Archive for July, 2006


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Consciousness Exercises

Published on July 19, 2006

Due to my experience with many modalities, I’ve included exercises which will release emotions and issues which prevent us from achieving the spiritual goal of being our Highest Self. Whichever exercises work best for you, the thing to keep in mind is the intended result is to release blocks to higher consciousness. Whatever comes up be it denial, failure to take responsibility for what is happening around you, clinging to the past, fear of releasing and surrendering unsuitable beliefs or upsets, or refusal to own and recognize the ego, all exercises have the ability to create radical inner change.

I will be adding exercises as time goes on for you to do as your time permits. You may find some work for you more than others, as you become proficient in practicing them. Each one has the propensity for eliminating the road-blocks. There are many ways one can reach enlightenment, but that end is not as important as the journey, and what we are as we travel the path. You can think of these as your own personal class exercises without the travel or the expense. As always, these exercises are not meant to treat serious conditions, and I always defer to and recommend contacting professionals, whenever issues necessitate. God Bless you in the Highest.

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Socrates

Published on July 30, 2006

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
___Socrates BC 469-399, Greek Philosopher of Athens


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Theoretical physics

Published on July 27, 2006

Theoretical physics employs mathematical models and abstractions, as opposed to experimental processes, in an attempt to understand Nature. Central to it is mathematical physics 1, though other conceptual techniques are also used. The goal is to rationalize, explain and predict physical phenomena. The advancement of science depends in general on the interplay between experimental studies and theory. In some cases, theoretical physics adheres to standards of mathematical rigor while giving little weight to experiments and observations. For example, while developing special relativity, Einstein was concerned with the Lorentz transformation which left Maxwell’s equations invariant, but was apparently uninterested in the Michelson-Morley experiment on Earth’s drift through a luminiferous ether. On the other hand, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect, previously an experimental result lacking a theoretical formulation.

Overview
A physical theory is a model of physical events and cannot be proven from basic axioms. A physical theory is different from a mathematical theorem; physical theories model reality and are a statement of what has been observed, and provide predictions of new observations.

An Einstein manifold, used in general relativity to describe the curvature of spacetime

Hence, more is involved than the application, or even invention, of mathematics — to wit: concept formation. Archimedes realized that one could determine the volume of an irregularly-shaped object by immersing it in a liquid, and that a ship floats by displacing its weight of water. Pythagoras understood the relation between the length of a vibrating string and the musical tone it produces, and how to calculate the length of a rectangle’s diagonal. Other examples include entropy as a measure of the uncertainty regarding the positions and motions of unseen particles and the quantum mechanical idea that (action and) energy are not continuously variable. Sometimes it is the vision of mathematicians which provides the clue; e.g., the notion, due to Riemann and others, that space itself might be curved.

Theoretical advances often consist in setting aside old paradigms

Heat is a fluid called caloric.
Burning consists of evolving phlogiston.
Astronomical bodies revolve around the Earth.
often replacing them with new ones

Physical objects are made up of molecules and atoms.
Diseases can be caused by unseen microbes.
Energy is exchanged in discrete packets called quanta.
Physical theories become accepted if they are able to make correct predictions and avoid incorrect ones. The theory should have, at least as a secondary objective, a certain economy and elegance (compare to mathematical beauty), a notion sometimes called “Occam’s razor” after the 13th-century English philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham), in which the simpler of two theories that describe the same matter just as adequately is preferred. (But conceptual simplicity may mean mathematical complexity.) They are also more likely to be accepted if they connect a wide range of phenomena. Testing the consequences of a theory is part of the scientific method.

Physical theories can be grouped into three categories: mainstream theories, proposed theories and fringe theories.

History
For more details on this topic, see History of physics.
Theoretical physics began, at least 2,300 years ago under the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, and continued by Plato; and Aristotle, whose views held sway for a millennium. In medieval times, during the rise of the universities, the only acknowledged intellectual disciplines were theology, mathematics, medicine, and law. As the concepts of matter, energy, space, time and causality slowly began to acquire the form we know today, other sciences spun off from the rubric of natural philosophy. During the Renaissance, the modern concept of experimental science, the counterpoint to theory, began with Francis Bacon. The modern era of theory began perhaps with the Copernican paradigm shift in astronomy, soon followed by the actual planetary orbits due to Kepler, based on the meticulous observations of Tycho.

The great push toward the modern concept of explanation started with Galileo, one of the few physicists who was both a consummate theoretician and a great experimentalist. The analytic geometry and mechanics of Descartes was incorporated into the calculus and mechanics of Isaac Newton, another theoretician/experimentalist of the highest order. Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler and William Rowan Hamilton would extend the theory of classical mechanics considerably. Each of these individuals picked up the interactive intertwining of mathematics and physics begun two millennia earlier by Pythagoras.

Among the great conceptual achievements of the 19th and 20th centuries were the consolidation of the idea of energy by the inclusion of heat, then electricity and magnetism and light, and finally mass. The laws of thermodynamics, and especially the introduction of the singular concept of entropy, filled in a great missing link in the attempt to explain why things happen.

The pillars of modern physics, and perhaps the most revolutionary theories in the history of physics, have been relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Newtonian mechanics was subsumed under special relativity and Newton’s gravity was given a kinematic explanation by general relativity. Quantum mechanics led to an understanding of blackbody radiation and of anomalies in the specific heats of solids — and finally to an understanding of the internal structures of atoms and molecules.

All of these achievements depended on the theoretical physics as a moving force both to suggest experiments and to consolidate results — often by ingenious application of existing mathematics, or, as in the case of Descartes and Newton (with Leibniz), by inventing new mathematics. Fourier’s studies of heat conduction lead to a new branch of mathematics: infinite, orthogonal series.

Modern theoretical physics attempts to unify theories and explain phenomena in further attempts to understand the Universe, from the cosmological to the elementary particle scale. Where experimentation cannot be done, theoretical physics still tries to advance through the use of mathematical models.

