Welcome to my world.

Actually, Turtlepoet, Shamanism is a form of religious medicine that originates from the Paleolithic hunting cultures of Siberia and Central Asia. When the current Native American Indian's ancesters crossed Bering Strait Land bridge from Asia they evidently brought with them some of their Shamanism. It evidently has survived and evolved into what we know as Native American Spirituality with each tribe having their own specific beliefs and styles. Shamanism is still alive and well in many parts of Asia and Siberia, though.

One concept is that the Holy Spirit is the femenine aspect of the Godhead and was in fact the "mother" of Jesus. In fact a book within the Nag Hammadi Library (I believe it's the book of james) says that Jesus himself calls himself a child of the Holy Spirit. Thus The Father God and The Mother Goddess (The Holy Spirit) created Jesus and the virgin Mary was merely the vessel. As for the specifics of the DNA... God created DNA... couldn't he and his consort, the Holy Spirit, come together within the womb of a woman and create their own human child if they so wanted?

Another concept (backed up by the Nag Hammadi Libray as well) is that Jesus was actually androgynous.

I scream at the sky, it's easier than crying
I'm shyist when I'm shouting out loud
I feel so alone in a room full of people
I'm loneliest when I'm in a crowd
I'm alone, and nobody hears me
Can't nobody heal me, won't somebody help me
I'm alone, I just need
Someone to take my hand and pick me up when I'm feeling down
Someone to take my heart and give it a home
Someone to be with me and help me through the times when I'm down and lonely
Someone to be with me when I'm alone
I'm alone, all alone
Alone is the way I live, it's not the way I want it but you know
You can't give in, alone is the way I feel, it's so hard to understand
Why I've got to be alone

If you look in my heart you'd see it
I'm trying to be something better
If you look in my heart you'd feel it
I've got to keep moving on
If you look in my heart you'd know it
I'm just trying to make my world better
If you look in my heart you'd see it
I got to do it alone

I've been down, I've been down
I've been down, down, down so low
I've been lost, so lost with no place left to go
I've had emotions, emotions that you better hope you never know
Sometimes it feels like I just can't take no more

If you look in my heart you'd see it
I'm trying to be something better
If you look in my heart you'd feel it
I've got to keep moving on
If you look in my heart you'd know it
I'm just trying to make my world better
If you look in my heart you'd see it
I got to do it alone

Seems like things just keep getting further out of hand
Why can't for once things just go as I plan
How dare you, how dare you tell me that you understand
Let me tell you straight out, there ain't nobody here that can
I'm all alone, I'm so alone, to be alone, just leave me alone

If you look in my heart you'll see it
If you look in my heart you'd feel it
If you look in my heart you'd know it
I'm not trying to make no one bitter
I'm just alone, leave me alone, alone alone, now leave me

I've lived in places that you wouldn't never ever want to be
Places where for a minute you couldn't ever stand to be
I've seen things, I've seen things you'd never want to see
SO what gives, what gives you the right to be the judge of me
I'm all alone, I'm so alone, to be alone, just leave me alone

A room full of people, can't nobody help me, I'm alone
I just need someone to take my hand and pick me up when I'm
Feeling down, when I'm down
Someone to take my heart and give it a home, when I'm down
Someone to be with me and help me through the times
I'm down and lonely, when I'm down
Someone to be with me when I'm alone
I'm alone, all alone
Alone is the way I live, it's not the way I want it but I Know I can't give in
Alone is the way I feel, there ain't nothing quite as sad as A person that's alone

"Alone" by Suicidal Tendencies




How can you love someone
If you think that you're no one
When you mistreat yourself,
and think it's all you deserve
Cause it's so hard to care
Is this or is it loneliness?

How can you demand respect - when you have no respect?
When you abuse your body, never mind your mind
And you're your own worst victim
There'll be no love just loneliness

Why do you force a smile - when you know all the while
That you're burning inside, but don't want no one to know
The hell that you're in
As love turns to loneliness

How can you sleep at night?
When you know it's not alright
When you wake up in the morning, nothin' has changed
If you do nothin' about it
Love becomes loneliness
Love vs loneliness, love vs loneliness

And when you're down and you think you need something
The temptations so hard to resist
But what you grab sure ain't what you needed
That's not love it's loneliness
And when you're lonely and think you need someone
The plot a painful twist
There ain't no one that can make you feel like someone
Only you can cure loneliness

How can you be confident when you're all wrong with it
When you know what you're doing and you're doing it wrong
It's no misunderstanding
This ain't love this is loneliness
How can you love someone - if you think that you're no one?

"Love Vs. Lonliness" by Suicidal Tendencies

Indeed!

