Author: admin@wholeuni

Symbolism & Religious Mystery, Pt. 2

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An excerpt from Joseph Campbell’s Thou Art That

Part Two – Experiencing Mystery

As we have previously mentioned, the primary purpose of a dynamic mythology, which we may underscore as its properly religious function, is to awaken and maintain in the person an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of that ultimate mystery that transcends every name and form, “from which,” as we read in the Upanishads, “words turn back.” In recent decades, theology has been often concentrated on a literary exercise in the explanation of archaic texts that are made up of historically conditioned, ambiguous names, incidents, sayings, and actions, all of which are attributed to “the ineffable.” Faith, we might say, in old-fashioned scripture or faith in the latest science belong equally at this time to those alone who as yet have no idea of how mysterious, really, is the mystery of themselves.

Into how many of us has the weight described by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger been born that “this life of yours that you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense the whole; only the whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one simple glance. This . . . is what the Brahmims express in that sacred, mystic formula that is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, that is you.”

This is the basic insight of all metaphysical discourse, which is immediately known—as knowable to each alone—only when the names and forms, what I call the masks of God, have fallen away. Yet, as many have observed, including William of Occam, Immanuel Kant, and Henry Adams, the category, or name, of unity itself is of the mind and may not be attributed to any supposed substance, person, or “Ground of Being.” Who, then, may speak to you, or to any of us, of the being or nonbeing of God, unless by implication to point beyond his words and himself and all he knows, or can tell, toward the transcendent, the experience of mystery.

The question sometimes arises as to whether the experience of mystery and transcendence is more available to those who have undergone some kind of religious and spiritual training, for whom, as I have said, it has all been named completely. It may be less available to them precisely because they have got it all named in the book. One way to deprive yourself of an experience is indeed to expect it. Another is to have a name for it before you have the experience. Carl Jung said that one of the functions of religion is to protect us against the religious experience. That is because in formal religion, it is all concretized and formulated. But, by its nature, such an experience is one that only you can have. As soon as you classify it with anybody else’s, it loses its character. A preconceived set of concepts catches the experience, cutting it short so that it does not come directly to us. Ornate and detailed religions protect us against an exploding mystical experience that would be too much for us.

There are two orders of meditation: discursive meditation and ordered meditation. In discursive meditation, such as that advocated by Ignatius Loyola, you consider some religious scene—the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin or the story of the Crucifixion—arranging it as one would a stage set in the imagination. This is a protective prelude to one order of meditation. Another order of meditation is explosive because it carries you beyond all names, forms, and concepts. And then you cannot get back. If, however, you have engaged for several years in discursive meditation first, it serves as an intermediary state by which you can get back. In places in which meditation has been practiced for a long time—in contemplative orders, for example—this is well understood.

Let us find the way to mystery through a meditation on the birth, life, and death of Jesus. In this regard, the first century question, whether Christianity was a mystery religion or the mystery religion of which all the others were re-figurements is relevant. The many symbols, such as the animals of the Egyptian mystery religions breathing their spirit on the infant Jesus—the bull of the god Osiris and the ass of his brother Set, there in the manger—suggest their early understanding that this was indeed so. So, too, in the same nativity scene, the Magi wear the hat of Mithra as they pay homage.

It is clear that, in Orpheus and Christ, we have exactly the same archetype, with the motif of leaving the physical world, still symbolized with a cross in astronomy, for the spiritual. They leave the Earth, symbol of Mother, to go to the realm of the Father.

In the translation of a Neolithic fertility rite into a spiritual fertility rite, we see the death and resurrection of the grain refigured in the symbol of the death of the old Adam and birth of the new. As I have observed before, although I do not know how to prove it, the great insight of St. Paul on the road to Damascus was that the calamity of the death of this young rabbi, Jesus, was a counterpart of the death and resurrection of the saviour found in the classical mysteries. Paul also grasped that the Christian myth of the Fall at the Tree of the Garden and the Redemption at Calvary on the Tree of Redemption are the two aspects of the two Trees in the Garden of Eden. The first, the Tree of the Fall, represents passage from the eternal into the realm of time. The second is the Tree of the return from the realm of time to the spiritual. So that Tree is the threshold tree, the laurel tree, which may be seen in its two aspects, going from the sacred to the profane and from the profane back into the sacred.

