Easter, Judas and Jesus

God so loved us that he gave Jesus Christ to die for our sins and to rise
again from the dead. We received the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life as gifts.

It would be nice if it were this simple but I think it comes with a responsibility, part of the Lords prayer:

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

While Jesus offers us redemption, it is our responsibility to forgive our fellow man.

The recent discovery of the book of Judah, and the knowledge that Jesus not only knew Judah would betray him to the Romans but in fact commanded him to do so, what that tells me is that he suffered and died knowingly and voluntarily for us, you can't love more than that.

I don't understand the whole son of God relationship; and actually for the first several hundred years neither did early Christians as churches disagreed, the council of Nicea dictated the meaning three hundred years after the fact. But I know Jesus loved enough to suffer and die.

I believe a prefect world eludes us only for our inability to love and forgive in this manner. I think instinctively we know this, that's the attraction in a pet, the desire for that unconditional love, and I think if we could all give that, and know we have it, the world would heal itself, at least that's my hope.

Chi, Qi, Ki, Prana, Pneuma

The life energy, Chinese call it Chi or Qi, it's the same word really, pronounced "Chee", just a matter of what form of Romanization is used, Japanese call it Ki, Hindus call it Prana, Greeks called it Pneuma.

In all languages, it equates to breath or wind, we don't know where it comes from or where it goes, it flows. We breath it in, and if we choose we can become aware of it's diffusing into our tissues. It does seem to be intimately associated with breath or air or oxygen, it's flow affected by our breathing, and yet, it is not the same.

It's noticeably missing from Western religious traditions. I find myself wondering what mention of it may have existed in those books of the Bible that the Council of Nicea deleted.

I've had a number of lucid dreams in which I've traveled to other planetary bodies. Among them, Mars and Earth's moon. In both circumstances, I was aware of breath.

On the moon, knowing there was no air, in spirit form I could still breath. I was amazed by this but I could breath freely and easily. I know, if I took my body along for the ride, that would not be possible. Likewise for Mars, although there is some air, it is mostly carbon dioxide and has a thickness 1% that of Earth's atmosphere. But still I could breath easily there too.

I have seen demonstrations of what martial artists that refer to themselves as chi masters can do. I can't say for certain that a portion thereof is not illusion, but it was impressive.

I believe there is a reality to the existence "qi", and I think it's more than something that gives life to us, I think it is a part of God, or of God and directs the evolution of the entire universe.

Near Death Experiences

Near death experiences fascinate me. People so often describe the experience as more lucid than normal waking life, super conscious, as if they had awoken from a dream and life had been the dream.

My mother tells me that she came home from work to find me passed out on the floor as the result of an asthma attack. I have no memory relating to that at all, not even that it happened.

It is the super conscious aspect of it that I find particularly intriguing. I'm not sure exactly what it is that is the basis for our own judgment of self-lucidity. Is our judgment impaired, or is the mind, freed of the brain, able to perceive more clearly?

While I haven't had any near death experiences that I can remember, I have had to two waking out of body experiences. In neither of those did I have any sense of super consciousness. My awareness of my surroundings seemed actually pretty ordinary.

Out of Body...

On Coast to Coast AM, guest William Buhlman talks about out of body experiences. It's interesting to me because I've had two myself as well as many lucid dreams and I certainly haven't come to the same conclusions that Mr. Buhlman has.

At first I was thinking to my self, this guy is full of it... But then I got to thinking about how radically different the two experiences I have and given that I don't know that his aren't entirely different than either of mine.

He makes the statement that once you've had one you know you continue past your body. I certainly can't claim this on the basis of an out of body experience.

With the lucid dreams, I know for sure I can get information distant from my body because I have tested this by going some place in a lucid dream that I had not been to, writing down what I saw there when I woke up, then driving there and verifying what I saw matched, and it did.

Where lucid dreams are concerned, some might come to the conclusion that consciousness exists independently of one's physical body, however, from my perspective that only proves non-locality, that is that I can observe time and space not local to my body.

With the two out of body experiences I had, which were radically different from one another, I have had no such opportunity to test whether or not I can even obtain valid information.

In the first out of body experience, after meeting up with someone meditating in a basement, because I didn't want to travel great distances alone, we went to Alpha Centauri, which in this experience had a 4th planet capable of sustaining life. The specific goal was to go to another planet that had life.

The planet was larger than Earth, maybe 3-4 times larger, but like Earth it was a planet that the majority was covered with oceans and there were continents that had a very similar appearance to earths, that is not to say the same specific shapes or arrangements, but a similar land to water ratio, and similar over all form.

I observed the planet from out in space, at a distance similar to that of a geosynchronous satellite above Earth. When you see photographs of Earth from that distance, or even from the shuttles low earth orbit, you can see the atmosphere is very thin, just a sliver on the edge of the planet, but this planet it was substantial, much much thicker.

Still, much like our atmosphere it had water clouds and storm systems, but owing to the thickness of the atmosphere, it had a real three dimensional look.

I did not see a moon, at least not a large moon like Earth. Nor did I see polar ice. I've heard that without our moon earth would not be so hospitable to life because the polar inclination and with it the seasons, would be unstable. However the thick atmosphere on this Alpha Centauri 4th planet may negate that issue buy distributing heat making seasons non-existent.

I was then called back, had to return to my body; and break up a fight between the kids. I have no control over when these happens, the first one was spontaneous when I was trying a relaxation meditation I had just learned. I've repeated the meditation but without the same effect.

The second one happened when I was first put on a drug for ADD, and it was much less pleasant, accompanied by intense buzzy vibration feeling like being electrocuted, and a sound of 10,000 files buzzing around my head, and I kept going in/out of my body, and when I was out I was totally out of control, out in deep space somewhere and no control over where I went.

Still, I'm hoping that eventually a planet finder telescope system will be launched and determine what, if any, planetary systems exist there. So maybe someday it will be verified whether or not such a planet exists orbiting Alpha Centauri.

I knew nothing about Alpha Centauri prior other than the fact that it was close as stars go, 4.35 light years. After this experience I wanted to know more about Alpha Centauri, was it a viable terrestrial planet host? Well, it turns out incredibly that Alpha Centauri is incredibly Sun like. It is 1.09 solar masses (9%) heavier, but slightly older, such that the temperature spectral character of the light it gives off are identical. The orbits of Alpha Centauri A and B are sufficiently distanced that planets out to about the distance of the asteroid belt around Earth could have stable orbits around Alpha Centauri. So very likely Alpha Centauri could host life bearing planets.

So it's interesting to me that given the tremendous variability of stars in our galactic neighborhood, that Alpha Centauri should be so nearly a sun clone.

Bottom line though is that out of body experiences haven't proven anything to me in terms of my own continuance after I die physically, and neither have lucid dreams, so I'm not sure how these people come to the conclusions they do.

Experiment

So far so far... My prayer experiment, I feel it's kind of mixed. Not an overnight success, not an overnight failure. Seems to be a general upswing but still some significant challenges.