Prominent theoretical physicists
Famous theoretical physicists include Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Niels Henrik Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Hendrik A. Lorentz, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, Lev Landau, Abdus Salam, Enrico Fermi, Louis Victor Broglie and Wolfgang Pauli.

Mainstream theories
Mainstream theories (sometimes referred to as central theories) are the body of knowledge of both factual and scientific views and possess a usual scientific quality of the tests of repeatability, consistency with existing well-established science and experimentation. There do exist mainstream theories that are generally accepted theories based solely upon their effects explaining a wide variety of data, although the detection, explanation and possible composition are subjects of debate.

Examples
Physical cosmology
Classical mechanics
Condensed matter physics
Dynamics
Dark matter
Electromagnetism
Field theory
Fluid dynamics
General relativity
Particle physics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum field theory
Quantum electrochemistry
Solid state physics or Condensed Matter Physics and the electronic structure of materials
Special relativity
Standard Model
Statistical mechanics
String Theory
Thermodynamics
Particle Cosmology

Proposed theories
The proposed theories of physics are usually relatively new theories which deal with the study of physics which include scientific approaches, means for determining the validity of models and new types of reasoning used to arrive at the theory. However, some proposed theories include theories that have been around for decades and have eluded methods of discovery and testing. Proposed theories can include fringe theories in the process of becoming established (and, sometimes, gaining wider acceptance). Proposed theories usually have not been tested.

Examples
Dark energy or Einstein’s Cosmological Constant
Einstein-Rosen Bridge
Emergence
Grand unification theory*
Loop quantum gravity*
M-theory
String theory
Supersymmetry
Theory of everything*

Fringe theories
Fringe theories include any new area of scientific endeavor in the process of becoming established and some proposed theories. It can include speculative sciences. This includes physics fields and physical theories presented in accordance with known evidence, and a body of associated predictions have been made according to that theory.

Some fringe theories go on to become a widely accepted part of physics. Other fringe theories end up being disproven. Some fringe theories are a form of protoscience and others are a form of pseudoscience. The falsification of the original theory sometimes leads to reformulation of the theory.

Examples
Dynamic theory of gravity
Grand unification theory*
Loop quantum gravity*
Luminiferous aether
Steady state theory
Theory of everything*
Metatheory
* These theories are both proposed and fringe theories.

Notes
Note 1: Sometimes mathematical physics and theoretical physics are used synonymously to refer to the latter.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Theoretical physics”.


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The Why Cafe

Published on

The following is an excerpt from the book The Why Café: A Story
by John P. Strelecky
Published by Da Capo Press; April 2006;$12.95US/$16.95CAN;
0-7382-1063-3
Copyright © 2003, 2006 John P. Strelecky

Preface

Sometimes when you least expect it, and perhaps most need it, you find yourself in a new place, with new people, and you learn new things. That happened to me one night on a dark, lonely stretch of road. In retrospect, my situation at that moment was symbolic of my life at that time. Just as I was lost on the road, I was lost in life as well, unsure of exactly where I was going or why I was moving in that direction.

I had taken a week off from my job. My goal was to get away from everything associated with work. It wasn’t that my job was terrible. Sure, it had its frustrating aspects, but more than anything else was the fact that most days I found myself wondering if there wasn’t supposed to be more to life than spending ten to twelve hours per day in a cubicle, working toward a promotion that would probably mean spending twelve to fourteen hours per day working in an office.

During high school I had been preparing for college; in college I prepared for the work world; and since then I had spent my time working my way up in the company where I was employed. Now I was questioning whether the people who helped direct me along those paths were simply repeating to me what someone had repeated to them in their lives.

It wasn’t bad advice really, but it wasn’t particularly fulfilling advice, either. I felt like I was busy trading my life for money, and it didn’t seem like such a good trade. That befuddled state of mind is where I was mentally when I found “The Why Café.”

When I’ve related this story to others, they’ve used terms like “mystical” and “Twilight Zone-ish.” The latter is a reference to an old television program where people would show up in places that at first glance seemed normal, but didn’t always end up that way. Sometimes, just for an instant, I catch myself wondering if my experience was real. When that happens, I go into my desk drawer at home and read the inscription on the menu Casey gave me. It reminds me of just how real everything was. I have never tried to retrace my steps and find the café again. Some small part of me likes to believe no matter how real the evening was, even if I could go back to the exact spot where I originally found the café, it wouldn’t be there — that the only reason I found it was because at that moment, on that night, I needed to find it, and for that reason alone it existed.

Maybe someday I will try to go back. Or maybe some night I’ll just find myself in front of it again. Then I can go inside and tell Casey, Mike, and Anne, if she is there, how that night in the café changed my life. How the questions they exposed me to have resulted in thoughts and discoveries beyond anything I had imagined before then.

Who knows, perhaps on that night I’ll spend the evening talking to someone else who also got lost and wandered into “The Why Café.” Or maybe I’ll just write a book about my experience, and let that be part of my contribution to what the cafe is all about.

***

Chapter 10

Casey’s question had my mind racing. Does doing what most people are doing help me fulfill my Purpose For Existing? Before I could answer, she spoke again.

“Have you ever seen a green sea turtle, John?”

“A sea turtle?”

“Correct,” Casey said, “a sea turtle. In particular, a big green sea turtle, with green splotches on its flippers and head.”

“I suppose I’ve seen pictures of one,” I said. “Why?”

“As strange as it may sound,” Casey began, “I learned one of my most important life lessons about choosing what things to do each day from a big green sea turtle.”

“What did he tell you?” I asked, not at all successful in suppressing my smile.

“Funny,” she answered, and smiled back. “He didn’t specifically ‘tell’ me anything, but he taught me a great deal just the same. I was snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii. The day had already been spectacular, in that I had seen a purple spotted eel and an octopus, both of which were new for me. There were also thousands and thousands of fish, representing every color you can imagine, from the most striking neon blue to the deepest shades of red.

