Spirituality // Current

Is atheism a religion?

"For some strange reason, many people keep getting the idea that atheism is itself some sort of religion. It's an... more

DeliaTheArtist
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Do I have an Animal Guide? If so how do I meet it?

We use the terms ‘animal spirit guides’ and ‘animal totems’ interchangeably here, as we refer to either physical or spiritual manifestations from a general or individualized viewpoint. Our personal preference is to use the term ‘animal spirit guide’ as it more closely describes an American Indian practice and the latter is often connected with Eastern European shamanism.

Finding your Spirit Guide:
You do not choose an animal guide as your personal spirit guide. The animal chooses you and they decide to whom they will reveal themselves and make their friend. Do not fall into the trap of saying, “Gosh, I think the wolf is a smart, good looking and powerful animal, so the wolf will become my animal guide.” It does not work this way.

Each Animal has its own Medicine which is unique to that specific creature as gifted by the Great Mystery and its spirit cannot be chosen like the color of your new car. Discovering who your animal guides are is a process of paying attention to the spirits around you and following the signs. It is a process of developing your inner knowledge and spiritual understanding.

An individual can not be assigned a spirit guide by another person, regardless of who that person maybe, no more than another person can say how or when the Great Mystery of Life will be known to you.

What happens if you want an animal spirit so bad you can taste it (not literally) and one has not come to you? We have two suggestions for this case. First, pray about it. Second, be satisfied with whatever happens or does not happen. It if comes, then it comes. If it does not, then it does not. End of question.

THE POWER OF ANIMAL SPIRITS

The natural power of animal spirit guides has not been lost. The knowledge and power of animal guides is alive and can be effectively used to improve our lives and all creation. American Indians call the process of connecting with animal guides and other parts of creation as being ‘One with Nature.’

Connecting with your animal guide will make you a better person. You will be healthier physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. You will see the world and all things in it with more clarity and understanding.

Animals are wondrous happy creatures. There is no doubt that animals have beautiful, balanced emotions. They love and defend one another. They feel sorrow and melancholy. Yet, there has never been a war between animal species. They know nothing about greed, envy, and hate. They live their entire lives without sin.

They have many amazing powers and use those powers only to benefit their kind and not to overcome their opponents. There is a reason why the Creator put all of us together on the same planet. A part of that reason is to learn from one another.

Animals are here to teach humans. They have many powerful lessons to give. They remind us that we are only a small part of creation; that each part of creation has a place; that each creature has its own skill and wisdom.

(cont)We use the terms ‘animal spirit guides’ and ‘animal totems’ interchangeably here, as we refer to either... more

arcticspirit
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8 responses

9 days ago

Current Presents Digg Dialogg: Al Gore on Atheism in US Politics

In this portion of Current presents Digg Dialogg, Kevin Rose interviews former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore... more

current
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2 responses

11 days ago

Indigenous tribes reject land sale

A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community, tribes commonly known in the West as Bushmen.

But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month.

"No money in the world can buy this land," says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. "It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale.

"[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course," adds Ms. Basson. "We don't care about them. We want to live here."

The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land. "They should have consulted the residents first but they didn't, which made them very angry," he says. "The government, as trustees, aren't allowed to sell this land without their consent, so the film studios will not happen."

"Not even a handful will I sell to them," says farmer Piet Eiman, one of the area's oldest residents, holding pieces of soil in his hands. "We are part of the land, it can support you from a baby, to a young child, to a man. It is part of us."

Rudolf Markgraaff, chief executive at Charis Productions, one of the companies looking to purchase or lease the tribal land, says he was surprised at the opposition. "This area is desperately poor with 70 percent unemployment, high rates of AIDS, and limited facilities like hospitals and schools.

"We had letters of support from the [African National Congress] Youth League, the ANC Women's League, and another group begging us to make it happen," Markgraaff says. "They're not doing anything with this land."

But Mr. Markgraaff is wrong. The local population is preserving their culture, with some families practicing the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, and others herding cattle and goats, or farming desert crops. These ways of life would be threatened or destroyed by the presence of such large-scale commercial development. A filmmaker's dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a... more

teland
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0 responses

17 days ago

Abida Parveen Sings Bulleh Shah

An all too short excerpt of Qawwali singer Abida Parveen singing Bulleh Shah's poetry.

Vierotchka
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2 responses

20 days ago

Pope: Science Plus Faith Will Get to God's Message

Notes Two Facets Needed for a Good Bible Reading VATICAN CITY, OCT. 26, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Both scientific exegesis and a... more

walesjames
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22 responses

22 days ago

New Perspective on Duality

Food for Thought. I completely understand that the 10-14-08 prediction of a mass ufo sighting damaged all credibility in channeling entities. The following information was allegedly received via a channeling. Regardless of the source, the concepts below resonate with truth in my opinion. There are no predictions - simply a new philosophical perspective and the hope for a better tomorrow.

The New Earth
message from Jesus/Yeshua
by Pamela Kribbe
In this day and age, a transition is taking place on earth. A new consciousness is dawning which will take material shape sooner or later. How exactly this transition will come about, what form it will take, is not fixed. The future is always indeterminate. The only thing that is really given is this moment: the Now. From the well of the Now, countless possible roads are springing, an infinite web of possible futures.

On the basis of the past, we can predict that one particular future is more probable than another, but the choice is always yours. It is you who decide whether you let the past determine your future! Predictions are always based on probabilities. Probabilities are related to the past. It is in your power as a human being to break with the past, to set out a different course. You are endowed with free will. You have the power to change, to recreate yourself. In this power rests your divinity. It is the power to create from nothing (to create ex nihilo). This divine power belongs to the very essence of who you are.

