A Nine-Month Life Changing Journey ToUnburden Your Past And Connect You To Your True PurposeProgram starts April 8-10, 2016

The Power of Breath Institutes Empowerment Training is the core program of all of our offerings. Since 2001, the robust curriculum has continually evolved and improved to assure a true, life-transforming experience for every participant who attends. The program runs from April to December and focuses on empowering every individual utilizing mindfulness, conscious breathing and simple ceremony as the primary tools of self-realization. The program takes place in a rural setting, in Spofford, New Hampshire, which enables nature-based experiences as an integral part of the program.

What sets this program apart from other personal growth programs is its safe and comprehensive approach to healing body, mind, heart and spirit through processes and methods grounded in interpersonal neurobiology, somatic psychotherapy and wisdom traditions. We build a culture of safety and trust first, cultivate loving self-awareness, and then build personal skills and capacities that lead to deep healing and the ability to engage in a full and vibrant life.

On this solid foundation you can integrate your day-to-day experience more fully and easily, while being able to make the choices that fulfills your highest potential.

Designed from over 35 years of group work, the Empowerment process is a well-balanced blend of Somatic Breath Therapy, mindfulness, cognitive inquiry, group process, and ceremonies in the natural world to encourage the recovery of each participants true and loving nature. The nine-month period you spend with our staff will be skillful, intensive, interactive and experiential. It will challenge you into the fullest and highest expression of your Self, while fully supporting you throughout the process.

If you can relate to any of these questions, say YES to yourself and register now. Space is limited; we only accept 11 new participants each year.

Weekend I Welcome to the Power of Breath

Weekend II Awareness, Presence and Living from your Heart

Weekend III Body and Beliefs, Trauma and Integration

Weekend IV Remembering Your True Nature: Warm Water Breathing

Weekend V Going Beyond What You Think is Possible: Cold Water Breathing

Weekend VI Sacred Ceremony and Taking Refuge

Weekend VII Mindfulness and Choice, Forgiveness and Freedom

Weekend VIII Dancing the Long-Dark Breath (All-Night Breathe)

Weekend IX Walking the Talk: Integration and Re-entry

Total investment: $3495 includes tuition, materials, lunches and snacks per weekend/event. Read the programagreements here. Tuition must be paid in full by April 8, 2016; we take Master Card, Visa, personal checks and cash. A $350 early registration discount is available if the entire tuition ($3145) is paid by February 15, 2016. A non-refundable deposit of $395 along with a short letter of Intent will secure your space in the training. This training will fill quickly! Makeyour deposit early to reserve your space. Weekends run Friday 6-10 pm, Sat/Sun 9 am 6 pm; 3-day retreats run 9 am to 6 pm each day.

2016 ET Dates:

April 8-10 (Friday 6 pm Sunday 6 pm)

April 29- May 1

June 3-5

July 7-9 (3-days: Thursday 9 am Saturday 6 pm)

August 5-7 (Friday 9 am Sunday 6 pm note: Friday is a full day)

Sept 9-11 (Friday 9 am Sunday 6 pm note: Friday is a full day)

October 7-9 (Friday 6 pm Sunday 6 pm)

November 4-6 (Friday 6 pm Sunday morning 10 am)

December 2-4 (Friday 6 pm Sunday 6 pm)

Application Process:

Please complete the program agreement hereand include:

Location and Accommodations:

All trainings are held in Southwestern NH at the Broadwing Breath Center, 45 Stones Mill Rd., Spofford, NH 03462. Indoor/outdoor camping style (bring your own bedding, sleeping bag, towels, etc.) is available for $15/night paid each training weekend. For motel/B & B accommodations, see listing on our website under Training Accommodations. For more information contact: Jeremy Youst, 603.363.4331 Jeremy@powerofbreath.com

Click below to hold your spotwith a $395 deposit:

Click below to payusing the prepay discount ($3195). Payment must be made in full by February 1, 2016 to be eligible for the discount.

For more information contact:Jeremy Youst, 603.363.4331 Jeremy@powerofbreath.com

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I had learned enough about Breathwork and its transformative forces to know this work would be beneficial for me. What I didnt realize was just how powerful and transformative this year would be The combination of facilitated breathwork sessions, dynamic and inspired leadership from Jeremy, support and challenge from an amazing staff, my tribe of like-minded, like-hearted, equally committed brothers and sisters, and ongoing support from Jeremy and the important people in my life, have all led to a very different me living in the world today. I am truly living my intention of being more authentic, and being free of my fear and my story about my painRachael Walter, 2013 ET graduate

Every month mysteriously revealed new information and awareness that surprised and delighted me. I distinctly remember ending each month saying, There is no way this month can be topped, and quite magically it was, and that which entered in the following month was amazing! Each month unveiled more lessons and surprises. Now I find myself here, looking back in awe. Its amazing-I never knew I had such a capacity for love-love for myself and love for others. I also have discovered a new level of joy! I never thought I could ever feel this happy.Its wonderful and I am humbly grateful. Beth White

I have entered the Truth of Me that is beyond all doubt. T. N., teacher.

