Divine Alchemy gives you the opportunity to express the harmony, the symphony from within. Basically what that means is, you’re not clinging to circumstances being the same. And because you’re not clinging to them being the same, they begin to flow. In other words, I’m not fixating it. , I’m not fixing them in time and space. You’re not trying to say, “They can only be this way.” This is the great difficulty of the concept of objective reality, is that if you talk to various people, you find that objective reality is different for different people. Even amongst scientists, certain phenomena of nature are viewed differently.
If lead can be turned into gold, maybe I’m not trapped by my fate. And maybe I can actually cultivate the qualities of being that I really want to manifest in my life, knowing that as I cultivate those qualities of being and live them, that it changes; it changes, it literally puts me in almost a different realm. It expands the possibilities of where I can go, of the choices I can make, exponentially. When you say a different realm, then, you might even be talking about a different dimension, interacting in a completely different way with everything; maybe even having contact with things I didn’t have contact with before.
And yet if you’re doing it right, it doesn’t negate this dimension. It doesn’t negate this realm. It’s not a point of going to somebody else’s planet. It’s not that you’re going to some angelic realm and leaving this planet. You’re staying here, you’re just different here.
What happensand this is so far outis that we live, we are manifest, in a multiplicity of realms. And that, by directing ourselves, by creating the person that we want to be, by bringing forth the Love, the Compassion, the Wholeness, the Continuity of Being that we want to bring forthand manifesting that in our lives, manifesting that with my action, not manifesting it in my life by changing the circumstances of those around me, but manifesting it by my actionthen my action is guided by my Soul’s Purpose, my truth, that I’m discovering and opening up to as I live. As I do that, it’s going to change not only my life, but the lives of every person that I run into. It’s actually revelatory in the sense that iit is something that opens up in an ongoing way. So Ghandi’s autobiography is called My Experiments With Truth, which we talked about in the Everyday Sanyasin series. He’s saying, I have a sense of truth, and I am living, I’m manifesting, through myself, my sense of truth. I’m literally using the Power of Soul, the Power of Soul Incarnate. And I’m watching how everything happens.
Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and the author of Dancing in the Fire of Transformation and The Everyday Sanyasin.
Where was God when Hurricane Katrina was tearing up lives and destroying New Orleans and adjacent areas of the Gulf Coast?
Where was God during the 9-11 terrorist attack?
Why does God let bad things happen to people?
Those are tough questions, but they’re ones we hear - and ponder - in times like these. The gruesome images on TV make even ol’ LeRoy stop smiling while he reflects on how God works in our lives.
Was Satan at work as Katrina slammed ashore? Sure . . . but Satan can’t kill without God’s permission. So then, is God responsible? It’s OK to ask Him. God is large. He can handle any question.
God sends hurricanes. But people chose to build a major American city below sea level, and others along coastlines where hurricanes come.
Is it fair that 10 civilians die for every soldier who is killed in the modern world’s wars? The Carter Center in Atlanta furnishes those figures, also pointing out that at any given moment, there are about 110 conflicts going on in the world, 30 of which produce 1,000 or more deaths per year.
Does God cause those wars? Or do people, who insist on having things their way?
In Africa, people are dying by the thousands because of starvation, disease and war, while Western cameras are focused mostly on less unsettling things north of the equator. Governments in those countries frustrate many attempts to settle disputes and make progress. That makes it easier for us to look the other way.
Right in our own backyard, people whom we know are suffering. Friends and loved ones die before what we think is their time.
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What sense can we make of it?
Ever since Eden, we have lived in a fallen world. The Bible tells us we all are sinners and that sin brings death and separation from God.
Why some are chosen to have lives of luxury while other peoples endure generations of suffering and hardship is a question we won’t have fully answered until we talk to Jesus in Heaven. But we know that we are not promised an earthly life free of pain, suffering and death.
Heaven is our hope. Our Christian faith is that there is no pain, suffering or death there.
It may be that God uses death, disease and suffering to test us while we’re still on earth. How will we react as a nation, as individuals . . .to Katrina’s aftermath? God may be testing us now, to see how much responsibility we can be given in Heaven.
The glorious thing is that we can even get to Heaven. We do that by accepting that Jesus is God’s son and that He came to earth to pay for our sins.
The very essence of God is contained at the start of the John 3:16 verse, “For God so loved . . .”
