Eye on Faith

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Mila Kunis: Year of Yes

Mila Kunis (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

For Mila Kunis, this has intentionally been the Year of Yes. “Yes” to a wedding, “Yes” to a baby, and “Yes” to whatever gifts life has to offer…

Things weren’t always this affirmative for Kunis. As she explained during a recent Marie Claire interview, “I was really good at saying no. I decided I was just going to say yes to whatever opportunity that came, no matter how crazy. And it changed my

life.”

This is an example of what Dr. Wayne Dyer calls “The Power of Intention.” During an interview with Valarie Griebel of Successful

Living, this “father of motivation” explained his Taoist philosophy.

Dyer stated, “Most people’s mistake in trying to apply the law of attraction is they want things; they demand things. But God doesn’t

work that way. It’s all about allowing.”

In other words, it's all about saying “Yes” to the Universe, rather than striving to limit and manipulate it.

Resources

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/12/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher_n_5487929.html

http://www.drwaynedyer.com/articles/the-power-of-intention

Friday, June 13, 2014

Pope Francis: What sports could be

San Lorenzo 1923 (PD-AR-Photo)

Although we've all heard the clichés about good sportsmanship, they are not often based in reality. Thus, we are left with a sports world that honors unbridled ego more than it does fair play.

Enter Pope Francis - a long-term fan of the Argentine football team, San Lorenzo de Almagro...

Fox Sports reports that, as the World Cup is upon us, the Pope has issued this message: Let soccer be a showcase for teamwork and solidarity, not an exhibition of racism and

greed.

Pope Francis then specifies three ways in which a sport as feisty as football can become a shining example: “…train and work hard to reach goals… fair play and teamwork… respect and honor opponents.”

In a televised video, the Pope then concluded: “Sports is not only a form of entertainment… but also – and above all… a tool to communicate values that promote the good that is in humans…”

Resources

http://msn.foxsports.com/soccer/story/pope-francis-let-soccer-be-a-showcase-for-teamwork-and-solidarity-061214

Thursday, June 12, 2014

The tortoise and the scare

A Giant Tortoise (Photo by Childzy)

"Slow and steady wins the race," especially if you’re a tortoise on the “run.”

Such was the case with Spike, an 80-pound Valentine’s Day gift from a New Mexico husband to his tortoise-loving wife.

Seventeen-year-old Spike (just a kid, tortoises are known to live well over 100 years) was growing tired of his yard-based life. It’s not that he didn’t appreciate his newfound family, but rather that his curiosity had grown beyond what a fence (or a shell) could contain.

So when the gate was accidentally left ajar, Spike “decided to make a break for it.” He lumbered off down the road, and had traveled half a mile before being apprehended by Animal Control.

This story has a happy ending, at least for Spike’s adoptive family. He is now safely behind their fence posts once again.

As for Spike? Perhaps he has mixed feelings. Perhaps he is recalling the good old days when tortoises were considered divine. Kurma, half-man and half-tortoise, was said to have been the second Avatar of Vishnu. The Greek god Hermes was also tortoise-linked.

Let's face it - hanging behind a picket fence seems a far cry from these heavenly ties...

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortoise

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/a-tortoise-ran-away-from-home-213857383.html

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Neurotheology: Aha moments

Thalamus (Red Arrow) (Image from AxelBoldt)

We’ve often heard the expression “No brain, no gain,” but does that also hold true for spiritual progress?

The relatively new field of neurotheology is bent upon solving that conundrum. The Atlantic recently ran an article by Lynne Blumberg titled “What Happens to the Brain During Spiritual Experiences?” The answer somewhat depends upon the type of spiritual experience it is.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, a pioneer in “the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences,” has thus far viewed approximately 150 brain scans of spiritual practitioners. These

practitioners included nuns, charismatics, mediums and meditators. He also studied the brain scans of atheists.

Spiritual techniques that involve repetitive concentration on prayers or mantras “tend to activate the frontal lobes…” Those that involve a surrender of will, such as channeling or glossolalia, instead tend to activate the thalamus.

While interviewing meditators about their subjective spiritual experiences, Newberg also observed that “everyone defines God a little bit differently even when they belong to the same religion.’

Resources

http://wwrn.org/articles/42628/?&place=united-states

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Alexander Imich: A remarkable life

Ganzfield Telepathy Experiment (PD)

Dying at the ripe old age of 111 was just one of the remarkable things that Alexander Imich had done.

According to The New York Times, this Upper West Side resident had lived in many other places – some of them not by choice.

Born into a well-to-do Jewish family from Poland, Imich later fought the Bolsheviks during the Polish-Soviet War. He managed to escape the Holocaust, but wound up in a Soviet gulag. Having survived that, he then made his way to the United States.

Imich had earned a doctorate in chemistry from Jagiellonian University of Krakow. After immigrating to America, he also pursued his decades-long interest in the paranormal.

While in his nineties, he edited an anthology titled Incredible Tales of the Paranormal, “documented

accounts of poltergeist, levitations, phantoms, and other phenomena.”

Before transitioning out of this world, Imich had said: The compensation for dying is that I will learn all the things I was not able to learn here on Earth.

Resources

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/nyregion/111-year-journey-of-the-worlds-oldest-man.html?_r=0

Monday, June 9, 2014

Shimon Peres: Behind every good man

Shimon Peres (Photo by David Shankbone)

Shimon Peres, Israel’s former prime minister (twice) and current president (at age 90), had also been married to the love of his life for 67 years.

Although a faithful and loving wife to Shimon all those long years, Sonia Peres had vastly preferred a private life to a public one. Her absence from official ceremonies led some people to dub her the “anti-first lady.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, her stated reason for not attending most political functions was the following: I married a dairy farmer. This was an allusion to their

beginning years as a married couple in a “socialist kibbutz collective.”

Back then, “they lived in a tent, then in a building with a tin roof that blew away in the wind.” At the time, Shimon only

owned “two pairs of pants, two shirts, and one pair of shoes.”

Sonia retained these stark tendencies until her 2011 death at age 87. Refusing to allow her husband’s position to determine her own choice of lifestyle, she “turned down the use of a chauffeur, did her own shopping and carried her groceries.”

Haaretz reported that when Mrs. Peres died, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated: In her quiet and modest life, Sonia represented good-heartedness and turned into a symbol and example of modesty and love of man.

Resources

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/01/israel-sonia-peres-wife-of-president-shimon-peres-dies.html

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Study hard, sleep it off

(Photo by Tom O Fitz)

Sleeping during class probably won’t win you many brownie points.

However, sleeping after class might.

Rebekah Marcarelli of HNGN reports on the results of a neuroscientific study from New York University’s Langone Medical Center. These results indicate that “sleep helps neurons form very specific connections on dendritic branches that may facilitate long-term memory.”

Dr. Wen-Biao Gan, Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology, compared this phenomenom to the sprouting of new leaves on tree branches. To carry this analogy a bit further, a “leafier” brain may, in fact, be a more adept brain.

Researchers have long known that “leafing and loafing” are interconnected in some way, but they haven’t known exactly how. This study is beginning to answer some of those “how” questions.

Resources

http://www.hngn.com/articles/33172/20140606/sleep-after-learning-gives-the-memory-a-boost.htm