I think the most valuable thing (and I am taking from this training) is this deep sense of self-love and the capacity to love my brothers and sisters in our group I am taking with me the Knowing that I have been truly seen, heard, loved, that I am lovable, that I am accepted fully all parts of me, that I am honored for who I am I would especially recommend you, Jeremy, for your presence, your experience, your skills as a spiritual midwife, facilitator, presenter, ritual master, jokester, your love and joyful embracing of life. And I would also speak to the depth of connection that gets nurtured within the context of skillful learning for thats the juicy part Elizabeth A.

. . . I love this work. I mean, sometimes it SUCKS it STINKS, big time Because in this you totally dive into the places you have always avoided have always run from. But the richness, the fullness of life, when you go into it, for all it contains, is so amazing. How in the world did I EVER live any other way? Wow. And it continues to deepen and become more enriched this life with breath. I Love all of it. All of it. Thats the key Cyndy K.

Today, I feel that I am aware of my true Self and purpose. Over the last nine months I have come to accept the inclinations, abilities and guidance that I have long hidden away and I have let go of the addictions that I hid behind The empowerment of Self (is) a journey that connects you to the Source. (It) is a journey that will push and tug and pull your soul to examine the true purpose of walking on this planet and help you to serve others Whether or not you become a Breath Facilitator, you will find your purpose and begin serving others as a part of your path/karma, and learn to find love in every moment Peter H.

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Empowerment Training - Power of Breath Institute

The future belongs to those who can afford it. This may be virtually true in todays world, where surviving retirement can feel impossible, but its also the literal premise of Altered Carbon, Netflixs new prestige sci-fi series. Based on Richard K. Morgans novel of same name, the neo-noir is set several hundred years in the future, when human consciousness has been digitized into microchip-like stacks constantly being swapped into and out of various bodies, or sleeves.

This technology, along with innovations like human cloning and artificial intelligence, has given society a quantum leap, but its also sent socioeconomic stratification into overdrive, creating dire new realities for the poor and incarcerated while simultaneously producing an elite upper-class. Called Metsshort for Methuselahsthe members of Altered Carbons 0.001 percent have achieved virtual immortality thanks to vaults of their own cloned sleeves and cloud backups full of their stacks. Its either dystopia or utopia, depending on ones bank account.

Whatever your views on the shows plot, in which a former rebel supersoldier named Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), on ice in a stack prison, is revived and hired by a Met to solve the murder of his last sleeve, Altered Carbons best quality is its worldbuilding. In the 25th century, transhumanismthe belief that human beings are destined to transcend their mortal flesh through technologyhas reached its full potential, and some of its end results are not pretty, at all.

But Altered Carbon is only the latest bit of transhumanism to hit TV recently. From Black Mirrors cookies and Philip K. Dicks Electric Dreams mind-invading telepaths and alien bodysnatchers to Star Trek: Discoverys surgical espionage and Travelers time-jumping consciousness, the classic tropes of body-hopping, body-swapping, and otherwise commandeering has exploded in an era on the brink, one in which longevity technology is accelerating more rapidly than ever, all while most people still trying to survive regular threats to basic corporeal health and safety.

These tropes have enjoyed a healthy existence in sci-fi and horror for decades, but now more than ever transhumanism is ubiquitous in pop culture, asking us to consider the ethical, personal, political, and economic implications of an ideology with a goalimplementing technology in the human body to prolong and improve lifethat is already beginning to take shape.

A crucial fact to remember about transhumanism and the philosophies it inspired, including the ones modeled by Altered Carbons Mets, is that its conception was heavily rooted in eugenics. Though earlier thinkers had already produced work one could call transhumanist today, the term wasnt coined until 1951, by Julian Huxley, a noted evolutionary biologist (and brother to Brave New World author Aldous Huxley). Julian Huxley believed strongly in the fundamentally exclusionary theory that society would improve immensely if only its best members were allowed to procreate. In the speech in which he first used the word transhumanism, he claimed that in order for humans to transcend the tentative fumblings of our ancestors, society ought to enact a concerted policy to prevent the present flood of population-increase from wrecking all our hopes for a better world.

While he didnt necessarily believe the criteria for what constituted best should be drawn along racial or economic lines, the ideology Huxley promoted was inherently elitist. It also allowed for virtually as many interpretations as there are people, and plenty of those people, particularly those in powerespecially in Huxleys time, but also in the fictional future of Altered Carbondid and do believe best means white, straight, financially successful, and at least nominally Christian. As a result, the concept he named ended up being primarily conceptualized in its infancy by white men of privilege.

