Archive for the 'Religion' Category
February 28th, 2010 -- Posted in Religion |
Many more people are beginning to find out how to remote view. Some individuals consider it much like their own personal time machine. However, remote viewing is a psychic ability, one that permits you to see future events. These are events, which you would never be able to see all by yourself without training.
However, for some individuals they have the ability of remote viewing and can perfectly describe a place or object that is in another area than where they happen to be now. In some ways, remote viewing is similar to the use of dowsing rods. Dowsing rods search for something as does the individual who is remote viewing.
There is no preset time when it comes to remote viewing, you can see into the past, present or the future to learn what you wish to know. Remote viewing is comparable to the ability to astral travel. AYou can learn how to remote view without being a psychic.
Many consider that while remote viewing you are tapping into the same ability of experiencing dj vu. Some individuals are better able to remote view than others are. Yet, there are still others who can remote view with little, to no practice. For some it may take the commitment of years of practice to succeed with remote viewing.
For instance, there are those parents who know without a doubt that their child is in danger although they may not be in the same area; this is the ability to naturally remote view. Another example of remote viewing is that individual who already knows of a death in the family before anyone else does, simply because they feel it or see it in their minds eye.
There are two ways to succeed in remote viewing. Some individuals have the ability to leave their body in spirit and then travel to a different location or place in time to observe something they wish to see. Others have the ability to simple see an object or place in their minds eye. When you are a remote viewer, you control your destination and have the ability to return to your beginning location or state.
You see, there is no reason to fear the ability to remote view, since it is a natural occurrence. You can begin learning how to remote view right now if you wish to do so. It is essential to find a quiet place with no distractions. Relax your body completely and then begin to visualize the area around you or another room in the house. Concentrate on the different settings of the past you were involved in or even go back in time a few years and actually feel you as being there.
Once you feel comfortable with that, you can begin using remote viewing to travel into the future. You can begin by seeing yourself happy a few years into the future and then a little at a time travel even further into the future. By practicing, you can succeed in the ability to remote view in hardly any time at all.
Many scientists believe that at one time all humans had the power to view remotely, but they have gradually lost this power over a long period of time. Success at remote viewing is all to do with communicating with your subconscious mind to get it to allow you to access this dormant power.
Various resources will aid you in remote viewing. For example, you may wish to learn how to communicate with your subconscious mind by using hypnosis. You can visit a professional hypnotherapist or you can use hypnosis recording to help you learn how to remote view.
Simple affirmations, if repeated often enough is another great way of communicating with your subconscious mind. There is also new audio technology called ‘binaural beats’ which can get your brainwaves at the correct frequency for powers such as remote viewing to be possible.
You may find that remote viewing comes to you naturally or you may find yourself struggling to succeed. Investing in some of these tools will aid your in learning how to remote view. Remember to be patient with yourself as you practice, since after you learn how to remote view you can see into the past, present and future as well as find items.
The writer J Lucas Cox writes for the http://www.remote-viewing-info.com website. Discover for yourself how easy it is to do remote viewing training. Find out never before revealed secrets. Anyone really can learn remote viewing all will be revealed when you visit here to get 29 free remote viewing mp3 audios!
January 26th, 2010 -- Posted in Religion |
Lucid Dreaming, also known as conscious dreaming is the practice of remaining aware of oneself as well as the fact that one is dreaming while dreaming. While in a dream, you are conscious of the fact that the things you see and experience are only a dream. You can have some control over your dreams once you are able to practice lucid dreaming, unlike in ordinary dreams.
Having control over your dreams is an incredible experience. Everything which you thought you couldn’t keep from holding you back from your goals just falls before you and you have new found mental clarity, even when awake.
But is it as simple as it looks like? Can everyone experience lucid dreaming and bring to life what otherwise seems difficult or impossible in this reality?
In fact, lucid dreaming is not too difficult a task. If you are determined to learn this powerful medium of expressing your inner desires, there are tried and tested ways of achieving this.
You need to know what you hope to achieve through lucid dreaming. Are you after something specific which can help you with other areas of your life, or do you just want to turn your dreams into a playpen of the imagination? Whatever your reason for wanting to learn lucid dreaming, know your goal and be determined to reach it.
