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Archive for the ‘Scientific Spirituality’ Category

Religious Youths Are Less Likely to Experiment with Drugs and Alcohol, Baylor Study Finds

Posted: September 9, 2014 at 2:51 pm


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Newswise Young people who regularly attend religious services and describe themselves as religious are less likely to experiment with drugs and alcohol, according to a new study.

The study of 195 juvenile offenders was done by researchers at Baylor Universitys Institute for Studies of Religion, the University of Akron and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. It appears in the journal Alcohol Treatment Quarterly.

Juvenile offenders in the study were referred by a court, mental health professional or physician to a two-month residential treatment program and were assessed by researchers at intake and discharge through interviews, medical chart reviews, drug screening and reports by youths, parents and clinicians.

Study findings, which support a growing body of research, suggest that young people who connect to a higher power may feel a greater sense of purpose and are less likely to be bothered by feelings of not fitting in, said researcher Byron Johnson, Ph.D., co-director of Baylors Institute for Studies of Religion.

Researchers used four measures: alcohol or drug use, craving for alcohol or drugs; prosocial behaviors (service to others); and self-centered or narcissistic behavior. Forty percent of youths who entered treatments as agnostic or atheist identified themselves as spiritual or religious at discharge, which correlated with a decreased likelihood of testing positive for alcohol and drugs.

Daily spiritual experiences such as prayer or worship also were associated with a greater likelihood of sexual abstinence, increased prosocial behaviors and reduced narcissistic behaviors, researchers wrote.

Johnson noted that fewer adolescents today are connected to a religious organization than were youths of previous generations. Twenty-five percent of the millennial generation people born between 1980 and 2000 were not attached to any particular faith, Johnson said, citing a 2010 Pew Research report.

Among possible reasons that adolescents may opt not to experiment with drugs are religious instruction, support from congregations, or a conviction that using alcohol and drugs violates their religious beliefs, Johnson said.

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Religious Youths Are Less Likely to Experiment with Drugs and Alcohol, Baylor Study Finds

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September 9th, 2014 at 2:51 pm

Tech professional Matthew Krajewski promotes spiritual empowerment in new book

Posted: September 8, 2014 at 2:46 pm


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Aptos, CA (PRWEB) September 08, 2014

Author and spiritual healer Matthew Krajewski first invited readers into the realm of spiritual awareness with his book Modern Magic, where he discussed the idea of magic and its healing powers, citing scientific findings, ancient texts and his own experiences with the supernatural. His new book, The Golden Sherpa: Ascending Into Magical Spirituality (published by Balboa Press), aims to empower readers by enlightening them to the powers available through biological energy fields.

Krajewski, a technology professional and modern mystic, engages daily in spiritual practices. In The Golden Sherpa he discusses the sensitivity required to tune into these spiritual processes, and how to access them regularly.

Using his background and expertise as a shaman, Krajewski discusses spirituality in an inviting tone. He is hopeful that this will not only make his book more comprehensible, but better get across his message that a refined sense of spirituality can make any metaphysical pursuit more accessible. Krajewski also hopes to connect with his generation, the Millennials, as he says they continue to experiment with empathic spiritual pursuits.

Modern society is marked by an internalized belief that we are all disconnected, Krajewski says. Burgeoning movements from ecological activism to gift economies are all movements that rely upon compassionate connection. This is not a trend, but an original blueprint for society, and one which I articulate at the most basic level so all readers can understand the nature of interconnected energy, in themselves and in the world.

The Golden Sherpa By Matthew Krajewski Hardcover | 6 x 9 in | 222 pages | ISBN 9781452589671 Softcover | 6 x 9 in | 222 pages | ISBN 9781452589664 E-Book | ISBN 9781452589657 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author Matthew Krajewski graduated from Sarah Lawrence College where he studied writing. He is a modern mystic, incorporating diverse yet modern sensibilities into his work as a shaman and healer. The Golden Sherpa is his second book on spirituality. He also practices biodynamic farming and beekeeping at Tree Bee Microfarm with his fianc, Chef Ryan Farquhar. Krajewski invites readers to visit him at http://www.magicalheritage.com.

Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, Inc. a leading provider in publishing products that specialize in self-help and the mind, body, and spirit genres. Through an alliance with indie book publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the self-publishing model. For more information, visit balboapress.com. To start publishing your book with Balboa Press, call 877-407-4847 today. For the latest, follow @balboapress on Twitter. ###

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Tech professional Matthew Krajewski promotes spiritual empowerment in new book

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September 8th, 2014 at 2:46 pm

Awe, With And Without The Gods

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In a 2006 article for the Los Angeles Times, Sam Harris identified 10 myths about atheism, among them the idea that "atheists are closed to spiritual experience."

Harris explained: "There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly."

And in a post last week, my fellow 13.7 commentator Barbara J. King also wrote about atheism and awe. "Atheists feel awe, too. Everyone does. That wondrous sense needn't be described by invoking the sacred."

Yet the idea that atheism and awe are at odds is a common one. In a 2013 interview, for example, Oprah Winfrey refused to accept a woman's self-ascribed atheism after the woman shared powerful experiences of awe and a love of humanity. Winfrey controversially responded: "Well, I don't call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is."

Of course, "the awe and the wonder and the mystery" could just as well describe what motivates many scientists, whether or not they believe in God.

So why the persistent idea that awe is inextricably linked to theism? And are "scientific awe" and "religious awe" fundamentally different, or deep down one and the same?

To be sure, awe is a multifaceted emotion, and one that's only recently become the target of systematic psychological research. In an influential 2003 paper, psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt argued that awe is characterized by two central features: vastness and accommodation. Vastness describes the experience of something larger than the self, whether that vastness is a matter of physical size or of metaphorical size, such as great power. Accommodation refers to the need to modify one's current mental structures to make sense of the experience whether or not such modification is actually enacted or succeeds.

These features of awe can help us understand how science and religion both elicit awe, and also how either theism or atheism could ensue.

When it comes to vastness, the natural world provides no shortage of material. In fact, studies have typically used nature documentaries, a full-sized replica of a T. rex skeleton, and even commercials depicting waterfalls, whales and astronauts in space as elicitors of awe. In one study, more than 70 percent of card-carrying atheists reported feelings of awe ("as if you were part of something greater than yourself"), with nature (54 percent) and science (29 percent) identified as the most frequent triggers.

On the other hand, religious spaces and rituals are often designed to encourage the sense that there's something larger than the self, and an omnipotent God is by definition vastly powerful. So in their own ways, both the natural world and human representations of the supernatural can create a sense of vastness.

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Awe, With And Without The Gods

Written by grays

September 8th, 2014 at 2:46 pm

Is Democratic Imperialism The Answer (3)?

Posted: September 7, 2014 at 6:46 am


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Feature Article of Sunday, 7 September 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

The glaring failure of democratic imperialism is there for all to see, except for one thing, the demagogic blindness of those red-hot unpatriotic partisan varieties who simply refuse to take stock of, let alone acknowledge, the litany of apocalyptic deficiencies publicly identified with their preferred political affiliations or ideological choices. Of course there are rational grounds for this kind of partisan inflexibility displayed by a majority of The People. It does however seem that, neither democratic imperialism nor constitutional dictatorship allows for deeper penetration of analytic liquidity in the exercise of rationalization within the broad spectrum of cognitive possibilities, given the notable proliferation of political epicaricacy across The Countrys political divide.

This stiff tendentious behavior may appear contrary to the dictates of progressive intellection, more so because the architectonic operationality of the human brain is such that neurological plasticity provides a range of freedoms and choices which man needs to enable him negotiate the terrain of natures unpredictability. This is like saying nature has benevolently handed over to man a secret code to help him gain ready access to natures heart of secrets. The secret code itself may be a Pandoras box, a knotty existential state of affairs requiring stabs of innovative intellectual exertion to unravel. Yet, whenever there is an action, there certainly appears to be a corresponding reaction. This contention may not be needfully complementary when one considers the fact that internecine conflation of action and reaction, in the case of inexpert persons, has the potential to upset an individuals psychological equanimity and emotional balance, supposedly.

