Friday, January 29, 2010
Unconditional love
A comment left on yesterday's post on my spiritual blog
by "alongriver" about how God loves us unconditionally got me thinking. Does it say that in the Bible? The answer appears to be no, but a Google search led me (via a reference at the bottom of the Wikipedia page on the topic, and I NEVER read the list of references) to this article:
http://www.infoniac.com/science/scientists-unveil-the-mysteries-of-unconditional-love.html
"The lead-researcher of the team from Montreal University's centre for research into neurophysiology and cognition, professor Mario Beauregard, said: "Unconditional love, extended to others without exception, is considered to be one of the highest expressions of spirituality. However, nothing has been known regarding its neural underpinnings until now."
The evolutionary theory states that people should feel the emotions of unconditional love for parents and children, meaning those who transmit our genes to next generations. But in real life we may experience unconditional love towards people with whom we have no "blood" connection.
In order to discover why this happens, the lead researcher decided to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on assistants who were paid the least but who took care of people with learning difficulties. These assistants served as examples of people who have the ability to feel unconditional love.
During the MRI, subjects were asked to call to mind feelings of unconditional love. Researches saw 7 active areas in the brain. Three of those areas were similar to regions in the brain that became active when it came to romantic love. The other four were different, which means that the feeling of love for someone without the need of being rewarded is different from the feeling of romantic love."
This seemed particularly meaningful to me because my most religious friend takes care of people with learning difficulties; it had the feel of karma in action. I tried to see how this counted as a religious revelation and thus something to write about... and then it hit me. WHY do we connect unconditional love with "the highest expressions of spirituality"? The answer that came to me is: it's not that feeling unwavering love for murderers and pedophiles is somehow laudatory, it's that at least one, and perhaps all, of the parts of the brain that become active while feeling unconditional love (and aren't connected with regular love) are involved in connecting with karma and/or God, and thus that those who feel unconditional love for everyone have ended up becoming deeply spiritually connected consistently enough that we've evolved the belief that that kind of person is especially spiritual.
But more important than understanding the connection between the typical perception of unconditional lovers and super-spirituality is the inescapable (at least to ME) idea that feeling unconditional love for everyone (or at least alot of the people alot of the time) is a way to directly stimulate/activate the part(s) of the brain that can connect you to karma and/or God.
That's HUGE!!
I decided, for no reason that I can point to looking back on it (since after all the article is describing SCIENCE, not philosophy, and what the researchers found is what they found no matter who reports on it) to see if this article had been posted on a recognized news site (it had, in the UK), and this title for one of the top search results froze me in my tracks (since "Omni" is my blogging name):
"Unconditional Love - Omni Love - tribe.net"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The URL of that result was this one:
http://tribes.tribe.net/omni_love/thread/24bb7c0a-6168-4fb8-a8ee-1d2fbd21741f
and this was in fact a thread of this section:
http://tribes.tribe.net/omni_love
I don't believe in coincidences, doubly so when I have urges to do things I can't explain that lead to the coincidental-seeming events; this has the ring of truth to me.
by "alongriver" about how God loves us unconditionally got me thinking. Does it say that in the Bible? The answer appears to be no, but a Google search led me (via a reference at the bottom of the Wikipedia page on the topic, and I NEVER read the list of references) to this article:
http://www.infoniac.com/science/scientists-unveil-the-mysteries-of-unconditional-love.html
"The lead-researcher of the team from Montreal University's centre for research into neurophysiology and cognition, professor Mario Beauregard, said: "Unconditional love, extended to others without exception, is considered to be one of the highest expressions of spirituality. However, nothing has been known regarding its neural underpinnings until now."
The evolutionary theory states that people should feel the emotions of unconditional love for parents and children, meaning those who transmit our genes to next generations. But in real life we may experience unconditional love towards people with whom we have no "blood" connection.
In order to discover why this happens, the lead researcher decided to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on assistants who were paid the least but who took care of people with learning difficulties. These assistants served as examples of people who have the ability to feel unconditional love.
During the MRI, subjects were asked to call to mind feelings of unconditional love. Researches saw 7 active areas in the brain. Three of those areas were similar to regions in the brain that became active when it came to romantic love. The other four were different, which means that the feeling of love for someone without the need of being rewarded is different from the feeling of romantic love."
This seemed particularly meaningful to me because my most religious friend takes care of people with learning difficulties; it had the feel of karma in action. I tried to see how this counted as a religious revelation and thus something to write about... and then it hit me. WHY do we connect unconditional love with "the highest expressions of spirituality"? The answer that came to me is: it's not that feeling unwavering love for murderers and pedophiles is somehow laudatory, it's that at least one, and perhaps all, of the parts of the brain that become active while feeling unconditional love (and aren't connected with regular love) are involved in connecting with karma and/or God, and thus that those who feel unconditional love for everyone have ended up becoming deeply spiritually connected consistently enough that we've evolved the belief that that kind of person is especially spiritual.
