Thank you for your gracious words. Merry Christmas to you too! Today is the day the Lord has made so I try not to dredge up the past too often, and I can tell you that I appreciate what you've said either way. I am growing in grace, and only in grace. As you said, it is a prayer for wisdom and grace alone which allows me to interpret scripture. Certainly, when I first started to pursue God, I had no earthly idea of where I would end up or what I would have to go through to get there.

What I am doing is essentially, submitting myself to God and allowing Him to remake me into the image of His Son. This is a process that is initiated, executed and completed by the Spirit of God. It is not my whim but the very real intervention of the Almighty in my life, whereupon the old me is extricated and the new me is molded by the Potters hands and seasoned with fire.

If there was anything I objected to in your words it was the implication that Christianity is like spiritual training wheels for those who can't hack it in the real world. This was simply my flesh, objecting; a spiritual pride that ironically came from my journal into the occult. I don't have that notion anymore; I have no trouble admitting that I am nothing and can do nothing without God, and that there is nothing in me which is of any value unless God put it there, and that for His glory.

I have volumes of things I wrote on esoteric spirituality, abstract thoughts, poetry, philosophy, life the universe and everything. I churned this stuff out as if my mind was a computer spitting out lines of code, I excelled at it, Enoch; as it seemed to me I was ascending the very heights of being, a kind of godhood, tapping into the very beating heart of it all. But God brought me crashing back down to the ground and He offered me a choice:

either crawl back into your darkness and reconstitute your construct or give up everything and follow My Son into the Light.

I didn't want to do it. I preferred my reality. Yet, to go back would mean to purposefully delude myself and that was what I absolutely refused to do. I was interested not in what I preferred but the truth. That's why I am a Christian.

Either way, I see that you are pursuing God, and I respect that. There is a difference in personal revelation, and we both have our opinions of that. That's fine and I think the truth can and will speak for itself. Even Buddha said, there are three things which cannot be long hidden; the sun, the moon and truth. Yet, there is something he missed which is that we can supress the truth. I could have rejected Gods revelation and reconstructed my reality, but thankfully I chose not to do that. Not everyone makes that choice. I have spoken to an atheist on this very website who denies he has a soul even though he has had an out of body experience. Sometimes people will take that rejection to their grave, which is why Christians are so urgent about letting people know about Jesus Christ. I don't know what your view is on the afterlife, but, the bible says we only have one shot and then the judgment. This is why I preach the gospel here, and everywhere. Not for myself, but because God loves these people and He wants them to know it before it is too late to do anything about it.

Thanks again for everything and I am praying you have a wonderful day tomorrow with your friends and family. I pray the Lord will give you a deeper revelation of His love. God bless you and yours.

i completely lost it at "i personally do not want my spiritual life mixed up with my political life..."

One person is NEVER responsible for another person's emotional state or reaction to stimuli. It is not YOUR fault that an entire nation of emotionally damaged, abused, affected, incapable, ineffectual, developmentally-disabled human beings are now covering the landscape like a fungus...HOWEVER:
Self-preservation, species advancement, psycho-spiritual evolution, and the innate sensibilities that afford humanity a chance to get the goddamn molecule off-planet being the prime directive, one should when given the opportunity assist said molecule so much as is does not cause undue stress or fatigue to one's body, mind, or soul.

YouTube comments mean jack and or shit, as does most of the prattle filling servers faster than they can be manufactured. Get over it Missy, yer sexy to some, ugly to some, stay on task, make yer magnet videos, eat, shit, fuck, sleep, and die like the rest of us so the planet can produce more coal, fishes, coffee and mosquitoes, life goes on.

Sexism, racism, ism ism motherfucking isms, get the fuck over yourselves you bunch of self-satisfied, privileged, whining cake-hole stuffing fucks, and BIG HUGS for everyone with sandy vaginas, hashtag, smiley-face, fuck-off.

Oh yeah, and TROLLS??? That's YOUR emotion state telling the molecule to be un-molecular. Everyone commenting on the internet is a goddamn troll, in case you haven't figured that shit out yet, get a clue.

^ This idea that people involved in politics, religion and science CANNOT profit is dumb and is perpetuated by DUMB PEOPLE. They all do and must profit to survive in the civilization that our politicians over the centuries created(warped?!). "Follow the money trail" is a dumb red herring. The money trail leads to ALL PEOPLE.