The next step is to learn the techniques of reaching the mental state where lucid dreaming is possible. You’ll have to begin learning dream recall, which is simply remembering your dreams. To begin lucid dreaming, you need to first be able to recall every detail of the dreams that you have.
The process is slow, but it can be achieved by maintaining a Dream Recall Register in which you enter as many details as you can remember about your dreams daily. Slowly but surely, you’ll realize that you can remember even the most vivid details of your dreams. Periodic reality checks during the course of dreaming will train your mind to be aware in dreams.
Many people have found that hypnosis can drastically reduce the time needed to prepare your subconscious mind to experience lucid dreaming. Often just one of two hypnosis sessions will allow you to consistently remember all of your dreams. Once this occurs your mind is then conditioned for lucid dreaming.
You will find at first that you sometimes will awake suddenly during lucid dreams. This is normal. Just recall the events of your dream as you try to fall back asleep and attempt to reenter the dream, steering in the direction that you want it go.
Another great way to have lucid dreams is to go back to sleep for a couple of hours after you wake up in the morning. These dreams are the closest to lucid dreams as they leave you wondering if they were actually dreams or your thoughts manifested in the form of a purported event. You can easily set an alarm to go off a couple of hours before your scheduled wake-up time. And when the alarm sounds, just wake-up, switch it off, and go to sleep in order to enjoy lucid dreams.
When learning lucid dreaming, it helps to be well aware of your sleep patterns so you know when the best times for you to have lucid dreams are.
Lucid dreaming can help people with insomnia and other sleep disorders. If you have trouble sleeping, just tell yourself “Sleeping equals lucid dreaming” and your subconscious mind will help you become free of the thoughts keeping you awake.
It once was the case that it could take years to learn lucid dreaming; the only way to prepare the mind was meditation, which took a long time to master. A lot of people lack the discipline and would simply give up. New technologies, especially audio technology have made it possible for anyone to experience lucid dreaming.
Binaural audio is one of the most reliable methods of getting people to have lucid dreams.
Binaural beats audio is the playing of frequencies which are slightly different from each other, one in each ear. This causes a feeling of deep relaxation and brings brain waves into the proper state for lucid dreaming.
Before this technology, meditation was the technique of choice, which did not work out so well for many people. Binaural audio is much faster and works reliably for the majority of people.
Binaural sound waves, especially in tandem with hypnosis can prepare your mind and allow you to begin lucid dreaming very quickly, sometimes even on the first try!
The author Trevor Albitt writes for the luciddreaminginfo.com website. Discover the amazing experience of lucid dreaming for yourself and get 29 Free lucid dreaming Binaural and hypnosis mp3 audios when you visit here.
January 6th, 2010 -- Posted in Religion |
Contentment, riches and Law of Attraction are very strongly connected, indeed. If you don’t know what that Law of Attraction is, that’s okay. It’s a very easy concept to understand. Basically, the Law of Attraction says that you have to have positive thoughts in order to have positive things in your life — including happiness and wealth.
The Law of Attraction isn’t a new concept and in fact has been around for a long, long time. It really works. When you think positive thoughts, the Law of Attraction isn’t far behind. Think about this for a minute. Do you know someone who seems to ‘have it all,’ and is relaxed, carefree, and comfortable in his or her own skin? That’s because they live by the adage that positive thoughts mean positive things. In other words, if you think negative thoughts, that’s what you’re going to attract. If you think positive thoughts, that’s also what you’re going to attract.
Your thoughts are made up of real energy, and so are you. If your thoughts are positive, you are positive. It is easy for abundance to come into your life if you have positive energy flowing throughout your body.
They Law of Attraction is powered by happy thoughts. How do you do that? Begin to talk to yourself as though you are wonderful, confident, beautiful, wealthy — everything you’ve always wanted to be. Do this all day, every day, even if you don’t feel like it’s ‘true.’ These are positive affirmations, and they can help you fix any problems you might be having.
So for example, you might say, ‘I am confident and beautiful,’ ‘I love people and they love me,’ ‘My choices are unlimited, and opportunities abound everywhere,’ and so on. Choose a few affirmations that encapsulate what you want to be, and say them throughout the day, every day.
