An old and dear friend Roberta asked for advice because they respected their spiritual values. She explains that her brother, Warren, along the black sheep of the family had with religion. Been filled after a life-style soap opera with conflicts, disappointments and a messy divorce, Warren claims to have a spiritual awakening that life is deeply satisfying. His persistence was annoying his older sister. When Donna stopping for breath, asked RobertaWarren. He wanted to know what is currently wrong with the brother-life soap opera.
Woman hesitated a moment before answering.
Well, nothing really. Warren has stopped his carousing and running around with other women and came back to Susie. He has patched things up with children and has made his career. Pays his debts with interest.
Roberta could not resist the temptation. And you disappointed?
She was angry with herQuestion.
Of course not! I'm happy for him, but he continues to call to talk about my lack of faith. Warren is a fanatic about it. He wants to accept Christ, our relationship with God, as, whatever that means. Why should I do if I have not ruined my life, as he did?
Rarely, someone opened a door so far for the spiritual dialogue between two friends who live the faith a factor in the life of personal satisfaction! Roberta quickly pointed out the difference between a woman randomlyThe acceptance of religious beliefs and a center of life in a covenant relationship or a meaningful connection with God because her boyfriend was wrong, do not need a relationship because they never had made the mistake of Warren. Women know well to accept that - in their quartet tragic suffering, guilt, anger and death as real as our own, or as you are.
Eunice Tietjens spoke for all of us in his poem metaphorically in the blood during the desperate days of World War II writtenI.
I know too many of them for you.
Too selfish in a formation that has been raised.
Type of too many cities that have gone
Here are joining systems of evil evil
And too many altars upside down
For would-be deities sacred fire to light.
Donna Warren was on the phone, the good news is that his mental slate was clean, which is authorized to start a new life with a spiritual renewal so dramatic, he was named Jesus was born of a new action.His life is much more satisfying than locusts during his years and lives with new meaning and permanence in something bigger than his narcissistic tendencies and illogical fears. Instead of selfishly grabbing all the joy they can, now lives with acceptance and love the lifestyle. No wonder he wanted his sister to tell them! He had the strength and courage to want the kind of man is always and has never been able to find in their own strength.Women might be annoyed, but Susie was very pleased because he had never ceased to love Warren. He no longer feels like an orphan in a cosmic universe, cold and dangerous, and that all changes in their marriage. He ended his spiritual bankruptcy, by the grace of God and peace with the Lord of the cosmos, with Susie and her children for the first time in his life. It is consciously connected to the cosmos and can not remain silent about his new, happy life.
Any person whoSearch satisfaction, good or bad, or more realistically a combination of spiritual and worldly interests, has to do with the tragic triad of human suffering, guilt and death. Through our primordial ancestors as a frightening experience and weak fangless hominids little, struggling to survive the big cats and dogs in the African savanna, we have the fears run deep in our soul, which has never disappeared completely hidden. This includes the possibility of anxiety HomosapienGreed, anger, dishonesty and violence when we feel fear, canceled or threatened with extinction. I do not suggest that every person who ever lived, suffered from various sources, teaches us life. We fear, pain, and try every possible way to avoid it, but it is an essential part of human existence. Our suffering and physical suffering from injuries and illnesses and emotional pain for the loss of loved ones and as the pain from the one rejected by a lover. ExistentialFailure caused frustration philosophical or spiritual anguish. Even then, every man knows the slightest perception of a reality we are all doomed creatures. We die and go the way of all flesh.
William Shakespeare put well when he wrote in one of its brilliant parts;
Every man born of woman owes God a death, which at the time and place of God's election collected.
Between the beginning and end of human existence, each person needs to meetwith distressing feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and guilt that buried deep in the unconscious aspects of the individual soul. No one escapes unscathed fear of death that comes from our approach extinction. We do not lose your sense of guilt that follows our sins and omissions. None of us, with the exception of paranoid psychopaths continue to live without the choices that we regret, and also not to do too many things that we did decent, it should. Our greed and the fear of evil to seeit. Even today I can think back and feel the sting of guilt and inadequacy of the periods of experience that arise from relationships that I as a teenager and with the decisions that are treated badly botched in adulthood. I have no doubt that the parents of the shooters were young, tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado and omissions of their guilt, shattered. In fact, the only way to get rid of the quartet tragedy lay with his suffering, guilt, fear and death through the suppression of ourPsychological fears in our unconscious. There are solid and destroy almost all the activities and relationships that we have. To break the grip of the tragic triad, to discuss the turmoil that caused mature, we must increase at a higher level of personal responsibility. Here is the truth of the matter.
