How did Thanksgiving come about?
Here’s a politically correct version:
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Why is Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November?
The first Thanksgiving Day celebration was a three-day feast held during the fall in 1621. It happened between September 21 and November 11. As you may know Pilgrims were joined by the local Wampanoag tribe, including their leader, Chief Massasoit.
Various communities celebrated a day of thanksgiving afterwards as they deemed fit. However, in October of 1777 all 13 colonies celebrated a day of Thanksgiving.
The first national day of Thanksgiving was in 1789. President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789 to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”
In wasn’t until October 3, 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln called for and issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation. It declared the last Thursday in November was to be a national day of “thanksgiving and praise.”
Afterwards, presidents honored the tradition and annually issued their own Thanksgiving Proclamation until in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not.
Since the day would fall on November 30th that month, retailers strongly complained to President Roosevelt that 24 shopping days before Christmas would be too short for profits that they counted upon.
Since most people did Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving, the extra week of shopping seemed essential for the economy.
So the Thanksgiving Proclamation of August 31, 1939 declared the date of Thanksgiving to be Thursday, November 23, the second-to-last Thursday of the month.
The change caused unforeseen confusion — dates had previously been established for school schedules, football games, special events, entertainment, and family vacations.
During the following year, many governors could not agree with the decision to change the date and refused to follow it. The country became split on which Thanksgiving to observe. The nation went into a bit of a panic and there was great debate.
In 1940, 32 states and the District of Columbia observed the Thanksgiving on November 21. 16 states chose November 28th. The conflict finally came to the Congress. On December 26, 1941, Congress passed into law that Thanksgiving would be henceforth the fourth Thursday of November.
Chopra: “Life is a field of unlimited possibilities.“
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Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfill your desires with effortless ease. And yet success, including the creation of wealth, has always been considered to be a process that requires hard work, and it is often considered to be at the expense of others. We need a more spiritual approach to success and to affluence, which is the abundant flow of all good things to you. With the knowledge and practice of spiritual law, we put ourselves in harmony with nature and create with carefulness, joy, and love.
All of creation… everything that exists in the physical world, is the result of the unmanifest transforming itself into the manifest. Everything that we behold comes from the unknown. Our physical body, the physical universe — anything and everything that we can perceive through our senses — is the transformation of the unmanifest, unknown, and invisible into the manifest, known, and visible.
The physical universe is nothing other than the Self curving back within Itself to experience itself as spirit, mind, and physical matter. In other words, all processes of creation are processes through which the Self or divinity expresses Itself. Consciousness in motion expresses itself as the objects of the universe in the eternal dance of life.
The source of all creation is divinity (or the spirit); the process of creation is divinity in motion (or the mind); and the object of creation is the physical universe (which includes the physical body).
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These three components of reality — spirit, mind, and body, or observer, the process of observing, and the observed — are essentially the same thing. They all come from the same place: the field of pure potentiality which is purely unmanifest.
The physical laws of the universe are actually this whole process of divinity in motion, or consciousness in motion. When we understand these laws and apply them in our lives, anything we want can be created, because the same laws that nature uses to create a forest, or a galaxy, or a star, or a human body can also bring about the fulfillment of our deepest desires.
Now let’s look over The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and see how we can apply them in our lives.
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In the beginning there was neither existence nor non-existence.
All this world was unmanifest energy . . .
The One breathed,
without breath, by Its own power.
Jesus — we will not forget
who you are
and what you’ve done for us.
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“Where You Go I Go”
Where You go I go What You say I say What You pray I pray What You pray I pray
[repeat]
Jesus only did what He saw You do He would only say what he heard You speak He would only move when He felt You lead Following Your heart, following Your spirit How could I expect to walk without You When every move that Jesus made was in surrender
I will not begin to live without You For You alone are worthy, You are always good You are always good
Where You go I go What You say I say God What You pray I pray What You pray I pray Though the world sees and soon forgets We will not forget who you are And what you’ve done for us, what you’ve done for us
“C.S. Lewis and Evolution” is the second of three short documentaries inspired by the book The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society. It examines the evolution of Lewis’s views on orthodox Darwinian theory from his time as a college undergraduate to his death in 1963.
Lewis’s first exception to human evolution was his insistence on an actual Fall of Man from an original state of innocence. The creation story (orcosmogonical myths) is similar in ancient cultures. In these, it is suggested that there was a finished creation from which we were fallen into sin, and therefore, we needed a divine presence to restore us to what God had originally created us to be. Lewis emphasized that man prior to the Fall had unimpeded fellowship with God.
At his time, archaeological discoveries could not tell us whether prehistoric peoples were kind, or courageous, or noble, or just. Nor do they tell us about their capacity for poetry or song. We know today that there was a great deal of evidence of advances that are impossible to explain if evolution of mankind were to have originated from lower animals. I may delve more into the ancient evidence; probably not though since it is a huge mystery.
