Breaking up, as the song says, is hard to do.  Things can get out of hand, quarrels can hasten the split, or a partner simply refuses to see the writing on the wall.  Finishing a relationship on a bad note, however, leaves both partners feeling uneasy.  Always try to talk things out first.  Some people can take years to recover from a broken heart, but once you have got over the initial distress you will find that your feelings of anger, bitterness and even hatred will subside.  Once you have understood the inevitability of the break-up, you are on the road to recovery.

            Believe that time can and does heal a broken heart.  The day you can meet the heart-breaker without having that racing pulse, you’ll know that your heart has truly mended.

Broken-hearted Person Tendencies:

1)      Feelings of sudden sadness and tearfulness

2)      Continuous irritability or anger

3)      Anxiety, tension, feeling on-edge or keyed-up

4)      Feelings of hopelessness or helplessness

5)      Less interest in activities with friends, work and hobbies

6)      Lack of energy, fatigue, tired most of the time

7)      Difficulty in concentration

8)      Change in appetite, overeating or craving for specific food

9)      Difficulty in sleeping, over-sleeping or insomnia

10)  Physical symptoms such as headaches, joint or muscle aches, a sense of being bloated

Guidelines for Broken-hearted Person:

Broken-hearted person tends to be swayed by feeling of frustration, hopelessness and self-pity.  Help yourself by following these guidelines:

1)      Don’t avoid socializing.  You need the support of friends to get over the crisis.

2)      Be positive.  Don’t relive the past, and remember that there were good reasons for the break-up.

3)      Make sure that all the friends around you are positive.  You don’t need negativity dragging you down.

4)      Give yourself a treat.  Have a beauty make-over, a new hairstyle, sorting a  new clothes.

5)      Spring-clean your home or change the furniture around so that you are no longer living in a temple to your lost lover.

6)      Remember what was pleasant in your love affair and avoid bitterness creeping in.

7)      If you feel angry, write down why and try to flush out negative feelings.

8)      Take up new interests.  Do all the things that you always meant to do.

9)      Don’t go out with any man/woman just because you want company.

10)  Don’t be inhibited because you are single – enjoy it.

11)  Give yourself a break before starting off on another relationship, or you could head for a repeat performance.

12)  Broken hearts mend – but not overnight.  Don’t be surprised if it takes a few months for yours to heal.

13)  Be happy with your new life, start what’s motivate you to go on.

14)  Keep your past as an experience while moving ahead.

15)  Keep your faith in HIM, where happiness resides within you as you go along your new and beautiful life.

            Believe that time can and does heal a broken heart.  The day you can meet the heart-breaker without having that racing pulse, you’ll know that your heart has truly mended.

You should identify a Christmas spending strategy so the failure to plan won’t load you with more debt.  Don’t let the emotions of the holiday season bamboozle you into a spending spree that you’ll regret later.  Yet, most people go into the season without planning how much they’re going to spend or how they’re going to divvy it up among their family and friends.  Decide in your heart and mind that the thought is what counts and spend only what you have available in cash after you’ve given tithes and offerings to your local church and other ministries, after you’ve set aside reasonable savings, and after all other bills are paid.  

Make a Christmas budget that identifies available cash and identify how much you’ll spend on each person.  When necessary to stay within the budget, shop at stores like half-off card shops and discount stores that sell nice cards and gifts that allow you to stay within your budget.  If you’re not be able to give everyone or anyone a gift because you don’t have the money to do so, then give them a card that expresses the feelings you have concerning your relationship.  When necessary, it can be homemade.

True friends and family that really love you understand that friendship is not all about gifts. They don’t get mad because you didn’t give them a present or a card, nor do they accept or reject you based on how much you paid for something you give them.  They will definitely understand when you take the time to let them know you’re working to get your finances into good shape and be a good steward of the money God has entrusted to you.  Those who don’t understand are really not your true friends anyway or it will simply take you some time being a good steward and reaching out in friendship in other ways for them to understand what friendship really is about.

In the future, use the same type of budgeting process / spending plan for other special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc.  As you focus on being a good steward of the manifold blessings the Lord has entrusted to you, you will begin to learn more of what He desires in this area and over time you will become a much better steward.  You will also endear yourself to people that will be true friends who have their eyes on the things in life that really matter.  Remember, poverty and disgrace are the reward of the person who does not follow God’s instruction but the person who heeds His instruction will be honored.

Please email any questions and pray for this ministry. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 16:9, Luke 14:28-30, Romans 13:8

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

For those of you who don’t know, I will give a bit of the back story.

John Titor was supposedly born in 1998 in Florida. He claimed that his history has involved a civil war and a short world war. According to his claims he joined the military and became the first tme traveller in 2036. He came back in time to complete a mission involving a portable computer made in 1975. http://www.johntitor.com/, http://www.johntitor.strategicbrains.com/

He claimed to have stopped in the year 2000 to do a favor for his grandfather from 1975.