But more important than understanding the connection between the typical perception of unconditional lovers and super-spirituality is the inescapable (at least to ME) idea that feeling unconditional love for everyone (or at least alot of the people alot of the time) is a way to directly stimulate/activate the part(s) of the brain that can connect you to karma and/or God.
That's HUGE!!
I decided, for no reason that I can point to looking back on it (since after all the article is describing SCIENCE, not philosophy, and what the researchers found is what they found no matter who reports on it) to see if this article had been posted on a recognized news site (it had, in the UK), and this title for one of the top search results froze me in my tracks (since "Omni" is my blogging name):
"Unconditional Love - Omni Love - tribe.net"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The URL of that result was this one:
http://tribes.tribe.net/omni_love/thread/24bb7c0a-6168-4fb8-a8ee-1d2fbd21741f
and this was in fact a thread of this section:
http://tribes.tribe.net/omni_love
I don't believe in coincidences, doubly so when I have urges to do things I can't explain that lead to the coincidental-seeming events; this has the ring of truth to me.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Bad Thing is FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Almost 2 months ago, I wrote the following and saved it as a draft:
"After a month of stress and anxiety with no progress seeming to be made, suddenly it's been resolved; my $ and my income stream have been restored. The way it happened seems almost... magical. I never even needed to argue the issue directly, it just got to the right person and *POOF* it was suddenly fixed. I asked for it to be fixed... and it has been. In a way that, while not TOTALLY unheard of in the annals of trying to get those who've screwed up to make good, is so unlikely that if you tried to write it into a book or movie script the powers that be would require it to be changed to something more believable.
Does that mean that God intervened on my behalf? Do I have proof that would stand up in a court of law? No. Do I have anything that most people couldn't dismiss as a chain of amazing coincidences coupled with blind luck, wishful thinking and tricks being played by my admittedly muddled mind? No. Using the best analysis I can come up with, based on a lifetime of experiences with the unknown, do *I* believe that the only explanation that covers all the bases is divine intervention?
Yes.
That makes this one of the biggest days of my life. It changes everything. It's a whole new ball game; I'll spend the rest of my life figuring out how to play. I'll keep you posted.
As I'm writing this, it's 12-1. You'll notice that that's not the date on this post; it'll be saved as a draft, and published... I don't know when yet, but you can see the date and time since you're reading it. Why have I done this crazy thing? I suddenly had the urge to write it, just as it stands, write it as a fait accompli and save it to be used... soon, I just feel that I'll need it SOON. I felt the urge to write that The Bad Thing was suddenly fixed, today, when NO visible progress has been made. I don't know where the urge came from, but I'm going with it; I've learned to do that much over the years, when I was crediting everything that resulted to karma.
I read in Oprah's magazine tonight about a time she asked God "What would you have me do?" and He answered her. I immediately went outside, faced into the darkness, and asked Him the same thing. After I came back inside, I had this urge, and followed it.
And now I wait... with a growing hope in my heart."
Obviously I was overly optimistic about the time frame; I'm not the patient type, and assumed that being certain it would be fixed meant that it would be fixed right away.
It WAS fixed in a way that seems magical and improbable; although I NEVER got to talk to anyone at the offending company about the issue in the nearly 3 MONTHS this dragged out, NEVER got any info from them, never got any evidence that anyone was even getting my messages other than the miraculous arrival of a CHECK from them as reported on 1-6, suddenly I got an email today that had been generated by my account on their site... yes, there's now a functioning account again, which means that TBT is FIXED!!
It seemed impossible 2 months ago that I'd NEVER get to talk to anyone, that NO ONE at that company would ever pick up the phone at their desk, and even more impossible that, after they hurled accusations at me and told me that they'd never change their minds and to never contact them again, I could POSSIBLY get this handled without having to discuss, debate, plead my case, SOMETHING... would YOU ever in a million years think that you could get a situation like this rectified without ever finding out what had gone wrong much less been given a chance to fix it? My... inspiration... of 12-1 as to the freakish way this would end was ridiculous but RIGHT; I'm satisfied that DIVINE inspiration, not to mention intervention, took place here.
Also: In my post of 1-1 I said:
"... I was preparing to put birthdays and such on my new calendar, opened it to January and thought with satisfaction, out of the blue, "THIS is the month that TBT was fixed""
Today, when I got up I thought "I'm almost out of January, so it HAS to happen SOON"... and then today was the day.
I'm stunned and grateful. As promised, I'll now be focusing more on my attempts to understand the nature of God. When I remembered that I'd promised to do so, into my mind dropped the idea that I should take a few minutes every day and see if anything presents itself to be posted about; I don't know if this came from God or not, but it's a good way to fulfill my promise so I'm going to do it. Depending on what I get and how often, I'll probably post most of these insights just on my spiritual blog rather than on both blogs; time will tell.