Further, evidence of ideational bankruptcy on the part of The Countrys political elites to restrain the epidemiological swelling of national ailments may itself originate from a clear symptomatology of internal inconsistencies, a theory predicated on blatant absence of creative political choices for policy makers. The fact of the matter is that these creative choices are there, quite conspicuously so, except that, possibly, the rigid particularities of partisan encumbrances, purity of ideological exclusivity, and prideful hesitance of The Countrys leadership to snatch the elastic possibilities of the human faculty stand in the way of the collective politics of national prioritization. This polemic ostensibly advertizes airs of collective indictment of the national conscience, although it is also a question that does not gloss the crucial element of individual culpability in the collective failure of national policies to reverse the crippling curse of poverty owing to active nationalization of political incompetence, to individual responsibility for the devastating shortcomings of the national enterprise.

What is the basis of our claim? After all, government as abstract instrumentality does not preclude the important element of societys moral responsibility answering to questions of reified connotations directly bordering on the existential actualities of man, as exercised through the combined effort of human agency. For instance, a pride of lions connotes a collectivity of animals acting in concert to protect their territorial interests and collective survival among other pressing needs, so does human anatomy imply an optimal portmanteau of individual body parts physiologically acting in concert to drive the regulatory homeostasis of the human organism. Thus, the loss of a lion or of a body part, say, may constitute a functional instance of death or life in terms of the concept of instinctual integrity surrounding the internal strategic dynamics of socialization among a pride of lions, its relationship to the external world of biological uncertainty, as well as of the mortal danger of homeostatic imbalance to the survival of the human organism, respectively. Stated otherwise, a seriously diseased body part may momentarily or permanently actuate the shutting down of an entire system of human anatomy.

Therefore, renal or kidney failure, for instance, does not necessitate diagnostic examination of a patients nose size or nasal index. Against this backdrop, it does make sense to closely examine the constituent elements of government as points of reference for institutional defects when the aggressive blaze of national crises rises to the intimidating heights of the heavens. Here, an underlying point of reference is to take the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive arms of government apart in their atomistic nakedness in search of the etiological locationality of national disaster. Yet the concept of government is a direct innovative artifact of human imagination. In a sense the human mind, therefore, constitutes the originating or primordial link to his environment, which is itself an outcome of his intellection, when it also appears the central idea of environment is of immanent fashioning rather than of being extrinsic to the ontological actualities of human consciousness.

Thus the seat of human consciousness, the mind, is a battlefield for the contesting claims of ideas, be it God, gods, ancestors, Satan, ghosts, witchery, sexual drive, murderous intents, survival, philanthropy, gustation, and so on. Besides, the fact of the environment being a product of human imagination does not, however, exclude the notional ontology of mutual interactivity between the two neighborly worlds, the mind and the environment. Another good example relates to the experimental activity of chemical equilibrium where reactants and products concurrently socialize with each other through an entropy relationship subject to conditionalities of externality, human interventions included, and of internality. This instance of experimental conditioning can also be likened to the internal dynamics of a balance sheet where correct debit and credit entries undergo transformational episodes of mutual impaction, a process, which, in turn, imputes numeric equilibration to an otherwise abstract economic or industrial activity.

The unspoken assumption here points to another crucial fact of human existence, that every human process feeds on a set of conditionalities and constraints, however abstract or empirical the nature of this process. This requires courage and a combination of other virtues to sail through the glacier of life challenges. Assata Shakur is right to note: But we were to find out quickly that courage and dedication were not enough. To win any struggle for liberation, an overall ideology and strategy that stem from a scientific analysis of history and present conditions. In fact, Assatas rhetorical eloquence correctly establishes science, not emotionalism or affectationism, as a secular version of liberating theology based on the instrument of radical rationalization, linking the existential actualities of the past to the prevailing circumstances of modernity. Of course, emotion has its place in human and animal biology as part of the general question of instinctual survivability, but the rationality of the scientific method, it seems, possesses the power, a writ of habeas corpus sort of, to call the subjectivity of emotionalization into question.