Over 50 years we have done the work of the best psychologists in the world and found that science and faith, psychology and psychotherapy and religion and worship awaycloser and more critical to achieve the satisfaction of most people. Both of our good human qualities, our needs come from, the agreement with triad tragic to find the security and peace in our complex world. After discarding Homosapien out our fears, anger and guilt after connecting with God, we are for ourselves what is meant by the physician Albert Schweitzer deeply committed when he wrote;
We have to stop to give our personal and cultural harm other people and society andlearn to exercise our will and accept our responsibility in the sphere of faith, worship and morality.
In fact, a conscious dedication to God includes a recovered self-esteem and responsibility for themselves and humanity, or is it a self-serving and false self-connection. Soon the Christian faith was very personal, including a conscious relationship with Jesus during his lifetime and then, in the metaphysical spirit. Unfortunately, after a few hundred years, the staffLost faith as a Christian church and aristocracy lay ripped and reorganized by the people's faith for their own benefit. The concept of a personal relationship with God was standing at the door in favor of a hierarchy to determine who would be pleasing to God and that is not discarded. The priesthood rituals that could not be replaced for a personal faith that he could control, has demanded payment for the amount and the use of torture against dissidents, who wouldStorm have gagged a Nazi soldier. Again in 1960 the company was still beating the Irish Magdalene, hunger and poor working conditions, pregnant girl to death, had come to ask for help. The psychotic mother superior called redemption through repentance, but it was a vicious cycle penalty system right from the horrors of the medieval church. No wonder that Pope John Paul, as he approaches the end of his life, has suffered a lot because the way his church fully justified to attack the Muslims,Funny how the women burn the witches, heretics and Protestants during the Inquisition, murder and failing to stop the destruction of European Jewry in Germany during the Holocaust challenge.
The tradition of Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches have always emphasized the growth in faith through the sacraments and the learning experience rather dramatic way to Damascus, in St. Paul knocked senseless by the saddle was when God finally got his attention. Obviously there is much good to say about farming,Children in the faith since the early days. All I know is that theology so much to get in trouble with him, but I understood that at least one personal commitment is sound theology and good psychology. Therefore, confessions, and not 40 years ago, had something to do with relational ministry to do Billy Graham, are now pastors and lay people in major cities of the Crusade team leader? They learned that women and men are spiritually committed the most loyal membersonly those who agree that faith is beautiful, and perhaps more satisfying than a secular way of life.
Although it is difficult for secular skeptics to believe that happiness and satisfaction they have found a spiritual way, we are able to thrive in many ways our faith. This can be seen by a large body of research. Psychiatrist Raymond Moody, a few years researching and writing this extraordinary book called life after life. In it he describes dozens of experiences through whichPeople from all walks of life clinically dead, and were then retrieved by heroic medical procedures. A variety of people, perhaps as many as several million, including Roberta, to death during the birth of our third child was bleeding and was in a miraculous way back, went through the tunnel now famous for the light beyond the life and then returned Earth to complete missions. Life after life experience, they refuse to go on too often, although some legal scholarsDebate their cause. However, many researchers see it as a real event. Occasionally we catch a glimpse, not of the existence of everything for us with the death of the brain and the body - appears to be an aspect of our divine soul and eternal God, who have joined us called into existence. We suspect that the human race is going through this for a long time, which would account for the elaborate celebration of Egyptian life after life in the era of the Pharaohs.
