The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D

Allopathy denies energy medicine, but the Earth-bound energetic connection promotes and maintains human - and planetary - health

Have you ever worked with someone who inspired the fuck outta you? The kind of person who taught you something profound or confirmed a spiritual belief through their work?

The most memorable story I worked on hasn't been published yet and I'm not entirely certain it'll ever be published. The act of writing, for the author, was an act of catharsis; the revision coaching, a salve. Doing the work, for her, felt like enough, and I get it. Sometimes we just need to offload the weight holding us in place, and writing is a great way to process and release heavy emotions. But for the sake of the world and in pursuit of long-lasting healing, I hope she publishes.

Her story is one of resilience and persistence in the face of allopathic health care. When she was pushed into hospitals and other medical settings, drugged up, hushed up, and dehumanized, she turned inward, reconnected with her soul-spark, found her way to plant and folk medicines — and healed herself.

Her journey is unlike others I'd read and included lots of treatments that most would call "pseudo-science" or straight up quackery. And yet, those pseudo-scientific processes are exactly what she needed to heal.

I am a better person and editor because I had the pleasure of investing in this writer’s healing story and her writing. Simply put, working with this client was a spiritual experience.

I already lean into folk medicine and energy medicine, have been doing so slowly and in my own way since 2017, but my client’s writing prompted me to pick up Dr. Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief.

From his book, I share these quotes with you:

Lenton subscribes to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis that holds that the Earth and all of its species constitute one interactive, living organism. Those who endorse this hypothesis argue that tampering with the balance of the superorganism called Gaia, whether it be by destroying the rainforest, depleting the ozone layer, or altering organisms through genetic engineering, can threaten its survival and consequently ours.

While the idea of the Earth-organism wasn’t new, the term “Gaianism” was new to me, and I set off to explore the philosophical outlook which posits that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution but a small part of a living Earth. While I won’t attempt to unpack all of Lovelock’s philosophy here, acknowledging the role we each play as stewards of Gaia is important to understanding my general life philosophy and relationship with religion broadly.

Because rest assured: Every person is religious, but some religious people are more honest than others about their relationships with their chosen stories.

My personal brand of religion blends atheism with Gaianism, prioritizes the anti-force values of voluntaryism, localism, and humanism, and celebrates ethical capitalism all while acknowledging we are each both parts of a collective and vibrant individuals. As such, tampering with the delicate balance that is Gaian homeostasis is unethical and antithetical to healthy human and planetary evolution. For me, this “tampering” can come in many forms but often looks a lot like synthetics; plastic.

The environment in which we live is critical to human health, but we cannot make the environment healthy by introducing synthetic and plastic solutions. No amount of energy generated by solar panels can offset the dangers of the toxic chemicals used to produce the panels. No amount of generated wind energy can make up for the disaster of leeched plastics from buried turbine blades. No amount of vaccine protection can make up for the immune-busting toxin overload of adjuvants and preservatives mainlined into today’s population.

Genetic engineering is unethical, so I avoid GMOs and bioengineered foods when shopping for my family.

Plastics are so unethical, so disruptive, that they shouldn’t even exist. (And frankly, if the train which derailed in Palestine, Ohio in 2023 hadn’t been carrying 115,580 gallons of vinyl chloride—a noxious chemical used to make PVC plastic, the townsfolk wouldn’t have had to worry about being poisoned. Just saying.)

Modern medicine, too, is deeply unethical as it divorces the human experience from that of an animal thriving on this pale blue dot, disallows natural law and natural biological evolution, and prevents Gaia from restoring or achieving the delicate balance so important to the circle of life.

In effect, it is the constant pursuit of progress itself—progressivism, which has persisted in the human zeitgeist since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution—that is unethical. To that end, I fall much closer to the anarcho-primitivism side of the political spectrum than most any other political theory.

No longer it is possible to believe that genetic engineers can, with relative ease, fix all our biological dilemmas. There are simply not enough genes to account for the complexity of human life or of human disease.

In re-reading this quote, I was reminded of Bryan Johnson, a wealthy CEO in California who is currently spending (and has spent) millions of dollars on medical interventions to achieve reverse biological aging. According to this article in Fortune, he sees 30 doctors reguarly for near-constant examination. Really, I never want to meet this guy.

To be so afraid of aging, to be so afraid of death, that he’s willing to drop $1,000 per hour on high-priced specialists who themselves have claimed miminal (albeit expected) results is such a colossal waste of money that if he was my child, he’d be having a long timeout while we discuss what “waste” means and how he’s going to rectify his waste with restorative action.

Just so we’re clear, genetic engineers cannot stop you from most realities of being human, of being an animal living on a chaotic planet. Genetic engineers and cosmetic surgeons and cosmetic and lifestyle treatments may be able to synthetically alter what many people see on the outside, but they cannot alter those all-precious “mommy and daddy ingredients,” as we refer to DNA in our home.

Biological reality is reality, and while humans can mitigate their own longevity risks by focusing on exercise, healthy diets, sunlight exposure, and sleep—to name a few important categories—you cannot stop yourself from dying. Someone should probably go back to ancient Mesopotamia and tell Gilgamesh, who seems to have started the whole immortality quest.

Instead of attempting to alter biology to fit an unrealistic ideal (hello, Barbie!), perhaps we should modify our ways of thinking to accept and celebrate biological reality, celebrate aging and death as milestones in the human condition.