Lewis foresaw that science could be twisted by greed and self-aggrandizement in order to attack religion, undermine ethics, and limit human freedom. The description of Transhumanism (the human enhancement movement) is written in Lewis’s predictions in The Abolition of Man and is seemingly frighteningly accurate as today, technology advances rapidly while moral knowledge declines.
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C.S. Lewis and Evolution examines Lewis’s growing doubts about parts of Darwinian evolution, beginning with his views while still an atheist. NOTE: Lewis believed in the common descent of all human beings from one non-human ancestor, although he was skeptical of unguided natural selection.
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More than a half century ago, famed writer C.S. Lewis warned about how science (a good thing) could be twisted in order to attack religion, undermine ethics, and limit human freedom. Throughout his life, C.S. Lewis struggled with what he called the “argument from undesign,” the reality that nature exhibits cruelty and imperfection as well as purpose and beauty. In this documentary “The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism,” leading scholars explore Lewis’s prophetic warnings about the abuse of science and how Lewis’s concerns are increasingly relevant for us today.
The Discovery Institute released the book The Magician’s Twin, edited by John G. West in 2012. West was a senior Fellow of the Institute and one of the editors of the highly C. S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia. The Magician’s Twin is actually a collection of essays written by contemporary writers about Lewis’s warnings of how dehumanizing scientism would take us in ethics, politics, education, faith, reason, and even in science itself.
The book explores Lewis’s views on bioethics, eugenics, evolution, intelligent design, and what he called “scientocracy.” The book is divided into four sections: Science and Scientism, Origins, Reason, and Society. I previously posted about the first section here.
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C. S. Lewis and Intelligent Design explores Lewis’s personal struggle to find evidence of intelligent design in a world filled with cruelty, imperfection, and injustice.
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In That Hideous Strength, Lewis observes, “The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already… begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result… The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress.”
Contemplative practices are counter-cultural. Broadly defined, contemplative practices, are more than the stereotype of prayer of a religious nature or meditation within an eastern tradition. Contemplative mind-body practices cultivate a focus on experiences, ideas or situations that act to remind us to connect to what we find most meaningful.
Contemplative practices are widely varied. I included an illustration below from the center for Contemplative Mind in Society that visually expands contemplative practices; for instance: various forms of meditation; focused thinking or brainstorming; time out in nature; writing; performing in the arts; contemplative movement in active, physical practices like yoga or tai chi; and silent practices like mindfulness and prayer of course.
Some people find that rituals rooted in a religious or cultural tradition sooth their soul. Not all practices are done in solitude. Groups and communities engage in practices that support reflection in a social context.
We may each benefit by a contemplative practice.
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The Tree of Contemplative Practices
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Click to enlarge: The Tree of Contemplative Practices
From the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society…
Historically, contemplative practice has been taught by the world’s spiritual traditions. However, in the last three decades, the fields of psychology, medicine, and education have recognized that contemplative practice can contribute to well-being and maturation. As a result, health professionals and educators have been teaching contemplative practices in ‘non-religious forms’ that can be used as a resource for resilience by agnostics and atheists, as well as by people with a spiritual or religious worldview.
There are two major types of contemplative practice:
Contemplation of behavior: When stressed out, angry, or afraid, we tend to become reactive. In such moments, we often act impulsively, in ways that harm ourselves or others. Contemplative practice teaches us to examine and change these destructive forms of behavior.
Elevation of awareness: The stress of daily life is like a sticky spider’s web. It ensnares us. It prevents us from experiencing the beauty that surrounds us, our capacity for love and compassion, and the presence of a transcendent dimension in life. Through meditation, prayer, the arts, and observation of the natural world (and many other techniques), contemplative practice can help us restore our ability to rise above our anxieties, and to perceive life’s mystery and beauty.
The links below offer some examples of contemplative practices:
Additionally… here is a short program of eastern contemplative Christian practices:
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Program Description An in depth dialogue on the teachings of early Christianity and the spirituality of eastern Orthodoxy, still little known in the West. A rare source of mystical wisdom.
“Researchers used brain scans to analyze the thought process of people with ‘high justice sensitivity’. By using afunctional magnetic resonance (fMRI) brain scanning device, they studied the brain activity as the subjects watched videos showing behavior that was morally good or bad like seeing a person put money in the beggar’s cup or kick the beggar’s cup away. They were asked how much they would blame or praise the person in the video and to complete questionnaires that assessed cognitive and emotional empathy and their justice sensitivity.
Those who scored high on the justice sensitivity assigned significantly more blame when asked to evaluate scenes of harm and also praised more the act of an helping person. But it was the brain scans that surprised the scientists.
During the behavior-evaluation exercise, people with high justice sensitivity showed more activity in the parts of brain associated with higher order cognition as compared to an average subject whereas the areas of brain concerned with emotional processing were not affected at all. Thus proving that individuals sensitive to justice are cognitively driven, not emotionally as everyone thinks.
So the search of justice does not primarily come from the sentimental motivations like portrayed rather it comes from reason and mental sophisticated analysis.