We can also check the powerof prayer in our lives as believers on the Lord. Randolph Byrd, a professor of cardiology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco studied 400 patients at San Francisco General Hospital for a period of several years. They were kept in cardiology with a heart attack or chest pain, serious treatment. Dr. Byrd performed a traditional double-blind research, where neither health professionals nor the patients knew thathalf of the patients were prayed for - in addition to best care in the hospital could offer. Their names were sent to church groups around the Bay Area for regular prayers. The 200 patients in the control group received the exact same medical treatment, but without the constant prayer. The results were spectacular, far beyond the statistics, almost impossible to believe!
Written according to Larry Dossey, MD, and the importance of medicine and the healing of the words (The power of prayer), has theGroup that prayed for answers just as if the patients receive the drug again wonderful. The 200 will be asked, if taken at random double-blind, has had far fewer deaths, less required surgery and were immediately put in a much milder drug plan. They healed faster than the control group 200 Dr. Dossey says that each new drug was so effective, it would be celebrated throughout the world as a modern medical miracle. Dossey cites about 130Studies showing that prayer and how it heals in time with the right hemisphere of the brain connected! We can call it telepathy, or communication with God or whatever, but the truth is that if we pray for you with love, compassion and concern, knowing that we are united to God, something good happens! Also - on the contrary, if you pray for us.
From the day I learned that my nephew was innocent on death row in prison in Arizona to appealLook, I fervently prayed that justice would be done so that the judges see the truth and the release of David. What happens at the hearing? Within 45 minutes, the judge has thrown out the conviction that without merit and David sent home with his mother and father. When we connect with God - we connect with each other and may be a connection please! A huge win on the evil and systems can have through prayer.
The key word of all timeFavorite gospel song Amazing Grace is to believe, to believe that great spiritual revelation of God to humanity. Several years ago, the story goes, a pre-med student told her, professor of New Testament, no longer believe that the Bible was full of impossible things, like the virgin birth, the publications of Lazarus from the tomb and the resurrection of Jesus The professor smiled and said politely.
Mary Ellen, are the small questions,Starter belief that in the right direction. If you think that's strange, wait until you see that God comes to the community and to believe that the large and ragged, scary-looking black man knelt beside her on the railing expect your brother in Christ. And you will be asked to leave your medical practice to serve as a prestigious medical clinic in Africa, the Hottentots. Assume that you have to cross daily and follow Christ in simplicityQuakers taught, instead of buying a new Mercedes coupe every two years. This is what we have to believe it almost impossible to find!
Viktor Frankl, my mentor in this approach distinctly spiritual Logotherapy, wrote that each person is deeply philosophical in nature, the unconscious, as essential to health, such as the unconscious psychology is discussed by Freud. Of course, Christian philosophers have always taught in church this dual emphasis on personal salvation andMaturation sequence. Research shows, in a variety of studies show that men and women to maintain strong spiritual convictions - that living with a concentrated faith, hope and love - with the grace of God, disease, and much less physical, psychological and philosophical compared to those who have nothing to do. Life is much more satisfying in a wide range of possibilities, whether consciously in touch with God through a covenant relationship with Christ.
Extensive research studies show that women who have a relationship with GodSixty percent more sexual orgasm, a deeply satisfying way as women wicked. Also, men and women who love more and more likely to worship together at 68 percent, love, peaceful life. Disputes, child and spouse abuse, divorce and family are given a huge reduction of the families who pray together.
In other words, if you want to get married, have a long relationship deeply satisfying sex with someone who is loving supportLife with a real partner, not abuse or neglect you and your children, you will cut the odds of failure by more than half of you find your soul mate in a community of faith. Of course you should continue to grow spiritually through his acts of grace, to meet the needs of your spiritual unconscious.
By accepting Christ, always aware of the grace of God, born again, establishing a relationship of the Federal or commit your life to Christ - is one of the firstStep toward spiritual maturity. Then we must love one another, and pray regularly for each other. A fulfilling life through a covenant relationship and service to humanity in general is not like buying a ticket on the Boston to New York shuttle. We are obliged to pay our taxes for the people we live and love. Warren has discovered this when he does ride a bike along and we hope that her sister has.
Here's a good starting point. God the Creator and CosmicSeminal mind is open to all souls who hunger and thirst for spiritual restoration. No system of one sex, race, class, country, community, religion, political party or economic is more precious to God than any other.
God offers us an invitation to come as you are!