I personally know a good number of pastors/ministers AND people involved in the sciences (both natural and social), as well as a couple people involved in local politics -- and you know what number 1 is?

Money.

Raising it so that they can live a life as a man of god/science, keep their church/research facility running, buy the things they need to do their job, and continue the time investment required for research.

IMHO it's the politicians and talking heads (in ALL political parties) who need it the LEAST -- because they're not trying to help people or increase our mental/spiritual intelligence as a species, they're funding a GODDAMN POPULARITY CONTEST; the cult of their political party and the cult of SELF. Oh look at me I'm Bill O'Reilly I say things that people agree with and I'm a freaking drama queen about it.

Television and radio asshats. Look at the pattern. Does popular opinion lead to proper behavior? No it leads to popular behavior. That's why we have reality television and that's why we have dumb asses running our media and our cuntry. I'm certainly not qualified to say shit but WTF, it's fairly obvious logic that almost all people ignore or just accept because IT IS DIFFICULT TO THINK CRITICALLY.

Instead of thinking critically and correctly, we concern ourselves with the social spectrum of our society, which is really just the art and pattern detection of social manipulation. You trick people. It's trickery and data manipulation. How can I raise money? Well, I know the people that watch my television channel believe this, so let's TRICK THEM BY MAKING INTELLIGENT PEOPLE THAT COME ONTO OUR PROGRAM LOOK LIKE THEY'RE THE STUPID ONES.

And here's the footage. Here it is. Learn. I learn. I say dumb things and I learn. Now YOU must learn. Science, bitches. Science. It isn't just a bunch of things made up to make money. All things require money, but the truth can be articulated without passion, whereas manipulators require it to push their ideas forward and when analyzed it becomes very apparent that that is all it is.

I like him. But he's talking about going back to before nationalism gave everyone an easy identity and consumerism something harmless to power to think about (shopping and tv).
He never mentions how the old way used to work out for the majority - straight up hard power rule. Sadly that seems the more likely outcome of his revolution -spiritual or not - rich kids fixing the libor rates or starting oil wars really don't have a crisis to deal with. They think its awesome and if their choice is to become (relatively) poor or go tiananmen square on our asses.. Guess what. Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven they say and they mean it.

All information (filtered and processed through one's perceptive apparatus) is either true, false, or meaningless. Handy phraseology say for instance like, "fear mongering" works to solidify rather than "liquefy" brain tissue and serves further to entrench models, modes, ideals, etc. which are largely programmed constructs designed to control and inhibit evolution of independent thought and personal and collective spirituality.

We should all be "fearful" of such satanic, Babylonian horseshit the world system hands us. The current world systems are toxic and may inevitably destroy all species.

The precipice of a new "dark" age (best and worst of times) seems where the world teeters, peeps......best to pack a fucking toothbrush.

Neuroscience and biochemistry yes. =)

You may not like it, or find it romantic, but it's something we can see and observe.

What evidence do you have to present?

As for science as a religion? Nah, it doesn't work like that. Science is a series of conclusions based on observations (very watered down term.) If things happen that change our observations, we change our conclusions. When is the last time something religious or spiritual changed how they think. It happens a lot in science. In a counter point, it took the vatican about 400 years to apologize to Galileo. =)

I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm saying there is no evidence to support what you're saying. Because there are processes in the brain that we can see and observe and form opinion off of.

If you have a way or process that can show some fact/proof/observations off of spirituality, I'd love to see them. It's the same thing with ghost hunters, in the history of the world and people, the answer to anything has never been ghosts. =)

hey man.
so the whole spirituality deal on that comment thread?
yeah.....
dont bother bro.
these folks dig their science.
if there aint no conclusive evidence or irrefutable proof,they aint interested.

this site is mainly secular but most atheists here are a good bunch.others may be a tad..militant.
science is their religion and they debate in the very same tone as a fundamentalist would.they just change the vernacular.

and when one of them has drawn blood they come out like a school of lamprey in dark waters.
looking to feed.

wish i could have helped ya but you did put forth a premise that was more anecdotal than anything.i mean you could take the time and try to explain how you perceive your reality in regards to spirituality but it would just fall on deaf ears.

unless you have that peer reviewed paper in your hands,you aint ever gonna get them to change their minds.
so dont even bother.

hard to watch that thread..pretty brutal on ya fer sure.

So, basically what you're saying is that you really are a fucking idiot.