“I was about 100 feet away from the beach, and diving down among some large rock structures, when I turned to my right and saw a large green sea turtle swimming next to me. That was the first time I had ever seen one in the wild, so I was ecstatic. I rose to the surface, cleared my snorkel, and floated on top of the water, so I could watch him.

“He was right underneath me when I looked down, and he was swimming away from the shore. I decided I would stay on the surface and just watch him for a while. To my surprise, although he appeared to be moving pretty slowly, sometimes paddling his flippers and other times just floating in the water, I couldn’t keep up with him. I was wearing fins, which gave me propulsion power through the water, and didn’t have on a buoyancy vest or anything that would slow me down, and yet he kept moving farther from me even though I was trying to keep up.

“After about ten minutes, he lost me. Tired, disappointed, and a little embarrassed that I couldn’t keep up with a turtle, I turned back toward the beach and snorkeled to shore.

“The next day I returned to the same spot, with the hope of seeing more turtles. Sure enough, about thirty minutes after walking into the water, I turned to look at a school of tiny black and yellow fish, and there was another green sea turtle. I watched him for a while as he paddled around the coral, and then I tried to follow him as he swam away from the shore. Once again, I was surprised to find I couldn’t keep up. When I realized he was pulling ahead of me, I stopped paddling and just floated and watched him. It was at that moment when he taught me the important life lesson.”

Casey stopped speaking.

“Casey, you can’t just end the story there. What did he teach you?”

She smiled at me. “I thought you were a nonbeliever in green sea turtles being able to tell you something?”

I smiled back. “I’m still doubtful on the ‘tell’ part, but from the way the story is going, I’m starting to become a believer in the teaching possibilities. What happened next?”

“Well, as I was floating on the surface, I realized that the turtle linked its movements to the movements of the water. When a wave was going toward the shore, and in the face of the turtle, he would float, and paddle just enough to hold his position. When the pull of the wave was back out to the ocean, he would paddle faster, so that he was using the movement of the water to his advantage.

“The turtle never fought the waves, but instead he used them. The reason I had not been able to keep up with him was because I was paddling all the time, no matter which way the water was flowing. At first this was fine, and I was able to stay with him. I even had to slow my paddling sometimes. But the more I battled against the incoming waves, the more tired I became. This meant that when the wave was going out, I didn’t have enough energy to take advantage of it.

“As wave after wave came in and went out, I became more and more fatigued and less effective. The turtle kept optimizing his movements with the movements of the water, though, which is why he was able to swim faster than I could.”

“Casey,” I began, “I think I appreciate a good turtle story . . .”

“Green sea turtle story,” she interrupted me, and smiled.

“Right, green sea turtle story. I think I appreciate a good green sea turtle story as much as the next person. Probably more, actually, since I love the ocean, but I’m not sure I understand how this relates to the way people choose the things that will fill up their days.”

“And I had such high hopes for you,” she said, and smiled again.

“Okay, okay,” I replied. “Give me a minute.” I thought through what we had been talking about before the green sea turtle story. Then I began speaking again. “You were saying that once someone knows why they are here — they know their PFE — then they can spend their time doing things that fulfill it. You were also saying that people who don’t know their PFE also spend their time on lots of things. That’s when I deduced that the things they spend their time on are things that don’t help them fulfill their PFE.”

“So far so reflective, and I think I can sense a major insight just around the corner,” she said.

“Yes you can,” I replied, and smiled at her entertaining sarcasm. “I think the turtle — the green sea turtle — taught you that if you aren’t in tune with what you want to do, you can waste your energy on lots of things. Then when opportunities come up to do what you want, you might not have the strength or time to spend on them.”

“Very nice,” she said. “And I appreciate the catch on the ‘green sea turtle’ instead of just ‘turtle.’” She became more serious. “It was a really big moment for me, definitely one of my ‘Aha’ moments in life.

“Each day there are so many people trying to persuade you to spend your time and energy on them. Think about your mail. If you were to participate in every activity, sale, and service offering you get notified of, you would have no free time. And that is just the mail. Add on all the people who want to capture your attention for television time, places to eat, travel destinations . . . You can quickly find yourself doing what everyone else is doing, or wants you to do.

“When I got back to the beach after watching the turtle on the second day, I was filled with all of these insights. I sat on my towel and wrote them down in my journal. I realized that in my life, the incoming waves are made up of all the people, activities, and things that are trying to capture my attention, energy, and time but are not associated with my PFE. The outgoing waves are the people, activities, and things that can help me fulfill my PFE. Therefore, the more time and energy I waste on the incoming waves, the less time and energy I have for the outgoing ones.

“Once I had that picture in my head, it really put things in a different perspective. I became much more selective about how much ‘paddling’ I did, and for what reasons.”

“Interesting,” I said, reflecting on her story and how I spent most of my time each day. “I see what you meant by learning something from a green sea turtle.”

Casey got up from the table. “I thought you might. However, I think I’m keeping you from eating your breakfast. Why don’t I let you work on that for a while, and I’ll come back in a little bit to see how you’re doing.”

“Casey, can I borrow a piece of paper and your pen before you go?”

“Sure.” She took the pen out of her apron, ripped off a piece of paper from her order pad, and put both of them on the table.

“The answer will surprise you,” she said with a wink, as she walked away.

“How do you know — ?” I started to ask, but she was already on her way to the back of the café.

I started writing figures on the paper. Average life expectancy of seventy-five years . . . twenty-two years old when I graduated college . . . six days per week that I receive mail . . . awake sixteen hours per day . . . twenty minutes each day that I spend on the mail . . .

When I finished all my computing, I couldn’t believe the answer. I did the math again. Same answer.

I realized Casey wasn’t kidding about the impact of the incoming wave. If from the time I graduated college until the time I was seventy-five years old, I spent twenty minutes per day opening and looking at mail I really didn’t care about, I ended up spending almost an entire year of my life on junk mail.

