme Mind has greater logic. If we have emotions, Supreme Love has greater emotions. If we have personalities, the Supreme Person has a better personality. If we understand and speak languages, the Supreme Communicator understands and speaks all languages. And if we know how to listen to those in need, the Supreme Councilor listens with greater empathy and care than we do.

So I suspect that when friendly ETs walk openly among us, their version of God will probably resemble the loving Father of whom our Nazarene leader reportedly said, “I and the Father are one.”

The Baptism of Christ – Aert de Gelde, 1710

…

Spiritual Love,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

Convenience shopping in Sweden with The Mark of the Beast

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“The second beast was permitted to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship it to be killed. And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark— the name of the beast or the number of its name.” – Revelation 13: 15-17.

Several decades ago when I was struggling to remain a fundamentalist Christian (I gave up in 2001), I thought the book of Revelation should NOT be in the Bible. The tone was wrong. The temperament and personality of God seemed wildly inaccurate.

But I’m often wrong about important things…

A half hour ago I came across a video by a British Comedian discussing a microchip popular in Sweden. They estimate that 10,000 people have had these things inserted subcutaneously now. In one of their hands.

Russell Brand seems warm-hearted, intelligent and often funny in his own loving way. Although he likes foul words, he hasn’t used many this time around. Nevertheless, anyone with a fundamentalist Christian background might want take a seat before watching this rant.

It’s a bit chilling…

I wish there were a Christian denomination focused only on doing things for others in search of shared love in this life, rather than centering as they all seem to do around accepting a specific worldview in search of Heaven and immortality in the next life.

To me, once you feel you know God and really trust him, you don’t worry about getting to Heaven or having the right beliefs or books to get you there. You just want to connect with loving people and help them do something genuinely worthwhile.

…

Doctrine-free Love,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates

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The picture of the Jewish Women and Children above is from a group of 1,684 Jews, of whom 1,670 survived the ride to Switzerland aboard the Kasztner train in 1944. The man who made this possible was Rezső Kasztner.

He sounds like a hero to me, but some people want more than results, they demand documentation of faultlessness, or else.

An Israeli judge, Benjamin Halevy, found Rezső Kasztner guilty of “selling his soul to the devil.” The Judge decided that Kasztner didn’t warn other Jews to flee. Kasztner’s motive was supposedly to selfishly save a “smaller number of Jews,” including his family and friends.

An angry citizen, acting on one-sided publicity and outrage, assassinated Rezső Kasztner in 1957.

Judge Halevy was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel in 1963, but before that…

The Supreme Court of Israel posthumously exonerated Kasztner in 1958. One of those judges, Shneur Zalman Cheshin, wrote this:

“On the basis of the extensive and diverse material which was compiled in the course of the hearing, it is easy to describe Kastner as ‘blacker than black’ and place the mark of Cain on his forehead, but it is also possible to describe him as purer than the driven snow and regard him as ‘the righteous of our generation.’ A man who exposed himself to mortal danger in order to save others.” — Shneur Zalman Cheshin of the Israeli Supreme Court, 1958

Erwin Lutzer, the author of When a Nation Forgets God, quotes a German man…

“I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves from it because what could anyone do to stop it? A railroad track ran behind our church, and each Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed as we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars. Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we could hear the cries of the Jews on route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us. We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow, we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church, we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more. Years have passed, and no one talks about it anymore. But I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me. Forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians and yet did nothing to intervene.” — When a Nation Forgets God, 7 lessons we must learn from Nazi Germany, by Erwin W. Lutzer.

Is there a lesson for us in this?

What is it?

Dangerous Love,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

Looking Directly into the Sun

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“Learn to place your intellect in the sheath of your awareness rather than in the sac of memory and identification. Once you do, this tremendous instrument can cut its way effortlessly toward the ultimate.” – Sadhguru

The big problem we face as a struggling species is our need to filter data through an inflexible worldview. This process rejects a significant portion of good accurate data thereby hindering us in spiritual growth and scientific advancement.

Worldviews (or cosmic paradigms) become central to our personal identities which we defend with denial, outrage and a false sense of superiority to those who hold conflicting views. The memory of things we’ve been taught by parents and trusted teachers in youth ties us to rigidity, denial and the rejection of useful knowledge.

And yet many of us seem convinced that spiritual growth and scientific advancement fully demand a rigid, data-filtering worldview.

For instance, theophobia has the geological community in a headlock preventing publication of anything supporting the ancient accounts of great floods and fires that nearly erased humanity. This is because lending credence to “holy myths” threatens paradigm identity and is therefore emotionally intolerable to most geologists.