This, of course, didnt remain the main interpretation of transhumanism for long. In the years following Huxleys coinage, humans made profound leaps in technological innovation, first in computers and then in AI, which allowed more people to envision the possibilities of one day being able to transcend their organic limitations. The basic concept was easily repurposed by those whose oppression has always been tied to physical violencenotably people of color, LGBTQ people, and women.

By the early 1980s, scholars like Natasha Vita-More and Donna Haraway had revamped the concept with manifestos that argued transhumanism ought to be about diversity and multiplicity, about breaking down constructs like gender, race, and ability in favor of a more fluid, chimeric alternative in which each person can be many seemingly contradictory things at onceincluding human and machine. (As WIREDs Julie Muncy explains in her review of the first season, Altered Carbon touches upon but never really takes a stance on this dimension of a post-corporeal world.)

As Silicon Valley boomed, so did transhumanism. Millionaire investors have poured endless cash into anti-aging research, machine intelligence companies, and virtual reality; meanwhile, the possibility of extended or superhuman life has veered even further into becoming the exclusive purview of the extremely rich (and, more often than not, extremely white and extremely male). In 1993, mathematician and science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge pegged the arrival of the singularitythe moment at which technology, particularly AI, supersedes human intelligence and either eliminates humanity or fuses with it, allowing people to finally become post-humanat around 2030; by 2005 futurist Ray Kurzweil was agreeing with Vinge in his now-seminal book The Singularity is Near. (The Verge has a solid timeline of transhumanist thought here.)

Today, working organs are being 3D-printed. Nanites, while a few years off, are definitely on the horizon. And the technologies that fuel nightmare fodder like Black Mirror are becoming realities almost daily, which gives the overwhelming impression to laypeople that the Singularity, while perhaps still technically far off, is imminent.

Add privatized healthcare, police brutality, immigration, sexual assault, and plenty more extremely real threats to peoples physical bodiesnot to mention the exponential growth of the TV industry itselfand youve got the perfect cocktail for a flood of transhumanist sci-fi shows that give form to anxieties viewers have about both wanting to escape the physical confines of their blood-bag existences and being absolutely, justifiably terrified of what could go wrong when they actually do.

But however uncomfortable it may be, that dilemma is not accidental. It has become necessary to understanding and surviving our current techno-political moment. Whether enjoying the ecstasy of possibility in Altered Carbons disembodied immortality or writhing in the agony of imagining eternity as a digital copy of ones own consciousness, the roller coaster of emotions these shows elicit ought to be a major signal to audiences that now is the time to be thinking about the cost of pursuing technological immortality. If stacks and sleeves are indeed our inevitable future, the moral quandary wont lie in the body-swapping itselfitll be reckoning with who gets to do it and why.

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'Altered Carbon' and TV's New Wave of Transhumanism | WIRED

Gods Will Be Watching was de Paco's first attempt at infusing a video game with ethical and moral dilemmas, and it was a resounding success when it landed in 2014. Deconstructeam was thrust into a broader conversation about the power and creativity of indie games, and there was enough money in the bank to start working on the next thing. This time around, de Paco wanted to be more deliberate -- Gods Will Be Watching was unfiltered, and in the end, its message got away from him.

"With Gods Will Be Watching, I wasn't really aware of the power of video games as a storytelling medium or maybe as communicating a message, so I kind of just made the game and put a lot of my instinctive philosophy in there," de Paco said. "I realized that I accidentally made an anti-system game, in which you have to go against any form of authority, so this time I tried to actually be aware of what I am telling and what I'm doing with the game."

The result is a concise yet branching cyberpunk story about the awful power massive technology companies can assert over people's daily lives (and bodies and minds). Through this lens, de Paco asks players how far they would go to obtain or sustain happiness, and what it truly means to be human. When we lose our emotions, do we lose our humanity?

Although the game offers a range of answers in its dialogue trees, it doesn't actually wrap all of these questions up in a nice ethical bow. They're not meant to be answered; they're de Paco's grand social experiment, designed to provoke thought and conversation. And here, it seems The Red Strings Club has succeeded.

De Paco said the game itself takes about three or four hours to complete on a standard playthrough. However, many Twitch streamers end up playing for something like 10 hours because they spend most of the time talking through the game's direct questions with the live chat.

"It comes in really lengthy conversations about what if it's good or not to get rid of emotions, or how it might benefit society," de Paco said. "It's really great."

Some of the game's questions are far-fetched scenarios specific to this particular future, but others feel relevant to life today. Scientists may not have developed implants that can alter our character yet, but we enjoy a common stimulus in caffeine and a depressant in alcohol. We have pills that promise to calm, excite and otherwise change our moods. We play with our emotional states every day.