When Man ate of the fruit of the Tree, he discovered himself in the field of duality instead of the field of unity. As a result, he finds himself out, in exile. The two cherubim placed at the gate are there representative of the world of the pairs of opposites in which, having been cast out of the world of unity, he is now located. You are kept in exile by your commitment to that world.

Christ goes past that—“I and the Father are one”—back into the realm of unity from which we have been expelled. These are mysteries. Here is an echo and a translation into another set of images of what we ourselves are experiencing. What comes forth now with the grain, as particles of that one life that informs all things, is the revelation of the spiritual unity in all its aspects. Here also is the revelation that one life can be personified as a Deity, as in the Christian tradition, and everything comes from the Deity. But the personification is not what is important. What we have is a trans-theological, transpersonified revelation.

When one is ready to see the eternal flashing, as it were, through the latticework of time, one can experience mystery. This is especially so in artwork that carries mythological symbols that speak to us still.

All this may be observed in the surface of an ancient two-sided vase. On one side, we see Triptolemus as an old man with Hermes before him with grains of wheat. Hermes is holding the caduceus. Turning the vase, we see that beyond this, Dionysos is led by a satyr with the chalice of wine. Triptolemus is associated with the bread, the grain, and Dionysos with the wine. These are the elements of the Roman Catholic sacraments of the Mass.

On a fifth century b.c. red-figured ceramic piece, one may see the goddess with the two powers, the serpent power and the solar power. The serpent power is the bite of death to ego that opens the eye and the ear to the eternal.

There are two orders of religious perspective. One is ethical, pitting good against evil. In the biblically grounded Christian West, the accent is on ethics, on good against evil. We are thus bound by our religion itself to the field of duality. The mystical perspective, however, views good and evil as aspects of one process. One finds this in the Chinese yin-yang sign, the dai-chi.

We have, then, these two totally different religious perspectives. The idea of good and evil absolutes in the world after the fall is biblical and as a result you do not rest on corrupted nature. Instead, you correct nature and align yourself with the good against evil. Eastern cults, on the other hand, put you in touch with nature, where what Westerners call good and evil interlock. But by what right, this Eastern tradition asks, do we call these things evil when they are of the process of nature?

I was greatly impressed when I was first in Japan to find myself in a world that knew nothing of the Fall in the Garden of Eden and consequently did not consider nature corrupt. In the Shinto scriptures one reads that the processes of nature cannot be evil. In our tradition, every natural impulse is sinful unless it has been purified in some manner.

In some artistic representations, one sees the Deity and at His right stand the three Graces. The muses are clothed because art clothes mystery. The final revelation is the naked mystery itself. The first of the three Graces is Euphrosyne, or rapture, sending forth the energy of Apollo into the world. The second is Aglaia, splendour, bringing the energy back. Then, embracing the two, we find Thalia, abundance. One recognizes that these are the functions of the Trinity in the Christian biblically based tradition in which these same powers are given a masculine form.

Finally, it does not matter whether you are going to name them male and female. Transcendence is beyond all such naming. This symbol refers to what might simply be called total meditation. Father is Thalia, the abundance who unites the other two. The Son is Euphrosyne, the rapture of love that pours itself into the world. The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is Aglaia, who carries us back. The energy itself stems from Apollo, who in the Christian tradition is the one Divine substance of which the three of the Trinity are personalities.

Remember my earlier statement that the experience of mystery comes not from expecting it but through yielding all your programs, because your programs are based on fear and desire. Drop them and the radiance comes.

Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. Through his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces and his TV interviews with Bill Moyers he introduced his views on mythology to millions around the world.This excerpt was republished from Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Mystery. © 2001 New World Library.

