Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

From Model to Reality
The Formation of Reality

Reality formation and re-formation constitutes a process whereby one model gives way to another, one set of boundaries expands to establish a new region for exploration, and more of the world reveals itself. On a group level, inventories govern selective cueing as they determine the options of what can be called to our attention. The primary utility of models applies precisely to group consensus, which constructs and expresses reality. This may be on a small or large scale, and may be violent or peaceful. It gives us something to work with, to experience, and to guide our lives.

The history of the dampening and resurgence of homeopathy illustrates the role of models in learning. A key to the efficacy of homeopathic remedies is the transfer of the essence of physical molecules into water; the energy pattern of the molecule is imprinted in the homeopathic solution through succussing. When taken, a remedy acts on the vital force, the life energy, of a patient, which then leads to healing. The remedy resonates with energy fields in the body, which then entrain the organism to a healing response.

Homeopathy was once accepted in the United States, but during the early 1900s, pressure from a group of physicians who did not accept this model helped marginalize its use. Modern quantum theory, which can account for the imprinting of molecular energy patterns in solutions, is now beginning to explain homeopathy and other energy-based therapies of old.¹⁷ With the reemergence of energy-based models within complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), homeopathy is regaining credence, as are acupuncture, laying-on-of-hands, and prayer.

Originating from the explosion of books and periodicals offering CAM information, consumers have been putting pressure on physicians to provide more options for treatment. Because of this grassroots movement, models based in various aspects of energy are blossoming. The energies of minerals, flowers, and aromas are applied to achieve particular effects. At the same time, some investigators in the scientific disciplines of medicine, physiology, and physics are tackling the role of energy in physiology and the field of bioenergetics is growing. By its very nature bioenergetics touches virtually every aspect of human endeavor; its healing dimension serves as a good example of this wide-reaching field. In part, these advances illustrate an individuated type of influence expressing itself constructively within a group.

This line of thinking also presents itself in the biophysical model, which holds that energetics provides a deeper level of understanding and description of the material world. If energy is in any way a determinant for physical actions and reactions, then new models, new variables for study, and new approaches to life will continue to sprout, eventually forming new ways of looking at the world in contrast to material, mechanistic perspectives. This is exactly what is taking form as evidenced by bioenergetic studies. As Oschman explains, “The medical and chemical-pharmacological models that have served us well in the past are not being replaced, but are being viewed within a more complete multidimensional perspective.”¹⁸

MIT Professor Emeritus Thomas Kuhn writes in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that only a crisis produces the need for practitioners to get out of their own way and allow new perspectives of inquiry to emerge.¹⁹ The plagues of the nineteenth century provided such a catalyst. Kuhn also argues that a modern crisis has emerged from within humans due to the lack of answers that solve modern problems. The cost of health care and the debilitating side effects of many drugs may be providing an opening for new endeavors.

From the energy body perspective, models help form cohesions, which determine the ability to work with any given model. If you haven’t integrated a sufficient number of elements that form a given cohesion’s inventory, you can’t relate. There is no resonance, no connection, no awareness, and no understanding. The reason that practices such as homeopathy, nonlocal healing, and other healing modalities have not been scientifically mapped yet is that there has not yet been a scientific model with which to develop hypotheses, theories, and then scientifically test these constructs—all of these being components of the model that makes science, science.

Once a model that accounts for the mechanisms and effects of prayer on healing develops, it may then be explained scientifically. Since healers often refer to the role played by energy, a bioenergetics model steps toward a scientific recognition as well as toward an entire worldview, for which quantum physics provides the groundwork. Discoveries in the field now paint entirely new pictures of how the body works and how it heals. Many investigators regard their work as revealing the very foundation of life where energetic occurrences, not material events, form the basis of life. But alas, it is still a model. It has been built from thoughts that eventually form cohesion. As a result, you experience the model. This self-validation lends itself to an interpretation that true reality is at hand.

Investigating the universe of energy will surely take us to new worlds, and will certainly provide a high adventure of discovery. An understanding of models boosts this process. While a world of energy may account for far more than that which has preceded it, and may therefore take us to a brighter day, waiting to be born are yet more discoveries, models, and ways of participating with the world about us.