Category: News

Here’s the thing – BTW – This isn’t a request for health advice.

Just to set the scene:-

I’m a lazy old grumpy s*d who could definitely do with losing thirty or forty pounds.

This obviously gives me the body and physique of Adonis as he is now, some two millennia after his prime.

As a result I suffer from nightly Sleep Apnea events.

Coincidentally (As the pounds have increased) I’ve begun to experience increasingly long dream events.

These take the form of dreams in which I live alternative lifetimes. I’m not just talking about odd scenarios and weird adventures.

No, I’m talking about dreams in which I live for forty years. In these dreams I experience days, months, years of an alternative existence. Waking and sleeping and going to a jobs/companies I’ve never done. Dreams in which I’m driving around going on holidays to places I’ve never been to (though mostly places I have been to). Sometimes these dreams are extremely weird – space adventures, aliens wars and the usual phantasmagorical stuff.

This has resulted in my developing a theory :-

It’s well known (or so I believe) Sleep Apnea can cause the sufferer to have a lower level of oxygen in the blood and a corresponding higher level of CO2 which can cause deliriousness.

Given my experiences with my extended dream sequences could it be that at the end of life – As all these things come together in the fateful last moments – these effects give the dying the illusion of life after death.

I’m not saying that there is a life after death, but that the illusion of the long dreams could be the focus of such beliefs.

As in, someone recovering from a near death experience might (if they remembered) report that they had been to heaven/hell* and so give force to the idea such places exist. (as of course they may do if that’s you’re particular belief)

So my question is :- Has anyone else experienced what I have – extremely long length dreams?

*(trust me I’ve been there in some of my dreams)

 

(Discussion in ‘Lounge‘ started by TheEndIsNigh, Oct 10, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19874/

 

There is a concept that what we dislike in others is often a trait within ourselves that we dislike when it wells up and comes to the surface.

I see that often in visitors here and wonder while we think they came to try to elevate themselves (as prophets, authors, knowers of truth, to proselytize etc) but maybe they came to elevate us!?! By identifying our buttons, issues, and willingness to listen, understand, and realize we all have value?

Side note, I thought I had brought up the mirror before but in searching found not that but this, enjoy.

https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/2119/

 

(Discussion in ‘Belief and Spirituality‘ started by wil, Oct 17, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19881/

 

The Gospels, Acts, and some of the Epistles mention Jesus’ extended family.

There was of course Mary, his mother. Joseph, his (step-)father.

James the Just is mentioned as a brother of Jesus.

John the Baptist, his cousin.

Who else is there? More uncles and aunts and cousins?

Are the “Sons of Thunder” related to him, cousins?

How about Jude, the author of the epistle of the same name? He identifies himself as the Brother of James.

(Not primarily interested in any “Davinci Code” type speculations, rather, what is known, what do the Christian members of the forum know?)

 

(Discussion in ‘Christianity‘ started by Cino, Oct 12, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19875/

 

Today is the Catholic feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

The Universalis app says:
“The doctrine that every individual has a guardian angel has never been defined by the Church and so is not an article of faith but is the “mind of the Church” as expressed particularly by St Jerome and St Basil. It is present in both the Old and New Testaments.

As Jesus says: See that you never despise any of these little ones, for I tell you their angels in heaven always gaze upon the face of my Father in heaven.

Thus even little children have guardian angels, and these angels remain in the presence of God even as they fulfil their mission on earth.

Anciently all angels were celebrated together on the feast of St Michael. A separate feast of the Guardian Angels began in Valencia in 1411. At the reform of the Breviary in the 16th century it was included among the local feasts, and it was raised to the status of a feast in the General Calendar in 1608, placed on the first free day after the feasts of saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

One of the benefits of this feast is that it reminds us that God cares for us each individually. We all know this in theory, but it is easy – in times of depression or temptation – to convince ourselves that we are too small to matter, for good or ill.

Let us use this feast to remind ourselves that each of us has an angel of our very own looking after us; and also to pray to God for our own Guardian Angel.”