Read more at http://www.themindfulword.org/2013/symbolism-religious-mystery-joseph-campbell/ #MHMue8joMWC8pFyx.99

Manly P. Hall on Mindfulness

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In our daily manifestation we are constantly in the presence of energies, but we take them for granted. We never question how it is that we can raise a finger, use a typewriter, or play a musical instrument. We see nothing mysterious about taking a walk, talking with our friends, or performing various arduous tasks in the name of health. The mystery behind the commonplace is something we do not understand but use constantly with little inquiry into our own nature. We have never questioned the process by which we are alive because we more or less take for granted that the questions cannot be answered and that whatever lies behind us is a mystery. Science has never undertaken to explore it. Philosophy has never been able to create a completely comprehensible exposition of principles, and religion deals in such abstract vagaries that we are not sure what part is true and what part is imaginary. But some have questioned and from the questioning developed various concepts by means of which it might be possible for us to explore this unknown world of causes.

Man specializes with his own mind, and whatever most occupies his mind is most supported by his resources. Persons interested in making a living devote their energies to this task, only occasionally taking time for meditation or reflection. It would seem, therefore, that there must be a motion, a process within our own thinking through which we can create the instrument for self-exploration. There must be some way of turning the mind from external addictions to the examination of internals. Most persons have never attempted to do this, and most do not even believe it possible. But there must be some way to use our faculties to discover ourselves, rather than using them constantly to buildup our store of knowledge about externals which, in the last analysis, are of very little basic importance to ourselves. To be given the equipment that we possess, only to use it for a few years, and then have both ourselves and our equipment fade away, seems to be contrary to the economy of nature. It would appear more reasonable that we have not yet attained to that degree of evolution which will enable us to develop the faculties of self-examination. They must lurk somewhere in our extrasensory perception band, and if we cannot find them, we will never know ourselves nor actually experience our true place in the universe or in the universal plan for ourselves.

It was first assumed that before we before we could penetrate the illusion of matter, we had to turn our attention away from matter, that to free our inner equipment for its apperceptive function, we had to relieve it of the burden of its continuous perceptive function, for every sensory perception that we possess is held in fascination in the world of phenomena. It is not so likely that we will be able to disentangle our functional resources and turn them in another direction. In order to explore causes, we must break the tie which forces us to continually use our energies as an outflowing toward externals. This is accomplished through a series of experiences in which we come to understand by degrees the unity of this life principle in ourselves. To the degree we understand life, we participate in it, and we are closer to enlightenment when we are tied to reality by bonds of intense sympathy. If our dedications are towards enlightenment, we have a greater probability of attaining it than when our dedications are turned to other things and enlightenment is merely an avocational interest.

To attempt this it is necessary to reverse the involutionary process which ties energy to matter, and set up an evolutionary process within ourselves. Involution is the breaking up of one life into many manifestations. Evolution is the restoration of unity, the bringing back of diversity until oneness is re-established. Illusion is diversity. Reality is unity. To quiet down the experiences of diversity, to gradually bring separate things together, to search for unities where we have accepted diversities, to seek forever the one in the many and to discover finally the one behind the many – these are the labors of spiritual evolution. We begin symbolically by seeking the common ground of things and, in so doing, overcome forever the antagonisms and the conflicts which arise from our inability to perceive the identities of life.

~Excerpted from Manly P Hall Lecture #193 – “The Mystical Experience Union with The External Self.

Where Do We Come From?

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The 7 Most Intriguing Philosophical Arguments for the Existence of God

Nietzsche said God is dead, but here are seven fascinating and provocative philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

This article originally appeared on io9.com, and is reprinted here with their permission.

Nietzsche is famous for saying that God is dead, but news of The Almighty’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated. Here are some of the most fascinating and provocative philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

To be clear, these are philosophical arguments. They’re neither rooted in religious scripture nor any kind of scientific observation or fact. Many of these arguments, some of which date back thousands of years, serve as interesting intellectual exercises, teasing apart what we think we know about the universe and our place within it from what we think we’re capable of knowing. Other arguments, like the last two listed, are attempts to reconcile questions that currently plague scientists and philosophers.
Now, none of these arguments make a definitive case for the existence of God, and many of them are (fairly) easily debunked or problematized (as I’ll try to show). But at the very least, they offer considerable food for thought.

Finally, by “God” or “god,” we’re not talking about any specific religious deity. As this list shows, the term can encompass everything from a perfect, omnipotent being to something that can be considered even a bit banal.

