Cosmic Harmony

Today is

10/10/10

"International Cosmic Harmony Day"

...I just made it up

Joseph Smith Meets An Extraterrestrial

Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, a group of churches whose adherents regard him as a prophet.

In the late 1820s, Smith announced that an angel had given him a book of golden plates, containing a religious history of ancient American peoples. Smith claimed the book was written in an unknown language, which he translated by use of seer stones given with the plates. In 1830, Smith published this translation as the Book of Mormon and organized what he claimed was a restoration of the early Christian church.

Moving the church in 1831 from western New York to Kirtland, Ohio, Smith attracted hundreds of converts, who came to be called Latter Day Saints. Some of these he sent to establish a holy city of "Zion" in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1833, Missouri settlers expelled the Saints from Zion, and Smith led an unsuccessful paramilitary expedition to recover the land. Fleeing an arrest warrant in the aftermath of a Kirtland financial crisis, Smith joined the remaining Saints in Far West, Missouri. However, tensions escalated into a violent conflict in 1838 with some hostile Missourians. Believing the Saints to be in insurrection, the governor ordered their expulsion from Missouri, and Smith was imprisoned on capital charges.

After escaping state custody in 1839, Smith led the Saints to build Nauvoo, Illinois on Mississippi River swampland, where he became mayor and commanded a large militia. In early 1844, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. That summer, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith's teachings, the Nauvoo city council, headed by Smith, ordered the paper's destruction. In a futile attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois. He was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.

Smith's followers believe he saw God and regard his revelations as scripture. His teachings include unique views on the nature of godhood, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His legacy includes a number of religious denominations, which collectively claim a growing membership of nearly 14 million worldwide.

Elohim (אֱלהִים) is a plural formation of eloah, an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֱל, ēl). It is the usual word for "god" in the Hebrew Bible, referring both to pagan deities and to the God of Israel, usually with a singular meaning despite its plural form, but is also used as a true plural with the meanings "spirits, angels, demons," and the like. The singular forms eloah (אלוה) and el (אֱל) are used as proper names or as generics, in which case they are interchangeable with elohim. Gods can be referred to collectively as bene elim, bene elyon, or bene elohim.

The notion of divinity underwent radical changes throughout the period of early Israelite identity. The ambiguity of the term Elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of "vertical translatability" by Smith (2008), i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of the monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BC in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century AD.

In the Levantine pantheon, the Elohim are the 70 sons of El the Ancient of Days (Olam) assembled on the divine holy place, Mount Zephon (Jebel Aqra). This mountain, which lies in Syria, was regarded as a portal to its heavenly counterpart. The Elohim were originally ruled by El Elyon (God Most High), but He later hands His rule down to the god called Hadad who was known among the common people as "the master" ("Baal"). Assembled on the holy mountain of heaven and ruled by one, the pantheon (Elohim) acts as one. The enemy of the Elohim is Yam ("the sea"), a chaos monster slain by Baal. Each son was allocated to a specific people (e.g. Yahweh to Israel, Milcom to Moab etc.).

The word occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew bible, with meanings ranging from "god" in a general sense (as in Exodus 12:12, where it describes "the gods of Egypt"), to a specific god (e.g., 1 Kings 11:33, where it describes Chemosh "the god of Moab", or the frequent references to Yahweh as the "elohim" of Israel), to demons, seraphim and other supernatural beings, to the spirits of the dead brought up by the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 28:13, and even to kings and prophets (e.g., Exodus 4:16) The phrase bene elohim, usually translated "sons of God", has an exact parallel in Ugaritic and Phoenician texts, referring to the council of the gods.

The Red Pill

I can see it in your eyes.

You have the look of a man who accepts
what he sees because he's expecting to
wake up. Ironically, this is not far from
the truth. Do you believe in fate, Neo?

Neo: No.

Morpheus: Why not?

Neo: 'Cause I don't like the idea that
I'm not in control of my life.

Morpheus: I know exactly what you mean.

Let me tell you why you're here.
You're here because you know something.
What you know, you can't explain.
But you feel it. You felt it your entire
life. That there's something wrong
with the world. You don't know what
it is, but it's there. Like a splinter
in your mind -- driving you mad.
It is this feeling that has brought you
to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?

(Neo nods his head.)

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere,
it is all around us. Even now,
in this very room. You can see it when
you look out your window, or when
you turn on your television. You can
feel it when you go to work, or when
go to church or when you pay your taxes.
It is the world that has been pulled
over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo.
Like everyone else, you were born into
bondage, born inside a prison that
you cannot smell, taste, or touch.
A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs)
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the
Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
This is your last chance. After this,
there is no turning back.

(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)

Morpheus: You take the blue pill and
the story ends. You wake in your bed
and believe whatever you want to believe.

(a red pill is shown in his other hand)

You take the red pill and you stay in
Wonderland and I show you how deep the
rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause;
Neo begins to reach for the red pill)
Remember -- all I am offering is the
truth, nothing more.

(Neo takes the red pill and
swallows it with a glass of water)

The Audacity Of Hope

The title of The Audacity of Hope was
derived from a sermon delivered by
Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had attended a lecture by
Dr. Frederick G. Sampson in Richmond,
Virginia, in the late 1980s, on the
G.F. Watts painting Hope, which
inspired him to give a sermon in 1990
based on the subject of the painting.

"With her clothes in rags, her body
scarred and bruised and bleeding,
her harp all but destroyed and with
only one string left, she had the
audacity to make music and praise God ...
To take the one string you have left
and to have the audacity to hope ...
that's the real word God will have us hear
from this passage and from Watt's painting."

Enigma

Easy peasy...lemon squeezy

the twin pillars of sunshine

are faith and patience

Stargate Project

stargate project

first earth battalion

movie trailer

Planet Earth

Spinning Lifeboat

We are spinning around on earth at 1,000 mph...

while we are orbiting the sun at 67,000 mph...

while we orbit the milky way galaxy at 483,000 mph...

are you dizzy yet?

Un-done

Ohmmmm.....

Ohmmmmmmmm..........

Ohmmmmmmmmmm............

Ohmmmmmmmmmmmm..............

(repeat)

The Day The Earth Stood Still

"Klaatu barada nikto"

(view trailer)

April Fools

Google plays an April Fools joke on

us and changes its name to "Topeka"

Ancestry

HOMAGE TO THE
TREE SHREW

It is interesting for me to learn how much the tree shrew can tell us about human nature. They were one of the first primates on the evolutionary branch leading to humans. Neuro-anatomical studies reveal that they were also the first primate to evolve a highly elaborate and differentiated visual system. Psychological tests show that this development gave rise to the ability to perform two tasks with equal skill: 1) focusing attention on interesting features (while filtering out irrelevant information) and 2) swiftly shifting attention to other interesting (or alarming) features in the environment.

We take these contributions for granted now, but both abilities were not equally present in mammals before the tree shrew. It is an adaptation that had survival value, allowing them to track prey without losing sight of their predators – a trick of nature that makes them equally suited to act as hunters, as well as survive being hunted as prey. We appreciate these contributions when something goes wrong, resulting in one form of attention deficit or another. I think we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to these little beings. They mark the beginning of neocortical evolution in man.

Dimensions

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience

We are spiritual beings having a human experience

Teilhard de Chardin

Smile

When the

Angel of Death

comes for you...

smile at him

Smashing Atoms

Life is like

smashing atoms...

"Shit happens"

Dream Big

You

can do


anything,


what will

you do?

Welcome To The Real World

The Matrix has you...

Relax

Abandon All Hope

There is a supermassive black hole

at the center of nearly every galaxy...

...you haven't got a chance