God is love. God gave Moses ten commandments. Jesus gave us what many believe is the eleventh commandment in Luke 10:27: ” . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
If we filter our world through God, making Him first in everything we do, the rest of our lives will get in line. If we could have perfect love, we wouldn’t violate any of the ten commandments! It wouldn’t be possible!
Jesus’ perfect love was demonstrated repeatedly by His giving nature. It so moved Paul that he wrote perhaps the most beautiful words in all the Bible in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. If you haven’t read that, please do, and pray that you might make it a part of you.
We won’t be perfect while we’re on earth. But we can work at it. Perfect love gives without a thought of return.
By ourselves, we can’t restore the twin towers in New York and all the lives that were lost. We can’t make the hurt go away in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. But we can help.
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And, we can visit the lonely neighbor down the street, or arrange for a meal for a suffering family. That’s love . .. and it’s a way to start. God will notice, even if our world in general does not. He will be pleased! Let us be at prayer:
Lord, make my life a window
For your light to shine through,
And a mirror
to reflect your love to all I meet.
-Amen
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LeRoy the Tramp is Keith Brake of Montezuma, Iowa. He and his wife, Linda, are the Kingdom Klowns of Iowa. Keith is a speaker and writer, and the Kingdom Klowns of Iowa are Christian and family entertainers who can perform skits, do full church services, balloon sculpturing and more at Christian and secular events. They can be visited online at http://www.clownsiniowa.com |
No matter what do we do for living, how educated we are, how wealthy we are and how nice we look, we all have different beliefs in what is the supra power upon us all. This is what we call religion. Its roots go deep into the matriarchal way of life of our predators when totems became first gods and were honored as such. It is a very interesting topic to research and to investigate and we still have some scientist working in this field.
Religion was founded to explain natural phenomena and weakness of the humans in front of it. Who else, but God could be stronger than a human? First Gods were animals and plants that were admired and could serve as an example somehow. But there had to be a superior being to support and to help a weak person to find his way and get rid of confusion. Later on it developed into an anthropomorphically religion that gave Gods same traits as humans have and their extra powers didn’t help them to stay out of trouble and this caused sometimes a loss of their immortality. We call all polytheistic believes pagan religions but can’t but agree that ancient literature works are a big credit to them. There are some more monotheistic religions like Christianity which are widely spread today, like Buddhism, Islam and a lot more. These religions are equally honored though one can say that they differ greatly. Christianity lays its basis on the Holy Bible, the Book of the Books that has to be read by every Christian man. If I were to judge I can’t call Christianity monotheistic, for the belief is focused on The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which are to be honored and loved more than anything. In his personal essay St. Augustine writes that he has sacrificed everything people call pleasures to leave a life dedicated to the service to the Lord. The belief is so deep that can easily be used to put somebody up to something. That’s why religion turned out to be a strong and stable tool in hands of governors of the state. This is where science starts developing. The speed is so fast that religion can’t catch up and gain its former authority. The matter is that some of the new discoveries ruined several church dogmas that were lectured for several hundred years. This is where inquisition comes on stage. Honorable priests were sure that all the inventions that were relatively contradicting to the former ideas were the creation of the devil and his airs. This was also used as a nice way to kick rivals of their track and successfully move forward. There were wars organized because of conflicts on religious ground, for example King Richard the Third and his war against Saracens.
Nowadays Christianity as a religion is not much involved in politics, except Vatican, the residence of Pope. A lot of custom research papers can be written on such an interesting topic. As for Islam, the question is hard to answer, they strictly stick to their traditions and violation of the rules brings strict punishment. Science plays an important role in the development processes in the country. Science gives income and that’s what makes research very important. Religion takes care of the mental side of a person. If one refuses to believe and becomes an atheist, he’ll eventually have no convictions left, for religion is the essence of morays and folkways piled up by centuries of experience. You can’t make anybody turn into a believer, but you may want to change your lifestyle a bit. Religion and science may easily co-exist as modern society can prove.
Tyler Benson is a senior writer of BestEssays.com - Term Papers writing service. He has 17 years of experience as the professor at several universities. Tyler Benson has been providing competent assistance to students in writing a proper personal essay at during all his remarkable teaching experience. His example of proper custom research papers can be found in several guides on how to write.