1) The very notion of an all-perfect being means God has to exist

This is the classic ontological, or a priori, argument. It was first articulated in 1070 by St. Anselm, who argued that because we have a conception of an all-perfect being — which he defined as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” — it has to exist. In his essay “Proslogion,” St. Anselm conceived of God as a being who possesses all conceivable perfection. But if this being “existed” merely as an idea in our minds, then it would be less perfect than if it actually existed. So it wouldn’t be as great as a being who actually existed, something that would thus contradict our definition of God — a being who’s supposed to be all-perfect. Thus, God must exist.

Okay, admittedly, this sounds a bit weird by modern standards. Actually, it even sounded weird back then; Gaunilo of Marmoutiers ripped apart Anselm’s idea by asking people to conceive of an island “more excellent” than any other island, revealing the flaws in this type of argumentation. Today, we know that this type of a priori argument (i.e., pure deduction) is grossly limited, often tautological, and utterly fails to take empirical evidence into account.

But surprisingly, it was a position defended by none other than Rene Descartes. His take on the matter is a bit more illustrative; Descartes, in his “Fifth Meditation,” wrote that the conception of a perfect being who lacks existence is like imagining a triangle whose interior angles don’t sum to 180 degrees (he was big on the notion of innate ideas and the doctrine of clear and distinct perception). So, because we have the idea of a supremely perfect being, we have to conclude that a supremely perfect being exists; to Descarte, God’s existence was just as obvious, logical, and self-evident as the most basic mathematical truths.

2) Something must have caused the Universe to exist

Philosophers call this one the First-Cause Argument, or the Cosmological Argument, and early advocates of this line of reasoning included Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s predicated on the assumption that every event must have a cause, and that cause in turn must have a cause, and on and on and on. Assuming there’s no end to this regression of causes, this succession of events would be infinite. But an infinite series of causes and events doesn’t make sense (a causal loop cannot exist, nor a causal chain of infinite length). There’s got to be something — some kind of first cause — that is itself uncaused. This would require some kind of “unconditioned” or “supreme” being — which the philosophers call God.

I’m sure you’ve already come up with your own objections to the First-Cause Argument, including the issue of a first-causer having to have its own cause. Also, infinity does in fact appear to be a fundamental quality of the universe. All this said, however, cosmologists are still struggling to understand the true nature of time and what “caused” the Big Bang to happen in the first place.

3) There has to be something rather than nothing

Called the Cosmological Argument from Contingency, this is a slightly different take on the First-Cause Argument. The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz put it best when he wrote,

Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason … is found in a substance which … is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.

Because it’s impossible for only contingent beings to exist, he argued, a necessary being must exist — a being we call God. Writing in “Monadology,” he wrote that “no fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise.”

More recently, the philosopher Richard Swinburne looked at the issue more inductively, writing,

There is quite a chance that if there is a God he will make something of the finitude and complexity of a universe. It is very unlikely that a universe would exist uncaused, but rather more likely that God would exist uncaused. The existence of the universe…can be made comprehensible if we suppose that it is brought about by God.

4) Something had to have designed the Universe

The Design Argument, or teleological argument, suggests we live in a Universe that surely had to be designed. The cosmos, goes the argument, exhibits orderliness and (apparent) purpose — for example, everything within the universe adheres to the laws of physics, and many things within it are correlated with one another in a way that appears purposeful. As William Paley argued, just as the existence of a watch indicates the presence of an intelligent mind, the existence of the universe and various phenomena within it indicates the presence of an even greater intelligence, namely God.
Needless to say, this line of argumentation was far more compelling prior to the advent of naturalism (the idea that everything can be explained without the benefit of supernatural intervention) and Darwinian evolution. Indeed, Darwin served as a kind of death knell to the Design Argument, at least as far as the biological realm is concerned. We know that the human eye — in all its apparent complexity and purpose — is not the product of a designer, but rather the painstaking result of variation and selection.
But the Design Argument isn’t entirely dead yet. The exquisite fine-tuning of the “biophilic universe” has lead some to conclude there is in fact a greater intelligence at work. To counter this line of reasoning, however, philosophers say we should simply defer to the anthropic principle, which is interesting because theists say the same thing!