Unfortunately we have seen regularly pretend nihilistic, narcissistic people that God loves them, their political parties, countries and companies the best way to power and prestige of the application and to gatherMoney from others. Such narcissistic religious, racial or gender exclusiveness and superiority is always a selfish, too selfishly to dominate others, to boast;
I speak for God, so all you have to accept less than a sinner, my intellectual superiority. You have to believe, I believe, agree as I adore and love too, because I vote, or the God who gives me power over you, you reject it as unworthy of the people we deal better.
This is the narcissistic, hypocritical sinspiritual neurosis, that Jesus condemned more difficult than any other human failing. He condemned the selfish religion of his time, offering them an empty cup with nothing but their bones are filled with brightly painted tombs lazy, instead of life. Unfortunately, this is more frustrated and alienated from God and each other person, the greater the temptation to pretend that they consider the rest of humanity. In this way, candidates have to "spiritual bankruptcy does not seem entirelyso useless. Of course this is a farce - all forms of exclusivity and superiority to the spirituality of love and relationships devastating. Affirms the superiority is really a form of neurosis, a defense mechanism, with the possession, enjoyment, power and prestige for a spiritual meaning and permanence are replaced. Spiritually mature people do not need a selfish self-deception to feel good about themselves. You can prosper without the other look bad. They are ableto see the good in others men and women without high-spirited for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Ranier Maria Rilke warns us in these words:
All those who seek God you seek,
And many who have found comfort bind you,
Shape and gesture, and ritual to release it.
As if her candle, the darkness was banished!
Alberta Jernigan of Houston recently spoke at a conference of Christian women.
American Christians are rich, the happier the world. We arePeople who love doing everything in its power to express the suffering humanity. Henry and I worked hard for decades to build our oil business, but we have never had grown greedy and petty, like many financially driven, secular mind-do businessmen. We never tried to pull the ladder we've done so many Texas politicians if they sold out the racists and sexists. God has blessed us, but our love is real only when we serve others.
Spiritual love makes a huge difference in ourValues, attitudes, activities and relationships. By John Amato perceptive writers, to have world-class relationship psychologist Carl Rogers', there are two basic types of people.
There are those who love others and for those who do not like.
I'll take it a step further. There are many people in a reactionary business, politics, education and even in the Church who are so out of frustration, fear, greed and jealousy filled, who cling desperately to the past. They are incapable of lovefree, not willing to adapt when change threatens them and paralyze them and their families, because life continues inexorably moving around them. There are also courageous women and men to accept change as it comes, adapting to new activities and relationships, creative thinking about life and their place in it, to love others deeply. It goes on, strengthen their families and organizations, psychologically and spiritually confused times.
We need to mature mentally or our relationshipwith God is passive and weak, rather than active and strong. Of course, as committed Christians, we believe that a federal connection, through faith, hope and love in the Lord Jesus Christ will come. We must build on the development of sources of meaning and work places of the heart, where we are with the people with whom we loved and life meet. All our tires attitudes, activities and relationships begin with God and God will probably end up with As we entrust our lives spirituallyactivities targeted to concentrate our forces in the grace of God, who do not meet our lives. We are not always happy, even though we have heard many say, reckless young man, a spiritual commitment that solves all problems of life. You're wrong, their problem is that they do not live long enough to gain wisdom about the life of the tragic quartet of suffering, guilt and death. Do not you realize that the average of five years, every person, family, church, society andCommunity is facing a serious problem that can not be resolved, but must be endured with courage. The great tsunami, which destroyed the Indian Ocean, both religious and lay people swept away. Please Saints lost all violent drug dealers as quickly as the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
It should be obvious to any thinking person that the spiritual conflicts of humanity are real enough. People need to force, in fact, the desire to control others, to provide for vulnerable peopleour decisions to the district, because we were so short during childhood in general. But there are those inner aspect of the mind called the spiritual unconscious Viktor Frankl. We all start with an internal reaction to life as it should be lived, sensitivity to beauty, love, decency and integrity. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, called this trend the moral law in every human soul. Kant felt that there was no way to explain it, that this law exists in all creation. We believe that is whatare linked to long for the spirit of the seminal - our ancestors living in the religions of the world called the God-pain. We discovered from our decades of research, consulting and teaching, that any attempt to understand the meaning of life is, for Kant the universal consciousness that exists in the hearts and minds of account. We all want to feel good about ourselves. We are always looking for moments of satisfaction in a sense, as nature itself is excited to reveal increasedthe joy of the totality of work and play, and learn to love and worship and lasting. But with this need for completeness, nature has also arranged so as to find it almost impossible for people to meet directly in our activities and relationships. Like so much of life, we must use a by-product approach.