On the other hand, mediation between scientific rationalization and emotionalization is required to establish an element of innate harmony within an individuals intellectual personality and across the analytic landscape of policy decision making. It matters a lot if the scientific approach in question meets the
rigors of contemporary analytics. It is that Assatas postulate on the question of rigorous scientificity certainly puts the modern science of fingerprinting ahead of the archaic archeology of the Bertillon system. It also remotely implies man has some degree of elastic control over the innate dynamics of the mind, once again, subject to conditionalities of neural socialization, to constraints of neurologic inelasticity and fluctuating levels of neurotransmitters in the brain. Other indispensable factors affecting the final artifactual outcomes of the thinking process, includes, but not limited to, education, mores, social order, religion, personal convictions, religion, age, societys level of industrialization, sex, and degree of individual and group psychological health. Then the additional layer of cultural particularity factors in.

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Is Democratic Imperialism The Answer (3)?

Written by grays

September 7th, 2014 at 6:46 am

Elephants, Angels and Aliens

Posted: September 3, 2014 at 10:43 am


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Believing That the Vastness of the Cosmos Points to Life on Other Planets Misses the Point Rome, September 03, 2014 (Zenit.org) Father Dwight Longenecker | 262 hits

I dont know if anyone else has noticed a seemingly profound, but ultimately silly discussion which is prevalent within popular culture.

Its called the Fermi Paradox and it goes like this: There are billions of stars out there like the sun. Therefore, statistically there must be billions of planets like earth where intelligent life has developed. Given the vast amount of time and the vast number of possible other earths there must be other intelligent life forms who have invented space travel. So where are they?

This argument sounds interesting at first sight, but on examination it is as faulty as the basic assumptions on which it is built. There are several problems with the underlying discussion:

First there is the problem of what I call size-ism. The materialist is awe struck by the vast size of the universe and the vast amounts of time he believes in. His awe before these vast quantities of time and space is rather like a religion. We all want something big to worship and the materialist, who doesnt have a God to worship, is in awesome wonder at the bigness of time and space.

However, why should we be impressed simply by size? We do not think an elephant is better than an infant just because it is bigger. The Sahara is big, but it is full of sand and nobody lives there. Antarctica is bigger than Austria, but it is not better because it is bigger.

The cosmos is vast, so what? There may be other intelligent life forms out there, but there is no evidence so far. Furthermore, vast size and statistical musings based on that size dont necessarily amount to much. A supposition based on statistics is still a supposition. The space and time may be vast, but the evidence so far would suggest that the earth is like a puddle of water in the Sahara. Just because the Sahara is vast and features one puddle doesnt mean there must be another puddle in the Sahara. In fact, the vast, dry emptiness of the Sahara might be good reason to suppose that there is not another puddle.

There are other assumptions in this way of thinking which are astoundingly small minded, and they are compounded by the fact that those discussing these things invariably think they are being open minded and thinking outside the box. Their suppositions are based on the assumption that space and time are fixed according to the material perceptions of our own space and time. They are working according to the now outdated scientific assumptions that nature is like a fixed machine that always works according to the same fixed principles.

Thinkers like Stratford Caldecott began to apply the discoveries of modern physics to ponderings on spirituality, space and time. It may be that reality is rubbery. What seems solid turns out to be unpredictable. The fundamentals go all funny. Perhaps the cosmic is comic and what we thought was so solid and sure will turn out to be shaky and uncertain.

Too many materialists assume that the rest of the cosmos functions according to the rules of space and time which operate in our own dimension of physicality. This may not be true at all. Their perception of the vastness of the cosmos is determined by their own mortality. For mortals time is limited because their lives are limited. In other words time is limited for mortals because they are mortal.