This is a harsh reality for de Paco: Two years ago, some close friends and family members started taking antidepressants, and the experience made him question the essence of humanity on a grand scale, sparking the theme of The Red Strings Club.

"It makes you wonder if they're still the same person or if they're happier or not," de Paco said. "For me, writing this kind of magic technology that is able to remove depression and everything was a way for myself to explore, to cope with the idea of people close to me being changed."

De Paco isn't on a mission to end the antidepressant industry. In fact, he wishes the effects of these drugs could be streamlined like in The Red Strings Club, allowing people to alter their moods like code. "I wouldn't mind to change that for an implant or maybe just changing a variable instead of having to go through the process of taking pills or being medicated," he said.

If he were given the option, de Paco wouldn't choose to remove any of his own negative emotions, arguing that would also eliminate a core part of his humanity. He's more into to the idea of digitizing his consciousness and ditching his body altogether.

"I would totally love to digitize myself," de Paco said. "I wouldn't mind not having this body, if I can feel pleasure, and, I don't know, take digital drugs or something like that. I would like to be digitized, but I wouldn't like to lose any of the aspects of my mind. I don't like being depressed, but usually being depressed is a way to know something is wrong and you have to do something about it. If I take those things from me, it's like I would lose my ability to discern what's good and bad."

Not that de Paco knows what's good and bad now -- he's still asking questions about the essence of humanity and observing his social experiments across Twitch, Steam and social media. He's still figuring it out. So is everyone else.

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'The Red Strings Club' explores the morality of transhumanism

The Shinar DirectivePart 2

Posted on December 7, 2014

Published: December 07, 2014

by Dr. Michael Lake

In chapter two of The Shinar Directive, we uncover a gold mine of information encoded into the stories presented in the Torah (especially in the book of Genesis). The sages of Israel understood these hidden mysteries and taught that it would take a faithful student of the Word a lifetime just to discover some of the secrets God presented to us in Genesis 13.

Over the years, several of my students have attempted to develop an exhaustive study of the book of Genesis for their doctoral dissertations. As they examined the original language of the Hebrew text and discovered such a treasure trove of information, they concluded that their dissertations could only cover a fraction of what is available in just the first chapter. Even then, many of their papers far surpassed the required standard length of a doctoral dissertation. What God can say in one sentence can become a lifetime of study for any serious student of the Word.

The perfect example of the power of one sentence from God is when Jesus made a seemingly simple statement in Matthew 24:37:

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (Matthew 24:37)

Jesus was speaking of the last days. In the verse that preceded this statement, we find:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

Since we have been so deprived of our Hebraic heritage, most students of the Bible miss the fact that Jesus had just used a Hebraic idiom that connected what He was sharing with the Feast of Trumpets. The language He continued to use in verses 4042 confirms this fact for those who use the tools of hermeneutical[i] research to understand the cultural setting in which Jesus taught. Although the purpose of this chapter is not to teach on the importance of cultural idioms[ii] and their proper use within our exegetical[iii] exercises to glean truth from the Word of God, I hope I have sparked your interest enough to promote expansion of your hermeneutical toolbox. We need to realize that Jesus did not minister in the streets of Detroit or the country hills of Kentucky. He spoke to a culture that had a deep and enriched heritage cultivated by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and nourished by a study of Torah. Biblical scholar Dr. John Garr makes this observation regarding our habitual dismissal of the cultural setting in our interpretative processes:

The problem is that practically all societies and people groups have read their own concepts and cultures into the Bible rather than drawing out of the Holy Scriptures the truths that have always been there. The churchs approach to Holy Writ has been ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst. When interpreting the Bible, Christians have engaged in eisegesis rather than exegesis by injecting their preconceived notions into Scripture rather than extracting from the text what it clearly says.

Texts without context have become pretexts for proof texts! The grammar of the Scriptures (the Hebrew language of the first testament and the Hebrew thought underlying the Greek language of the second testament) has been largely minimized if not downright ignored. Likewise, the history and culture of the people through whom and to whom the sacred texts were committed have been virtually ignored. Entire theologies have been based upon a criterion of dissimilarity in which texts in the Apostolic Scriptures that have clear connections with the Hebrew Scriptures have been dismissed by some scholars as not being the authentic words of Jesus and the apostles but the work of subsequent redactors. It is as though Jesus had to have been born and lived in a vacuum and never influenced by his native language and culture. The very idea has given rise to a Christianity that has been wretched from its theological and historical moorings and set adrift in a maelstrom of nonbiblicalin far too many cases, anti-Biblicaltraditions, including postmodernism, consequentialism, secular humanism, and even demonic perversion.[iv]

If the cultural context within Scripture is so essential to the formation of the practics of our faith, is it not equally paramount in our understanding of Bible prophecy? Such casual dismissals caused prophecy teachers in the past century to declare anyone teaching that Israel would once again become a nation as a promoter of heresy. When Israel became a nation overnight in 1948, it shook the very foundations of many evangelical prophecy ministries worldwide. We need to learn from these mistakes and incorporate a Hebraic understanding into our hermeneutical process.