This type of affirmation work is especially important when you don’t feel like doing it, by the way. The Law of Attraction works on this, too. If you become discouraged, frustrated, sad or angry, don’t worry about it, but change your attitude as soon as you recognize it and think of something positive. You’ll ultimately need to change the way you deal with life and banish negative thoughts in order to use the Law of Attraction to your best benefit and to be fulfilled in your life.
In fact, your mind is the only thing stopping you from having whatever you want. Do you think you can’t have abundance and happiness? Why not? Other people have it, right? If they have it, you can, too. Get off the ‘negative,’ and begin to dwell on the ‘positive.’
Learn to ‘go with the flow.’ At any moment, you’ll see that positive energy is always flowing and you are its beneficiary, in one way or another.
Once you begin to recognize that happiness and law of attraction are connected, everything will begin to come together in your life.
If you feel bad, you’ll be unmotivated, or even worse, negatively motivated. You may become depressed, watch depressing movies, or call up and ‘commiserate’ with friends who are negative. If you don’t watch out, your life itself could be full of negative circumstances and you won’t even realize you’ve built your life that way.
The wonderful thing is that you can remove bad luck from your life by using positive affirmations and law of attraction techniques. The worst thing you can do is give up. Continue to reassure yourself that you are the happiest person alive and watch the opportunities come pouring in!
Simon Ward is one of the experts who writes for the popular http://www.abundance-info.com website. You can find out how easy it really is to successfully understand The Secret Law Of Attraction by visiting here. Change your life forever with a huge collection of Free Abundance And Law Of Attraction Success Secrets Audios and Videos.
February 3rd, 2009 -- Posted in Religion |
by Matt Hellstrom
There is a lot of pain and suffering in this world, and sometimes it seems that God just sits back and watches and doesn’t care. Why is that? I don’t know if we’re ever going to find an answer to that question while we’re still alive, but I’d like to give my opinion.
Most people want to be able to have money to pay for their kids college, enough to pay bills and go on vacation once a year. They want to be happy and not have problems. They want to have good health. I’m no different than everyone else. Doesn’t it make sense that God would want the same for us? I don’t think He necessarily does, because He wants more than that for us!
Larry Crabb has written many highly-acclaimed books including “Finding God”, “Inside Out”, and “The Marriage Builder”. In addition to being a best-selling author, Dr. Crabb is a psychologist and counselor. I’ve read several of his books. They are all very good, but some of them are kind of hard to follow because they are written at a very deep level.
I read a book by Larry Crabb recently that was quite different from the other’s that I’ve read by him before. This book was called “Shattered Dreams – God’s Unexpected Pathway to Joy”, and I think it was different because it was something that Dr. Crabb had personally experienced and very intimately touched him. The book was much easier to follow, in my opinion, than the others I had read by him.
Most people believe that joy and happiness are the same thing. If we have material things to make us comfortable such as a big house, a new car, a great job than we’ll have joy. Maybe having a loving husband or wife and obedient children is what’s necessary. But while those things might make us happy, they don’t necessarily lead to joy.
God wants us to find joy in a different place – in relationship with Him. If you can achieve that relationship and still have the above-mentioned happiness, that’s great! I don’t think they are necessarily exclusive of each other. After all, God does want us to have good things. The Bible says “If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”.
However, quite often when we have the happiness, we either become content or we get so wrapped up in keeping that happiness intact that we don’t see the need to find the time for that relationship with God. It is in these times that God might allow some pain to come into our life to draw us closer to him. It’s at these times that many of us tend to do what we can to minimize that pain, basically because it hurts!
Larry Crabb tells us in “Shattered Dreams” that we need to experience that pain and not try to minimize it or turn away from it if we’re going to experience the joy that God desires us to have, and that we really hunger for in our hearts. This is no fun, but the bottom line is that’s it’s the only path to experiencing true joy. After reading this book, I believe that this is why God allows pain and suffering and why bad things happen to good people.