I rechecked my math a third time. It was true. There were probably fifty-three years of life after college, and if I wasn’t careful, I would waste one of them reading solicitations.

“Well?” It was Casey. She had returned from the kitchen, but I was so caught up in my math efforts I didn’t notice her.

“You’re right,” I replied. “I am surprised. Actually, I think I’m beyond surprised and quickly heading to shocked. Do you realize that junk mail alone could eat up an entire year of your life?”

She smiled, “Not all mail is junk mail, John.”

“No, I know that, but at least for me the majority of it is. Besides, it’s not just the mail. I was sitting here wondering what other incoming wave items are occupying my time and energy every day.”

“It can get you thinking,” she said. “That’s why my time with the green sea turtle made such a big impact on me.” She smiled at me, then turned and walked toward the people at the other end of the café.

From The Why Café by John P. Strelecky. Copyright © 2003, 2006 by John P. Strelecky. Reprinted by arrangement with Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group (www.perseusbooks.com ). All rights reserved.

Easy reading-Beginner Spiritual

Author
John P. Strelecky is an expert on helping people improve their lives. He has impacted millions through his writing, presentations, and appearances on television and radio. He has consulted for Fortune 500 companies and lectured at the university level. He lives in Orlando, Florida. The Why Café is his first book. For more information, please visit TheWhyCafe.com
The Why Café


EBG Excerpt…Enlightened world

Published on July 26, 2006

In the enlightened world, there is no one who “does” anything to you. There are only those who are ignorant of what they are being, due to their level of consciousness.


Science stands with spirituality in new book

Published on

By David Royer/staff
droyer@newsleader.com

STAUNTON — It began about three years ago, Francis Collins recalled, with a series of lectures at Harvard University.

Hundreds turned out to hear him, the nation’s leading geneticist, speak on a topic normally considered taboo territory for a trained scientist: spirituality, and its relationship to science.

Pen soon met paper on a book that, in some ways, Collins began writing ever since he abandoned atheism and reached for religion as a young doctor 30 years ago.

“The Language of God,” a book that challenges religion and science as it embraces them both, reached bookstores this month, as the debate between pure science and pure belief reaches ever-more shrill tones.

Collins is making his rounds in the media, appearing in Time magazine this month, on the Charlie Rose show Tuesday night and, on Aug. 5, in his humble hometown of Staunton.

His book’s premise — that both disciplines can enlighten each other — describes Collins’ own quest to walk a middle path between Genesis and Darwin, and his desire to ease the sense of conflict between the twin towers that dominate his worldview.

“I’m troubled by the way in which the discussion of science and faith has been dominated by extreme voices on both ends of the spectrum,” said Collins, a Robert E. Lee High School graduate who, as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, helped create the road map of the human gene in 2003.

“There are many of us who live in harmony in the middle of this spectrum.”

The middle of the spectrum can be a knife-edge for many scientists, Collins said, in disciplines like genetics that crank out discoveries that seem to turn the age-old stories of the Bible into allegorical fairy tales.

Scientists have long fallen into a camp dominated by a clinical sort of atheism that discourages religious belief as too soft for science, but substitutes science as a sort of faith, he said. Meanwhile, a backlash by Christian fundamentalists who misinterpret scientific discoveries, he fears, could dampen scientific inquiry.

Collins bridges the gap by what he calls BioLogos, or theistic evolution.

To him, the Darwinian processes that shaped life over billions of years of evolution are beyond debate. Yet to the believer’s mind — his mind — they can reinforce faith in a miraculous creator, he said.

His position has taken criticism from evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, who argue that scientific evidence has shut the door on the supernatural forever.

Collins, when asked whether the creation story in Genesis should be abandoned as fiction, leaves a bit of wiggle room and says the topic needs to be further explored.

Still, many on both sides of the spectrum are pleased with Collins’ middle path.

“I think it’s worthwhile to have people like Francis Collins out there,” said Nick Matzke, spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, a California-based organization that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools, according to its Web site.

Matzke described theistic evolution as a “reasonable position” that accepts science while respecting personal faith. It should not be confused with intelligent design, a recent attempt to undermine Darwinian evolution that some say should be taught as an alternative to evolution, he said. Click here for the continued article.


Discovery Offers Hope to Chronic Pain Sufferers

Published on July 25, 2006

By Robin Lloyd
Special to LiveScience
posted: 25 July 2006
09:30 am ET

More than 70 percent of people with chronic pain have lived with it for more than three years, according to the American Chronic Pain Association. A third of those have suffered pain for more than a decade.

Now, scientists have discovered the molecular pathway for chronic pain in rats, offering hope to the nearly one in six Americans who endure aches, burning sensations and throbbing long after their injuries have healed.

The pathway was described previously in the California sea slug, which is an invertebrate, but it has been recently confirmed in rats by Richard Ambron and Ying-Ju Sung of Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and a colleague.

Painful Facts
How pain hurts Americans:

1 in 6 suffers from arthritis.
More than 26 million between the ages of 20 and 64 have frequent back pain.
More than 25 million have migraines.
Pain costs an estimated $100 billion each year.
SOURCE: American Pain Foundation

The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is colored blue, and the peripheral nervous system (major peripheral nerves) are yellow. Shown are the brain inside the cranium, spinal cord inside the vertebral column, and the spinal nerves coming out of the intervertebral foramen.

The Pain Truth
How and Why We Hurt

Rats have a nervous system that more closely resembles our own and they are often used as model organisms for studies of pain in humans.

“A finding in invertebrates does not necessarily translate into a result that is also true for vertebrates,” Ambron told LiveScience. “This is a major advance because we were able to show that the pain pathway was conserved in rats.”

Pain research
The worldwide painkiller market was worth $50 billion in 2005, but current medications for chronic pain, meaning pain that lasts weeks, months and even years, leave much to be desired. Companies have shied away from developing new pain drugs in part due to troubles with Vioxx and Celebrex—called COX-2 selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Vioxx and Celebrex were reported a couple years ago to increase the risk of heart disease and stroke as side effects.