You're claiming physical effects. It doesn't matter if they come from a spiritual thought process or karma or whatever, you're claiming a physical effect (the curing or prevention of diabetes and cancer) which means it's measurable and testable.

A simple test would be to take a medical history for a load of people in America who are living the spiritual lifestyle and believe the rubbish (the more people the better). Then take a medical history for a corresponding control group, this would be people living in the same areas, eating at the same places with the same type of exercise regime and so on. If - as you claim - the spiritual aspect of your life protects you from illness then the spiritual people should show a lower incidence of illness.

Please tell me what's wrong with that? It's science and it's testing the effect you claim.

Oh yeah, you won't. I forgot about the whole fucking idiot thing...

Alright,

this Wikipedia entry is a good start on the neuroscience and chemistry that goes on inside our brains when love happens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love

As for the chemistry of conciousness, I'd recommend the book Neurochemistry of Consciousness: Neurotransmitters in Mind. I believe it's a free download on most readers. It's also a neat read.

It is exciting that we are those things. Because we all have roughly the same physical materials in our head, and we are all different people. The majority of us have the ability to record, interpret and recall information and stimulation, and it's all those chemicals and receptors in our heads.

We fall in love, or hate, or feel "meh" about something because of the stuff in our brain that makes our personalities. Even identical twins are still different people. That's amazing to me. The fact that we even reproduce at all, it takes a lot of work on a cellular level to even have a kid. That is amazing to me.

I have yet to see any proof that this is a god or a soul. What we can do is, look inside someone's brain and measure what's happening and what reactions we have. We can see it, we can observe and form conclusions from it.

We know that if you give a type I diabetic insulin, that insulin will act as a replacement inside their body. We also know, from the news, that if you try and think positive about getting that pancreas to work again, it fails to do so.

So, when someone says, that spirituality can cure disease, all I ask for his some hard proof. Not a bunch of hokem.

That's straight up crazy talk.

You can't show any physical proof or tests to show that it works. Yet you say it does, because of what proof or evidence? If you say it happens, show the examples. Let them be put up for inspection and debate.

As for "spiritual elements" like love and fear, they aren't spiritual. They are a series of chemicals in our brain going off. I remember a joke a friend of mine said once, when someone once said: "You can't measure happiness." To which he replied, sure you can, just measure the amount of dopamine they've got going through their head.

We're a series of hormones, fluids and matter. All of it can be measure and calculated. If someone had their cancer or Type I diabetes cured by faith, why would that not make the news? Why would that not be the most promoted thing in the medical industry?

Faith can help your mental state and make you feel better. Feeling happier and better about yourself does have an effect on your general health, but it is not a cure for disease.

By 'proper science' I'm assuming you mean something which is entirely, 100% empirical, physical, and explicitly non-spiritual. I can't show you anything in that regard. What I'm referring to is exactly spiritual. It's a man's belief (wholly non-physical, not just brain synapses firing) which I'm referring to.

You're asking me to show you something wholly physical, presupposing a priori the non-existance of the spiritual, which then can somehow prove the existence of the spititual. I can't do it, sorry. You can't perform double blind experiments on spiritual elements like love, fear, hate, jealousy, etc. But those things do exist, and their effects and affects are profound.

Now I know, I made some ostensibly outrageous claims as to the power of belief. I can understand the outrage. I'm not really upset about that. I do hope to open up some new areas of thought for those who are medically minded to a religious extent.

See the book, Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake.

THAT was the return of the tactical camera? The character's back never took up less than 85% of the screen height...

DA:O was a solid spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. DA2 ... wasn't. This looked like admittedly very impressive graphics (press the awesome button!) but appeared to play more like DA2.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I felt like I was inside of you while writing this song - that's what you mean right - like *spiritually* inside you - right?

-sounds good on paper your position, agree with you .... Proselytizing involves conscious complicity or blind faith-I call bupkis on Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, etc, not because of some inherent foulness contained in the tenants (which are basically the same for all major religions) but for subjective-interpretation combined with a culture bereft for many generations teaching garden-variety self-hate-Can't fix a peoples or culture without discarding shit-think and Islam represents.

Education, re-education, etc.,-whatever it takes to save the Islamic world, or North Korea and her imprisoned peoples,or joe-six-pack who got diddled by his uncle when he was 6-

Religions' a construct and healthy spirituality, a divine gift for humans to add to their trip here-