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Elephants, Angels and Aliens

Written by grays

September 3rd, 2014 at 10:43 am

Muslim Youth Should be Guided Aright, Lead them not Astray

Posted: August 30, 2014 at 10:43 pm


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Islam encourages the young people to use their ability and potential to develop one's intellectual, personality, spiritual and physical. This is important, as a nation's progress or downfall relies on the youth since they are considered as the future heirs of the nation's development.

In their Friday sermon yesterday, Imams across the Sultanate reminded the Muslim congregants to pay particular attention to youth development, particularly the spiritual aspect in age of today where God and religion are decimated by logic overdrive and extremely minute scientific analysis.

In mosques throughout the country, worshippers were told to give the appropriate guidance to the young generation, youth especially, due to the impressionable nature. Therefore, the Sultanate aims to produce a generation of Al-Quran literate youth. On the other hand, the Imams advised the Muslims against shelving Al-Quran as mere decoration both at home and the office. Instead, Muslims have a lifelong obligation to recite the Verses properly, understand its contents and apply the principles in life.

Al-Quran said the Imams before thousands of Muslim worshippers, some of whom are clearly dozed off, is the cure to the sickness of the heart. In Islam, disease or sickness of the heart consists of sinful consciousness such as being overly envious or jealous over someones success or happiness, misanthropy, greed and arrogance, among others.

The sermon yesterday came amidst the worrying social problems committed by youth of the nation, majority of which are underreported due to self-censorship and the overall apprehensive tendency of the local Malay Muslim population. Youth as young as ten-years-old are now readily exposed to destructive elements that masquerade in deceptive veil of happiness. Todays generation is born to a world where iPads, iPhones, and other highly advanced gadgets are just within arms length. It is not helping that teenagers nowadays, especially females, are willing to engage in unhealthy activities that totally compromise their academics, spirituality, dignity, and of course their future. They become extremely conscious with their body image and the selfie trend serves only to worsen their narcissistic fit where young girls are more than happy to upload their photos to Facebook, unaware that somewhere out there, paedophile and starving rapists are looming over them, looking for a possible opportunity to devour their potential victims.

Hence, today and the future youth generation should step up and enhance one's attitude, knowledge, skill and capability as to make changes for the better to achieve the objective and Vision 2035. BRUDIRECT.COM

If you have any stories or news that you would like to share with the global online community, please feel free to share it with us by contacting us directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Muslim Youth Should be Guided Aright, Lead them not Astray

Written by grays

August 30th, 2014 at 10:43 pm

DiaSorin Announces New Webinar in Their Annual Vitamin D Series

Posted: August 28, 2014 at 3:48 am


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(PRWEB) August 28, 2014

DiaSorin has announced that their new webinar, The Clinical Utility of 1,25 Dihydroxyvitamin D, will feature guest speaker Dr. Gregory A. Plotnikoff, a physician and researcher at Penny George Institute for Health and Healing Integrative Medicine. Dr. Plotnikoff serves as an integrative medicine physician at the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing and as Senior Consultant, Center for Health Care Innovation, Allina Health Care, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He also serves as a co-editor of the new journal Global Advances in Health and Medicine.

In this webinar slated for September 11, 2014, 11am Central Time, practicing Internist and vitamin D researcher Gregory A. Plotnikoff, MD, MTS, FACP, will review how new testing for 1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D can enhance your clinical practice. Issues to be addressed include identification of patients most likely to benefit, when to test and how to interpret values. Dr. Plotnikoff will also address the latest data on vitamin D production, utilization and breakdown pathways. The program includes opportunities for questions.

Gregory A. Plotnikoff, MD, MTS, FACP, is a board-certified internist and pediatrician who has received international honors for his work in cross-cultural and integrative medicine. He has been active in East-West medical integration issues with the Japanese Society of Oriental Medicine, National Geographic and the World Health Organization. He is the recipient of several international awards for research and teaching as well as the Early Career Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota Medical School.