Aside from the problems with the COX-2 drugs, acetaminophen is little help, and morphine and other narcotics are addictive and sedate the patient.

The uncertainty around COX-2 drugs has left people in chronic pain with few choices, Ambron said. Click here to continue


God

Published on

The noun god is used in English to refer to a postulated immortal, supernatural being, usually said to rule, alone or in company with other gods, over the destinies of humankind and the universe. When spelled with a capital “G” it is a proper noun, the name given in English to the one supreme being as postulated by the three major monotheistic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. When spelled with a small “g” it is a common noun, referring to a postulated supernatural being of any religious system, as for example the gods of the Greek and Roman religions.

The word “God” comes from the Old English/German/Norse language family and is (in Western culture ) equivalent to the derivatives of the Latin word “Deus”. Many major current monotheistic concepts of a “God” descend from the Abrahamic tradition of YHVH (”I am that I am”, “I am the One Who Is,” “He who cannot be named”).

Conflicting interpretations arise regarding the name of “God”, and what the name actually means — often the infinite God concept is mixed with non-infinite personifications of “God” (i.e. God as an old man, a Zeus or Odin.) A belief in a “God” or gods is found in most cultures, although followers of a particular God or gods may consider other gods to be inferior. Likewise many people hold non-literal, sometimes even secular interpretations of God — few of which may actually contradict the pure concept of an “infinite God,” despite any contradictions these may have with any particular religious tradition.

Names for God in Monotheistic Religions

The generic term God is often used as a proper name by most adherents of most monotheistic faiths. Different names for God have arisen from both language differences and from religious traditions. Both kinds of branches have generated evolutions in the name of “God.”

Allah - Islam/Arabic
Also Eli — Aramaic, the language of Jesus (Isa)

Jehovah or Yahweh - one of the names used for God in the Bible, based on the Hebrew YHVH (????). This name, while appearing in Jewish prayers, is never pronounced (Adonai is usually said instead). As written Hebrew did not originally mark vowels, the original pronunciation is speculative.
Adonai - Judaism. See The name of God in Judaism for many other Jewish names of God.
The Holy Trinity (meaning The Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit/”Holy Ghost”) - A name used primarily in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayers and liturgy. The doctrine of the Trinity is held by most of Christianity from at least the time of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Compare Godhead.
Arguments Regarding the Existence of God

Throughout history, many arguments have been made both for and against the existence of God. For example, it has been argued that, without postulating the existence of one, eternal God, the origin of the universe appears inexplicable, since it is not logically possible for something to come from nothing. Conversely, it has been argued that such an origin may be an inevitable consequence of the paradox of nothingness, and that the inexplicable existence of God is no explanation at all. Due to the seemingly inconclusive nature of all such arguments, many have maintained that belief in God depends on faith, not upon any argument or proof.

Beliefs about the Nature of God

Theology is the study of the nature of the divine. In some cases, theologians attempt to explicate (and in some cases systematize) the assumptions that underlie specific, organized, religions; in other cases, theologians seek to transform a personal experience of the divine into some philosophical system. All theologies begin with a notion of “god;” different theologies have been grouped and classified according to their views on two fundamental issues:

1. Is God singular or plural?

2. Is God transcendent or immanent, or both?

Answers to these questions reflect, and imply, different positions concerning the relationship between god(s) and the world, and between god(s) and humankind.

Theism holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and in some way present in the affairs of the world. Most theists hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, although this belief raises questions about God’s responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence. For a discussion of the meaning of “God” in this sense, see: What is God?.
Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary for Him to create it. In this view, God is not anthropomorphic, and does not literally answer prayers or cause miracles to occur.
Monotheism holds that there is only one god, or that the one true god is worshipped in different religions under different names. Polytheism forms an opposite view to that of monotheism. Muhammad was influenced by monotheists who condemned the polytheism in which he grew up, so that he converted to a monotheistic worship of the principal god of the Quraishite pantheon, denying the deity of the rest.
Pantheism holds that god is the universe and the universe is god — or, more generally, that the universe is divine. It is most often explained as having the feeling that existence has a divine or awe-inspiring aspect. Hinduism is often characterized as pantheistic.
Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. The Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a panentheistic view of God; this view of God has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism. This is also the view of Process Theology and the Christian movement known as Creation Spirituality.
?Maltheism is a form of theism which holds that God is a cruel, arrogant, abusive, and untruthful being, unworthy of worship. Maltheists are often monotheistic and believe that God is dependent on worship to live.
?Animism is the belief that spirits inhabit every existing thing, including plants, minerals, animals and, including all the elements, air, water, earth, and fire. The first form of worship probably expressed animist ideas. The anthropologist E. B. Tylor argued that religion originally took an animist form.
?Dualism, also called Manichaeism, holds that there is both a perfectly good God and an opposing evil deity of equal potence. It is the belief that there are only two fundamental things or substances or constituents of things in the world at large or in the human soul. An example would be that both good and evil simultaneously exist and that one cannot survive without the other. That they balance each other even though they are independent of each other. An ancient form of Zoroastrianism which was known to the ancient Greeks was dualist in nature.
?Henotheism is the belief in one god, but at the same time does not deny the existence of other gods. It is a variation of polytheism which holds that there are many gods, but one of them is supreme and the other ones are only ancillary and don’t have the same level of “god-ness”. Some forms of Greek and Roman classical polytheism fall into this category. The gods of Norse mythology, who are subsidiary to Odin are another example of henotheism. The term has come to mean in recent years that one believes in multiple god/esses, though the worshipper “borrows” from various cultural groups and may worship one above the others. An example would be worshipping a Greco-Roman god for one reason and then asking a Celtic god for something else. This form of henotheism is frequently condemned in the Torah or Old Testament. The pagans of the Roman Empire were similarly henotheistic, as are some modern-day Neopagans.
?Monolatrism forms a type of henotheism. Its adherents believe that many gods do exist, but these gods can exert their power only on those who worship them. Thus, a monolatrist may believe in the reality of both the Egyptian gods and the god described in the Bible, but sees him or herself as a member of only one of these religions. The gods that he/she worships affects their life; the other gods do not.
Polytheism is the belief in more than one god/dess. In some beliefs it is said that all these god/desses are of equal power and authority while in others a hierarchy exists. The Greco-Roman deity structure exemplifies polytheism.
A few people use the word “monotheism” to refer to the belief in a single god and use “theism” to refer to any belief in god(s), i.e., monotheism or polytheism. Some theists believe in the existence of other less powerful immortal beings, but give them other names such as angels or demons.