When evaluating good actions, a high activity in the regions of brain involved on decision making, motivation and reward was shown, answering why some people react more strongly to justice related situations and why they value justice more than others. The findings also suggest that individuals make judgement about behavior based on how they process the reward value of good actions as compared to bad actions.”
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How do you suppose people are coming to higher-consciousness about social justice?
If you have been following my blog, you may guess that I believe it isn’t by accident — I’m pretty darn sure its because this is what we are doing while we are getting more spiritually fit and mindfully attuned and prayerfully loving. We are changing our brains and our genetics. We are evolving. We are learning and teaching that it is good to love being loving and compassionate. We are learning that we may even have compassion for people that are awful (and of course still have legal justice)… its work; yes it is… its God’s work.
My mission is to promote loving; not religion. You may also though enjoy the remainder of my post today. I hope so.
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Wikipedia short biography
Kim Walker-Smith is an American singer, songwriter, worship leader, and recording artist. She produced her first solo album, titled ‘Here Is My Song‘, which was released in February 2008 through the Jesus Culture record label.
Kim Walker-Smith
Sermon: Impatience and fear
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Program Description Women’s Conference – Session 2 – August 18, 2011 – Under the theme “What If…”
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“My hunger for God
far outweighs the hunger
to understand or to have all the answers.”
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Bless Your Holy Name; Jesus!
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Thanks for visiting.
Eric
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As I face myself in the mirror… I’m looking for holiness within my human face… that will come along.
13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
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This is simple: If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. In other words, repent and believe that Jesus is the Son of God and you are then grated the promise of eternal life.
Concentration – be acknowledging
1. accept or admit the existence or truth of [Jesus] as divine
2. recognize the importance or quality of the indwelling of Holy Spirit
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How to acknowledge Christ
Luke 12:8-12 “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”
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Science too demonstrates spirituality
Andrew Newberg
The front part of the brain, which is usually involved in focusing attention and concentration, is more active during meditation. This makes sense since meditation requires a high degree of concentration. We also found that the more activity increased in the frontal lobe, the more activity decreased in the parietal lobe.
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As a result of sin, we imagine God’s anger and judgment. Thus, we fear wrath — the only just punishment for sins committed against an infinite and eternal God is an infinite punishment/death (Romans 6:23 and Revelation 20:11-15).
That is why we need our Savior. Jesus was born on Earth and then died in our place. He descended to Hell. His death was payment for all sins (2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 5:8). Upon resurrection we have the proof that His death was sufficient to pay the penalty for all sins.
Suddenly, a new clarity is available in these revelations.
Jesus is Savior (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).
God isn’t about punishment.
God is forgiveness and God is by His grace bringing us to think about and to want forgiveness. God is love and God wants us to know only about His divine love. We will forget all that is unreal. We will not recall that we’d thought that God would punish us for hate. Hate isn’t real; never was.
In a moment once, when I looked into my mirror, I saw that hate is an illusion. I saw that upon receiving forgiveness, hate is like a pencil mark that is erased as though it never were because indeed it never really was there. It was fear.
I looked past what I thought was fear and that too faded away into nothingness. Fear too was unreal.
Everything that is eternal flowed through me at that moment. I liked that moment. I practice that moment; because it is real.
I know, there IS a universal moment when there is only eternal joyfulness; that is real; and there, in that moment is every moment that ever will be; eternally real. That moment holds us in space-time until there is no other moment in the the awareness of all that is and ever was to be spiritual.
I pray we will all see this reality that I enjoy sharing about. I pray that God will dwell in us all; every one of us. We will rejoin Him in His reality. All that is illusion will be no more; it never was. This is my strength. This I know. There is all knowledge here in that one eternal moment that is all about us and every-how creating the real us.
When you are conscious you are aware of who you are and very in tune with your soul. Everything you experience is in the present and absolutely nothing that’s happened even a second ago are you concerned about because it’s in the past and completely gone. You are not even thinking about the future because it hasn’t arrived yet. This is the way to a happy life where the ego is just displaced, and your thoughts are in the now and positive.
Being conscious is a lot like mindfulness, but it involves going deeper within and becoming one with your soul. When the mind is quiet because you are living in the now and not somewhere in the past or future you are able to think clearer, be kind and giving, breathe deeper, be joyful and very creative. Conflict is gone from your life because when you are conscious you…
The Catholic theologian
Karl Rahner famously said .
“the Christian of tomorrow
will be a mystic, or not a Christian at all.“
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I’ve gotten into a few series of topics here. For instance, before this post, I’ve demonstrate how spirituality is an essential ingredient for adult humans. in scientific research and by various spiritual authors. Some posts are religions but many are not.
This post begins a study of contemplative practices. While this area of blogging isn’t untried, even with some success, I want to order the study in a way that presents Christian meditation and contemplative practices in perspective of a global consciousness.
