Lack of Sleep, Again

I actually slept quite well last night, except for the hour when I went out to look for Comet Lovejoy, and Orion had slipped just below the trees.  I did see Betelgeuse (the red giant in Orion's "shoulder") quite well.  Tonight is the best night to see the comet, and you can check out Sky and Astronomy's link here:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/spot-comet-lovejoy-tonight-122920141/

In other news, I removed some posts I made when I was tired.  I do not have a lot of fondness for the local New Age community here, as I really have met more loonies in that crowd than good and decent people (apparently it was a little different several years  ago)...but I confess I don't know very much about their (too many to count) thought processes to really comment on it.  People would proffer such thoughts to me because they would like to help me be well and not have lupus derail so much of my life...still, it's important to be informed. And of course, changing one's thoughts and cognition is the basis of most therapy (at least good therapy).

I categorically do not believe I can will away lupus with happy thoughts, though.  I think that affirmations and so forth are good to help you get through, especially: but to tell anyone with a serious illness that they created this via their thoughts is pure BS and abusive.  Positive thoughts might keep me optimistic and live each day fully, and perhaps reduce stress, but I'm not going to fk around with my illness by thinking I can wish it away--I bless Western medicine for that one. 

Honestly, as much as Louise Hay has helped so many people, even me, with learning to be positive, I shelved her books after reading this quote in an interview (the entirety of which can be found in the link that follows.   I don't dislike this woman or the work she's done (she was, for example, one of the few people who would work with AIDS patients when they were considered to be pariahs), but honestly, that crowd takes their line of thinking too far and I am honestly shocked at the facile lines of thinking they devolve to at times).  You have to read both paragraphs to get an idea of the mindset she proffers (which in my opinion carries a load of guilt with it bigger than anything I ever heard in my Catholic childhood):

But while Hay may have hedged about whether positive thinking could cure AIDS, in her writings she was adamant that thoughts — not just sexual behavior — could help cause it. “Venereal dis-ease,” Hay writes in “You Can Heal Your Life,” using her eccentric spelling, “is almost always sexual guilt. It comes from a feeling, often subconscious, that it is not right to express ourselves sexually. A carrier with a venereal dis-ease can have many partners, but only those whose mental and physical immune systems are weak will be susceptible to it.” And that mental weakness can be self-loathing, hating one’s looks or just a fear of aging.

In person and in print, Hay mentions these causes only to play them down: “In no way am I trying to create guilt for anyone”; “this is a time for healing, for making whole, not for condemnation.” But she cannot escape her own logic: if our thoughts create our circumstances, then we are always, in the end, to blame. When I asked her if, since people’s thoughts are responsible for their conditions, victims of genocide might be to blame for their own deaths, she said: “I probably wouldn’t say it to them. I don’t go around making people feel bad. That’s not what I’m after.” I pressed harder: Did she believe they are to blame? “Yes, I think there’s a lot of karmic stuff that goes on, past lives.” So, I asked, with a situation like the Holocaust, the victims might have been an unfortunate group of souls who deserved what they got because of their behavior in past lives? “Yes, it can work that way,” Hay said. “But that’s just my opinion.”

The entirety of the article can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/magazine/04Hay-t.html?pagewanted=all

And just for a bit of backup, here's an opinion piece on more of this line of thinking:

http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=72f9ffbf-78f2-44f5-8cea-4c8c67091429&sponsor=

I am sorry to have to shelve Louise Hay's books but I can't support her if she really believes something like that.  Working on the kind of book I am writing makes me see such thinking with a very dubious eye. 

I'm spending the day resting and then will do some writing on my book.