For them to give in and admit these “myths” were basically accurate would feel something like an Orthodox Jew eating pork, a Muslim drawing Mohamad, or a Christian doubting Jesus’ historical existence.

So the evidence of periodic geological cataclysms in Earth’s history has been downplayed for generations, but unfortunately it’s looking like our “experts” have made a grievous error in protecting their theophobia with the paradigm of geologic gradualism.

There’s good scientific evidence that the Sun is a periodic nova or “micro-nova,” that coronal mass ejection material from the Sun nearly wiped out our species about twelve thousand years ago.

The perceived problem with this data set is not merely that it supports humanity’s ancient “mythical” records, but that it is inherently frightening to scientists because those few who look into it also find evidence that a similar geological catastrophe may happen within our lifetimes.

The more practical problem with this data is that scientists can’t get funding for research that gives an inch of ground to the “crazy” people who believe in God or any historic veracity of ancient human records.

But it’s not just mainstream scientists whose worldviews prevent an objective look at this. Many Christians have a worldview that doesn’t allow the possibility of a return of global flooding or any other global catastrophe because the “inerrant” scriptures include a rainbow with a promise that God will never drown us again.

Sadguru is wrong in thinking that sleeping only a few hours a night is healthier for everyone than sleeping 8 or 9 hours a night, but the man is divinely inspired when he suggests letting your intellect experience the “sheath of your awareness” rather than “the sack of memory and identification.”

If you want to give his advice a whirl and transcend your worldview for a moment with some controversial but important scientific data and theory, here’s a video that could truly save our entire species from the next major periodic sun eruption…

The narrator and creator of this video is Ben Davidson. Here’s his website. Here’s his beautiful family.

“Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

Your pal,

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

My Spiritual Paradigm in 2018

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My father was born today (December 27, 1897). He was an MD with board certification in Radiology, Anatomic Pathology and General Surgery. His life was all about studying science, publishing medical articles and living far beyond frugality. He was an atheist who preferred religious people because he thought they were more trustworthy. “It’s too bad everything they believe in isn’t true,” he said.

This post is dedicated to Dad…

We live in a simulated universe created by means of a language that’s projected from beyond, possibly using the crystal structure called “E8,” in which the fundamental building blocks are not irreducible strings or electromagnetic waves or subatomic particles or even intelligently driven perturbations in the zero-point field (though this idea is related, I think).

Instead, the fundamental building blocks of our simulated reality appear to be the symbols of a language.

This is a language in which each physical symbol, its meaning, and the hardware needed to interpret or “manifest” the meaning within our 3D space are one-in-the-same.

The Supreme Being (or Beings) exist outside the simulation, but can enter it and undoubtedly have. We (our full selves) inhabit a Reality outside of the simulated universe, a place that is beyond our ability to imagine because it’s “outside of time” and contains something like “extra dimensions” which can only be vaguely imagined by people with expertise in math and physics.

Our simulated universe was invented for us by the Supreme Being(s) because we requested it.

We enthusiastically spend simulated time here in hopes of expanding the depth and breadth of our love, wisdom and character in a place made specifically for developing these personal attributes.

There’s a respected web of cause and effect stemming from free decisions that each of us has made within the simulated universe. This free-choice web limits our ability to create a reality based upon a belief system.

For example, if I want to believe in a fundamentalist Christian paradigm (or any other spiritual system), but I’ve been convinced in school that scientific materialism is undeniable, then I am incapable of believing in any fundamentalist paradigm other than scientific materialism itself (a.k.a. physicalism). And vice versa.

On the other hand, if for any reason I have retained the ability to believe in a given spiritual (or anti-spiritual) paradigm, and I pursue it, then that system of belief will become literally true for me within the simulation.

In practical terms, this means that there is always a “reality that’s out there” in the simulated universe whether or not I believe in it.

Examples of realities that won’t go away with denial include the reality of UFO’s, the reality of DNA’s hyper-complex code, the reality of dinosaur fossils, the reality of Near-Death Experiences, the reality of Angels, demons and various ethereal beings, the reality of World Bank domination in modern times, the reality of all souls being ultimately one, the reality of an intelligent universe, and the growing reality on Earth of a mindless, meaningless universe.

Logically opposing belief systems can be fully manifest in separate parts of the simulation on an individual basis, especially after a person’s current life ends, but also to some extent during this current life. The more something is collectively believed, the more real it becomes due to the simulation’s basic nature and the careful respect for free will. (When the effects of a free will decision are eliminated, the reality of that decision is also eliminated. Hence the respect for the effects of free will decisions and actions.)

Our experience in the simulated universe is not necessarily limited to one lifetime. Depending on what we are able to believe, we may ride the simulation for multiple lifetimes.

