a lot of challenging questions

Good morning. I’m asking myself some hard questions these days, so I’m going to ask you some of the same ones. I’m just asking questions, but I’m guessing a few of these might ruffle some feathers. What a way to start the week, eh?

How many things do you have faith in - meaning you believe something that has no tangible basis for support?

When most people think about faith, they think of their religious beliefs. But we have faith in other things: faith that things will go the way we expect, faith that our fellow humans will obey the same traffic laws we’ve agreed to, faith that the sun will come up tomorrow.

For many, their faith in others was shaken by the entirety of the covid debacle (which we’re still in*). Others have faith in things that don’t affect them personally, but they staunchly believe regardless.

Things like the moon landing. Did that happen? Because the tapes were erased by NASA and then we were told:

The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said…

I remember erasing VHS tapes and re-recording my next favorite show over the old one. I’m no rocket scientist, but when I erase and re-use something, I’m not sure how I can go back to the original, let alone make it better. Unless I’m just making the whole thing up.

And while theories of the moon landing in 1969 have circulated for years, there are fresh eyes checking footage these days. Well, I don’t think it’s fair to say “eyes” since we’re talking about AI. But this clip that Jeff Childers shared last week shows a group of people sharing AI-generated information with Russia’s president Putin that says that the moon landing photos from the US are fake, but China’s are real:

Okay, let’s bring it back to earth. Maybe just simple things you take/took for granted. Like not eating too much salt?

And remember how well decades of pushing low-fat diets worked for America’s obesity levels? But people believed that was going to make them healthier. They had faith in their doctors and the commercials they saw on TV.

Or something we all know to be true: “don’t look at the sun or you’ll go blind”?

How I Stopped Wearing Glasses or Contacts (and didn't get LASIK)

Okay. So maybe some things we have faith in aren’t real.

What about things we don’t believe in? Like aliens? Are we the only life forms in all of the Universe? (Apparently, whistleblowers state that the CIA has retrieved 9 non-human aircraft from various sites around the world.)

Speaking of “around” the world: is it round? Before you throw me out as a flat-earther, consider this: I personally haven’t been to space to catch a bird’s eye view of our planet and also know that most of the images we’ve ever seen of space have been composite photos and altered intentionally, so how can we actually know?

That’s really the crux of it all and my main question: How do you know what to believe?

How do you know what to have faith in?

Some would say God.

God, as distilled by countless translations of His word, sometimes by men who think they know better?

When the Bible has been edited to modernize its language, for the purpose of making it more readily understood, its editors have used verses already modified from the original and modified them yet further. Entire verses have been moved and footnoted, changing the meaning of the original, not only to make it more readable to modern eyes, but to reflect the opinions and beliefs of the editors. This has been done despite the scriptural admonition against changing one word of the biblical prophecy, a verse which has itself been changed, its meaning altered, until another future editor decides to alter it yet again.

So is the Bible before people edited it the one that you believe? Or do you take the translated versions as gospel (literally)? Or is that “not God” and the original transcripts are?

Is God whom you connect to when you’re deep in meditation or prayer or dreams or mantras? Or is that “not God” and only the church leader behind the pulpit can tell you what God is or isn’t?

Does God fit into the mold you want Him to? Is it possible to limit The Almighty? Are you attempting to do just that by recognizing anything as “not God”?

If everything is God, and God is whom we trust, then where does discernment come in? What about intentional deceit and corruption? Is that God, too?

I don’t have answers, only questions. Lots and lots of questions. These questions help me to not only understand my faith but also strengthen it. So I keep asking them and digging a little deeper. How strong is your faith? Can it be questioned, or does that weaken your faith?

I think our curiosity is how we test - and therefore strengthen - our faith.

If you have any answers or insights or further questions of your own, I welcome them in the comments!

Let’s be honest: my faith in government has been questionable for quite some time. And hometown hero Mandy Cohen (I hope you know how much I’m chuckling right now) isn’t helping to strengthen that faith, though apparently that’s why they replaced Fauci with her.

Cohen sat smiling like a giddy schoolgirl as she got lambasted in the CDC hearing the other day about the Reedly, CA, illegal biolab. The CDC waited months to check on the lab after the original complaint and then when they did investigate, they didn’t test a single vial to determine its contents: not even the ones labeled “ebola.”