Well supposedly this guy has fond the cure all for everything from depression to quit smoking, from chakra cleansing to stopping procrastination all just by tapping these certain points. lol http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=magnustapping&p=r

RomanticSoul, try being short, fat, and have really short hair... see my avatar. Yeah, I sometimes here the jokes about being a butch lesbian and the like. *rolls eyes* frakkin' idiots!

Cherokee, eh? You just reminded me of something...

An old Cherokee was teaching his young grandson one of life’s most important lessons. He told the young boy the following parable:

“There is a fight going on inside each of us. It is a terrible fight between two wolves,” he said.

“One wolf is evil. He is anger, rage, envy, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The second wolf is good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about this for a moment. Then he asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win this fight?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

I read Holy Blood/Holy Grail long before Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code came out and I thought it was a fasinating read. I was saddened to hear about Richard Leigh's Death. I put this thread here only because it may very well strike up a conversation of a religious/spiritual nature. If not, oh well. Either way, it was a great book by a couple of great authors.


Holy Blood / Holy Grail Author Dies
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - Richard Leigh, the writer of alternative history who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism over themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel "The Da Vinci Code," has died, his agent said Friday. He was 64.

U.S.-born Leigh, who had lived in Britain for three decades, died in London on Nov. 21 of causes related to a heart condition, the Jonathan Clowes Agency said.

Leigh was co-author of "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," a work of speculative nonfiction that claimed Jesus Christ fathered a child with Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline continues to this day.

A best-seller on its release in 1982, the book gained new readers after Brown's thriller, which explores similar themes and has sold more than 40 million copies, was released in 2003.

Leigh and co-author Michael Baigent sued Brown's publisher Random House, claiming "The Da Vinci Code" "appropriated the architecture" of their book. A third "Holy Blood" author, Henry Lincoln, did not join the lawsuit.

The authors made a striking pair during the lengthy High Court hearing — Baigent professorial in a suit and tidy gray hair, Leigh sporting a leather jacket and thick sideburns.

In April 2006, High Court judge Peter Smith threw out the claim, saying the ideas in question were too general to be protected by copyright.

The prominent court case sent "Holy Blood" back up the best-seller lists, but Baigent and Leigh were left with a bill estimated at almost 3 million pounds (US$6.2 million; €4.2 million) after the judge ordered them to pay 85 percent of Random House's legal costs.

"We lost on the letter of the law. I think we won on the spirit of the law; to that extent we feel vindicated," Leigh said after the verdict.

That was an optimistic assessment. The judge harshly criticized the claimants, calling Baigent "a poor witness" and saying, "I am not sure what Mr. Leigh thought was the purpose of his evidence."

An attempt to appeal the ruling was rejected earlier this year.

Leigh, born in New Jersey in 1943 to a British father and Austrian mother, attended Tufts University in Boston, the University of Chicago and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He worked as a university lecturer in the United States and Canada before settling in Britain.

In the mid-1970s he met Lincoln and Baigent, and the trio discovered a shared interest in the Medieval order known as the Knights Templar. They developed a thesis linking the knights with the Merovingian dynasty allegedly descended from Jesus.

Baigent and Leigh collaborated on several other books, including "Holy Blood" sequel "The Messianic Legacy"; "The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception," which alleged a Roman Catholic conspiracy to cover up the scrolls; and "Secret Germany," about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Leigh's first love was fiction, and he published a book of stories, "Erceldoune and other Stories," and the semi-autobiographical novel "Grey Magic."

He never married. A funeral was held Wednesday.

Help your tree smell like it was just cut. Make a mixture of 1 cup water with 6 drops of essential oil of Pine, NOT purfumed oil, but rather pure essential oil. Use this to spray the tree. Or put a few drops of the essential Pine oil on a cloth and tuck this around the base of the tree.

Daily Meditations on the Feminine Spirit

Who knows what the goddess means? She has meant different things in different eras, in different cultures, to different people. She has been anger and rage as well as peace and fruitfulness. She is the totality of experience of each woman. She cannot be limited to a single form, nor contained in a single body. She is more comprehensive than we can imagine. In meditating upon her vastness, we encounter it within ourselves.

Everything that exists partakes of the goddess. But we cannot know her directly. Rather, we know her through the universe that expresses her and that surrounds us. Studying this world, and studying ourselves, is the only way we can truly learn to know the goddess. Look at the sky, the black earth, the green living things that surround us. Look at the movements of animals, graceful and hungry and free. Watch the flights of birds, the great movements of sea mammals and fish, the ice-flow of glaciers, the frozen rippling time incised on great mountains. These are all ways to know the goddess.

We ourselves participate in the divine feminine. Whether male or female, we each hold her within ourselves. Our route to the goddess is only partially through understanding the world around us. It is also through understanding our hearts: our most frightening and needful urges as well as our brightest and most ecstatic ones. Embracing all that we are, we also embrace her, in whose image we are made.