Many people find the concept of God meaningless or unnecessary:

Atheism holds that no gods exist at all. Different atheists formulate this position in different ways.
Agnosticism holds that a god or gods may or may not exist, but we cannot know.
Logical positivism holds that the word “god” is (cognitively) meaningless.

God as Unity or Trinity

Jews, Muslims, and a small percent of Christians are unitarian monotheists. The vast majority of Christians have been and still are Trinitarian monotheists.

Unitarian monotheists hold that there is only one “person” (so to speak), or one basic substance, in God. Some consider Trinitarianism to be a form of polytheism. In contrast, Trinitarian monotheists believe in one god that exists as three distinct persons who share the same substance/essence; this belief is called the Trinity: compare with the Hindu Trimurti.

Mormons hold that God is one of three divine personages collectively referred to as the Godhead. One of these personages is a spirit without a body referred to as the Holy Ghost. The other two personages are spirits with perfected or glorified (often called celestial) bodies referred to as Heavenly Father (or less commonly Eloheim) and His Son, Jesus Christ. Mormons hold that God is a Holy Man, or sanctified human who advanced to his divine status through a repeatable process of progression, and that by following the precepts of their faith, humans can literally (eventually) become gods (sometimes phrased as “become like Heavenly Father”) at some point after death and resurrection. This belief is mainly held in the largest Mormon branch, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This belief system implies, if not explicitly claims, polytheism as opposed to the monotheistic views of mainstream Christianity.

Monotheistic Conceptions of God

Judaism, Christianity and Islam see God as a single being who rules over the universe. These three Western faiths uphold an ancient monotheistic tradition that, according to their belief, is the original faith of mankind (or alternatively, for some believers, began with their first Prophet, Abraham). In this view one God, the creator of the world, exists. A number of additional attributes generally link to God, including Omnipotence (being all-powerful), Omniscience (being all-knowing), and Omnibenevolence (being all-loving).

These usually conceive of God as a personal God, with a will and personality. However, many important medieval rationalist philosophers of these three religions taught that an intelligent person should not view God as personal at all, and that all these teachings were actually meant as metaphors only. The intellectual elite of these three faiths in the West still accept these views as valid, although it seems that the laity today do not have a wide awareness of them.

In Eastern Christianity, it remains essential that God be personal; hence it speaks of the three persons of the Trinity. It also emphasizes that God has a will, and that God the Son has two wills, divine and human, though these are never in conflict. The personhood of God and of all human people is essential to the concept of theosis or divinization.

A number of arguments for the existence of God have been offered; one argument for the thesis that God does not exist is the problem of evil, with the project of Theodicy as a response.

Biblical definition of God

The book of Exodus in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament) characterizes God by these attributes: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

The Tanach (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament) contains no systematic theology: No attempt is made to give a philosophical or rigorous definition of God, nor of how God acts in the world. The Tanach does not explicitly describe God’s nature, exemplified by God’s assertion in Exodus that “you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” The Tanach does, however, provide a poetic depiction of God and His relationship with people. According to the biblical historian Yehezkal Kaufmann, the essential innovation of Biblical theology was to posit a God that cares about people, and that cares about whether people care about Him. Most people believe that the Bible should be viewed as humanity’s view of God, but theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Biblical God as “anthropopathic,” and said that we should read the Bible as God’s view of humanity.

Similarly, the New Testament also contains no systematic theology: no attempt is made to give a philosophical or rigorous definition of God, nor of how God acts in the world. The New Testament does, however, provide an implicit theology as it teaches that God became human while remaining fully God, in the person of Jesus Christ. In this view, God becomes someone that can be seen and touched, and may speak and act in a manner easily perceived by humans, while also remaining transcendant and invisible. This appears to be a radical departure from the concepts of God found in the Hebrew Bible and in the Qur’an. The New Testament’s statements regarding the nature of God were eventually developed into the doctrine of the Trinity.

Aristotelian view of God

A separate article exists on the Aristotelian view of God. Much of this article discusses Aristotle’s book on first philosophy, the Metaphysics, in which Aristotle discusses the meaning of “being as being”. In brief, Aristotle holds that “being” primarily refers to the Unmoved Movers, and assigned one of these to each movement in the heavens. Each Unmoved Mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation, and everything that fits the second meaning of “being” by having its source of motion in itself, moves because the knowledge of its Mover causes it to emulate this Mover (or should).

Many medieval philosophers made use of the idea of approaching a knowledge of God through negative attributes. For example, we should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; all we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. We should not say that God is wise, but we can say that God is not ignorant, i.e. in some way God has some properties of knowledge. We should not say that God is One, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God’s being. See apophatic theology. This article also discusses Aristotle discussion of Platonic theory, according to which ideas are the ultimate principles of Being.

Kabbalistic definition of God

Kabbalah (Jewish esoteric mysticism) teaches that God is neither matter nor spirit. Rather God is the creator of both, but is Himself neither. But if God is so different than His creation, how can there be any interaction between the Creator and the created? This question prompted Kabbalists to discuss two aspects of God, (a) God Himself, who in the end is unknowable, and (b) the revealed aspect of God who created the universe, preserves the universe, and interacts with mankind. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another.