I said all of that to make a point: When Jesus spoke of the days of Noah, it served as a memory trigger to all of the hearers who could tap into over one thousand years of teaching regarding every aspect of the Noah narrative. In the times of Jesus, there were not chapters and verses to Scripture; these would not be added until the twelfth century by Stephen Langton with the introduction of the Latin Vulgate Bible. The sages of Israel would use a word or phrase to take the hearers to the portion of Scripture they were referring to. This is especially true with the Torah. Thus, as diligent students of Gods Word, we must labor to hear with Hebraic ears and dig deep into Noahs story to properly ascertain all that Jesus was referring to. Which was

1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:18)

So many things seem to jump off the page as I approach these verses. Before I fully dive into the story of Noah, I want to touch on a biblical conundrum for the Transhumanist Movement contained within these passages of Holy Writ. In verse 3, God declares that He is going to limit the lifespan of man to 120 years. As we examine the text, we find as a mission of grace to mankind, Noah spent 120 years preaching repentance and building the ark. It was only after the canopy over the earth was broken up by God that the Flood came, and with it the dynamic changing of earths environment, which reduced mans lifespan. Prior to the Flood, according to biblical record, men would not even begin to have children until they approached their eighties or older! Now God sets the time limit to a mans life based on the number of years that Noah preached of the coming destruction and the need for repentance. (This also serves as a prophetic warning that there is a limit to how long God will extend His grace toward men.) The more time sinful man had to live and learn, the deeper he would become entrenched with the knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil. If given enough time, mans insatiable appetite for dark knowledge would transform earth into a literal hell that God could not tolerate. Today, transhumanists[v] are endeavoring to circumvent Gods restraints on our lifespan. From what I have read in their literature, this is one of their primary goals. Seventy, eighty, or even one hundred and twenty years are not enough for them. While they lament over global warming and the perils of overpopulation, they seek to provide only a chosen few the opportunity to live hundreds of years, if not obtain near immortality. With the exponential acceleration of knowledge in the last days and the possibility of extending the life span of the Luciferian Elite, they may well have the time needed to thwart Gods intervention in Genesis 6! You see, God shortening mans lifespan to 120 years (and then later to seventy to eighty) was not a judgment against humanity; it was an expression of His grace toward all mankind.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

I want to examine verses 4 and 5 in a manner that is similar to a physicians diagnostic procedure: He would examine the presenting symptoms. Symptomology can be used in medicine and nutrition, and even in examining the health of a civilization. If certain symptoms are present in a patient, it will point toward the underlying disease that caused it. There is an intertwining aspect within the text of the corrupt Sons of God (Bene Elohim), the development of hybrid offspring, and the explosive evil within mens hearts. This wickedness that manifested within mankind was declared as great by God. In Hebrew, the word for great is rab (rab). This word means abounding, strong, exceedingly, and more numerous than.[vi] When evil has become so strong that it abounds throughout humanity and its perpetrators are more numerous than the righteous, it is a presenting sociological symptom of interference by the fallen Bene Elohim. (More on this later in both the new book The Shinar Directive as well as an upcoming online entry dedicated to the Communion with Darkness.)

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. (Genesis 6:2)

There is great speculation regarding the identity of the Sons of God in Genesis 6:2. I prefer the traditional Hebraic view that these were angels and not men. Some would argue today that the sons of God represented the descendants of Seth. Dr. Chuck Missler explains the origin of the Sethite theory:

The strange events recorded in Genesis 6 were understood by the ancient rabbinical sources, as well as the Septuagint translators, as referring to fallen angels procreating weird hybrid offspring with human women-known as the Nephilim. So it was also understood by the early church fathers. These bizarre events are also echoed in the legends and myths of every ancient culture upon the earth: the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, the American Indians, and virtually all the others.

However, many students of the Bible have been taught that this passage in Genesis 6 actually refers to a failure to keep the faithful lines of Seth separate from the worldly line of Cain. The idea has been advanced that after Cain killed Abel, the line of Seth remained separate and faithful, but the line of Cain turned ungodly and rebellious. The Sons of God are deemed to refer to leadership in the line of Seth; the daughters of men is deemed restricted to the line of Cain. The resulting marriages ostensibly blurred an inferred separation between them. (Why the resulting offspring are called the Nephilim remains without any clear explanation.)

Since Jesus prophesied, As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be, it becomes essential to understand what these days included.