From "The Goddess Companion" by Patricia Monaghan

Today's Goddess: Boldogasszony
Hungarian Wedding

Themes: Winter; Love; Romance; Relationships; Devotion; Purity; Fertility
Symbol: Milk.

About Boldogasszony: This Hungarian mother and guardian Goddess watches diligently over her children, wanting only the best for them, as any mother would. Her sacred beverage, milk, is also considered a suitable libation when asking for this Goddess's blessing.

To Do Today: Hungarian wedding festivals often take place in winter, after the harvest season and meat preparation. The traditions here are laden with magick we can "borrow" for building strong personal relationships, asking for Boldogasszony's blessing by having a cup of milk present at any activity. For example, cutting a rope that is attached to your home symbolizes your release from the old ways and freedom to enter into a commitment. Stepping across birch wood purifies intentions and ensures a fertile, happy union.

Lighting a torch (or candle) represents vigilant devotion in a relationship. Do this at the time of your engagement, as you recite vows, or as you both enter a new residence for the first time so that commitment will stay with you. Wherever you are, eating off each other's plates and drinking from one cup deepens harmony (include a milk product like cheese). Finally, dancing with kitchen utensils ensures that the home fires will always be warm

From "365 Goddess" By Patricia Telesco

I got the following meditation in an email today and thought I'd share it. Enjoy.


Listen To Light: Meditations for Hanukkah

I remember celebrating Hanukkah as a child huddled around the menorah with my family, eagerly waiting for my presents each night. I can still see my father of blessed memory, shining so brightly, singing Hanukkah songs and delighting in the potato latkes he prepared. As an adult, this memory of my father and Hanukkah's spiritual gifts of faith and hope sustain me through life challenges.

At a time of the year when the days are shortest, Hanukkah comes to help us find the light within the darkness. If we can uncover the spiritual opportunity hidden in life challenges, we will be strengthened and transformed through them. Unlike Biblical holidays that have certain restrictions, the holiday of Hanukkah has none. One simply lights the Hanukkah menorah for eight nights. There is a treasure chest of blessings that has been accumulating for thousands of years that we can draw upon at this time.

Too often people light the Hanukkah candles and then quickly move on to other activities without taking the time to receive its spiritual gifts. This is akin to receiving a beautiful gift from someone who loves you and not saying thank you. One of the problems we have in life is that we do not know how to receive. We shop too much, we eat too much, we are running here and there, constantly busy when we need to take time to simply be, to feel what is occurring within us and be present to what we truly need and want in our lives. There is a hunger within us to be loved unconditionally for who we are and not for what we do. When we try to meet our spiritual needs with material things and various distracting activities we will never be satisfied. Meditative gazing upon the simple sweet light of Hanukkah can fulfill us in the way we have yearned for our entire life.

As you prepare to light menorah candles this year, take a few moments to center yourself with deep breaths. Feel the connection to the hundreds and thousands of Jews who are lighting candles throughout the world at this very time. Try to say the blessings with the consciousness that you are aligning yourself with the Jewish people throughout history and with Divine Will. Assume your place in this ancient lineage of righteous people, prophets, sages, martyrs and ordinary Jews, like us, who have celebrated Hanukkah for thousands of years. If you can, place the menorah by the window to indicate your desire to share this light of miracles with others. When we share spiritual light with others, the light is not diminished but increased. The more light we share with others, the more light flows through us.


Meditative Instructions

Imagine yourself standing in front of the Menorah in the Holy Temple. As you light candles on your own menorah, ignite the space deep within yourself where you are most powerfully and intimately connected with your soul. This is your temple. This holy temple within yourself holds your deepest dreams and holiest visions. Although this may be a little uncomfortable, keep your eyes open and continue to gaze at the lights. The holy light of Hanukkah has the power to purify and to transform. Take note of the various colors of light within the flame.

Be gentle with yourself, allowing space for any discomfort without running away. Simply be with the light as much as possible. If your mind begins to wander too much and you find yourself filled with extraneous thoughts, simply take note of this and bring your focus back to the breath and the gazing. Imagine that you can cast into the light anything you want to get rid of. Exhale your negative thoughts into the light. Cast your fear, your guilt, your regrets and your insecurities into the flame. The more you are able to let go, the brighter the light will be. You can close your eyes if you need to do so, but continue to meditate, allowing the light to be experienced within you.

Now, as your eyes are closed, imagine that you are a Hanukkah candle and the light of Hanukkah burns within you. Your body is the candle and your soul is the flame. As you identify with this candle, becoming this candle, experience yourself as a being of great light. Visualize the light of your soul radiating and shining brightly in this world. While the candles are burning, alternate between keeping your eyes open and closed. Gaze directly at the light.