Some Kabbalistic Jews, such as Moses Cordovero and Lubavitch (Chabad) Hasidism, hold that the first aspect of God is actually all that there really is. Nothing exists except for God, and all else is an illusion. (Depending on how this is explained, such a view can be considered panentheism, or pantheism.) Most other Kabbalists hold that there is an aspect of God that is revealed to the world.

Kabbalists speak of the first aspect of God as ‘En Sof’; this is translated as “the infinite,” or “that which has no limits”. In this view, nothing can be said about this aspect of God. This aspect of God is impersonal. Kabbalists speak of the second aspect of God as being seen by the universe as ten emanations from God; these emanations are called ’sefirot’.

The ’sefirot’ mediate the interaction of the ultimate unknowable God with the physical and spiritual world. Some explain the sefirot as stages of the creative process whereby God, from His own infinite being, created the progression of realms which culminated in our finite and physical universe. Others suggest that the sefirot may be thought of as analogous to the fundamental laws of physics. Just as gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force allow for interactions between matter and energy, the ten sefirot allow for interaction between God and the Universe.

A difficulty with this view is that the Kabbalah teaches that the Sefirot are not distinct from the Ein-Sof, but are somehow within it. The idea that there are ten divine sefirot could evolve over time into the idea that “God is One being, yet in that One being there are Ten”. This would be almost the same as the Christian belief in the Trinity, which states that while God is “One”, in that One there are three persons. This interpretation of Kabbalah in fact did occur among a small number of Jews in the 17th century. Rabbi Leon Modena, a 17th century Venetian critic of kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would indeed be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity closely resembles the Kabbalistic doctrine of sefirot. This critique was in response to the fact that some Jews went so far as to address individual sefirot individually in some of their prayers. Kabbalah had many other opponents, notably Rabbi Yitzchak ben Sheshet Perfet (The Rivash); he stated that Kabbalah was “worse than Christianity”, as it made God into 10, not just into three. The critique, however, was unfair. Most followers of Kabbalah never believed this interpretation of Kabbalah. The Christian Trinity concept posits that there are three persons existing within the Godhead, one of whom literally became a human being. In contrast, the mainstream understanding of the Kabbalistic sefirot holds that they have no mind or intelligence; further, they are not addressed in prayer, and they can not become a human being. They are conduits for interaction - not persons or beings.

The Kabbalah’s idea of emanations could also be compared to the distinction made by fourteenth century Christian theologian Gregory Palamas. Palamas drew a distinction between God’s essence and energies, affirming that God was unknowable in His essence, but knowable in His energies. Palamas never enumerated God’s energies, but described them simply as ways that God could be seen acting in the Universe, and particularly on people, from the light shining from the face of Moses after Moses descended Mt. Sinai, to the light surrounding Moses, Elijah and Jesus Christ on Mt. Tabor during the transfiguration of Jesus. For Palamas, God’s energies were not some other thing separate from God, but were God; however the idea of energies was kept very distinct from the idea of the three persons of the Trinity.

Today all Hasidic Orthodox Jews are Kabbalistic; some non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews are kabbalisticly inclined, while some are rationalists. Most Reform and Conservative Jews are rationalists.

Neopagan Concept of God and/or gods

Neopaganism allows for diverse personal beliefs about the nature of God. There is little specific dogma. Most Neopagans hold a polytheistic, pantheistic or panentheistic belief, often with some elements of animism. Among Neopagans, and especially Wiccans, God is commonly expressed through the duality of the Goddess and the Horned God. However, there are those Pagans who align themselves with the Left Hand Path or LHP. These LHP Pagans are generally autotheists.

While on the surface Neopagans worship many gods, many practice a kind of monotheism, believing the many gods to be aspects of the One God. Many others practice duotheism, for example in many forms of Wicca all gods are considered aspects of the Lord, and all goddesses aspects of the Lady.

Most Heathens consider themselves strict polytheists.

The Ultimate

Arguably, Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate (this, too, has many different names) are not conceptions of a personal divinity, though certain Western conceptions of what is at least called “God” (e.g., Spinoza’s pantheistic conception and various kinds of mysticism) resemble Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate.

The mathematician Georg Cantor identified God with the mathematical concept of the Absolute Infinite.

Gender of God

In Judaism it is a fundamental heresy to believe that God has a gender. Grammatically, most of the Hebrew names for God are masculine; a few are grammatically feminine; This is not held to have literal significance. In regards to translating Hebrew names of God into English, most Orthodox and many Conservative Jews argue that it would be wrong to apply English female pronouns to God, not because God is of the male gender, but because doing so tends to draw attention to God as having gender, and also because the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) usually uses names that are grammatically masculine.

In Christianity, one person of God, the Son, is believed to have become incarnate as a human male; however, the other two persons of God are without gender, since they are not at all physical. (Mormonism is an exception; it teaches that God the Father also has a perfect body of flesh and bones, while agreeing that the Holy Spirit is bodiless.) The other two persons (the Father and the Holy Spirit) have traditionally been referred to using male pronouns and have primarily been associated with male imagery; but some Christians today, especially those inspired by feminism, do not consider this tradition to be binding. Other commentators point out that Hebrew tradition sees the Spirit as female.

Most Neopagan traditions, such as Wicca, believe in both male and female Deities. A few (especially Dianic Wicca) see the Divine as entirely feminine, and call her the Goddess.

Revelation: How God Communicates With Mankind

Many religions hold that God can communicate his will to mankind; in Judaism, Christianity and Islam this process is called revelation. Some religions believe that revelation is only available to certain individuals, dubbed prophets. Others believe that revelation is channeled through divinely sanctioned religious institutions, and still other, more mystically oriented religions, believe that revelation is generally available to all people. The books of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible; aka Old Testament) are held to be the product of revelation by Jews. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament are held to be the product of divine revelation by Christians. Muslims consider the Tanakh and the New Testament to be deliberately corrupted and falsified works; instead they affirm that the Koran alone represents divine revelation. How revelation works, and what precisely one means when one says that a book is “divine” remains a matter of some dispute.