January 28th, 2009 -- Posted in Religion |
by Zach Bolt
Have you ever faced a problem or challenge that just seemed insurmountable? Have you ever felt like giving up because of an difficulty looming in front of you like a mountain? If you have, then I can assure that you are not alone, and that I along with most other people have felt the same way at times. In fact, Jesus Himself assured believers that there would be mountains in our lives that would need to be moved in order for us to possess Gods best for us. Since obstacles and challenges are going to arise, then clearly the question we need answered is, What is the key to prevailing over lifes obstacles? The key to overcoming lifes challenges and problems in victory lies in seeing them from the proper perspective. If you can begin to see your problems from Gods perspective, then you can apply your faith effectively to overcome them.
I used to travel a lot on business for the company that I worked for, and I frequently found myself flying on airplanes. For some reason, God has chosen to give me some amazing revelations on plane rides, and I am about to share one of them with you. One of my favorite parts of being on an airplane is the takeoff. The jet slings down the runway and all of a sudden youre hurling through the air. As the plane gains altitude your perspective on the world begins to change. Buildings such as schools and hospitals that look huge when you are on the ground all of a sudden begin to look very small as the plane rises higher and higher. What has changed? Not the buildings, they are the same size they were when you were standing on the ground. The change has been in your perspective. Now that you are viewing those same large buildings from several thousand feet in the air they look very small even though they have not actually changed in size at all.
The same principle of perspective holds true when you apply it to the difficulties, or mountains, in your life. According to Ephesians 2, believers have been seated with Christ in Heavenly places. What does this mean to us and our everyday lives? It means that from Gods perspective we are seated with Him in His Heavenly throne room right next to Jesus. Ephesians 1 tells us that all things are under the feet of Jesus, and that we are His body. Since we are the body of Christ, this means that all things are under our feet, also. The Bible also makes it clear that the earth is Gods footstool, and that His throne is high above the earth.
If we put all of this information together, we can clearly see that from Gods Heavenly perspective all of the problems that we face in life are no bigger in His eyes than those tiny buildings we see from thousands of feet above the ground in an airplane. We are seated right next to Him in Heavenly places in Christ, and so all of lifes obstacles should also appear like those tiny buildings to us as well if we will simply adopt Gods proper perspective on them. If we try to face a mountain in our own strength then it will appear huge, but if we will view it from our position in Christ then it will look very tiny indeed. I want to challenge you today to begin viewing the obstacles and mountains that face you from your Heavenly position in Christ. Once you have the right perspective on a mountain so that you see it as a small thing compared to Gods ability, you simply need to trust God to move it and watch Him go to work on your behalf. Keywords: change your perspective, overcoming obstacles, proper perspective
May 4th, 2008 -- Posted in Religion |
Many people reading this will not be happy. I suppose this article will be seen as somewhat analogous to a person everybody thought of as really, really straight coming out of the closet and proudly proclaiming him or herself as gay. No, it’s probably worse; as most Americans would sooner elect a gay person as President, than elect a secular humanist. In fact, a mere few years ago, the head of school of a prominent Orthodox Jewish day school left his job, came out of the closet as a homosexual, and checked out of Orthodox Jewish observance. Many of his students were angrier at the latter, rather than the former, even though (male) homosexual activity is a capital offense under Jewish Law. Go figure.
Well, here goes. (Deep breath.) Having grown up an Orthodox Jew since the age of eight, having gone to prominent Israeli high school and post high school yeshivas, having been ordained by the Chief Rabbis of Israel, having served as the rabbi of an Orthodox congregation, as the head of one Jewish educational organization, and in the professional leadership of two Jewish day schools, having taught formally and informally people of all ages about Judaism, basically, since the age of sixteen, I am checking out. I am no longer Orthodox, and beyond that, no longer a theist. That’s it, it’s over. I am a secular humanist.
What happened? Looking back I see things differently than I did at the time, but I have always been a skeptic. I never accepted things at face value, and consequently gradually there were more and more things in my religious philosophy and belief system that didn’t really fit. There were more and more square pegs that really needed to be forced into round holes.
The change of heart and mind itself though really kind of happened all at once. It was as if it had always been clear to me. I just couldn’t understand why I didn’t pick up on it before. Orthodox Judaism and everything it was based on was wrong. It wasn’t just factually wrong, it was at times immoral, and it had robbed me of my individuality. It felt like a jail, which I couldn’t wait to get out of.