In speaking of this day and age as an age of transition, never forget that you are the master of your own reality. There is no such thing as a predestined Plan or a Cosmic Power which overrules your individual soul’s path or your individual power to create your own reality. It doesn’t work that way. Every soul on earth will experience this transition in a way that fits their inner propensities. There are many realities. The reality you choose will answer your inner needs and desires.

What makes this time (1950 – 2070 approximately) special is that there are two different cycles of consciousness coming to an end: a personal cycle (or a set of personal cycles) and a planetary cycle. The completion of these cycles coincides, so that one reinforces the other.

For a part of humanity, the completion of their personal cycle of earth lives is near. Most of the souls involved in this completion are lightworkers. We will speak in much more detail about this group of lightworker souls. Here we would like to explain the nature of this personal cycle: what it means to go through it and what is the purpose of living all these quite complicated lives on earth.

The personal karmic cycle
The earth lives you experience are part of a greater cycle of your soul. This cycle was designed to enable you to fully experience duality. You have within this cycle experienced what it is like to be male and female, to be healthy and ill, to be rich or poor, to be “good” and “bad.” In some lives you were intensely involved with the material world, being a farmer, worker or craftsman. There have been more spiritually oriented lives, in which you carried within you a strong awareness of your spiritual origins. In those lives you were often drawn to religious callings. Also there have been lives in which you explored the worldly domain of power, politics etc. There may have been lives devoted to an artistic expression of yourself.

Often souls tend to specialize somewhat in the course of all these lives. This can clearly be recognized in people who possess a natural gift in a certain area. It seems they have a potential there, even as a child, which only needs to be awakened at the right time and which is then easily developed.

More @ link (left-hand side "New Earth I" link)
Food for Thought. I completely understand that the 10-14-08 prediction of a mass ufo sighting damaged all credibility in... more

walesjames
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2 responses

22 days ago

WTF is the point!?

A Slam poem that I will be using in trying to get on the slam team for las vegas

JaceTurnerFilm
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6 responses

23 days ago

3 Weeks on T, Changes, and a little life update

Witness my transformation from female to male

JaceTurnerFilm
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3 responses

23 days ago

Tree of Life

A music video educating about the industrial uses and health benefits of the American Hemp plant. Featuring the song "Tree of... more

JackHerer
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8 responses

23 days ago

Virgin Of East LA

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a 16th century Mexican icon of the Virgin Mary which appears on wall murals and tattoos around the... more

BooksBrown
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13 responses

8 months ago

Do atheists enjoy life?

"As I believe in freedom of opinion – as well as God – I have no problem with London's buses carrying the slogan "There is probably no God"; although I would admire the bravery of the advertisers more if they added "or Allah". But, if people want to contribute £100,000 to an advertising slogan – great. It shows that capitalism (and its adjunct, marketing) works in the cause of freedom of opinion. The best guarantee of freedom of expression is not a charter of rights or a bill of free speech, but diversity in media and communications.

I don't agree with the slogan in question, but then I don't agree with a lot of advertised opinions. I know them to be bunkum, like the beauty creams that offer to "turn back time". I disbelieve such claims because they do not accord with my experience: such lotions have been employed for years, and time has marched relentlessly on. The coda in the London bus secularist message "so relax and enjoy life" strikes me as bunkum rather on a par with beauty cream claims, and for the same reasons: it does not accord with my experience.

Far from relaxing and enjoying life, most atheists I have encountered are gloomy blighters with a depressing and nihilistic message that there is no purpose to life so where's the point of anything? They so often fall into the category defined by GK Chesterton: "Those that do not have the faith/Will not have the fun." You only have to attend one of their dreary humanist funerals to see that – I am never going to another of those, just to be made miserable.

I'm not against people having different opinions; what I'm against is people in influential positions never having their opinions challenged. Far more nauseating than the open slogans on the London buses, subscribed to and paid for, are such phenomena as art installations by the likes of Gilbert and George consisting of the words "Ban religion", over and over again. They are then fawningly interviewed by a deferential Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4, when they should be subjected to the same kind of rigour as John Humphrys doing over the chancellor of the exchequer. Incidentally, if Gilbert and George had lived in a country which banned religion – Enver Hoxha's Albania – they would have been dispatched to perform menial agricultural work, if not to a gulag.

In short, let us have discourse and debate about these matters of faith and non-faith. Does it not say in St Paul: "Come, let us reason together"? Advertising is discourse: it is a form of communication which people are free to accept or reject. It probably further stimulates debate. It may even stimulate someone to write a book called "The Tolerant Atheist", in which the author affirms that while he is not a believer himself, he accepts the evidence that for countless numbers, religious faith gets them through the night: and its beauty, language, optimism, music and architecture helps them relax and enjoy life."

I posted this because I completely disagree with it. Most of the atheists I know (myself included) are not "miserable blighters", but fall somewhere in line with the rest of us as far as their happiness level is concerned.
Certainly no atheists I know has ever said anything like "there is no purpose to life so where's the point of anything?" - Not believing in god does not mean you find no purpose in life, and honestly I find it hard to believe that MOST of the atheists this woman has talked to felt this way.

Atheists can come off as aggressive and offensive sometimes (again, myself included) because the idea of not believing in god is so taboo to some people that it's immediately taken as a bad or pessimisic world view.

So my questions are- if you are an atheists, are you a miserable blighter? If you have met atheists, have they been such?
"As I believe in freedom of opinion – as well as God – I have no problem with London's buses carrying the... more