5) Consciousness proves that immaterial entities exist

We still don’t have a working theory of consciousness, giving rise to the notorious Hard Problem. Indeed, subjective awareness, or qualia, is quite unlike anything we normally deal with in our otherwise material universe. The weirdness of consciousness, and our inability to understand it, has given rise to the notion of substance dualism, also known as Cartesian dualism, which describes two fundamental kinds of stuff: the mental and the material. Dualists say that material on its own is incapable of producing qualia — one’s capacity to have internal thoughts, subjective awareness, and feelings.

Theists have used substance dualism to make the claim for an independent “realm” of existence that’s distinct from the physical world. It’s a scenario similar to the one experience by Neo in “The Matrix”; his mental experiences occurred in a realm separate from the one that hosted his body. Theistic philosophers have taken this idea to the next level, using it to infer the existence of otherworldly or immaterial entities, including God. It’s a bit of a stretch, and an argument that could use a lot more evidence.

6) We’re living in a computer simulation run by hacker gods

God is in the eye of the beholder. Unlike Anselm’s take on God as something “that which nothing greater can be conceived,” gods can also consist of entities vastly beyond our comprehension, reach, and control. If the Simulation Hypothesis is true, and we’re the product of posthuman ancestors (or some unknown entity), we simply have no choice but to recognize them as gods. They’re running the show, and our collective (or even individual) behavior may be monitored — or even controlled — by them. These hacker gods would be akin the gnostic gods of yesteryear — powerful entities doing their own thing, and without our best interests in mind.

7) Aliens are our gods

We have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. A possible solution to the Fermi Paradox is the notion of directed panspermia — the idea that aliens spark life on other planets, like sending spores or probes to fertile planets, and then leave, or monitor and control the process covertly. By definition, therefore, they would be like gods to us.
This idea has been addressed many times in scifi, including the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Chase”, in which a god-like species is responsible for all life in the Alpha Quadrant, or Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” in which an alien can be seen seeding the primordial Earth with life. Even Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001” is a take on this idea, with the monoliths instigating massive evolutionary leaps.

A Welcome from Bob Thurman

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Dear Friends,

For more than the past half century, I have been learning from many teachers, while also serving as a teacher to undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy and religion, as well as serving people seeking understanding and practice in spiritual settings outside the academy. I have shared with them teachings that have proved helpful in my life’s journey, especially teachings which have come from my long experience with Theravada and Mahayana teachings descended from the Shakyamuni Buddha. I have also found and shared a lot of valuable insights and practices sourced from other Eastern traditions, Western philosophies and sciences, and from Western esoteric traditions.

During this long teaching career, I have often been asked by people, “How can I find a spiritual teacher?” “What should I study?” “even “I have a problem which the usual doctors and teachers have been unable to help me with; what alternatives are there?”

To the academic students of whatever level, I never recommend specific spiritual teachers, but share with them a “rule of thumb.” Study a lot from books and also meet lots of teachers, but politely part from anyone who tells you he or she has everything you need and urges you not to consult with anyone else.

To the spiritual students, on the other hand, I may recommend a teacher but my main focus would be to urge them to learn a lot through broad study, no matter with whatever teacher or teachers they may engage in specific practices. I have observed there is a tendency today to think that learning becomes unnecessary when one has a teacher, that one just has to follow the teacher’s advice and just meditate. In fact, in most traditions, experiential wisdom is the true door to liberation, and there are three types of wisdom—born of learning, born of critical reflection based on that learning, and only thirdly wisdom born of meditative realization based on both.

In this setting, I am delighted to welcome you to TheLifeSite on the world wide web. In the parts of The Site I am responsible for, I and my colleagues will finally able to introduce seekers to responsible and capable servants of their quests. Of course, we do not pretend to be omniscient ourselves, so we may not always succeed in steering you to the very best persons, studies, opportunities for you. There are undoubtedly may excellent teachers and teachings we may not find right away, and there may be some avenues we may cease to recommend upon further investigation—final judgment is still the seeker’s responsibility. But we have made our best effort to assure you of the highest quality of everything we direct you toward.

