Ξ June 27th, 2007 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Life |
“On the eve of the millennium, Leonard Leibovici, an Israeli professor of internal medicine in Israel and expert on hospital-acquired infections, conducted a study of healing prayer’s effect on nearly 4,000 adults who had developed sepsis while in the hospital. He used a random number generator to randomize the participants into two groups, only one of which would be prayed for……The names of all those in the treatment group were then handed to an individual, who said a short prayer for the well-being and full recovery of the treated group as a whole. Three outcomes were compared between the prayed-for and not-prayed-for groups: the number of deaths in the hospital; the overall length of stay in the hospital, and the duration of fever. ……….As it happened, the group that had been prayed for suffered fewer deaths than the controls (28.1 vs. 30.2 percent), although the difference was NOT statistically significant. What WAS scientifically significant, however, was the major difference between the prayed-for group and the controls related to the severity of illness and the time it took to heal. Those being prayed-for had a far shorter duration of fever and hospital stay and, in general, got better faster than the controls.
The subject of Leibovici’s research-the healing effects of prayer- of course was hardly new.” * Lots of studies on the healing effects of prayers had been done over the years. This study offered a novel twist. The patients had been in the hospital between 1990 and 1996. The praying was carried out in 2000- between FOUR and TEN years later!!!
This study made the British Medical Journal, Christmas issue, 2001. Our God is not a God bound by time.
*The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart
Ξ June 22nd, 2007 | → 5 Comments | ∇ Life |
Sometimes you get to a place where you’re content and satisfied. That’s where I am. God has shown me so many things and taught me so much about living a contented life, free of worry and anxiety. I see He has given us the power to create that life from our thoughts as well as our actions. ”Every action begins with a thought“ I am so much watchful of my thoughts than ever before. Jesus told us that we would do the things He did and even greater. What a responsibilty! May I be ever mindful of what I think as well as what I do.
Ξ June 14th, 2007 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Life |
The following was “borrowed” from Richard Beck’s Experimental Theology. He is discussing Peter Rollins’ book, How (Not) to Speak to God.
Rollins contends that theology occurs in the aftermath of God: “While our religious traditions may not define God, they can be seen to arise in the aftermath of God, both as a means of provisionally understanding what has occurred in the life of the person or community that has been impacted, and as a response to God.”
Dr. Beck goes on, That is, theology does not describe God, it does not correspond with the divine. Theology (and the bible) is the chatter that follows after God has “left the building.” In God’s wake the witnesses begin to share stories and their excitement OF WHAT JUST HAPPENED. It’s like God is this legendary rock star who pops into a Starbucks. The patrons fall silent.
Is that who I think it is?
No, well, maybe it is.
I think that is him.
It is him!
(Rock star departs and chatter breaks out.)
THAT WAS HIM!
What was he wearing? What did he say? What did he order? Was he nice? Standoffish? And on and on.
How accurate this truly is………………….
Ξ June 12th, 2007 | → 3 Comments | ∇ Life |
In a drafty monastery high in the Himalayas in northern India, during the winter of 1985, a group of Tibertan monks were seated quietly, deep in meditation. Although scantily clad, they appeared oblivious to the chilly indoor air temperature, which approached freezing. A fellow monk passed between them, draping them, each in turn, in sheets drenched with cold water. Such extreme conditions would ordinarily shock the body and send the core temperature plummeting. If body temperature falls by only 12 degrees, within minutes a person will lose consciousness and all vital signs.
Instead of shivering, the monks began to sweat. Steam rose from the wet sheets; within an hour, they were thoroughly dry. The attendant replaced the dry sheets with new ones, also drenched in ice-cold water. By this time, the monks bodies had become a the equivalent of a furnace. Those sheets were efficiently dried , as was a third batch.
A team of scientists led by Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, stood nearby, examining an array of medical equipment to which they had attached the monks for any clues as to what particular physiological mechanism might have enabled the body to generate this extraordinary level of heat. For years, Benson had explored the effects of meditation on the brain and the rest of the body. He’d embarked on an ambitious research program, studying Buddhists in various remote outposts around the world who had spent many years in disciplined practice.
H.Benson et al., “Three case reports of the metabolic and electroencephalographic changes during advanced Buddhists meditation techniques,” Behavioral Medicine, 1990; 16(2): 90-5.
Just what’s going on here? Three years ago, I would have probably said something demonic was going on. The monks had basically “sold their souls” for this ability. Now, I don’t think that’s it at all. I still don’t understand how this and many other practices of mastery over temperature and metabolic rates are carried out, but I believe this is real. These extraordinary feats of intention have been witnessed by many scientists and layman alike for years and all over the world. How can focused attention turn a seemingly normal person into a human boiler? It may be a long time, if ever, before we understand the neurological processes that occur during feats of highly directed thought.
It gives us pause to think just how powerful our thoughts can be………………………….
I want you to meet Chloe Beth Rogers. She is my first and only granddaughter. Born Sunday, June 3, 2007, Chloe is only the fourth girl born in the Rogers clan since 1909. She is the daughter of Jeff and Kelly Rogers of Spring, Texas. So, welcome sweet Chloe!
I am following up “The Field”, by Lynne McTaggart, with her latest offering, “The Intention Experiment”. I find this book easier to read for the layman, like me. It also details many of the experiments done in the field of quantum physics, but concentrates on those dealing with deliberate intention, the “outlandish” idea that thought affects physical reality. The targeting of your thoughts is referred to by scientists as “intention” and “intentionality”. McTaggart promises that anyone who reads the book may participate, if he wishes, in intention experiments which will be ongoing for the next several years. A sizable body of research exploring the nature of consciousness, carried on for more than thirty years in prestigious scientific institutions around the world, shows that thoughts are capable of affecting everything from the simplest machines to the most complex living beings. This evidence suggests that human thoughts and intentions are an actual physical “something” with the astonishing power to change our world. Every thought we have is a tangible energy with the power to transform. A thought is not only a thing; a thought is a thing that influences other things.
Researching the work of people at the very forefront of scientific discovery has been a humbling experience for McTaggart. Within the unremarkable confines of a laboratory, the largely unsung men and women engage in activities that are nothing short of heroic. They risk losing grants, academic posts, and, indeed, entire careers groping alone in the dark. Most scratch around for grant money enabling them to carry on. All advancements in science are somewhat heretical, each new important discovery partly, if not completely, negating the prevailing views of the day. To be a true explorer in science- to follow the unprejudiced lead of pure scientific inquiry- is to be unafraid to propose the unthinkable, and to prove friends, colleagues, and scientific paradigms wrong. Hidden within the cautious, neutral language of experimental data and mathmatical equation is nothing less than the makings of a new world, which slowly takes shape for all the rest of us, one painstaking experiment at a time.
This sort of revealing inquiry fascinates me. The reason it does is that it points to that intelligent, higher power that most of us call God. How interesting it is that areas of the scientific community are now beginning to realize what we have known all along. There are no accidents!
Stumble it!