Origin of the Sethite View

It was in the 5th Century A.D. that the angel interpretation of Genesis 6 was increasingly viewed as an embarrassment when attacked by critics. (Furthermore, the worship of angels had begun within the church. Also, celibacy had also become an institution of the church. The angel view of Genesis 6 was feared as impacting these views.)

Celsus and Julian the Apostate used the traditional angel belief to attack Christianity. Julius Africanus resorted to the Sethite interpretation as a more comfortable ground. Cyril of Alexandria also repudiated the orthodox angel position with the line of Seth interpretation. Augustine also embraced the Sethite theory and thus it prevailed into the Middle Ages. It is still widely taught today among many churches who find the literal angel view a bit disturbing. There are many outstanding Bible teachers who still defend this view.[vii]

In my own personal research, I have concluded that Dr. Missler is correct. All of the sages of Israel and the early Church fathers concluded that the sons of God referred to some category of angel and not righteous men. It should also be noted that, in the rabbinical literature of today, these sons of God are still interpreted as fallen angels as well. The only deviation from this interpretation is within Catholic theology and the Protestant theology that was influenced by Rome.

George H. Pember, in his classic work written in late 1800s, Earths Earliest Ages, came to the same conclusion:

These words are often explained to signify nothing more than the intermarriage of the descendants of Cain and Seth: but a careful examination of the passage will elicit a far deeper meaning.

When men, we are told, began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, the sons of God saw the daughters of men. Now by men in each case the whole human race is evidently signified, the descendants of Cain and Seth alike. Hence the sons of God are plainly distinguished from the generation of Adam.

Again; the expression sons of God (Elohim) occurs four times in other parts of the Old Testament, and is in each of these cases indisputably used of angelic beings.[viii]

To me, the concept of producing giants by the marriage of godly men with corrupt women is far-fetched. If that were the case, we would have giants living among us today. It is obvious that something more was going onsomething supernatural.

What this has to do with The Shinar Directive is centrally important, and not just for ancient days but the near future as well, regardless how incredible that may seem.

CONTINUED IN NEXT ENTRY

[i] Hermeneutical or hermeneutics: the study of the methodological principles of interpretation (as of the Bible).

[ii] Idiom: a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that uses some of its own words, grammar, and pronunciations.

[iii] Exegetical or exegesis: an explanation or critical interpretation of a text.

[iv] John D. Garr, Family Worship: Making Your Home a House of God (Atlanta: Golden Key Press, 2013) 1213.

[v] Transhumanist (abbreviated as H+ or h+): an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

[vi] Strongs, # H07227.

[vii] Chuck Missler, Mischievous Angels or Sethites? http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/110/.

[viii] George H. Pember, Earths Earliest Ages (Crane, MO: Defender, 2012)175176.

Originally posted here:
transhumanism Biblical Life Assembly

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During the 1920s and '30s, George Gurdjieff accumulated followers who were interested in his methods for attaining a higher level of consciousness.

G.I. Gurdjieff was born circa 1866 in Alexandropol (present-day Armenia). In 1922, after settling in France, he reopened his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. There, he taught students to reintegrate their spiritual nature with their daily modern lives. Gurdjieff's followers included writers P.L. Travers and Katherine Mansfield. He died in Neuilly, France (near Paris) in 1949.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, generally referred to as G.I. Gurdjieff, was born in Alexandropol, in the Armenian region of the Russia Empire (present-day Armenia). His birth date is possibly January 13, 1866a date that is listed in one passport. However, another passport puts the date as December 28, 1877, and some close friends believed that his birth year was 1872. Gurdjieff himself was vague about his origins.

Gurdjieff's mother was Armenian and his father was Greek. Though his father worked as a carpenter, he also regaled Gurdjieff and others with recitations of legends, such as the epic of Gilgamesh. These tales may have spurred Gurdjieff's later belief in the existence of ancient knowledge that surpassed what was offered by science and religion.

Gurdjieff received early tutelage from the dean of the military cathedral at Kars, who was a priest and family friend. According to his autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men, he journeyed across Central Asia, Egypt and India in a voyage of spiritual discovery. However, there is no corroboration for Gurdjieff's self-reported accounting of his travels between 1887 and 1911.

When his travels were over, Gurdjieff returned to Russia. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia, where he opened the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919. A few years later, Gurdjieff settled in France, where his institute took shape once more.

From his base at the Chteau du Prieur, near Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff shared his new philosophy. He believed that man was in an almost constant sleep state, and that people must work to revive themselves in order to regain the higher consciousness that they are capable of. He also averred that the sleep state made people easy to manipulate, and was therefore a proponent of questioning everything.

At Fontainebleau, Gurdjieff often required people to listen to his writings as they were read aloud. People at the center also performed exercises and dance movements, sometimes to music created by Gurdjieff and composer Thomas de Hartmann.