A while back, in a conference setting, I came up with a principle I would like to leave you with. Religions and spiritual traditions are “service industries,” they were founded by great beings who sought to serve other sentient beings to the best of their abilities, and their succeeding ministers and teachers must carry on as servants of succeeding generations of students and disciples. When they become institutions and their authorities come to think that they own their followers and must expand their numbers, they betray their founding purpose. So as you bravely set out on or continue with your quest for life’s meaning and best fulfillments, do not be afraid to expect the best service of teachers and companions, do not accept domination from anyone, and while you may yourself wish gratefully to offer service and devotion yourself sometimes, always remember that the best reward of a good teacher is for the student to realize the teaching, and express that realization in benevolence toward others.

Welcome to TheLifeSite! And best of luck in your joyful journey toward the meaningful, the truly blissful, and even the miraculous!

Robert A. F Thurman

JeyTSong Khapa Pofessor of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University
Author on Buddhism, 50 Year friend and student of H. H. Dalai Lama

Video: How Wolves Change Rivers

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When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the United States after being absent nearly 70 years, the most remarkable “trophic cascade” occurred. What is a trophic cascade and how exactly do wolves change rivers? George Monbiot explains in this movie remix.

Visit http://sustainableman.org/ to explore the world of sustainability.
For more from George Monbiot, visit http://www.monbiot.com/

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir

B-Roll Credits:
“Greater Yellowstone Coalition – Wolves” (http://bit.ly/1lK4LaT)
“Wolf Mountain” (http://bit.ly/1hgi6JE)
“Primodial – Yellowstone” (https://vimeo.com/77097538)
“Timelapse: Yellowstone National Park” (http://bit.ly/1kF5axc)
“Yellowstone” (http://bit.ly/1bPI6DM)
“Howling Wolves – Heulende Wölfe” (http://bit.ly/1c2Oidv)
Interview from TED: “For more wonder, rewild the world” by George Monbiot
“Fooled by Nature: Beaver Dams” (http://bit.ly/NGgQSU)
Music Credits:
“Unfoldment, Revealment, Evolution, Exposition, Integration, Arson” by Chris Zabriskie (http://bit.ly/1c2uckW)

FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the US Copyright Law.

For any concerns or questions, you may contact us athttp://sustainableman.org/contact/

See more at: http://sustainableman.org/how-wolves-change-rivers/#sthash.sgkadLVt.dpuf

Top 3 Benefits of Fasting

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Fasting has been the subject of controversy for years, most often we hear about the dangers of it without any mention of the tremendous benefits it can bring to your mind, body and soul. Fasting is a tradition that was incorporated into many ancient cultures, from ancient Vedic traditions to Buddhist traditions and more.

Fasting is not to be confused with starvation, it’s the process of restrain and control from the sensorial experience of eating and at the same time making sure you are hydrated with good, clean fluoride/ chlorine free water. Our senses here are a deception and cloud the inner voice. If one can maintain control and discipline that’s great, at the same time one can be overcome by their senses and live completely from the mind.

It’s December 2012 and the planet is going through a large shift in consciousness. Human beings are starting to see behind the curtain that has been blinding the masses for years. We are waking up to the fact that all the worlds resources and major industries lie in the hands of a small group of multinational organizations. Much of what we’ve learned about health and our bodies has been completely fabricated and false. The health and pharmaceutical industries are funded by the same families, they go hand in hand. Once we take something on as truth, it becomes truth and we create that reality for ourselves. We are not really resonating with the current state of the planet, many of us have a desire to see change and are waking up to the solution we all hold inside of us. Fasting helps absorb the high frequency energy that is currently hitting the planet, staying clean and light is a tremendous help and can assist you in raising your frequency and vibration. We are not our senses, and we need to feed our soul too. Our ancient civilizations new many things we are currently learning and have yet to understanding, their knowledge didn’t stop with astronomy. Truth is, there are too many benefits of fasting to count!

If you want to understand the secrets of the universe, think in terms in energy, vibration and frequency – Nikola Tesla

Fasting is the strongest appeal to the human being’s natural powers of healing and self-rejuvenation, on both a spiritual and corporeal level – Heinz Fahrner, M.D.