When I spell out my problems with Orthodox Judaism it really starts, first, with the fact that I really just don’t connect to it anymore emotionally or cognitively. It really seems rather alien to me. The financial, emotional and social sacrifices one must make within the framework of Orthodox Judaism are substantial, and if one does not connect to it, find meaning in it, and believe it to be absolutely true, I cannot see how one can continue to live according to its multiple and minute precepts.
One might object and protest that if Orthodox Judaism’s claims are valid, the fact that you don’t connect to it should not be a factor. Here lies the rub. There is absolutely no proof that Orthodox Judaism’s claims are valid. There is no proof that there is a God. In previous centuries at the primitive level of their scientific knowledge (even though there was never proof) there might have been reasons to posit a designer for the world. Our knowledge today of cosmology and biology no longer necessitates this. Not only that, there is no proof that a God dictated the Torah to Moses, if such a person ever existed, and no proof that any of the things we are told in the Torah ever happened. Even in books in the Hebrew Bible that might have some truth to them such as the Former Prophets, proof is available only for a select number of persons and events, which even in those cases usually does not back up the account of the Hebrew Bible. There is certainly no proof that the Oral Law existed much time before the Common Era. Again, perhaps in past generations, in the absence of the knowledge we now have about the development of these writings and ideas, there were reasons to accept these claims as true. Our knowledge today no longer necessitates this. In short, even before analyzing the points against belief in the Torah, you need to take quite a leap of faith, one that I see as entirely unwarranted. Occam’s razor and simple logic dictate therefore that these claims be seen as not only not provable, but also false.
Second, I am convinced that significant parts of the Torah (and the rest of the Hebrew Bible) and the corpus of Halacha are immoral, intolerant, backward, racist, sexist and homophobic. Definitely the argument can be made that the Torah has much beauty to it, and that (at least in certain parts of it) it was beyond its time, but judging by today’s standards it is extremely lacking. Hence I find it impossible that it was written by God.
Third, Orthodox Judaism is very much dependent on Moses’ receiving of the Torah from God, and that just does not fit with the evidence. Anyone who takes a serious and detailed look at the Torah and modern biblical research with an objective eye cannot fail to see that the theory of monoauthorism, namely that the Torah was written by a single author, especially in the 13th Century B.C.E. (and certainly earlier), is a fantasy. At that time Hebrew script and writing did not yet exist. The Canaanite alphabet had barely been standardized, after the change from 27 consonants to 22 consonants, and it was still written right to left, left to right and vertically too. Archeology clearly shows that Israelite society, when it emerged, was not a literate society, while the Torah takes this as a given. This is only one of numerous anachronisms in the Torah that make it clear that it is not a 13th Century B.C.E. document. In the 13th Century B.C.E., for example, contrary to what is imagined by the biblical authors, there were no domesticated camels, no Philistines living on the Coast, no Chaldeans in Ur, no widespread use of iron and coinage, no kingdoms in Edom, Moab and Amon, and the cities of Dan (with that name), Nineveh, Beer-Sheva, Gerar and many others mentioned were not founded yet.
Beyond that, the Documentary Hypothesis, the theory that the Torah is the product of a 6th-5th Century B.C.E. redaction of four (main and a few other minor) sources written during the 9th-6th Centuries B.C.E., is pretty much iron clad. The only serious opposition, very unconvincing in my eyes, is from those scholars on the left who accept polyauthorism, the existence of a number of authors, but maintain that the Torah is a product of late post exilic writings. There is simply no serious opposition from the Orthodox camp, which can deal with, and explain away the hundreds of points of data in six or seven different categories converging together that back up the Documentary Hypothesis.