We humans have our spiritual unconscious, which leads us to love, grace and beauty of God and the cosmos looking for. God is the ultimate source of all music,Art and creativity as we share with those who support us and appreciate life. Of course we also want to be unique to shine greater than our competitors in order to dominate, for the lion's share of life to get benefits. The first motivation comes from our fear of being alone, our horror of isolation, of being at the mercy of nature, scarce resources on the physical, emotional and spiritual that we trust in us. We want to love and be loved, to mingle with our co-Colleagues in every way possible. This desire to be part of something important, we respect the feelings of creating self-transcendence. This is called agape love, the religious, the union of lovely creature with the Creator, which leads to a conscious relationship with the cosmos and its elements. Psychoanalyst Otto Rank put it that way;
Because only by living in close contact with an ideal of God that exists outside of ourselves, we can also exist.
The need to link withThe Divine is not just a superstition or simply the search for security, because our borders in a wide cosmos and dangerous - even if this is what some researchers today think. They assume that the idea of God a human invention to be used both to compensate for the horrors of existence. In reality, faith and confidence to develop ideas about what is really going on in this incredibly complex universe of which we are each so small a role. Connect is an unfolding of our humanneed to be complete - now and forever rising above themselves in connection with the Cosmic Creator, and that puts us out of ourselves. In the words of rank, can not only flourish in our own strength, although in our secular society, without a lot of spirituality, along with simplified forms of worship, to ignore the faith, hope and love and try to grow enough tries satisfaction. These people are starving mentally, as you fill everything to make their empty soulsProperty, power, prestige and pleasure - always careerists, players, gangsters, and even deviant hermit. You are existentially frustrated and alienated, in the midst of the greatest welfare of all human history, then wonder why they lost in life, feeling stuck in a morass of meaning which breaks their spirit and then leaves the feeling useless.
This is the other side of human nature. Together with the universal search for love and meaning, which we call agape or divineLove, longing we often dominate and manipulate others
- They are superior to all the world to gain prestige and enjoy pride, as if they were gods. During the self-timer transcendent aspects of life are called agape or divine love, these elements are certainly narcissistic eros or passionate love. This is much easier to sexuality, including all forms of power and strength. This includes the impulse - the compulsion - to a life free of rules and regulations for exciting experiencesunhindered development of the forces that desire to rise above nature and prestige than his peers to win the pleasure and possessions. This is the desire to maximize his personal gifts to achieve their conditions through self-development. However, when we also completely on Eros, we focus unscrupulous thieves. If we live only with the agape, our forces are unable to develop a large extent. We must find a balance in all areas of life.
Of course we accept it as completelyAcceptable for women and men connected to worship and serve God in many ways more human personality is too complex for its consistency and so is the belief and the church organized. Our little candle throws only the largest ever in the dark. Look at life only through union with others in the places where we belong. Roberta has a simple confession of his childhood wrong, if more than one child. The Nazi murderers of millions, Hermann Goering, has confessed his crimes, many linkedbe done with God, just before it was scheduled. A friend of mine has reached the big decision of his life while plowing a cotton field with his tractor.
Many people confuse the aesthetic with spirituality, apparently unaware that the human species has always been a religious one - that each of our civilization was built around previous religious beliefs. Some of worship was simple and sometimes very cruel, like the Aztecs, but the clergy were scientists and engineers, andrulers often. People have always wanted to mystical, supernatural experiences and relationships, to feel at home in a vast and mysterious cosmos. This is what we yearn to connect with our Creator and we are all vulnerable to the significant spiritual practices that are closer to the ideals of God for us the development of the community which we belong.