Many of my regular readers know that I am Christian and I’m a monotheistic believer. However, what I didn’t much present before this is that I believe that every person is an essential mind; an idea that is an aspect of all that is.
My posts in this contemplative practices series will focus on how we may each be contributing to global consciousness, even in spite of any resistance. Global conscious, I think is the pulse of our times as it occurs in space-time.
Now, I happen to think that benefits globally do occur because this is God’s will. I write about it and as more people choose a serenity path for themselves to transcend our world chaotic consequence of separate self-sense, more people are centering themselves in moments of inner peace, and the outcome is seemingly of itself folding out from a shift of global consciousness.
However, really, I am sure that this is because more are coming to understand the messages of the Holy Spirit. The messages, surrender to God’s will; participate in being love; ask God in prayer to be doing His will; be peaceful and compassionate; are all the same message. This is how (I think) that divine knowledge reveals itself in global consciousness. Any divine knowledge is all divine knowledge.
In our human form, here in bodies, we typically may look at some point along the way, usually as adults, to transform from ego-centrist creatures to a higher way of relating and being.
I began an Integral Life… here are some highlight of the Integral Life… from Father Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber.
So, let’s begin looking at the responsibility to self to transcend the ego and discover, each of us, a genuine personal and transcendental purpose (these videos are high quality despite the image that may display before you begin one). Each to their own path:
Spiritual, But Not Religious?
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If you can’t watch the entire program FF to 12:30 to see the important end to this program. .
Program Description Father Thomas Keating, considered one of the great contemplatives of our time, has spent a lifetime in the practice of Christianity, seeking and sharing its depths. The goal of the tradition, suggests Fr. Thomas in this week’s video, is transformation — but transformation into what? In this video, Keating presents us with that an answer depends on what stage of development we are at.
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Tomorrow’s Spirituality
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If you can’t watch the entire program FF to 6:00 to learn about the “stages” concept in this program. .
Program Description A Cistercian monk from St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, Father Thomas Keaton has spent a lifetime in deep Christian practice, and in sharing the fruits of this contemplation with countless others. We were enormously blessed to host a dialogue with Fr. Thomas Keaton and Ken Wilber in April of 2006. In this video, Ken discusses some of the foundational concepts of Integral spirituality.
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Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute and the co-founder of Integral Life. Father Thomas Keaton is a founding member and the spiritual guide of Contemplative Outreach, LTD and founding member of the Spirituality branch of Integral Institute.
Integral Life… “No one is 100% wrong.” – Ken Wilber
If ordinary people don’t perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives then they can’t develop the higher level of consciousness, to use a term that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated, but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us.
-President Bill Clinton
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People who live integrally are animated by pursuit of a deep purpose, knowledge and sophistication in their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate a capacity for self-awareness, perspective-taking, a diversity of interests, and a commitment to lifelong development. Integral awareness allows people to expand and deepen the experience of every moment, to make sense of the world, to include everything they are while leaving nothing out, and to wake up to the unifying truths that lie at the core of all human experience. Integral Life commits to helping its members live totally free in their immense diversity while embracing the full richness of the human experience in themselves and others. In short, Integral Life community members are leaders committed to extraordinary living.
There can be no balance of science and religion. There can be a give-and-take relationship that recognizes this. The scientist must seek empirical evidence. The faithful must seek absolute knowledge.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was this imbalance in one visionary.
A biological approach for understanding life that seeks the absolute knowledge — lofty. That science/faith investigation must rearrange perception and place levels of perceptions into most-true perspectives, sort this about, reorganize, sift and categorize, expand and reduce, adjust and test and dialog.
The evolution of this is for me impossible to see. The process is not. I worked at it for many yeas, I see the process clearly.
This new emergence of a global Internet and of communication is essential. A process for intellectual evolution is necessary too. Teilhard, I think, viewed this process evolving from democratic global leadership.
Interestingly, this too is occurring and the ultra fast Internet is stimulating this. The balance too is virtually impossible to maintain of authoritative and individualist interests.
So, Teilhard went further too and he predicted trans-humanizing biology — enhancing humans.
As readers of this blog know, I believe that a synthesis of sound science and ancient spiritual traditions (combined with a healthy dose of humility) is necessary to avoid the dangers of fundamentalism, whether it be religious fundamentalism or scientific fundamentalism. One of the reasons I am a Catholic is because the Church has long supported science and the integration of faith and reason.
Dave Pruett had an excellent article in the Huffington Post this week what happens when this relationship between science and religion is severed. The result is contemporary Western civilization with its reduction of human beings to GDP units, consumerism and ecological damage. I encourage you to read the entire article (which references Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry) but set forth below is an excerpt:
[I]n The Power of Myth (1988), the late Joseph Campbell explored the vital ways in which mythology — the overarching story of…
Here is another reference to the new science of mind-body and wellness and how spirituality is a boost — here is suggested: “explore the relationship between spirituality and your health.” Okay, I will continue. In fact, I have a few more posts in my drafts. Meantime, this post is about a book I hadn’t seen. If you haven’t opened the blog, Reigh Simuzoshya, Ph.D. has many other posts that link spiritual practices to health and science. Check it out.