Other studies have found epigenetic mechanisms to be a factor in a variety of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. In fact, only 5 percent of cancer and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease to heredity. (Willett 2002). While the media made a big hoopla over the discovery of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer genes, they failed to emphasize that ninety-five percent of breast cancers are not due to inherited genes. The malignancies in a significant number of cancer patients are derived from environmentally induced epigenetic alterations and not defective genes. (Kling 2003; Jones 2001; Seppa 2000; Baylin 1997)

Symptoms of dis-ease are good things. They alert us to hidden dangers and poor lifestyle practices making us sick. Suppressing those symptoms, then, means suppressing the messages our bodies are desperately trying to send us.

Cancer is a touchy subject for a number of reasons, but everyone seems to have had cancer or knows someone who survived cancer or grieves someone who died from cancer. My best friend even had a tumor excised back in 2006 when we were college freshmen. Now, though, I believe tumors are the way the body collects toxins for purging, that a tumor is a symptom of coming dis-ease within the body, that the root causes of those toxins must be identified, that the body must be flushed to clear away the toxic clutter. I won’t beat on about this much more, since I touched on it already. But it’s safe to say I will accept neither chemotherapy or radiation for any future diagnosis I may be given.

And when you look at charts that show the rise in vaccine uptake against charts showing increases in the diagnosis of autoimmune disorders . . . well, you can draw your own conclusions.

Every material structure in the universe, including you and me, radiates a unique energy signature.

This is exactly the explanation of the human soul or spirit I give to my daughter. Every one of us has a body battery, a natural and intrinsic energy that connects our persons to Gaia. One scientist even posited the soul weighs about 21 grams.

Our unique energy signatures, our biofields, interact with each other similar the ways trees interact. And since we are all made of star stuff, back to the stars our energies shall eventually go.

Moving on.

That study (Null, et al, 2003) concludes that iatrogenic illness is actually a leading cause of death in the United States and that adverse reactions to prescription drugs are responsible for more than 300,000 deaths a year. These are dismaying statistics, especially for a healing professional that has arrogantly dismissed three thousand years of effective Eastern medicine as unscientific, even though it is based on a deeper understanding of the universe. For thousands of years, long before Western scientists discovered the laws of quantum physics, Asians have honored energy as the principle factor contributing to health and wellbeing.

And further:

Using prescription drugs to silence a body’s symptoms enables us to ignore personal involvement we may have with the onset of those symptoms. The overuse of prescription drugs provides a vacation from personal responsibility.

There’s a reason I no longer use any pharmaceuticals, prescription or over the counter. Historically, and especially for women and other marginalized groups, pathologization and medicalization have largely been used to discredit and medicate away the realities of human emotional and trauma processing. Instead of acknowledging what is going on in our lives and helping us handle those challenges, doctors whip out their pill pads, write a new script, and call it close enough. This, to me, is a colossal failure.

I’m in the “skills, not pills” thought camp of the medicine experiment, and I believe modern medicines should only be used in life-or-death situations (to stave off death long enough for a person to heal) or in other limited circumstances. Drugs just slow or stop symptoms; they do not—and cannot—address the root causes of dis-ease that resulted in those symptoms.

Imsomnia is a symptom. Rather than prescribing sleeping pills, doctors should help patients adjust their lifestyles and manage their stresses so that they can return to healthy circadian rhythms.

Anxiety is a symptom. Rather than prescribing SSRIs or SNRIs, doctors should help patients develop healthy coping mechanisms and emotional patterning so that they can manage anxious feelings like they manage any other emotion.

Obesity is a symptom. Rather than prescribing any of the host of weight-loss injectables on the market now, doctors should work with patients to develop healthy relationships to food, including how food nourishes and supports the immune system, what healthy portions look like, and more.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Doctors should not dismiss the power of the mind as something inferior to the power of chemicals and the scalpel. They should let go of their conviction that the body and its parts are essentially stupid and that we need outside intervention to maintain our health.

And here is the root of Gaianism in medicine.

Outside intervention is most assuredly not needed, and any external support that may be helpful must come from the earth itself. In fact, earth medicines are often more powerful and beneficial than their modern-medicine counterparts. In fact, oregano oil may outperform antibiotics, and I’ve personally found mullein leaf to be more beneficial and faster-acting than my old albuterol rescue inhaler ever was.

Beyond foraged and wild plant medicines, the human mind is a doctor in its own right. The placebo and nocebo effects show us how powerful belief actually is, and while modern medicine doesn’t really understand these phenomena, perhaps modern medicine need not understand but rather accept belief as a powerful healing mechanism for humanity. These effects can be so powerful that they sometimes trash clinical trials for regulatory drug approvals. Both effects come from the mind.

In short, Gaia—the Earth itself—from an evolutionary perspective, has provided all the health and wellness support the human being could ever need. Modern doctors must return to nature if they want to restore and promote good health.

[O]nly when Spirit and Science are reunited will we be afforded the means to create a better world.

In the aforementioned client book, I saw the powerful matchup of spirit and science at play, how far quantum energy and healing could go in restoring health to the human being. And while my client would likely tell you herself that healing work is never done, that she is a work in progress, I believe that health, like love, is an active word. It’s something we must work toward, not something we just get to have.

We are works in progress; yet, we belong to the whole that is Gaia. And Gaia provides all.

Sure, Dr. Lipton’s book may be a little woo-woo for some of you; I know I approached the book with skepticism and chose not to follow the marketing to the cult-like mind-reprogramming offered at the end, but the work itself was intriguing at the very least, as was the knowledge that many people have successfully healed themselves of some seriously debilitating health problems by using the power of the mind.

<3 Fal

P.S. Have you shirked modern medicine and finally healed yourself? I’d love to hear about your experience.

P.P.S. I pulled a tarot card right after I finished writing this review, and my deck gave me the Four of Stones: The Power of the Earth. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.