Neopaganists teach that communication from the gods is usually direct and experiential, and do not have the concepts of “scripture”, “prophet” or “revelation” in the sense used by the Abrahamic religions. Divine messages are believed to usually be given directly to the person or persons for whom they are meant. In some traditions, a ritual sometimes considered revelatory is called Drawing Down the Moon, in which a high priestess (or sometimes High Priest) invokes the Goddess and speaks by Divine inspiration to an assembled coven. This ritual occurs most commonly in the Wiccan traditions.

Omnipotence and Omniscience

Discussions about God between people of different faiths, or indeed even between people of the same faith, often prove unproductive, in no small amount due to people using the same words but assigning them different meanings. This situation occurs when some monotheists within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam state that God is omnipotent. In practice one finds that the term “omnipotent” has been used to connote a number of different positions. See the articles on Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Predestination.

Many monotheists reject altogether the view that God is omnipotent. In Unitarian-Universalism, much of Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism, and some liberal wings of Protestant Christianity, God is said to act in the world through persuasion, and not by coercion. God makes Himself manifest in the world through inspiration and the creation of possibility, but not by miracles or violations of the laws of nature. The most popular works espousing this point come from Rabbi Harold Kushner (in Judaism). This is the view that also was developed independently by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, in the theological system known as Process Theology.

Some of the Hindu Gods include Brahman, Devi, Vishnu, and Siva. See the entry on Hinduism for a discussion of this faith’s theology, which is fairly complicated: most of its adherents are polytheists, but a few are monotheists.

God as a computer, alien, etc.

Some comparatively new belief systems and books portray God as an alien. Many of these theories hold that intelligent aliens from another world have been visiting Earth for many thousands of years, and have influenced the development of our religions. Some of these books posit that prophets or messiahs were sent to the human race in order to teach humanity morality, and to encourage our civilization to grow and develop.

Some people have posited that perhaps God is really an intelligence that at some point in the past become sufficiently advanced that it uploaded itself to the very fabric of the cosmos. In this view, this god-intelligence now looks over the Earth.

Similar to this theory is the belief or aspiration that humans will create a God entity, emerging from an artificial intelligence. Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer (and futurist of sorts), said in an interview that: It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.

Another variant on this hypothesis is that humanity or a segment of humanity will, through self-evolution, create a posthuman God from itself.
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Weekly Consciousness Tune Up…Yehuda Berg 7/23-7/29/06

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We live in an impatient, instant-gratification society. Instant coffee. Online dating. Overnight delivery. Video-on-demand. Our rallying cry is, “I need it ASAP!”

As we begin the fifth and final book of the Torah this week, we find Moses finally telling the Israelites off, so to speak. From the moment Moses appeared on the Biblical scene, he stood by the Israelites, always backing them up through all of their complaining and their incredible knack for forgetting miracles the moment the fireworks fizzled. But now, after 40 years of their shenanigans, as he realizes his time on this world is about to end, he finally gives them a what-for.

There are a few lessons here for us, but in light of the current state of world-affairs, there is one in particular we need to pay attention to. We need to take our time. Moses is teaching us that if we want our thoughts and feelings to have impact and to be expressed from the Light rather than darkness, we need to take a breath and walk away. It’s not always the solution, but trust me, for the time period we are in now it is the only solution.

This week we are entering the month of Leo and we are still in the negative 3 weeks (the most challenging of the year). Emotionally we are walking on landmines. It’s no wonder that the current situation in the Middle East is what it is. Unfortunately, when tensions are high and lives are at stake, we don’t always have the luxury of taking a breath and walking away. World leaders can’t say, “You know what, I am coming from a place of ego right now, can we talk about this later?” That is something that does not exist in politics.

But we do have that option. Let us use Moses as an example. He waited 40 years to speak his mind to the Israelites, the least we could do is wait 40 seconds or 40 minutes or 40 hours. Whatever you do, don’t blast the people in front of you because, for sure, this week it’s going to come from the wrong place. And the potential damage is far greater than the temporary satisfaction you’ll feel.

The red flag to watch out for is when your reaction comes instantly and with irritation. For sure, it is coming from darkness and not from Light.

My father and teacher Rav Berg once said, “The greatest desire to receive is, `I want it now.’ This urgency and impatience is a total denial of the laws of cause and effect.” This means in those situations when we want to rip into another person and give them a world of pain, we have to remember that the universe is much more precise in giving us what we deserve. We don’t have to be responsible for doling out punishments for other people’s actions.

This lesson is especially poignant this week when so much is laying in the balance as far as the world is concerned. If we exercise this form of restriction in our own lives, then the people of the world will find themselves more patient because as the kabbalists teach, our actions have a quantum impact on the universe.

All the best,

Yehuda


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The Will

Published on July 21, 2006

Will is the power of making a reasoned choice or desicion, or controlling one’s actions. The will is only as powerful as the consciousness of the individual behind that will. The odds are pretty good that if you are here reading this, you already have the intention, and therefore the capacity for, or the propensity to have (or be of), higher will.

Since all exercises in raising consciousness must be precluded by having a strong will, all will and attention exercises will strengthen the “will muscle.”

Objective: To strengthen the will

Expected results: Increased awareness

1.) Talk a walk and notice something. Decide how you would describe the object and then move on. Continue this exercise while noticing and describing more things along the way.


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Attention

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Objective: To place control of attention under the will.

Expected Results: Increased sense of power.

For this exercise you may want to use a timer.

Fix your attention on a stationary object for a period of two minutes. Any time your attention wanders, bring it back.

Another way of doing that is to pick a mental image or memory and direct your attention to it for a period of two minutes. If your attention starts to wander, bring it back. If you have trouble with this method, return to stationary objects, until you feel confident you can return to this method.


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Atonement Exercise

Published on July 20, 2006

This is a wonderful process. It can work while walking a trail, a path in the woods, up a flight of stairs, or in your own home. It can be don