Historically, religion has been implicitly correlated with improved health. Later, this belief piqued the interest of scientists who have since measured and documented the connection between the two. A review of literature which includes findings by Dr. Howard Koenig and associates (2001) informs us that science attests to the fact that practiced religion is correlated with significant longevity and a reduced risk of myriad diseases. Since the 1800s when biostatistician Francis Galt’s study affirmed the positive health outcomes of intercessory prayer many more similar studies have been conducted and scientists have been astounded by the strong correlation of spirituality with general health. The quantified health effects of spirituality are reportedly the same as the effects of quitting smoking on health as far as years added to the individual’s life are concerned. Some of the specific benefits of religion include lower levels of stress; better coping skills; improved mental health; less…
Jesus was once asked when the kingdom of God would come. When I read what he said, I realized that the kingdom of God is not something people will be able to see and point to.
Jesus said some striking words regarding the coming of the kingdom.
An absolute; ultimate truth is that a treasure lies within each of us. We are made to need each other as though we are pieces of the kingdom come puzzle.
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“Today, in the first decade of the 21st century, science and spirituality have potential to be closer than ever… May each of us, as a member of the human family, respond to the moral obligation to make this collaboration possible. This is my heart felt plea.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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Let’s contemplate… watch this:
. Program Description An introduction to the Mind and Life Institute, describing its founding and mission of building a scientific understanding of how to cultivate a mind of compassion and wisdom. Speakers include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Adam Engle, Richard J. Davison, and Helen J. Neville. Narrated by Richard Gere.
The past has no power over the present moment. I may choose my own interpretations and if I choose a spiritual solution, I may be free of the past… or… choose to submit to the lesson. I need to be in the present to do this — in the moment of choice. One thing I find uplifting and enlightening is to trust in God; to trust also in what Jesus taught; and to very consciously and deliberately affirm and invite into my heart and my mind, His Holy Spirit.
I recreated my awakening for you here: Only one Word was on my mind. I wept freely with great joy that day… that day, I will always recall.
Here is a prophetic inspirational that I love:
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John 14:1-4
(Jesus is speaking) “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
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Since that day, I’ve been so wondering and cherishing and thinking about positive qualities and training myself in the moment to hold His Love in my heart.
Today, I want to share how research provides a link between spiritual experiences and health and well-being.
According to research, spiritual experiences are associated with a decreased focus on the self. Prayer, meditation, and mindfulness to name a few, are healthy. Similar to good diet, exercise and rest, regular spiritual experiences contribute to overall health.
Spiritual experiences are associated with a decreased focus on the self. I’ll use this as a definition for a spiritual state of mind: a non-tangible state of mind that brings profound meaning into one’s life as one transcends oneself.
Use something else if you like — we can’t say spiritual is universally anything religious though. Spiritual is as much a secular term as it is a religious term.
Neurotheology, also known as spiritual neuroscience, attempts to explain spiritual and religious experience and behavior in neuroscientific terms. By understanding how the brain works during certain spiritual experiences and practices (e.g., prayer, meditation, and mindfulness), science can explore related psychological and physical health connections; for example, brain activity during meditation indicates that people who frequently practice meditation do also experience lower blood pressure, lower heart rates, decreased anxiety, and decreased depression.
Just as our spiritual teachers have always said, the health benefits as well as the spiritual practices are important.
Dr. Andrew Newberg is a neuroscientist who studies the relationship between brain function and various mental states. He is a pioneer in the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences, a field known as “neurotheology.”
Newberg’s research includes making brain scans while people practice prayer, meditation, rituals, and during trance states. The scans are analyzed in an attempt to better understand the effects, nature of and the benefits of the various religious and spiritual practices and attitudes.
Findings:
Spiritual experiences are typically highly complex, involving emotions, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors. These experiences seem far too rich and diverse to derive solely from one part of the brain. For example, a near-death experience might result in different activity patterns from those found in a person who is meditating. Such evidence indicates that more than a single “God spot” is at work — that, in fact, a number of structures in the brain work together to help us experience spirituality and religion.
According to Newberg (and others) humans are compelled to act out myths due to the biological operations of their brains. An “inbuilt tendency of the brain to turn thoughts into actions,” they say is responsible. Says Newberg, “The main reason God won’t go away is because our brains won’t allow God to leave. Our brains are set up in such a way that God and religion become among the most powerful tools for helping the brain do its thing — self-maintenance and self-transcendence. Unless there is a fundamental change in how our brain works, God will be around for a very long time.”
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Andrew Newberg: Three main changes in meditative brains
To look at the neurophysiology of religious and spiritual practices, we used a brain imaging technology called single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), which allows us to measure blood flow. The more blood flow a brain area has, the more active it is (see here).