Indeed, for the last half century, at least, no serious and comprehensive case has been mounted by the Orthodox to prove monoauthorism, and disprove polyauthorism on any serious level, and certainly not to prove monoauthorism from the 13th Century B.C.E. Some of the Orthodox are fond of citing differences of opinion in the biblical research community, regarding the details of polyauthorism, as some dubious proof that polyauthorism is wrong, and by default monoauthorism is right. This defies logic. Disagreement about details of an accepted construct with adequate support in honest research does not imply that the whole construct is invalid, and presto, the opposing unproved and irreparably flawed construct is right. Tired repetition of a few critical comments written by polyauthorists many years ago within the context of the above discussions, and usually quoted out of context, with no regard for evidence that has surfaced since the time of the comments, does no one any good either. Giving isolated case by case explanations (excuses?) how blatant contradictions aren’t really contradictions, or how anachronisms can be twisted to somehow fit the supposed time period they were written in, or how certain linguistic, thematic or terminological phenomena may have alternative explanations, while ignoring the overall patterns, that again cut across hundreds of points of data in six or seven different categories converging together, is just not serious.
Fourth, an honest look at today’s mainstream Syro-Palestinian archeology can lead only to one understanding, namely, that the Exodus from Egypt, including the subsequent journey through the Sinai and Transjordan, and the Conquest of Canaan, never happened in any way remotely related to the account in the Torah, and for all practical purposes never happened at all. In fact, the consensus of archeologists today is that the Israelites and Judahites emerged out of the Canaanites of the Central Highlands of Ancient Palestine in the 12th-11th Century B.C.E. Without the foundational events of the Exodus and Conquest, the entire edifice of Orthodox Judaism crumbles. Add to that that most of what we are told in the Hebrew Bible before the 9th-8th Century B.C.E. is extremely questionable, certainly as far as scope and details are concerned. Even after that we are told a story that is a very specific version of the historical events, the version adopted by the minority Yahweh Alone party, the small group of priests who left their legacy and ideology embedded in the Deuteronomistic History (the composition which originally included the nine books of Deuteronomy – Kings).
This is probably the strongest proof out there, and no one in the Orthodox community, to my knowledge, has dealt with this at all (and saying that the archeologists don’t know what they are talking about doesn’t count). More than that, some will still cite the now easily debunked and heavily biased “biblical archeology” of the past, which seemed to back up some of the accounts of the Hebrew Bible (conveniently leaving out the fact that it never really backed up others, and even went against some of them). It is as if nothing has happened in this field of research in the last half century, while in reality the revolution and systemization of this field over the course of those years has been phenomenal, turning this science into a much more exact one.
With the above in mind, it makes much more sense that religion in general, with Judaism being no different, is the human product of people’s efforts to understand the world around them, especially before the advent of modern science, find meaning in their lives, and strive for connection with the transcendental. I remain fascinated by these cultural human phenomena, but convinced that they are just that. Again, there are many reasons to support such a conclusion, and absolutely no reason I should believe otherwise.
The more I read and research, the more I realize the truth and beauty of secular humanism. I do not wish to base my life on fables, wishful thinking while ignoring the facts, and an imaginary friend that supposedly rules the universe, to whom we owe allegiance and obedient worship. Nor do I seek, as some Jewish movements to the left of Orthodoxy do, to continue in the footsteps of traditional Judaism, just in a watered down fashion. Rather I wish to base my life on a non-theistic world outlook that recognizes the supremacy of reason, and the dignity of the human being, who can and must stand alone in this world, and whose accomplishments and perseverance in an incredible and beautiful, while hostile and indifferent universe can and should be celebrated.
After I wrote most of this, I saw that Christopher Hitchens summed up most of my thoughts so perfectly, “A moment in history has now arrived when even a pygmy such as myself can claim to know more [then the wisest of previous generations – DSG] – through no merit of my own – and to see that the final ripping of the disguise is overdue. Between them, the sciences of textual criticism, archeology, physics and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made and have also succeeded in evolving better and more enlightened explanations. The loss of faith can be compensated by the newer and finer wonders we have before us…” (God is Not Great, 2007, p. 151)
I do not expect anyone to fully understand, just based on reading this. The above is based on much contemplation and much research, which cannot be adequately conveyed in a few paragraphs. Frankly, I am not really that interested in convincing anyone. I simply cannot live as an Orthodox Jew anymore, and I need to state that clearly. I look forward with excitement to a new and different life, as a secular humanist.
One last note to my friends who remain within the Orthodox community, where those who leave the community are derided as being off the derech or (proper) “way”: Please do not refer to me as someone who is off the derech. I am on my own derech with as much legitimacy as yours, and frankly in light of all the above facts, a truer one and more realistic one too.