After gazing for ten minutes or more, you will find yourself in a heightened spiritual state and you will be able to listen deep inside to your own soul. The candles are symbolic of the soul. Each night the light offers a high frequency vibration. If you want, you can even ask a specific question or simply ask for guidance. Then, listen to the light. It is helpful to have your journal or a piece of paper and write on the top of the page in the name of God or the light of Hanukkah. "This is what I have to say to you..." When you are ready, write in stream of consciousness the words reflecting your present thoughts and feelings. Simply write from the heart without judging or evaluating. This is just for you. You will be amazed at the wisdom that pours out of your own soul. Done with intention and prayer, you will receive answers to your questions.

The light of Hanukah radiates hope, faith and unconditional love, reminding us to dream again, and that our dreams are beautiful and important. Even though we may not have lived our lives authentically nor fully and we may have even harmed others, the light of Hanukkah reminds us of who we really are and who we can be. We can be free, we can be holy, and we need not be limited by our fears. We can live our lives with greater integrity, love and beauty. Meditating on each night of Hanukkah will help you transform your life in ways you have always hoped.

On an even deeper mystical level, gazing at the lights of Hanukkah provides a glimpse into the eternal light of God, the hidden light, the holy light, the light before creation. This light of God has burned forever and will burn eternally. When we get a glimpse of this holy light, we know that the Jewish people are eternal. Even though we Jews as individuals and as a people have faced and will face many challenges in life, the light of Hanukkah reminds us that God is with us. And now more than ever, this is a great comfort.



Melinda (Mindy) Ribner, L.C.S.W. is a spiritual psychotherapist and healer in private practice. ( www.kabbalahoftheheart.com). She is a teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbalah for over 20 years. Author of Kabbalah Month by Month, New Age Judaism, and Everyday Kabbalah, she is also the Founder and Director of Beit Miriam (www.Beitmiriam.org). She travels throughout the United States and Israel sharing the joy of meditation and Kabbalah.

Elder's Meditation

"Listen to the howl of our spiritual brother, the wolf, for how it goes with him, so it goes for the natural world." --Oren R. Lyons, Spokesman, Traditional Circle of Elders

If we watch nature, we can tell a lot about what is going on in the world. The animals and the plants are great teachers. Some time ago, crops were sprayed with a poison to kill the insects. Other animals ate the insects. The small animals were eaten by the Eagles and the Wolves. We live in an interconnected system. What we do to one, we do to all. If our spiritual brothers are living in balance, chances are we humans are also living in balance.

Great Spirit, let me listen to my Earth teachers, the plants and the animals.

http://www.whitebison.org/

You mean the God of the Holy Bible YHWH for all other Gods and Goddesses are false, right? *rolls eyes* Good grief! And the merry-go-round goes round and round. *sighs*

please forgive me, I didn't read this entire thread because I'm a little strapped for time. So if someone has already brought up this point forgive me.

AdventureBegins is right when he explained the meaning of the Hebrew word "shav." In Biblical times people made oaths by swearing in the name of their god. In Deuteronomy 6:13 (New Living Translation) it says, "You must fear the Lord your God and serve him. When you take an oath, you must use only his name." So, taking what that verse and what the 3rd commandment says, the Bible is telling us to use only YHWH's name when swearing/making an oath. However, when making such an oath do not use YHWH's name in that oath when you know that you are going to break that oath.

"On the 25th of Kislev are the days of Chanukkah, which are eight... these were appointed a Festival with Hallel [prayers of praise] and thanksgiving." -Shabbat 21b, Babylonian Talmud

Chanukkah, the Jewish festival of rededication, also known as the festival of lights, is an eight day festival beginning on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. Kislev is the ninth month of the Jewish year, occurring in November/December. This year Chanukkah begins on December 4th.

To learn more about the meaning of Chanukkah, the traditions surrounds food, games, and songs go here... http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm

Good grief. I wasn't attacking you. If I was attacking you, you'd know it sweetpea. I wasn't being defensive either. I just wanted you to have all the info before you start giving me a lecture, which I felt one coming on. lol So, come on, enlighten me.

What you two are arguing about is "once saved always saved" verses "saved but can back slide" which is just another one of those doctrinal issues that have been up for debate between Christian denomination forever and a day. Neither side ever wins the arguement because they both feel that they are right and the other is wrong. Around and around we go, where the doctrinal merry-go-round stops no one knows.

Please enlighten me. What exactly am I doing? Now before you answer that let me say that I'm speaking from experience, not just as someone who'se been belittled and attacked by Christians, but as someone who was once a Christian and was doing the belittling and attacking. I used to be one of those "holier than thou" Christians. Now, please, enlighten me.