When we scanned the brains of Tibetan Buddhist meditators, we found decreased activity in the parietal lobe during meditation. This area of the brain is responsible for giving us a sense of our orientation in space and time. We hypothesize that blocking all sensory and cognitive input into this area during meditation is associated with the sense of no space and no time that is so often described in meditation.
The front part of the brain, which is usually involved in focusing attention and concentration, is more active during meditation. This makes sense since meditation requires a high degree of concentration. We also found that the more activity increased in the frontal lobe, the more activity decreased in the parietal lobe.
When we looked at the brains of Franciscan nuns in prayer, we found increased activity in the frontal lobes (same as Buddhists), but also increased activity in the inferior parietal lobe (the language area). This latter finding makes sense in relation to the nuns using a verbally based practice (prayer) rather than visualization (meditation). The nuns, like the Buddhists, also showed decreased activity in the orientation area (superior parietal lobes) of the brain.
We also looked at the brain of a long-term meditator who was an atheist. We scanned the person at rest and while meditating on the concept of God. The results showed that there was no significant increase in the frontal lobes as with the other meditation practices. The implication is that the individual was not able to activate the structures usually involved in meditation when he was focusing on a concept that he did not believe in.
The temporal lobes are clearly important in religious and spiritual experiences. The amygdala and hippocampus have been shown to be particularly involved in the experience of visions, profound experiences, memory, and meditation. However, Andrew feels that the temporal lobe must interact with many other parts of the brain to provide the full range of religious and spiritual experiences. For more information on the research, click here.
You may be interested to know that Andrew Newberg has 2 courses available.
The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience
24 lecture explore the neurotheology aimed at understanding the connections between our brains and different kinds of religious phenomena
Spiritual Practices for a Powerful Brain
Six sessions detail the spiritual practices and offer guidelines for implementation along with the science and research behind them
My purpose for pressing these science articles is to demonstrate health and spiritual benefits of spiritual practices. I hope you’ll come back often — there is more to be discovered.
The Magician’s Twin:
C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society
The Discovery Institute released the book The Magician’s Twin, edited by John G. West in 2012. West was a senior Fellow of the Institute and one of the editors of the highly C. S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia. The Magician’s Twin is actually a collection of essays written by contemporary writers about Lewis’s warnings of how dehumanizing scientismwould take us in ethics, politics, education, faith, reason, and even in science itself.
The book explores Lewis’s views on bioethics, eugenics, evolution, intelligent design, and what he called “scientocracy.” The book is divided into four sections: Science & Scientism, Origins, Reason, and Society.
The Magician’s Twin addresses and challenges the claim that the works of C. S. Lewis are a friend to Darwinian evolution. The book does not address the question of the age of the earth. It’s chapters profess dangerous implications of the Darwinian theories of evolution. Three chapters by John West address how ‘neo-Darwinism’ and ‘scientific materialism’ shape American public policy and culture since the nineteenth century to the present. Writes West, Lewis was “appalled by the growing dogmatism and intolerance he saw among evolutionists.”
C.S. Lewis foresaw that science could be twisted by greed and self-aggrandizement in order to attack religion, undermine ethics, and limit human freedom. The description of Transhumanism (the human enhancement movement) is written in Lewis’s predictions in “The Abolition of Man” and is seemingly frighteningly accurate as today, technology advances rapidly while moral knowledge declines.
In the video documentary “The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism,” leading scholars explore Lewis’s prophetic warnings about the abuse of science and how Lewis’s concerns are increasingly relevant for us today.
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.NOTE: Lewis believed in the common descent of all human beings from one non-human ancestor, although he was skeptical of unguided natural selection.
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Click the Universe Expansion Cosmic Distance Ladder to explore black holes at the Hubblesite Special Feature pages.
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I love the show and C. S. Lewis. I don’t care about evolution. Some of it occurs — so what. I have a simple approach:
The complexity of our universe is a created universe sustained by a protection of energy that supports and sustains life.
Every cell of our bodies is new in a year and each new cell is a product of thoughts that we think.
The universe came about from cause. It plays like a fine instrument. The universe operates by perfect uniform laws of nature.
God constantly reveals more simply the complexities of His universe.
DNA assures that we will act just as God’s plan calls for from each of us at just the right moments doing in those moments just the exact thing that we as unique aspects of an entire community of humanity must do at an exact time so that we will keep our subconscious agreements with each other. Those moments are unavoidable. Our circumstances will compel us to be exactly in the right place at the right time and we will do and or say exactly the right thing then; no matter what we may mess up most of the rest of our days. We are usually unconscious about it or chalk it off to coincidence. There are no coincidences.
Most of us are unconscious about our individual purpose until the time is exactly right and even then it rarely dawns upon most any of us that we have a purpose.
We are eternal spiritual beings. Most of us are fearful much of the time and thus we are separated from knowing fully God’s loving presence. Some of us are even oblivious about God.
We all need to be aware that our upsets belong to we as individuals and take responsibility for these without finding fault with anyone else.
