12.28.2008 – The Pale Blue Dot

I find this video gives me perspective. And a dose of much needed humility when it’s necessary. We really are, in fact, extremely insignificant in the grand scheme of things!

12.23.2008 – Teetering

I find myself often teetering between feeling that I’m atheist and feeling that I’m agnostic. And I guess most often I think my agnosticism battles the logical side of my mind for just a little bit of control.

I guess I look at it this way. I really have a hard time believing that ‘this is it’. I mean this life. Our lifespans are really a nano-fraction of a split second in the endless expanse of time and space. If this life was really all that there is for us…how amazingly insignificant it really is. The impact that we would have on the world and universe around us is, for all intents and purposes, negligible. I find it hard to swallow that we are given such an amazingly small portion of time to live our lives and that is all there is.

And how sad it is to think that once we are gone, we are gone and there is nothing more. I mean, obviously, the athiest side of me buys that theory. But if that’s the truth, then it almost seems like…why bother trying to better ourselves. What’s the real use in any of this? Why break our necks day in and day out just to extend what will ultimately just end anyway.

I suppose some would say, well then we should live each day of our lives likes it’s the last one we are ever going to have. I find that a bit self -centered…but also justifiable.  It’s hard, though, to feel that way without a massive foreboding feeling that at any time it can all just end and all the people that we love in life will be gone and we’ll never have those connections again.

It’s probably just that FEAR of the end that keeps me thinking that there may be something else. It’s certainly isn’t a theistic perspective. I guess i just have to HOPE that in some way we live on. Whether in some collective universal consciousness, or possibly some individual spiritual self awareness of some kind. Obviously, I don’t have the answers. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think any of us ever will. But I’m also not sold on the fact that this is all there is.

12.10.2008 – My Thoughts on Healing

All of my life I’ve been presented with ‘stories’ of ‘miracle healings’. There are countless examples of stories from people who claim to either have themselves been ‘healed’ or have personal connections to people who have similar experiences.

I remember attenting church services where a ‘special guest’ would be speaking that day and that special guest was concidered a ‘faith healer’.  I remember seeing how after the sermon the audience would be whipped into a frenzy by the music being playing and the singing and ‘whorshipping’. And I’d witness the ‘mass hysteria’ that would happen at the front of the church while people would line up for what seemed like hours just waiting for this person to lay hands on them and send the healing power of God to them to cure them of their ailments. I remember seeing those people, often times, stricken by the ‘overwhelming power of God’ and physically falling on the the ground wrything in a religious stooper of some kind.

I know most of us have seen or experienced this sort of thing in some way. There have been many movies and TV shows that have poked fun at the whole scene. Personally, the entire thing always felt very odd and unnatural and extremely fake to me.

Here’s my take on why this MIGHT work sometimes, and why these folks may have actually been healed as a result of this phenomenon…

I believe in the power of the human mind. I believe that there is SO much we don’t know and understand about the way the brain works and it’s power and control over the human body. That being said…I believe that the ‘power of suggestion’ and or ‘faith’ can work wonders within a person.

I used the word faith because I think that when a person is offering themselves up to one of these ‘healers’, they truly have the faith in their minds that these people are doing what they claim. I think that when they have 100% faith that they are being touched by the hand of God and that they can be healed that way, their own brains can send out signals to the body that can repair itself.

Obviously, I am no physician. I am no psychologist. But what I am is a realist. It’s been said many, many times that we use VERY little of the capacity and power of our brains. So, with that being said, this is just a theory that happened to cross my mind and this is where I post those thoughts. My intensions are not to offend those who believe. My intension is only to pursue MY truth in hopes of one day finding THE truth. The ONE truth that makes sense to me.