Though he had brought followers with him to France, Gurdjieff gained more once he was ensconced in Fontainebleau, particularly as one early acolyte, P.D. Ouspensky, elucidated and propagated his teachings. His prominent followers included architect Frank Lloyd Wright's third wife, Olgivanna Hinzenburg, writer Katherine Mansfield, editor A.R. Orage and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers.

Gurdjieff developed a special vocabulary of his own in some of his writings, using words such as "blastegoklornian." For his disciples, these words increased his aura of deep understanding and mystery. For Gurdjieff's detractors, they made his writings even more nonsensical.

Gurdjieff continued teaching even after his Fontainebleau center closed its doors in 1933. He remained in Paris during World War II, surviving under the German occupation. On October 29, 1949, in Neuilly, France (near Paris), he died at the approximate age of 83. He left behind works that include All and Everything (containing Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When 'I Am') and The Herald of Coming Good.

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George Gurdjieff - Religious Figure - Biography

In 1990, in my role as a science reporter at The New York Times, I chanced upon an article in a small academic journal by two psychologists, John Mayer, now at the University of New Hampshire, and Yales Peter Salovey. Mayer and Salovey offered the first formulation of a concept they called emotional intelligence.

Those were days when the preeminence of IQ as the standard of excellence in life was unquestioned; a debate raged over whether it was set in our genes or due to experience. But here, suddenly, was a new way of thinking about the ingredients of life success. I was electrified by the notion, which I made the title of this book in 1995. Like Mayer and Salovey, I used the phrase to synthesize a broad range of scientific findings, drawing together what had been separate strands of research reviewing not only their theory but a wide variety of other exciting scientific developments, such as the first fruits of the nascent field of affective neuroscience, which explores how emotions are regulated in the brain.

I remember having the thought, just before this book was published ten years ago, that if one day I overheard a conversation in which two strangers used the phrase emotional intelligence and both understood what it meant, I would have succeeded in spreading the concept more widely into the culture. Little did I know.

The phrase emotional intelligence, or its casual shorthand EQ, has become ubiquitous, showing up in settings as unlikely as the cartoon strips Dilbert and Zippy the Pinhead and in Roz Chasts sequential art in The New Yorker. Ive seen boxes of toys that claim to boost a childs EQ; lovelorn personal ads sometimes trumpet it in those seeking prospective mates. I once found a quip about EQ printed on a shampoo bottle in my hotel room.

And the concept has spread to the far corners of our planet. EQ has become a word recognized, Im told, in languages as diverse as German and Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Malay. (Even so, I prefer EI as the English abbreviation for emotional intelligence.) My e-mail inbox often contains queries, from, for example, a doctoral student in Bulgaria, a school teacher in Poland, a college student in Indonesia, a business consultant in South Africa, a management expert in the Sultanate of Oman, an executive in Shanghai. Business students in India read about EI and leadership; a CEO in Argentina recommends the book I later wrote on the topic. Ive also heard from religious scholars within Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism that the concept of EI resonates with outlooks in their own faith.

Most gratifying for me has been how ardently the concept has been embraced by educators, in the form of programs in social and emotional learning or SEL. Back in 1995 I was able to find only a handful of such programs teaching emotional intelligence skills to children. Now, a decade later, tens of thousands of schools worldwide offer children SEL. In the United States many districts and even entire states currently make SEL curriculum requirement, mandating that just as students must attain a certain level of competence in math and language, so too should they master these essential skills for living.

In Illinois, for instance, specific learning standards in SEL abilities have been established for every grade from kindergarten through the last year of high school. To give just one example of a remarkably detailed and comprehensive curriculum, in the early elementary years students should learn to recognize and accurately label their emotions and how they lead them to act. By the late elementary years lessons in empathy should make children able to identify the nonverbal clues to how someone else feels; in junior high they should be able to analyze what creates stress for them or what motivates their best performance. And in high school the SEL skills include listening and talking in ways that resolve conflicts instead of escalating them and negotiating for win-win solutions.

Around the world Singapore has undertaken an active initiative in SEL, as have some schools in Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. In Europe, the U.K. Has led the way, but more than a dozen other countries have schools that embrace EI, as do Australia and New Zealand, and here and there countries in Latin America and Africa. In 2002 UNESCO began a worldwide initiative to promote SEL, sending a statement of ten basic principles for implementing SEL to the ministries of education in 140 countries.

In some states and nations, SEL has become the organizing umbrella under which are gathered programs in character education, violence prevention, antibullying, drug prevention and school discipline. The goal is not just to reduce these problems among schoolchildren but to enhance the school climate and, ultimately, students academic performance.