How’s your faith in the three letter agencies these days? Look how happy she is at how bad the CDC is performing.

And speaking of poor performance, Pfizer is looking at a lawsuit from the state of Texas for their false claims about their covid shots. The AG of Texas, Ken Paxton, is suing Pfizer for misrepresenting how well its shots performed and misleading the public.

That’s fair, especially considering all of the subclinical myocarditis going around. Subclinical means that these people have heart muscle inflammation that isn’t causing them outward symptoms. The staggering amount of this was shown in a retrospective study of asymptomatic patients released in Radiology in September that concluded:

When compared with nonvaccinated patients, asymptomatic patients who received their second vaccination 1–180 days prior to imaging showed increased myocardial ¹⁸F-FDG uptake on PET/CT scans.

Translation: covid shots injured hearts and those injured don’t even know they’re hurt (*told you we’re still in the covid debacle). Jeff Childers pointed out that the reports about Paxton’s lawsuit from the media look like he is suing because the shots didn’t end covid fast enough. But that’s just Project Mockingbird’s way of getting you to not pay attention to the story because it’s huge. This suit could blow the lid right off this whole covid debacle.

I am subscribed to the Institute for Evidence-Based Chiropractic and they send out these robotic-sounding research capsules every once in a while. I always watch them because they are short and share relevant chiropractic research. This one was on cannabis and chronic low back pain.

The results were a little alarming, as you can see from the chart above: the study was specifically regarding male cannabis users, and their partners (even if they didn’t use cannabis) were more likely to have spontaneous abortions if they got pregnant due to poor sperm quality. (I think it’s important to note that the other side effects shown above may have some bias because people who are struggling with mental health disorders would be more likely to seek the comfort of cannabis, and therefore would already be at risk, although cannabis itself could be a risk factor.)

The study also showed that cannabis is not specifically helpful for chronic low back pain. But cannabis is incredibly beneficial for cancer-related spinal pain and neuropathies. The whole video above is less than four minutes and can easily be listened to at 2x speed if you’d like the info.

To bring it back to challenging questions, is cannabis safe?

In case you’re wondering, chiropractic care is really beneficial for chronic low back pain.

But we’re not just great at helping people decrease pain. We also like helping people live better and healthier lives. As such, this week we’re hosting Liz of Vibrant Zen as she leads us through a beautiful sound bath experience following our weekly yoga class. You can register for the sound bath here, and if you want to really increase your ability to drop in to the relaxation and benefits of sound healing, I strongly recommend you join us for yoga beforehand!

If you’ve never done a sound bath before, I jokingly tell people that I lived a whole life in a sound bath once. It was specifically a gong bath at the old Blue Lotus studio downtown several years ago. My friend Amanda May led a kundalini yoga class there and it was my birthday, so I asked my friends to join me for it that night. It was lovely and as part of the class, she did a gong bath - hitting a soft mallet against her 90 pound gong, whose beautiful and calming reverberations went through the warehouse-like space, bouncing off humans and walls alike.

I lied there on the floor, feeling and hearing the low reverberations, and then found myself deeply immersed in a dream-like state where I was able to witness an entire life experience from some centuries ago. I have no idea if it was a previous life experience of mine (because how could I know? See questions above) or if it was just a dream-like vision. But it was truly a surreal experience.

If that sounds a little intense for you, then know that the other sound baths I’ve experienced have simply brought about deep relaxation with a side note of joy sprinkled in. And instead of a gong, Liz uses crystal singing bowls, rainsticks, and ocean drums. I am really looking forward to this!

If you’re a Barnes & Noble subscriber, my audio book is now available there! Still waiting on Audible to get their act together, but I’m hoping it’ll be up before the end of the year. We’ll see. While I was looking on Audible, I found this podcast (I did not know Audible had podcasts) that I did earlier this year with Dr. Laura Brayton and we talked about pelvic floor issues and perimenopause and prenatal care and other things that don’t start with the letter “p” as well.

So if you’re looking for a little extra info on any of those topics, check it out. If you love podcasts and love listening to me talk, you can always find the podcasts I’ve been on at the bottom of lindsaymumma.com.

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoy asking and answering the many questions I’ve laid out here. Perhaps “enjoy” isn’t the right word. What I actually hope is that you feel the frustration and discomfort of growth as you explore your edges and discover yourself and what you believe in.

L