flowperson

Okay troops, time to get down to the important stuff! What do you think about religious slogans in everyday commercial media?. If you live out west and are an afficianado of In-N-Out Burger you know that bible verse references have appeared on their drink cups for some time. I and my parents still go there once a month for our burger and fries fix (the meat's never frozen and the fries are made out of real potatoes on the spot !!) . It's all almost a religious gustatorial experience, and I've never even looked up one of the references when I've returned home. I highly recommend a #1 "animal style" with grilled onions. This article discusses the growing phenomenon of mixing religious slogans and dogma with commercial pursuits. What are your opinions on the purposes and reasons for the growth of this trend? Do you believe that Starbuck's risks "brewing" (sorry) trouble in their attempt to somehow compensate for their pro-gay statement on their cups last year? flow.... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/weekinreview/23cave.html

I haven't really tried fasting either, nor have I known anyone well enough who practiced it regularly so that I could obtain a clear opinion on it from someone who had first-hand experience of its effects. I do know that it takes large amounts of self-discipline to achieve spiritual results. However I have done some general reading on it and as mentioned above it modifies the body's chemical balances in significant enough ways to create brain activities that are not of the ordinary types. As I understand it, aside from the longing for visceral satisfaction, states of euphoria may be experienced, as well as profound sadness, and in some situations hallucinogenic effects. All of these would fall into the category of altering perceptions of the individual sufficiently so that they might be open to spiritual experiences not usually available to one with a satisfied belly and normal blood chemistry. There is some cultural/historical evidence that celebrations such as Ramadan are group experiences that make an attempt to call-up sect memories of times when there was not suffficiency of food in the community; and, how this may have been somehow miraculously remedied by the deity as a direct or indirect result of the supplications of the community. I believe this to be very old and of tribal origin. Remember that the hidden God is a God of the desert, and nowhere on earth is food or drink as scarce a commodity as in the deserts of the earth. Contrast this with the ancient group practices of tribes in agricultural regions. They mainly concentrated their ceremonial supplications in this regard towards fertility and harvest rites. My overall view is that denial of food/drink in a ritual practice is very, very old and is world-wide in its roots, going back much farther than the 10,000 years or so that agricultural related ceremonials have been practiced. Sharing of food and drink may well have been the original altruism practiced among strangers. There is further global evidence as to the sacred importance of food and drink in the spiritual sense when it is recognized that the inclusion of food and drink in many ancient burial rites were meant to assist the soul on its afterlife journey with the spirits to other places. flow....

TaaDaa!!! I knew someone would remember. Yes, the lovely Scottish Sheila. Thank you David for restoring my faith in memory, any strange kind. flow....

I believe that you covered 1st, 2nd, and 3rd very well, not to mention home plate! flow....

I can only explain the mechanism of determining truth or falsehood in this regard as some innate ability that certain people have of sensing some sort of "alarm" when listening and observing others in person or in video mode. I find my "alarm" being triggered more and more when watching the national news, so I just don't do that much anymore. It is not merely the processing of verbal information and trying to make intelligent choices about what is being said, it is really more of a visceral and intuitive set of reactions that tells you that deep involvements with a person and his/her activities over the long term are likely not to be to your benefit or edification. I guess you could call it being judgemental to an extent, but it is deeper and more profound than that in a lot of ways. It is more like obeying a "law of the jungle" thing. You sense that you have to to protect yourself. I believe that a lot of people operate in that mode today even though superficial courtesies in everyday life tend to cover-up the visceral thing. Acknowledging the existence of such things among people that trust each other are the things that really cement relationships over time, and the reason that family relations are so special. flow....

des See, I remembered! PARROTHEADS RULE!!! A more comprehensive analysis of this cultural phenomenon will be forthcoming in the future. flow.....

Dearest Yin/Yang kid: I get up and go to work VERY early in the morning, and after getting into work this a.m. I realized that I addressed YOUR message to DES by mistake!!! meaculpameaculpameaculpameaculpa!!!!!! When one gets to a certain age and is tired at the end of the day it becomes sometimes difficult to determine whether one is remembering a playful kitten lying on his/her back with its feet in the air, as opposed to most excellent modern art. It is said that we all live in a visual age. This proves my theories concerning intergenerational MISUNDERSTANDINGS when it comes to trying to remember images as opposed to people's names. Everything else I said is true to the best of my knowledge, so help me brother Ray. I "Kant" apologize any more sincerely for my mistake. DES you're great also!! Flow..... P.S. Oh, and DES. I meant to tell you a long time back that I believe that the Hokey-Pokey is really about putting ourselves into alternate realities and testing ourselves to convince ourselves that we'll be o.k.there. Of course we do it while dancing and singing together in a circle! More fun from the fifties!! More quantum physics stuff!