The reading at mass is from the Book of Exodus 23:20-22

The Lord says this: “I myself will send an angel before you to guard you as you go and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Give him reverence and listen to all that he says. Offer him no defiance, he would not pardon such a fault, for my name is in him. If you listen carefully to his voice and do all that I say, I shall be enemy to your enemies, foe to your foes. My angel will go before you.”

I find it inspiring …

 

(Discussion in ‘Abrahamic Religions‘ started by RJM Corbet, Oct 2, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19869/

 

 

muhammad_isa said: ↑

Again, as the majority of people see Muslims as “non-Christians”, I am not particularly welcome in this section.

Interesting…so are you indicating that Muslims see themselves as Christian? (Believing Christ is G!d/Allah?

This counters my understanding of what i often hear. “We are all Muslim, most just don’t know it yet.”

I thought a main belief of Islam is that they honor Jesus specifically not as Allah, but as a prophet, a Jewish prophet along with the rest…and Muhammad (pbuh) is the last and supercedes the rest (as far as changes to laws and understandings go)

(Discussion in ‘Islam‘ started by wil, Jun 9, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19755/

 

 

Are you back to church?

Has it changed and how?

With the variant we are still on zoom and my minister’s topic was the pandemic and the church and potential futures and benefit.

(Discussion in ‘Christianity‘ started by wil, Oct 17, 2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19880/

 

 

Recently, @Grandad mentioned that his scholar son is a member of the Shadhili Tariqah.

What are the differences between the various orders, such as Shadhili, Mevlevi, Chishti, Naqshbandi…? Is it doctrinal? Teaching style? Techniques?

(Posted by Cino 24/10/2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19886/

The death on the cross is central to most Christian belief.

Mark’s Gospel states:
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph.
Mark 15:33-45

John’s gospel states:
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down.

The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.
John 19: 28-35

Both Matthew and Luke basically repeat the account given in Mark’s gospel, which is believed to be the first of the three synoptic gospels:
Matthew 27:45-61
Luke 23:44-54

The Quran states:
“and as for their saying “we slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the Messenger of God” – yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them.

Those who are at variance concerning him surely are in doubt regarding him: they have no knowledge of him, except the following of surmise; and they slew him not of a certainty – no indeed; God raised him up to Him; God is All-mighty, All-wise.”
(4: 156 – The Quran Interpreted – Translated by Arthur J. Arberry)

It would appear that a person has to choose between either the Gospels or the Quran on the issue? Is there a convincing reason to choose one account over the other? Is there a middle ground?

(Posted by RJM Corbet 20/10/2021)

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19884/

I grabbed this from a comment I read in an Amazon review. I think English is not the first language (apologies if wrong) I have edited slightly, but not changed the substance:

“I perceive some troubles in his (the author’s) understanding of Tantric concepts … inevitably clouded by its own paradigmatic and patriarchal religious comprehensions of reality: the idea that ‘images’ and ‘imagination’ (and the alam al mithal), are illusions that ought to be transcended, echoes the same sick and unbalanced concepts that forget that, after all, we are here and we are alive – concepts that are a consequence of a patriarchal view of reality and nature, a view that has dominated most of the religions both in east and west … ”

And here we go:

“… the feminine and matriarchal perceptions did not view matter and images as impediments, only as one of the infinite facets of existence … to accept that we are alive and that the realm of forms and matter (that resemble directly the world of similitudes) is a part of, and inseparable from, reality; it is precisely the idea of separation from the whole that leads us to believe that our narrow perceptions of reality to be the absolute truth.

This led me to a look at alam al mithal

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https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/19832/

 

 

By now, people should be aware of the discussions in Physics about whether the world is a simulation or not.

How many have studied the many accounts of the Near Death Experiences?

How many have thought about “Paradise” in the Bible? How it is a timeless situation?

How many have considered that the greater reality and truth involves the timeless and eternity?

Have you thought about these issues?

Have you looked at Einstein’s statements about time and matter? Others since?
Before posting judgements on this issue..?

The Wachowski’s presented a cinematic illustration of Truth to the world.
In the same year the work of physicist Julian Barbour was also released, titled, “The End of Time”.

Check it out. This book needs to be listed with the other cited works concerning “Matrixism”.

(Posted by Geo August 1 2021 to revive old thread started by DynoMight in 2006)

Follow thread …

https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/6106/page-2