We must be loving and compassionate, empathetic and we must find our self-actualized purpose before looking to outside for satisfying relationships.
The Holy Spirit is the protecting and sustaining energy of this universe. We ought look inward and be still to allow the Spirit to fill our bodies and fully enliven our hearts and then the Spirit will direct us as we’d never known possible.
Excerpts from
The 7 Spiritual Laws of Success
by Deepak Chopra
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Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfill your desires with effortless ease. And yet success, including the creation of wealth, has always been considered to be a process that requires hard work, and it is often considered to be at the expense of others. We need a more spiritual approach to success and to affluence, which is the abundant flow of all good things to you. With the knowledge and practice of spiritual law, we put ourselves in harmony with nature and create with carefulness, joy, and love.
All of creation, everything that exists in the physical world, is the result of the unmanifest transforming itself into the manifest. Everything that we behold comes from the unknown. Our physical body, the physical universe — anything and everything that we can perceive through our senses — is the transformation of the unmanifest, unknown, and invisible into the manifest, known, and visible.
The physical universe is nothing other than the Self curving back within Itself to experience itself as spirit, mind, and physical matter. In other words, all processes of creation are processes through which the Self or divinity expresses Itself. Consciousness in motion expresses itself as the objects of the universe in the eternal dance of life.
The source of all creation is divinity (or the spirit); the process of creation is divinity in motion (or the mind); and the object of creation is the physical universe (which includes the physical body).
These three components of reality — spirit, mind, and body, or observer, the process of observing, and the observed — are essentially the same thing. They all come from the same place: the field of pure potentiality which is purely unmanifest.
The physical laws of the universe are actually this whole process of divinity in motion, or consciousness in motion. When we understand these laws and apply them in our lives, anything we want can be created, because the same laws that nature uses to create a forest, or a galaxy, or a star, or a human body can also bring about the fulfillment of our deepest desires.
Now let’s look over The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and see how we can apply them in our lives.
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In the beginning there was neither existence nor non-existence.
All this world was unmanifest energy . . .
The One breathed, without breath, by Its own power.
Nothing else was there . . .
— Hymn of Creation, The Rig Veda
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Thanks for visiting.
Eric
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If you like this, you’ll love this: I previously published more detailed posts.
Discover your divinity, find your unique talent, serve humanity with it, and begin to experience your life as a miraculous expression of divinity — not just occasionally, but all the time. You are to know true joy and the true meaning of success — the ecstasy and exultation of your own spirit.
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Everyone has a purpose in life
….
a unique gift
or special talent
to give to others.
And when we blend this unique talent
with service to others,
we experience the ecstasy
and exultation of our own spirit,
which is
the ultimate goal
of all goals.
When you work
you are a flute
through whose heart
the whispering of the hours
turns to music.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth
with threads drawn
from your heart,
even as if
your beloved were to wear that cloth
….
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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This is the seventh Deepak Chopra law for success from his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.
If you’d like,
open the series
from its beginning point
or continue along from here.
Each skill builds on the previous skill.
If you want to make maximum use of the Law of Purpose, then you will make several commitments. The first commitment is: I am going to seek my higher self, which is beyond my ego, through spiritual practice.
The second commitment is: I am going to discover my unique talents, and finding my unique talents, I am going to enjoy myself, because the process of enjoyment occurs when I go into timeless awareness. That’s when I am in a state of bliss.
The third commitment is: I am going to ask myself how I am best suited to serve humanity.
According to this law, you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing your specific talent. There is something that you can do better than most anyone else in the world — and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that makes you right to fulfill your purpose.
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I will put the Law of Purpose (Dharma) into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:
(1) Today I will pay attention to the spirit within me that animates both my body and my mind. I will awaken myself to this deep stillness within my heart. I will carry the consciousness of timeless, eternal Being in the midst of time-bound experience.
(2) I will make a list of my unique talents. Then I will list all the things that I love to do while expressing my unique talents. When 1 express my unique talents and use them in the service of humanity, I lose track of time and create abundance in my life as well as in the lives of others.
(3) I will ask myself daily, “How can I serve?” and “How can I help?” The answers to these questions will allow me to help and serve my fellow human beings with love.
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Summary of the 7 Laws The universal mind choreographs everything that is happening in billions of galaxies with elegant precision and unfaltering intelligence. Its intelligence is ultimate and supreme, and it permeates every fiber of existence. Everything that is alive is an expression of this intelligence.
Every cell has its birth in the Law of Pure Potentiality. DNA is a perfect example of pure potentiality; in fact, it is the material expression of pure potentiality. The same DNA existing in every cell expresses itself in different ways in order to fulfill the unique requirements of that particular cell. Each cell also operates through the Law of Giving. A cell is alive and healthy when it is in a state of balance and equilibrium. This state of equilibrium is one of fulfillment and harmony, but it is maintained by a constant give and take. Each cell gives to and supports every other cell, and in turn is nourished by every other cell. The cell is always in a state of dynamic flow and the flow is never interrupted. In fact, the flow is the very essence of the life of the cell. And only by maintaining this flow of giving is the cell able to receive and thus continue its vibrant existence.