I have found that meditation automatically puts one on a track that allows one to come to know oneself. In answer to your opening question DES, by allowing such a distinguished spiritual leader to speak to them about this subject; and besides, knowing that his subject matter will relate to peer reviewed reasearch done by members of their profession, they are automatically placing themselves in a philosophical and ethical box. I believe that fear is governing their negative response. Fear that such revolutionary findings within the scientific orthodoxy may well start a process in which "professionally" they might be occasioned to lend their support to this mystical process of self-examination. And fear that once they are led to participation in this process they might well be afraid of what they might find within themselves. Make sense to you? Flow

Yin/Yang and other cosmic principles aside ( I've got to be careful of this curved black and white imagery stuff. My son recently married a very wonderful Chinese-American lady from a wonderful family.) we might wish to consider that another thread on the site pays homage to Scotty Peck. His landmark work helped many of us deal with the cruelties of the world's realities in the past, and much of his philosophical grounding was in the Hegelian Dialectic. Scotty's work was very "Christian" in its nature because of its compassionate approach to the problems of others and his willingness to personally "assume" and carry a portion of their difficulties in therapy sessions. A very Jesus-like thing to do in my opinion. Of course, also, it is this that the best of our ministers and pastors do among us to ease our day-to-day pain and longing. This direct "participation" in the realities of others is usually uncomfortable, but is necessary today in order to bring about some unifications in this divided world. It all just goes to show that "truth" takes on many forms and versions in the world and larger cosmos. Understanding some small portion of that "truth" has to do with entering into dynamic dialogue with others ( if they allow it to happen), and extrapolating what information is gleaned into some sort of scalar patterns that have universal meanings. I am convinced that we all reflect both our distinctive differences and similarities when we are not "acting out" some role or other. But how do we as a people negate deceptions and get into some sort of honest and fully transparent dialogue in ways to determine the underlying patterns and essential "truths"? Very hard to do when the vast majority of humans in modern urban areas usually limit their pursuits to entertainmant and/or escape once they reach a "certain" standard of living. By the way DES some who study such things believe that the Yin/Yang symbol may well represent an end-on view of the 10 dimensional cosmic string in which our particuloar realities are embedded. Really bright people those ancient oriental seers. I believe you should be proud of your nick-name out here in the wild,wild west. flow....

There is also the companion saying to the "ears to hear" admonishment of Jesus. One must also have "eyes to see" to know the "truth". Isn't it interesting that some of us seem to be able to determine deception by many in "power" simply by watching and hearing them on television. I wouldn't call it a judgemental process, although it can turn into that if one is not careful with his/her opinions and beliefs. But, it may best be called a "truth" determining ability that seems to be developing in humanity after fifty years of conditioning and evolving understanding through watching and listening to the medium. flow....

Fred: We're on the same wavelength. As you like to do, I was only picking apart some of the structure in order to make my understanding of what you wrote clearer based upon my experiences. That's how I learn also. I'm just an old school, learn-by-doing codger. It's hard to break old habits in this modern world. Besides, we're having an intergenerational discussion since you are about my childrens' ages, and you know what happens in these, MISUNDERSTANDINGS. It's always wonderful to know that there are other devoted science fiction afficianados out here, outside of the cages. flow....

Rog: For some reason your attachment won't translate on my machine, and I run an Apple. Better look at your document and find the glitch. Until then I'll keep looking at it from time to time to see if it reads. flow...

There is an interesting debate developing concerning whether or not the Dalai Lama should be allowed to address a meeting of The Society For Neuroscience next month. The essence of the presentation, bolstered by several years of supporting research at a major research university, is that regularly and consistently practiced meditation programs can change brain activity by generating positive brain wave patterns and accompanying positive thought patterns. Visit the story and see what you believe. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/national/19meditate.html