Each of us is here for our own specific purpose.

For some, the purpose is to learn courage and love.

For others (particularly scientists) we’re here to learn open-mindedness and the ability to question things we know are true. The odds are against us achieving such objectivity on Earth, but the very challenge of it attracts us here.

One characteristics of the simulation that renders it particularly useful to our souls’ growth is the ubiquitous “dualism” in which every good thing can have a negative side effect and every negative thing can have a positive side effect. This becomes a source of cognitive dissonance, particularly in questions of morality.

For instance, our dependence upon food requires us to kill plants, bacteria, insects, and perhaps to some degree, higher organisms, to stay alive. And yet our innate sense of morality (a.k.a. love) makes us loath to kill certain creatures. Similarly, our need to procreate, driven largely by testosterone in all genders, is necessary to our species’ existence, yet it also manifests as a strong force in breaking trust, destroying families and making life more difficult on our dear children.

And yet the dissonances here teach our souls balance and perspective. That’s a huge attraction.

Realizing that our universe is simulated may seem to present a new problem of rejecting all other worldview paradigms. It might tempt one to say, “If our souls exist with God in another realm and nothing here is real, then nothing here is worth believing in or caring about.”

But despite the literal simulation of matter and energy, our cognitive awareness here is real, not simulated. Our love and our pain are genuine because our souls experience them. We don’t have the option of dealing with the simulated universe as an illusion because it reaches beyond the simulation into our hearts.

In view of all this, the logical thing to do is to identify your own personal reason(s) for entering this simulation, and based upon those, choose a personally believable worldview that offers support for someone on your quest.

For instance, if you’re here primarily to learn open-mindedness, which means you’re probably a scientist, then you might read about the search for UFOs and alien life, although you already “know” such things are complete nonsense aimed at “lesser minds” than yours. Be prepared for the surprise your soul is seeking.

Or if you’re here to learn courage, then choosing a live-for-the-moment worldview might make sense, leading you into a lifestyle of courage, such as mixed martial arts, public speaking, surfing giant waves, doing open heart surgery, smuggling Bibles into North Korea, or standing up to politically correct hatred and prejudice.

Or if you discover that you joined the simulation to increase your capacity for self-sacrificing love, then any of the major religions will probably steer you in that direction. Find one you can truly believe in, if possible. If not, pick and choose from among them, or make up something of your own as I’ve done. Your beliefs will be real for you when you need them most.

If you’ve joined the simulation to discover who you would be apart from God’s physical presence and influence, then materialistic science and atheism might be what your soul needs (assuming you’re capable of believing). If so, make the world envious of your good character the way Gillette Penn has done. And like him, don’t be offended by others who believe in undetectable realities besides Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

And if you’re one of the family of suffering people who feel overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite loss of someone precious to you, then focus on the Reality beyond this simulation. Imagine a Real place where time is independent of us, allowing a loving Supreme Being all the time in the world to travel with your lost loved one to a meaningful, great place doing exciting things. As infinitely horrible as it feels to lose your loved one, the loss is temporary and only exists within this simulated universe. Trust me. This is literally true.

…

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD

As a pathologist (retired now), I’ve been trained to observe and interpret complex visual and biologic systems, so my diagnostic opinion of Reality is worth consideration. Conflicting belief systems are part of what unites us here as souls from Reality seeking personal growth in this Divine Simulation.

…

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Toxic Self-talk Cloaked in Objectivity

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When I was 13 years old, Jack, the brother of my band’s bass player, told me about a book, “How To Be Your Own Best Friend.” Since then, I’ve known the importance of avoiding negative self-talk.

But knowing and doing are vastly different. I went ahead and indulged in “analytical” negative self-talk without realizing what I was doing. Now it’s an ingrained habit, and here’s how it all happened to me.

I pride myself in being objective and value it beyond almost everything else. This ingrained mindset came from my blessed atheist Dad and his constant intellectual influence. He was a medical doctor with Boards in 3 specialties, including pathology, the field I wound up in and finally quit, thank God.

Of course, objectivity is the only way to overcome your blind spots as you search for truth.

And while it may be humanly impossible to be truly objective, it’s a worthy goal, sort of like getting the perfect truth onto a patient’s surgical pathology report despite the fact that human error in the laboratory is known to be beyond eradication.

So with Dad’s influence on top of the influence of the fundamentalist Christian religion I joined at age 14, with all its “infallible” messages that I zealously devoured, learning how despicable and abhorrent it is to take any credit for the talents that God has given me, I did two things that, in retrospect, were psychologically, socially and professionally stupid.