The body’s wondrous ability to autolyze (or self-digest) and destroy needless tissue such as fat, tumors, blood vessel plaque, and other nonessential and diseased tissues, while conserving essential tissues, gives the fast the ability to restore physiologic youth to the system. By removing or lessening the burden of diseased tissue, including the fatty tissue narrowing the blood vessels, fasting increases the blood flow and subsequent oxygenation and nutrient delivery to vital organs throughout the body- Joel Fuhrman, M.D

Due to [the] effects of fasting, a fast can help you heal with greater speed; cleanse your liver, kidneys, and colon; purify your blood; help you loose excess weight and water; flush out toxins; clear the eyes and tongue; and cleanse the breath.” – James F. Balch, M.D

1. Fasting helps protect against brain disease:

Researchers at the at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore have found evidence that fasting for one or two days a week can prevent the effects of Alzheimer and Parkinson’s disease. Research also found that cutting the daily intake to 500 calories a day for two days out of the seven can show clear beneficial effects for the brain.

2. Fasting cuts your risk of heart disease and diabetes:

Regularly going a day without food reduces your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Studies show that fasting releases a significant surge in human growth hormone, which is associated with speeding up metabolism and burning off fat. Shedding fat is known to cut the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Doctors are even starting to consider fasting as a treatment.

3. Fasting effectively treats cancer in human cells:

A study from the scientific journal of aging found that cancer patients who included fasting into their therapy perceived fewer side effects from chemotherapy. All test conducted so far show that fasting improves survival, slow tumor growth and limit the spread of tumors. The National Institute on Aging has also studied one type of breast cancer in detail to further understand the effects of fasting on cancer. As a result of fasting, the cancer cells tried to make new proteins and took other steps to keep growing and dividing. As a result of these steps, which in turn led to a number of other steps, damaging free radical molecules were created which broke down the cancer cells own DNA and caused their destruction! It’s cellular suicide, the cancer cell is trying to replace all of the stuff missing in the bloodstream it needs to survive after a period of fasting, but can’t. In turn it tries to create them and this leads to it’s own destruction.

A way to beat cancer cells may not be to try to find drugs that kill them specifically but to confuse them by generating extreme environments, such as fasting that only normal cells can quickly respond to – Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and biological sciences at the University of Southern

Man is the only ‘animal’ who persists in eating when he is sick, even though he may have no appetite and food makes him nauseous – Alan Cott, M.D

Sources:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-year-new-understanding http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120208152254.htm http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1373164/Regular-fasting-lower-risk-heart-disease-diabetes.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/18/fasting-protect-brain-diseases-scientists
http://www.nia.nih.gov/newsroom/announcements/2011/07/study-finds-fasting-may-help-reduce-negative- side-effects

 

 

 

Endothelium, Heal Thyself (Self-Mending Vessels)

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The endothelium, the cellular layer lining the body’s blood vessels, is extremely resilient.

Measuring just a few hundred nanometers in thickness, this super-tenuous structure routinely withstands blood flow, hydrostatic pressure, stretch and tissue compression to create a unique and highly dynamic barrier that maintains the organization necessary to partition tissues from the body’s circulatory system.

It’s also extremely adaptable. In instances when the barrier must be physically breached to enable immune cells to reach various regions of the body to fight infection, the endothelium cooperates with leukocytes to create openings to provide the infection-fighting cells ready access to their targets. By and large, these ensuing “micro-wounds” are short-lived; as soon as the cells have crossed the endothelium, these pores and gaps quickly heal, restoring the system’s efficient barrier function. In cases when these gaps fail to close — and leakage occurs — the results can be devastating, leading to dramatic pathologies including sepsis and acute lung injury.

The mechanism underlying this highly intuitive capability has not been well understood. Now a research team led by Christopher V. Carman, PhD, of the Center for Vascular Biology Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), using a combination of advanced fluorescence imaging and electron microscopy to monitor intracellular signaling dynamics, has amassed real-time information that shows that biomechanical signals are what sets this healing process in motion. Described in The Journal of Cell Biology, the new findings suggest that rather than structural robustness per se, the barrier function of the endothelium relies on an enormous self-restorative capacity.