"After a month of stress and anxiety with no progress seeming to be made, suddenly it's been resolved; my $ and my income stream have been restored. The way it happened seems almost... magical. I never even needed to argue the issue directly, it just got to the right person and *POOF* it was suddenly fixed. I asked for it to be fixed... and it has been. In a way that, while not TOTALLY unheard of in the annals of trying to get those who've screwed up to make good, is so unlikely that if you tried to write it into a book or movie script the powers that be would require it to be changed to something more believable.
Does that mean that God intervened on my behalf? Do I have proof that would stand up in a court of law? No. Do I have anything that most people couldn't dismiss as a chain of amazing coincidences coupled with blind luck, wishful thinking and tricks being played by my admittedly muddled mind? No. Using the best analysis I can come up with, based on a lifetime of experiences with the unknown, do *I* believe that the only explanation that covers all the bases is divine intervention?
Yes.
That makes this one of the biggest days of my life. It changes everything. It's a whole new ball game; I'll spend the rest of my life figuring out how to play. I'll keep you posted.
As I'm writing this, it's 12-1. You'll notice that that's not the date on this post; it'll be saved as a draft, and published... I don't know when yet, but you can see the date and time since you're reading it. Why have I done this crazy thing? I suddenly had the urge to write it, just as it stands, write it as a fait accompli and save it to be used... soon, I just feel that I'll need it SOON. I felt the urge to write that The Bad Thing was suddenly fixed, today, when NO visible progress has been made. I don't know where the urge came from, but I'm going with it; I've learned to do that much over the years, when I was crediting everything that resulted to karma.
I read in Oprah's magazine tonight about a time she asked God "What would you have me do?" and He answered her. I immediately went outside, faced into the darkness, and asked Him the same thing. After I came back inside, I had this urge, and followed it.
And now I wait... with a growing hope in my heart."
Obviously I was overly optimistic about the time frame; I'm not the patient type, and assumed that being certain it would be fixed meant that it would be fixed right away.
It WAS fixed in a way that seems magical and improbable; although I NEVER got to talk to anyone at the offending company about the issue in the nearly 3 MONTHS this dragged out, NEVER got any info from them, never got any evidence that anyone was even getting my messages other than the miraculous arrival of a CHECK from them as reported on 1-6, suddenly I got an email today that had been generated by my account on their site... yes, there's now a functioning account again, which means that TBT is FIXED!!
It seemed impossible 2 months ago that I'd NEVER get to talk to anyone, that NO ONE at that company would ever pick up the phone at their desk, and even more impossible that, after they hurled accusations at me and told me that they'd never change their minds and to never contact them again, I could POSSIBLY get this handled without having to discuss, debate, plead my case, SOMETHING... would YOU ever in a million years think that you could get a situation like this rectified without ever finding out what had gone wrong much less been given a chance to fix it? My... inspiration... of 12-1 as to the freakish way this would end was ridiculous but RIGHT; I'm satisfied that DIVINE inspiration, not to mention intervention, took place here.
Also: In my post of 1-1 I said:
"... I was preparing to put birthdays and such on my new calendar, opened it to January and thought with satisfaction, out of the blue, "THIS is the month that TBT was fixed""
Today, when I got up I thought "I'm almost out of January, so it HAS to happen SOON"... and then today was the day.
I'm stunned and grateful. As promised, I'll now be focusing more on my attempts to understand the nature of God. When I remembered that I'd promised to do so, into my mind dropped the idea that I should take a few minutes every day and see if anything presents itself to be posted about; I don't know if this came from God or not, but it's a good way to fulfill my promise so I'm going to do it. Depending on what I get and how often, I'll probably post most of these insights just on my spiritual blog rather than on both blogs; time will tell.
Monday, January 25, 2010
"CHERRIES IN WINTER: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times" by Suzan Colón
The fine folks at Smile.ly sent me a free copy of a lovely book, "CHERRIES IN WINTER: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times" by Suzan Colón:
"Wise, warm and written with self-deprecation and wit, Suzan Colón CHERRIES IN WINTER: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times (Doubleday; November 3, 2009) is an inspiring gem of a memoir about three generations of women who find solace in their kitchen when the hard times hit.."
I read voraciously, and so was excited to get a book, especially one written by a woman; I enjoyed Colón's vision of how strength can be passed between the generations through something as humble and basic as recipes. To read more about the book, or to join Smile.ly and get your own cool free stuff, go here:
http://smile.ly/952.cfm
"Wise, warm and written with self-deprecation and wit, Suzan Colón CHERRIES IN WINTER: My Family's Recipe for Hope in Hard Times (Doubleday; November 3, 2009) is an inspiring gem of a memoir about three generations of women who find solace in their kitchen when the hard times hit.."
I read voraciously, and so was excited to get a book, especially one written by a woman; I enjoyed Colón's vision of how strength can be passed between the generations through something as humble and basic as recipes. To read more about the book, or to join Smile.ly and get your own cool free stuff, go here:
http://smile.ly/952.cfm