On second thought, I take it back. This theory actually rests solidly upon two pillars of modern scientific orthodoxy (plus I was reading the BB help page, and I needed an excuse to make a bulleted list): human advancement, conceived in social terms, must come from the temporal future, not from an eternal spiritual realm; human advancement, conceived in personal or spiritual terms, must come from superior genetic makeup, not from an eternal divine spark in each individual soul. It turns out that the historic Christian myth transposes it into spatial categories -- either way, you're stabbing at the truth analogically, which is useful for some purposes, misleading for others. I wouldn't take either version literally, but it's an interesting approach nonetheless. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You can't take it back. I won't let you. Actually it's a four dimensional cage we are talking about breaking out of. There are the flat-earth two dimensions, with which we are all familiar (ad nauseum); there is length, breadth, and depth (3) which merely heightens, widens, and deepens Shakespeare's stage; and then, there is the fourth which is the timeline of earth's history, including the primordial times before we appeared to start screwing everything up. Your first bullet implies that we "receive" backwards flows of intentionality that lead us to the construction of viable social infrastructures over time. Or to say it another way, we tend to create the future we collectively desire. Having been somewhat involved in this process when evaluating new technologies and scientific discoveries for development and licensing, I can tell you that all the good intentions in the world are ALWAYS foreshortened or trumped by dollar considerations. If wonderful things were anticipated for an innovation, chances were that it would be limited in scope fairly early on because of investment limitations. However, I also found that those of us involved in such negotiations were usually very mindful of our collective obligations to the "eternal spiritual realm". It was a very tenuous thing, but those of us who did these things for a living acknowledged these feelings of obligation more often than not in private. This was especially so when the first research contracts involving the development of genetically engineered food crops were developed in the 80's. Your second bullet first came to prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century when "eugenics" began to rear its head. Of course one could argue that it reared its head because of the tenuous backwards flow of intentionality mentioned under the first instance. But of course, later on in the mid-part of the century it became just another excuse to push racist and facist (gee I never noticed how similar the spelling of these two words are!) attitudes upon the public bolstered by pseudo-scientific underpinnings. Of course having the appropriate genes has a lot to do with any creative process, but I will take exception to the second part of the second bullet. Having done a considerable amount of original writing over an extended period of time; and, acknowledging that I can only speak from my personal experiences, there are times when the writer/creator is really not in control of what is said or how it is said. You may call it a divine spark that connects you to a vast spiritual realm. In any art form, graphic, musical, lyrical, etc. it is the voice of the eternal speaking "through" you, and that makes all the difference. Whether it is accepted or not by those who might gain access to the completed work becomes secondary. Getting it down in the "correct" version and form is all that matters to a creator. So I guess the bigger picture we are defining is how to balance scientific objectivity, creativity, and progress, with traditional and well-known spiritual concerns? My main contention is that in today's technologically-driven existence, the existing spiritual philosophies just don't operate very well anymore flow.....

Gee Fred, I thought you'd never ask. How about this as a starting point. Jesus always referred to himself as "the son of man". What does this mean? It's ok to "have a belief" that he was the son of God, but this belief defies the existing poetic and narrative evidence that we have access to two thousand years later. I believe that He, if ever, referred to himself only once with regard to the divine son aspect. I have always been a devotee' of science fiction, and to me there are few sets of stories that border as often on science fiction as much as the stories in the Old and New Testaments do. Yes Fred, I believe that most of the stories ARE both science and fable. After my long term and intimate exposure to the inner workings of a great research university, I have come to a supposition that Jesus just may have been a genetically engineered being sent backwards through time to teach us all what it will take for us to live in harmony in the far future. It's the only reason for his visit that makes long-term sense to me. Or maybe he was just the first, and the herald that announced the coming of many others like him in the future. Maybe that's what's so scary for the fundies. I have no evidence for this, for if this is the case, the creative activities that begat him and those to follow are still a few hundred years in the future, even today. When people ask me what I really believe about all this I tell them that God is the most accomplished genetic engineer in the cosmos, possesses the most efficient quantum computer in the cosmos, has the ability to send animate and inanimate materials through time and space; and, most importantly, God starts in the middle and works both ways at once. The past is the "kingdom" for it is defined by the interactions of the "rulers and the ruled", and we are all involved in the process of determining just what the future will hold for us and our descendants. But, God is clearly in charge of it all in my opinion. Fred, I detected a certain note of frustration in your inability to find any alternative to the liberal/conservative conundrum. When this philosophical-religious battle is fully joined and catches us all up in its consequences (and they will be vast and far reaching) then we and our descendants will have to take a swing at the plate to determjne our own futures. We were designed to educate ourselves to the realities we exist in and to choose the best way forward for ourselves and for those we love. In the mean time, I suggest survial, love as much as you can, pass on to others as much as you can of what you learn, and most importantly, trust God. I've survived on a day-to-day basis for about twenty years now believing in this set of presumptions, as screwy as they may seem to be; but, they work for me since "1984" really was "1984" in my life. flow....