Yes, you can! There is no verse in the Bible which causes you to
accept a young earth as the only answer. The Bible does not say,
“Thou shalt believe in a young earth.” The fact is, no verse in
the Bible makes any claims as to the age of the earth. All the
so-called verses that young earth proponents point to can be
interpreted by the reader to mean old or young. Also, the key
doctrines of the Bible are not affected by either
interpretation. Many young earth believers will claim that you
cannot believe in an old earth and be a Christian. The reasons
for this belief vary, but there are several overlying principles
underneath this argument. Death, Disease Before Sin
The Bible teaches that death is the penalty for sin. The young
earth proponent carries it one step further than the Bible
teaches by adding their own belief that there was no physical
death before sin. However, when Adam and Eve sinned, spiritual
death was introduced, not physical death. This mistaken belief
is due to a misinterpretation of the Bible.
Why do they misinterpret this key fact? Let’s look at the key
verses. Genesis 1:29-31 “And God said, Behold, I have given you
every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the
earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30And to every beast
of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
that creepeth upon the earth, where-in there is life, I have
given every green herb for meat; and it was so. 31And God saw
every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And
the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” Romans 5:12
“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death
by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have
sinned.” Yes, Adam introduced death. However, he did not
introduce physical death…only spiritual death. Consider these
key points: 1. God said creation was “very good” (Gen 1:31).
Young earth proponents claim it can’t be “very good” if it
contained disease and death. They fail to realize that God
created a thriving, renewing ecosystem. Death and regeneration
are crucial to the working of God’s creation. If it were not
self-renewing, it would not last very long, and then God’s
creation would indeed not be “very good.” 2. The Bible says that
God gave the green plants to all animals to eat. Young earth
proponents claim that since the animals ate grass, there was no
death due to carnivorous activity. Two points. First, the Bible
does not say that animals “cannot” eat meat…it only says they
were given grass to eat. Second, this was the condition of the
Garden of Eden, which was different from the world outside the
garden. Inside the Garden there was perfection and peace, but
outside it was different. 3. Spiders are wondrous creatures.
They spin their silk webs in order to ensnare their victims
before consuming them. How would they have survived in a
pre-death world? Would their webs have been used to catch
falling leaves? No, they could just simply go into a tree, or to
the ground, to feast on the leaves. Spiders were created with
only one diet in mind…a dead insect.
Also, why were some spiders created with poison? What is the
purpose of this poison? They didn’t need to poison the leaves,
or whatever else they were supposed to eat in the Garden. And,
it could not have been for self-defense, since there were no
predators in the Garden? In fact, the same thing goes for
poisonous snakes. Poison only has one purpose…to kill. Even
poisons that incapacitate are for the same thing in the end, for
once the creature is incapacitated, it is consumed.
The only logical conclusion is that God created poison to kill.
Poison serves no purpose in a calm, friendly Garden with no
death. If God did create poison, according to the young earth
model, then His creation was not perfect, as the poison served
no purpose. 4. It is obvious that these passages mean spiritual
death, not physical. Here’s a simple logical answer…when Adam
ate the forbidden fruit, he entered into spiritual death…he
did not physically die when he bit the fruit. We know this
because he had children with Eve after he ate the fruit. Adam
did not introduce physical death, but spiritual death (see the
blue text box above). In fact, if you read Satan’s dialogue with
Eve, then you will see the answer plain as day. He told Eve she
would not die, but would become knowledgeable. Satan knew that
he would be introducing spiritual death to the world. How else
was Satan to prevent people from following God…killing them
physically did not end their spiritual relationship with God. By
introducing spiritual death, Satan knew he could prevent people
from worshiping God. 5. Young earth proponents claim that sin
and suffering entered the world after the Fall of Man. They
claim that disease is a result of sin. However, what is disease?
It is sickness caused by viruses, bacteria, etc. Did these
microorganisms exist before the fall of man? If you listen to
young earth proponents, they could not have existed before the
fall. However, they had to. To imply that they came about as a
result of the fall of man, is to imply that God created them
after Adam sinned. But, since God is in His seventh day of rest,
and the creation is already 100% complete, he could not have
created them after the fall. They had to be created sometime
during the six days of creation.
Here is conclusive proof that bacteria existed before the fall.