The Law of Cause and Effect is exquisitely executed by every cell, because built into its intelligence is the most appropriate and precisely correct response to every situation as it occurs. The Law of Least Effort is also exquisitely executed by every cell in the body: it does its job with quiet efficiency in the state of restful alertness.
Through the Law of Intention and Desire, every intention of every cell harnesses the infinite organizing power of nature’s intelligence. Even a simple intention such as metabolizing a molecule of sugar immediately sets off a symphony of events in the body where precise amounts of hormones have to be secreted at precise moments to convert this molecule of sugar into pure creative energy.
Of course, every cell expresses the Law of Detachment. It is detached from the outcome of its intentions. It doesn’t stumble or falter because its behavior is a function of life-centered, present-moment awareness.
Each cell also expresses the Law of Dharma. Each cell must discover its own source, the higher self; it must serve its fellow beings, and express its unique talents. Heart cells, stomach cells, and immune cells all have their source in the higher self, the field of pure potentiality. And because they are directly linked to this cosmic computer, they can express their unique talents with effortless ease and timeless awareness. Only by expressing their unique talents can they maintain both their own integrity and the integrity of the whole body.
The internal dialogue of every cell in the human body is, “How can I help?” The heart cells want to help the immune cells, the immune cells want to help the stomach and lung cells, and the brain cells are listening to and helping every other cell. Every cell in the human body has only one function: to help every other cell.
By looking at the behavior of the cells of our own body, we can observe the most extraordinary and efficient expression of The Seven Spiritual Laws. This is the genius of nature’s intelligence.
In the series, I used descriptions and text from Chopra almost exclusively — because his work works as he wrote it. I just want to add this:
This is the language of God. If you begin with this and prayers and meditation to build a positive inner serene peaceful outlook then you are on your way to a deep understanding of the profound mysteries in life. The miracles — the seemingly supernatural occurrences — are natural — not really so unusual; not at all. If your science or if your education tells you otherwise, let it go — it may be flawed. You don’t need it if it isn’t bringing you inner peace, happiness, joy, and freedom to be who you are intended to be. The realization that you can be, do, and have the genuine you is extraordinary and exhilarating. Listen to your heart and when it tells you to get more positive, do that. You are meant to know your maker. This series is only about love. Do it that way.
One of the best prayers is for God’s blessings and peace to be upon those whom we love and care for. I think it wise even to pray for enemies. God’s blessings come upon us in one way or another. For me, I just think it best to pray for His will and get out of the way if necessary.
Taking action to be a blessing for others in need is a loving act.
How can your talents and gifts bless others?
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I worked during December 2013 to post content for self-improvement. In January 2014, I’ll be posting topics related to how we can improve the world. I hope you’ll come back often — there is more to be discovered.
Deepak Chopra observes in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, that desperate striving isn’t necessary or even desirable. To the contrary, this law says that in order to acquire anything in the physical universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it.
This doesn’t mean that you must give up the intention to create your desire.
You give up your attachment to the result.
This is a very powerful thing to do.
The moment you relinquish your attachment to the result, combining one-pointed intention with detachment at the same time, you will have that which you desire. Anything you want can be acquired through detachment, because detachment is based on the unquestioning belief in the power of your true Self. Attachment comes from poverty consciousness, because attachment is always to symbols.
From his book, “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Success“ — Chopra lays out another of seven laws of spiritual success — The Law of Detachment — one each day is recommended.
If you’d like, open the series from its beginning point or continue along here, the sixth day in the series. Each skill builds on the previous skill.
Detachment is synonymous with wealth consciousness, because with detachment there is freedom to create. True wealth consciousness is the ability to have anything you want, anytime you want, and with least effort.
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty . . . in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.
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Put the Law of Detachment into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:
1. Today I will commit myself to detachment. I will allow myself and those around me the freedom to be as they are. I will not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be. I will not force solutions on problems, thereby creating new problems. I will participate in everything with detached involvement.
2. Today I will factor in uncertainty as an essential ingredient of my experience. In my willingness to accept uncertainty, solutions will spontaneously emerge out of the problem, out of the confusion, disorder, and chaos. The more uncertain things seem to be, the more secure I will feel, because uncertainty is my path to freedom. Through the wisdom of uncertainty, I will find my security.
3. I will step into the field of all possibilities and anticipate the excitement that can occur when I remain open to an infinity of choices. When I step into the field of all possibilities, I will experience all the fun, adventure, magic, and mystery of life.
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December is self-improvement month at this blog — let’s all get in touch with our best true selves and make this our month to end the year at our best. I’ll feature lots of content to improve the inner and outer us. Check back frequently.
President George Washington proclaimed Thursday, November 26, 1789 to be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.” 
Eric
If ordinary people don’t perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives then they can’t develop the higher level of consciousness, to use a term that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated, but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us.
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