This is interesting. On the one hand we seem to agree that the Seminar advanced knowledge in the field of study. But since the participants were largely liberal/progressive, that knowledge advance might just be suspect in that orthodox/conservatives likely reject it all out of hand. Now if B follows A and implies C, is it true that the orthodox/conservative advocates might probably be expected to reject ANY advance in knowledge in this field of study no matter how authentic it might appear to be, such as a verified and vetted manuscript of the "Q" document dug out of a cave in the Negev? Remember what a rigidly tight lid was kept on the Dead Sea Scrolls? I do. We're talking about belief here folks, and emotional attachments are involved in this. While some seek the novel and new no matter what the cost or consequences (I'm tempted to call them"curious georges" but I guess that name really doesn't fit }, others will fight to the death ANY attempt to change the status quo when it comes to new sacred knowledge (maybe we could call these people "incurious georges"). The foundations of societies are sacred beliefs, and we are all experiencing a titanic tug of war in the changing of these beliefs in our modern, borderless, technological world simply because they do not mesh with or define in any manner the dilemmas that our new world presents us all with every day. I view the Seminar as an attempt by one person and a group of inquisitive and like-minded scholars to advance knowledge by openly questioning the foundations of Orthodox Christian beliefs. What a gutsy thing to do, especially when they did it before the monumental changes that we are all now experiencing every day! God bless them. They sought the light! They collectively refused to continue in the darkness of the times. What was the first thing that God did in Genesis? He/She LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!! flow....

I remember back in the day when they were in it, but then I was a Cubs fan. Back then one didn't root for the other team. You didn't ever cross that team line even under dire circumstances, or you risked ostracism by your dearest peers. Really, I pretty much stopped watching baseball at all in '94 when they started paying .210 hitters who kicked the ball around the infield while playing 2nd base $5million a year. I figured it probably wasn't worth my time or attention. However I'll still watch a series game now and then, and certainly will if the Sox do well. Best of fortune to your team MOW. flow....

This is in furtherance of the subject of this thread. Today's New York Times website includes an excellent article concerning the de-facto privatization of many renowned public universities over the past two to three decades. This, of course, is the natural outcome of devoting fewer public dollars to support public higher education; which, in turn, results in diminished public benefit for us all in the long term. It sure all reads like some sort of long term conspiracy to further the dumbing-down of the ordinary citizens of our country. To what end I wonder? flow.... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/education/16college.html

Well said. Inconclusiveness leads to continance, and both make the world go 'round. How boring the world be if we could be sure of most things! flow...

If you're a fan of originals, try to find an original copy of "The Thomas Crown Affair" with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in their prime. Awesome!!! flow....

Des and MOW: If you haven't seen it I would recommend a Robin Williams film to you, "What Dreams May Come" as a reference point in your evaluating the nature of the hereafter. Very well done and extremely original visually. flow...

Xian: I would agree with you to an extent, but when looking at the materials one is struck with the simplicity and primitiveness of the sayings in the Thomas gospel. While the synoptics are full-bore literary stories in nature. When studying the origins of wisdom literature in any sacred discipline, the earlier works usually tend toward the mystic, poetic and simple, rather then narrative stories. Not to mention the fact that several of the main threads that show up in the synoptics are foundationed in Thomas. Then, of course we are also missing access to the "Quelle" document, which, at least for now, is lost to us all. This might provide bridgeing knowledge to tie things together more logically. If it never surfaces we may never know. Or, we might even end up with more questions. But every so often things are still uncovered in the desert. I also believe that the "majority" of scholars would fall under the rubric of orthodoxy, and hence it simply would not be in their ecclesiastical interest to find that Thomas could take any sort of precedence, historical or otherwise, over the synoptics. For what it's worth I believe the Jesus seminar got lots of things right, simply because they rigorosly and scientifically examined the evidence available to this very diverse group at the time. I've watched such processes in action up close, and it is THE primary way that civilization's knowledge moves into the future. flow.....

Let's hope together that The DaVinci Code motion picture does more for the sacred feminine than the all time worst bomb in history did about 15 years ago. Remember Ishtar ( the name of the prototypical near eastern female chief Goddess} with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty? I think Hanks will adapt to the role and become Langdon. That's what the best actors do. That's why they have success after success. There was once a time when Hoffman and Beatty fit that mold. I predict that Hanks will be remembered a long time for this portrayal. flow....

Just when you think that you're out of The Twilight Zone, you're back in it. This popped up on my daily journey through the NY Times. Looks like some important people are doing something already. flow.... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/13/science/13research.html

Anyone know who's playing the self-flagellating albino? My choice would be Gary Busey, but he'd probably show too much flab and too many wrinkles in the naked scenes. But then hollywood makeup artists can do wonders!