Dr. Plotnikoff is well known for his work in interventional nutrition, herbal medicines and spirituality in clinical care. He has additional training as a hospital chaplain, in medical acupuncture, in mind-body skills and as a practitioner of Traditional East Asian Medicine. He is co-author of the book Trust Your Gut (Conari, 2013) and author of 22 textbook chapters and more than 50 first-authored articles in the medical literature including several in Japanese. His 2003 article on vitamin D and chronic pain is one of the most highly cited articles in the history of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The free webinar is hosted by LabRoots and will allow participants to interact with the speaker as well as network with each other. A live Q&A session will follow the presentation, offering a chance to ask questions to Dr. Plotnikoff. Attendees can also earn free Continuing Education credits for this talk.

For full details and free registration, click here.

About DiaSorin: For over 40 years the company has been developing, producing and marketing reagent kits for in vitro diagnostics worldwide. Its line of products used by diagnostic laboratories that are part of hospital facilities or operate independently can meet the needs of the following clinical areas: infectious diseases, bone metabolism, hepatitis, and endocrinology.

About LabRoots: LabRoots is the leading professional networking website designed to connect all science verticals. Founded in March 2008, LabRoot's vision was to connect the scientific world leveraging a myriad of unique features and tools, discovering meaningful collaborations across geographic boundaries and fields of expertise. LabRoots is the owner and producer of BioConference Live - which has grown into the world's largest series of virtual events within the Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics community.

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DiaSorin Announces New Webinar in Their Annual Vitamin D Series

Written by grays

August 28th, 2014 at 3:48 am

Is Religion Only in Your Head?

Posted: August 27, 2014 at 8:43 am


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Christianity Requires Belief in the Resurrection Rather Than Neuroscience Rome, August 26, 2014 (Zenit.org) Father Dwight Longenecker | 665 hits

In the early 1980s I visited the town of Medjugorje where a group of young people reported that they were experiencing visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The scientists wired the children up to machines to record their physiological responses during the apparitions. The scientists wanted to study what was going on in their brains as they saw the Blessed Virgin.

Religious experiences of the mystical kind occur throughout human experience and in most every kind of religion. But what is happening when visionaries see the Blessed Virgin, Hindu holy men go into a trance or charismatics speak in tongues?

Are they experiencing something real or is it just their imagination?

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg studies how the brain responds to religion. In this fascinating article his work is explained and explored by an atheist journalist named Julia Llewellyn Smith. She submitted to some experiments with Newberg to see if a religious-type experience could be artificially activated in his brain. It didnt work.

Llewellyn Smith explains:

Newberg is director of research at the Jefferson Myrna Brind Centre of Integrative Medicine, in Philadelphia, and co-author of, among other books, The Metaphysical Mind: Probing the Biology of Philosophical Thought. He is a leading neurotheologist, pioneering a new and highly controversial science that investigates whether as many sceptics have long suspected God didnt create us, but we created God.

During brain scans of those involved in various types of meditation and prayer, Newberg noticed increased activity in the limbic system, which regulates emotion. He also noted decreased activity in the parietal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for orienting oneself in space and time.

When this happens, you lose your sense of self, he says. You have a notion of a great interconnectedness of things. It could be a sense where the self dissolves into nothingness, or dissolves into God or the universe.

Newberg has discovered that the human brain has what might be called a capacity for prayer and this is universal. We are able to get outside ourselves and experience what we feel is contact with a high power.

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Is Religion Only in Your Head?

Written by grays

August 27th, 2014 at 8:43 am

‘Colorful Imaginings’ reception at Spa Orlando

Posted: August 25, 2014 at 10:45 pm


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Spa Orlando will host a reception for "Colorful Imaginings," a solo exhibition featuring the work of Jason L Lee, this Thursday, Aug. 28.

"We are excited to have Jason's work in our spa. His paintings have a beauty in them that resonates with our space and enhances our environment," says Danielle Davis of Spa Orlando.

Lee is a Florida native, arts advocate, scenic artist, book-cover illustrator, graphic designer and entrepreneur as co-founder/owner of the Arts Hub Organization. A self-taught painter, he uses a combination of impressionistic and illustrative techniques with a surrealist's eye to create fantastical imagery conveying scientific and spiritual theories, as well as personal beliefs.