How do we know this? Because Adam and Eve were normal human
beings, and as human beings, they required the aid of bacteria
for the breakdown of foods in the human digestive tract. Right
now, as you read this, millions of bacteria cells are in your
colon, breaking down your foods into waste products. (Perhaps
the young-earth proponents will argue that the bacteria and
viruses we have today mutated from this original bacteria
source. There response would be interesting). 6. The rock
record, through its fossils, indicates that death existed for
millions of years. By young earth models, all fossil-bearing
rock layers must be laid down after the fall of man. The
mechanism they point to is the Flood of Noah. However, the flood
has been shown to be scientifically impossible. Bottom line…if
the Flood can’t do it, then there must have been physical death
before sin. There is absolutely no sound reason for not
believing there was death before the Fall of Man. What is Time?
The other major stumbling block for young earth objections is
time. Here we will examine two concepts; first is God and time,
and second, a weak God. Nowhere in the Bible does it teach that
the earth is young. The Bible does not say “the earth is 6,000
years old.” Nor does it say “the earth is 4.5 billion years
old.” The fact is, the Bible makes no claims as to the age of
the earth. We must interpret the age of the earth from science
and the Bible.
Young earther’s will make a defense of the “days” of creation
being literal 24-hour days. The truth is, there is no claim in
the Bible that states the length of these days. The “day” as we
know it didn’t even begin until the fourth day of creation, when
the sun and the moon were created (according to young-earth
interpretations). The saying I like to use is, “If you are God,
and you are in outer space, a million miles away from any stars
or planets, then how do you mark the passage of time? As God,
you do not sleep, you do not need rest, therefore time has no
meaning.” When we get to heaven, we will spend eternity there.
Are we going to have clocks in heaven? Wow, there goes another
million years! It won’t matter to us, just like it doesn’t
matter to God.
Should finite man limit infinite God to a twenty-four hour day?
It is finite man that has imposed his interpretation of the word
“day” onto an infinite God. Well, our rules of time don’t apply
to an infinite, everlasting being. Just look at the creation.
God rested on the seventh day. In fact, he is still resting, and
we are still in the seventh day! If this day has lasted for over
6,000 years, then who are we to impose time limits on the other
days of creation? The use of the word day is just so that man
can have some type of framework to understand creation, and does
not imply 24-hour days.
The Bible says in II Peter 3:8, “…that one day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” God
does not see time the same way we do! To him, one second could
be a million years. Therefore, no matter what the interpretation
is of the original Hebrew for the word “day,” it does not apply
to an infinite God. The early church fathers, including Justin
Martyr, believed the days of creation were a thousand years
long. Literal days were not even considered until the fourth
century, and it did not become a major theologic issue until the
19th century.
One more point to ponder. Old-earth creationists say the earth
is 4.5 billion years old. Was God here 4.5 billion years ago?
Obviously, the answer has to be yes. Think about it. Our second
major concept concerning time is a weak God. One of the claims
by young-earth creationists is that the old-earth theory waters
down, or weakens, Gods powers, by in effect saying that if God
could not create the earth in six days, then he must not be as
powerful as the Omnipotent God of the young earth believer.
Here again, simple logic will prevail. It doesn’t matter how
long the period of creation is, God’s power is beyond
comprehension, beyond anyone else’s capabilities, and He remains
omnipotent no matter how long creation lasted. I could say “An
all powerful God could have created the world in six seconds.
Why did it take him six days…he must be weak.” This obviously
is not true.
To prove this, here is the simple argument. I challenge any
young-earth creationist to do this…starting right now, I
challenge you to create a brand new world, complete with new
plant and animal species, complete with a thriving ecosystem,
complete with coal beds, fossils, oceans, etc. And, I’ll even be
generous and give you 10 billion years to do it. Can you do it?
Of course not. But the all-powerful, omnipotent God that we
worship can, and did do it.
Could He have done it in six days? Sure, if He wanted to. If He
wanted to, He could have done it in 6 seconds. Is the God of the
six-day creation weaker because He didn’t do it in 6 seconds? Of
course not. Conclusion What then are we to conclude? Spiritual
death, with the eternal possibilities of heaven and hell, began
with Adam and Eve. They were the first humans to have this
option. But physical death has been here long before Adam ever
walked the earth.
Concerning age, the creation itself testifies to its age. Job
12:8 says “Speak to the earth, and it will teach you.”
Fortunately, none of the objections of young earth proponents
carries any weight. You can be 100% confident that you can be a
Christian, and believe in an old earth.
This article comes from the Answers In Creation website (
n.org). The source article is located at
wersincreation.org/question.htm.