In 1995, I outlined the preliminary evidence suggesting that SEL was the active ingredient in programs that enhance childrens learning while preventing problems such as violence. Now the case can be made scientifically: helping children improve their self-awareness and confidence, manage their disturbing emotions and impulses, and increase their empathy pays off not just in improved behavior but in measurable academic achievement.

This is the big news contained in a recently completed meta-analysis of 668 evaluation studies of SEL programs for children from preschoolers through high school. The massive survey was conducted by Roger Weissberg, who directs the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the University of Illinois at Chicago the organization that has led the way in bringing SEL into schools worldwide.

The data show that SEL programs yielded a strong benefit in academic accomplishment, as demonstrated in achievement test results and grade-point averages. In participating schools, up to 50 percent of children showed improved achievement scores and up to 38 percent improved their grade-point averages. SEL programs also made schools safer: incidents of misbehavior dropped by an average of 28 percent; suspensions by 44 percent; and other disciplinary actions by 27 percent. At the same time, attendance rates rose, while 63 percent of students demonstrated significantly more positive behavior. In the world of social science research, these remarkable results for any program promoting behavioral change, SEL had delivered on its promise.

In 1995 I also proposed that a good part of the effectiveness of SEL came from its impact in shaping childrens developing neural circuitry, particularly the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex, which manage working memory what we hold in mind as we learn and inhibit disruptive emotional impulses. Now the first preliminary scientific evidence for that notion has arrived. Mark Greenberg of Pennsylvania State University. A codeveloper of the PATHS curriculum in SEL, reports not only that the program for elementary school students boasts academic achievement but, even more significantly, that much of the increased learning can be attributed to improvements in attention and working memory, key functions of the prefrontal cortex. This strongly suggests that neuroplasticity, the shaping of the brain through repeated experience, plays a key role in the benefits from SEL.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me has been the impact of EI in the world of business, particularly in the areas of leadership and employee development (a form of adult education). The Harvard Business Review has hailed emotional intelligence as a ground-breaking, paradigm-shattering idea, one of the most influential business ideas of the decade.

Such claims in the business world too often prove to be fads, with no real underlying substance. But here a far-flung network of researchers has been at work, ensuring that the application of EI will be grounded in solid data. The Rutgers University-based Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (CREIO) has led the way in catalyzing this scientific work, collaborating with organizations that range from the Office of Personnel Management in the federal government to American Express.

Today companies worldwide routinely look through the lens of EI in hiring, promoting, and developing their employees. For instance, Johnson and Johnson (another CREIO member) found that in divisions around the world, those identified at mid career as having high leadership potential were far stronger in EI competencies than were their less-promising peers. CREIO continues to foster such research, which can offer evidence-based guidelines for organizations seeking to enhance their ability to achieve their business goals or fulfill a mission.

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Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman

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Columbia Association Health and Fitness in Columbia, MD

Columbia Association offers a variety of health and fitness services to the community. Regardless of your age, interest or activity level, the following programs can help you achieve optimal wellness.

Group fitness classes held at Columbia Athletic Club, Columbia Gym and Supreme Sports Club are taught by nationally certified fitness instructors. Classes include a broad variety, ranging from Zumba, to dance, to yoga and much more.

Aqua classes are available at CAs three fitness facilities, as well as Columbia Swim Center and CA Outdoor Pools during the summer months.

Mind body classes are available at Haven on the Lake. Designed to relieve stress, increase physical fitness and enhance your overall wellness, classes include aqua fitness, barre and dance, Pilates, yoga and more.

Martial arts classes provide a host of benefits, such as improved concentration, confidence, self-esteem and self-discipline. Children enjoy CAs martial arts program because its fun. Parents have found that it helps instill discipline, self-respect and character development.

Mature adults. CA is dedicated to providing a wealth of services that will improve quality of life for Columbias older adult residents and visitors. Health and Fitness programs include exercise classes that are designed to decrease the effects of issues like arthritis, osteoporosis and imbalance.

Other health and fitness programs for mature adults include a variety of opportunities designed to better serve the community. Such opportunities include classes held at Columbia Art Center, Senior Events Shuttle, volunteer opportunities and more.

NewU is comprised of four physician referral programs to help you improve your health and achieve your wellness goals. Fit Beginnings provides guidance on successfully integrating exercise into your life; Columbia Optimal Health pairs physical activity with nutritional counseling and wellness coaching; Columbia YouthFit helps families become healthy through motivation, physical activity and healthy eating; and Optimal Health for My Baby & Me focuses on pre-through post natal health to ensure optimal wellness for you and your baby.

Personal training. CAs personal trainers will guide you to a new level of fitness. All of our trainers are certified by nationally accredited certifying organizations and continually build their knowledge through professional training and educational programs. Trainers design a program tailored to your background, lifestyle and level of fitness, so that you can reach your goals.

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Columbia Association - Health and Fitness - Columbia, MD