  1. I developed a blind spot to my own negative self-talk by accidentally hiding my self-criticism behind a veil of false objectivity.
  2. I swallowed the evil notion that it’s uniquely displeasing to God if I should ever credit myself for anything good I’ve done or will ever do. Along with this came the concept that it’s pleasing to God if, at the end of each day, I searched for my “sins” and felt maximally guilty while begging in a pathetic inner voice for forgiveness for anything negative I had done that day. The perverted logic was: “the closer you get to God, the worse you’ll look in your own eyes.” Which meant that the guiltier I felt, the more God liked me. Sort of like the publican and the Pharisee in the temple? (Luke 18:10)

I swallowed the Guilt Cool Aid almost every night of my life for years, probably decades before I was able to see the absurdity of an intelligent, loving God wanting this kind of self-destructive prayer.

To be fair, it’s pretty obvious to me that the Christian fundamentalists I’ve known over the years have done a million times more good in the world than harm. Unfortunately, that’s the “baby” and most of the sacred doctrine that seems to produce the good deeds is the “bathwater,” at least as far as I can tell now.

So in a perfect world, we would look up to the glowing example of all the fundamentalist Christians that I’ve known, rather than despising them for their odd narrow-mindedness and essential hypocrisy that being human brings. And I think the often-mentioned crusades, used to put down Christianity historically, should instead remind us of the hundreds of millions more who were killed in the name of fundamentalist Marxism.

I guess rational thinking is required, no matter what belief system you choose.

And I’ll admit, there are arrogant people out there who have pathologically unrealistic self-confidence, a dogmatic, controlling attitude towards others, and an unshakable belief that they are always right about everything they think, say and do.

Such people would probably benefit from a dose of the fundamentalist Christian self-talk poison that I swallowed. It would be medicine to them and maybe bring some relief to the “little people” they steal from, abuse and kill.

But few of us (besides politicians and world bankers) are arrogant and dangerous to such a degree.

Most of us are more attuned to reality, more vulnerable to guilt, and could probably benefit by improving our self-talk or at least learning to recognize when it’s destroying us from the inside out.

If you’re half blind to this venom the way I am, the challenge is worth accepting. There’s much to be gained.

For instance, just this morning I heard my inner voice, the person I assume is me, saying that I’m lazy. It flew past me at first. I didn’t flinch or even notice it. But in a few moments, its echo caught my attention and I finally recognized it as negative rather than objective. I stopped my train of thought, backed up and ask myself if I would say such a thing to someone I loved and cared for, someone like my son or daughter.

Hell no, I wouldn’t! I love my suddenly adult kids unconditionally!

So I literally talked to my subconscious mind.

This is a little off the beaten path, but here’s an accurate and helpful glimpse of the human inner landscape as I see it…

The subconscious mind needs to be treated like a beloved dog or perhaps a domesticated dolphin. It needs simple logical explanations spoken in easy words with clear messages delivered with honest supportive emotion.

I apologized to my inner Labrador Retriever.

My subconscious mind is not an inner child, by the way. It’s been around the block with me, rejected by its peers at every job I’ve had, considered a failure by loved ones despite objective success, considered a weak pathologist by surgeons despite the fact that the opposite was objectively true, at least to the few pathologists who worked closely with me and could judge the quality of my work intelligently.

This morning I told my dog-like subconscious mind that it had done plenty of hard work all of its life.

I reviewed the evidence.

I pointed out several of the many people we’d helped together over the years when nobody else was willing to do the extra tedious work – the extra hours it takes to find one or two pre-malignant cells on a pap test where thousands of normal cells hide the rare villains and dozens of normal pap slides hide the few abnormal cases. The extra hours it takes to review other pathologists’ surgical slides for them, slowly and thoroughly, to search the literature to find better diagnostic accuracy, to search and find the missed positive lymph node or the focus of residual cancer that the faster pathologists tend to overlook again and again.

When you do this for pathologists who are also your bosses (as they’ve always been for me), they don’t necessarily appreciate your help or take a liking to you for saving their cookies. At an emotional level, they often seem to resent you. And they virtually never thank you for finding their mistakes.

It’s human. But diligence helps cancer patients survive, and it takes a non-lazy pathologist to stay at the scope and do this work when there’s no extra external compensation, only lonely hours away from home and a reputation for being slow.

After this unusual inner monologue, I felt better. A little stronger and more open to sharing the whole story with you.

I hope it helps you recognize the inappropriateness of “objective” inner criticism when it’s not really objective at all. And I hope that next time you catch yourself being cruel to your inner best friend, you’ll apologize in detail and really mean it.

…

Morrill Talmage Moorehead, MD