His paintings blend inspiration from music, science, spirituality and life experience.

Spa Orlando, also known as The Spa of Thornton Park, will host "Colorful Imaginings" through Sept. 25.

The free reception, from 6-9 p.m. Thursday, is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. Spa Orlando is at 23 N. Summerlin Ave., Orlando.

For more information on the exhibit, reception or the Arts Hub Organization, email artshuborg@gmail.com or call Lee at 321-695-8266.

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'Colorful Imaginings' reception at Spa Orlando

Written by grays

August 25th, 2014 at 10:45 pm

Honoring one another’s spirituality brings peace and healing

Posted: August 19, 2014 at 6:43 pm


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Cans of tear gas hurled at protesters, police armed in military gear, shots fired, hearts broken its difficult to accept that this sad scene is playing out just a short distance from the home of a friend of mine. For my family and me, visits to his home have always been warm and joy-filled occasions. Today these visits present a stark contrast to what has happened in the community since Michael Brown, a young man from Ferguson, Mo., was killed by a local policeman.

Some say the root of the problem is racism. The police force in Ferguson is primarily white, while the population of Ferguson is primarily African-American.

The situation has stirred me to pray, as it has many others. No one wants to see a community torn apart. As I reached out to God with the hope that the community could find peace and healing, the words of another friend of mine came to thought. She, told me of a time when someone speaking to her said, I dont know whether to call you African-American or black. Ann has a quick wit, but she is also a deep, spiritual thinker. Her response was, What if you call me Ann, and Ill call you by your name, Joe.

As I thought more deeply about Anns response, and knowing her approach to life, I realized she was urging the idea that we should honor one anothers spiritual individuality and lay physical appearances aside. With that reminder, a conviction that humanity could rise above racism began to grow in my thought. I realized that when we stop defining one another on the basis of our material characteristics, and, instead, understand and appreciate each individuals spiritual nature, or Godlikeness just as Christ Jesus did racism will lose its hold.

The Bible explains that there is an unbreakable link between God and each of us. It says, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Genesis 1:27). The reality of this powerful truth may at times seem to be a far cry from human experience. However, in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, explains: Mortals are not like immortals, created in Gods own image; but infinite Spirit being all, mortal consciousness will at last yield to the scientific fact and disappear, and the real sense of being, perfect and forever intact, will appear (p. 295).

Christ Jesus showed us that God is all good and perfect Love. Through his pure consciousness of man as Gods perfect likeness, Jesus helped others see themselves in this true light. By this means he healed lepers (see Luke 17:12-14), cast out demons (see Matthew 17:14-18), and raised the dead (see John 11:1-45).

Jesus made mans spiritual individuality, or Godlikeness, tangible to others because he fully expressed this individuality in his own life. That was his way of loving others. He lived according to the new commandment that he taught: That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another (John 13:34). His life of pure, unselfish love demonstrated mans spiritual nature and presented humanity with a living example of true manhood and womanhood.

As we live up to that example, we do our part to break racisms hold in our neighborhoods and our world. We could begin by asking ourselves some questions: Do I understand my inherent oneness with God, and everyone elses oneness with Him? Am I willing to seek the spiritual understanding of being that will allow me to rise above selfish considerations to live according to Jesus new commandment? Do I love God and my fellow man enough to be a witness to the real, spiritual nature of everyone I meet? We can all do this because each of us is the pure, perfect image of Love. As we perceive our unity with God more clearly, we will be able to see the real, spiritual nature of all humanity.

The world has great need for healing today. Not only in Ferguson, but on every street corner around the world there is an urgent demand for humanitys spiritual individuality to be understood and demonstrated. There are no lines drawn, dividing one spiritual idea from another. We are all united through what Mrs. Eddy calls the indissoluble spiritual link which establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his creator (Science and Health, p. 491).

Man made in Gods image is magnificent. We can honor the spiritual individuality of one another and so dissolve whatever misperceptions would separate us.

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Honoring one another's spirituality brings peace and healing

Written by grays

August 19th, 2014 at 6:43 pm


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