“When people talk about biomechanics, they’re saying that cells are able to sense and respond to changes in force,” says Carman, who is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “In other words, it’s not only hormones and chemical signals that influence cell behaviors. Cells can actually sense physical cues and thereby modulate their function.” Specifically, the new findings demonstrate that the endothelium senses an acute loss of preexisting isometric tension, and that downstream of this biomechanical signal, the ensuing recovery response generates reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are responsible for coordinating the micro-wound closure process.

Carman’s previous work explored precisely how leukocytes generate vascular micro-wounds in the first place, uncovering a novel endothelial piercing activity — “invasive podosomes” — that are generated by the leukocytes. In this new paper, he hypothesized an equally active role for the endothelium in closing the pores and gaps made by the leukocytes.

To test this hypothesis, his laboratory set up experimental models that mimicked acute, intense inflammation. Using dynamic time-lapse and high-resolution confocal microscopy, the investigators could see the process by which leukocytes were breaching the endothelial cell. In the course of a 10-minute span, they observed that a single endothelial cell tolerated the passage of at least seven leukocytes directly through its body, and that within this brief period, the gaps closed, leaving no sign of the pores.

“The cell’s restorative capacity was just so striking,” says Carman. “But these early investigations were still inadequate to tell us how the breaches were being closed. We had to dig down to the sub-cellular level to understand the underlying activities and the molecular signaling mechanisms that were orchestrating these activities.”

Subsequent experiments, led by co-first author Roberta Martinelli, PhD, revealed that in response to micrometer-scale disruptions caused by the transmigrating leukocytes, the endothelial cells were generating unique ventral lamellipodia structures, which were then migrating to the sites of the micro-wounds to close them up. “The ventral lamellipodia were responding to the sensation of an acute loss of preexisting isometric tension,” explains Martinelli, a senior scientist in the Carman laboratory, who compares the cell to a circus tent tethered in place by strategically placed ropes and stakes.

“If you cut one of the ropes holding up the tent, two things will happen,” she adds. “First the part of the tent that was under tension will undergo a recoil which will lead to a relaxation, leaving one part of the tent untethered and flapping in the breeze. At the same time, the remaining sets of ropes and stakes will have to bear the extra load. In the case of the endothelial cells, this translates to a force loading event.”

Existing studies have focused almost exclusively on force loading (physical pulling or tugging on cells) as response triggers. But by using new devices, the team was able to push, prod, stretch and unstretch cells in very specific ways.

Vascular endothelial cell healing a transcellular wound.

“Our experiments told us that endothelial micro-wounding is actually a tension-loss signal [i.e. force unloading] and that this signal cued the recovery response,” adds Carman.

This response, he adds, is fundamentally dependent on proteins (i.e. NADPH oxidases) that can generate reactive oxygen species (ROS), specifically hydrogen peroxide.

ROS are widely implicated in causing cellular, tissue and organ damage when present at excessive levels in the body. But, these findings show that low levels of these molecules — when produced in discrete locations within the cell — are highly protective.

“It’s tempting to speculate that excess ROS causes vascular breakdown by short-circuiting the recuperative response process and creating ‘white noise’ that dis-coordinates and disrupts micro-wound healing,” adds Carman. “It appears that we’ve got an essential homeostatic self-repair mechanism that is completely dependent on the generation of intracellular ROS, which is opposite to our typical thinking about ROS in cardiovascular health and disease.”

Adds William Aird, MD, PhD, Director of BIDMC’s Center for Vascular Biology Research, “These findings suggest a new way of thinking about how to deal with pathologic breakdown of the endothelial barrier. We know that a ‘leaky endothelium’ is a central part of the pathogenesis of a number of serious diseases, including sepsis, acute lung injury, and ischemic cardiovascular diseases, as well as chronic inflammatory conditions such as diabetes and arthritis. In addition to the presence of excessive barrier insults, it now appears that leakage can result when the endothelium loses its self-restorative capacity and its dynamic reserve to heal micro-wounds.”

Credit: Christopher Carman