It seems that this sparked some interest on the internet. Many people from believers to skeptics came forward to engage in online conversation with this man for the duration of his time here. This also spawned further claims of time travellers visiting to gather information of the time and others looking for him. http://www.timetravelinstitute.com/ttiforum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=time_travel&Number=14934&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

I find it interesting that there is now a movie about this man. Here is a link showing the documentary. http://timetravel0.com/

Some interesting links:

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message901712/pg1

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message834021/pg1

and for skeptics, http://www.timetravelinstitute.com/ttiforum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=time_travel&Number=38696&page=3&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Like I said above, I find this story interesting, though I am somewhat of a skeptic. I mean, I believe that time travel may be possible some time in the future. Not will be but maybe. My issue with the story is that if he were really from the future, then why would he broadcast it so publicly?

I am very interested in your opinions here. Please comment and let me know what you think.

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I think this addresses the central issue with religions today–the whole “my religion is right and yours is wrong” mentality. I believe religions are all part of the same dialogue that attempt to answer the big questions; they are all talking about the same mystery.

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I like this sign because it makes God accessible. I think religions are frequently offputting and unpleasant for many people because God is presented as an entity to be feared because he judges and condemns.

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Whether you believe in God or not, God will have the last word. We are ultimately not in control. So then we must ask what kind of God God is–is he a loving entity or just a blind force of nature? In any case–he, she, it–is ultimately in control.

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Translation: “God is an atheist.” Hmm, makes you think. If God is God, then does God believe in himself? Did God create himself? Ah, the philosophical implications are endless . . .

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There is so much emphasis placed on which religion is the correct one–which religion is True in the grandest sense of the term. One of the central focuses in the religion I was exposed to as a child, the Latter-Day Saints faith, is that it is the only True Church. That’s always been very unpalatable to me. Nevertheless, most religions claim exclusive knowledge.

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At their best, atheists are often quite funny. They bring a sense of humor to religious questions that is often lacking in religious dialogue. At their worst, they sometimes attack and belittle the big questions.

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Apparently, faith did not see these store owners through the hard economic times.

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The two parts of this sign are good advice no matter what your belief system. If we could all be kind to each other, wouldn’t we pretty much solve the bulk of the issues the world faces? I heard somewhere that there is only one message in the Bible: Love your neighbor as yourself and the rest is just commentary. I like that a lot.

The second “carpe diem” aspect of the sign (There’s probably no God. Now stopy worrying and enjoy your life) is also great advice. I think worrying and fear are the downside of many religions. It often seems to be the case that when truths are institutionalized, the truths become fossilized and joyless.

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This sign made me laugh. I think God may indeed be bored with me and all my questions.

The video immediately starts the video out trying to set 2012 apart from other events, as does any doomsayer who tries to make a quick buck selling books on New Age material. I got through that crap. The song of course is “Only Time” by Enya. Of course, the song evokes my memories of a planetarium at a high school. The New Age song only exacerbated my fears of Apocalypse as the astronomer mentioned the Sun will explode. Some kid told me it wouldn’t happen for six billion years, but still, it scared the crap out of me. The fact that it could burn out and we wouldn’t even know for eight minutes scared me. Any mention of sun spots or the like was material I didn’t want to know about. It was when I was in fifth grade after Y2K, which I didn’t totally understand.

Anyway, the video continued to say that the Mayan calendar would end on December 21, 2012. When the Gregorian calendar ends, we get a new one and start over with a new year. The video mentioned that Nostradamus predicts great doom for the world. This is too vague and any of his works, mostly consisting of bad poetry, could be interpreted so liberally that they could be used to fit any agenda. By the way, if he predicted the end of the world in 1999, how can he be right about this one?

St. Malachy predicts that there will only be one more Pope; the current Pope is Benedict. Since when do saints make predictions? How much do we even know about St. Malachy to say that he is a credible source? The video went on to say that NASA predicts an asteroid will hit the Earth soon. If they did, more people would know about it and then the 2012 argument could have something in favor of it.

People will still say that the date December 21, 2012 is ominous because of this: 12/21/2012. Wait, there are two many ones and twos. This could be bad. I wouldn’t go to work that day. You add them and multiply them 52 times and you get 666! Ah! 666 – the Number of the Beast! A note on 666. 6-6-1906. 6-6-1806. Dates when nothing happened except people woke up, worked, and then went to bed. Brace yourself for 10/10/2010.

Folks, we’re not supposed to know when the Apocalypse is. If you are religious, you would believe that only God knows according to the Bible. It’s the part of the Bible fear mongers leave out to scare us. These fear mongers are the ones who interpret everything in the Bible literally except for Revelation. Example: the Lamb of God represents the cotton industry and that leads to demand for slaves and then the United States has a civil war and then Russia has a civil war and it becomes the Soviet Union and then America and the U.S.S.R. are one button away from Apocalypse.

Folks, we can’t pick out which parts we want to use to push our agenda. We also need to hold these people accountable when they get it wrong and don’t try to b.s. their way out of it.

Believers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11iCmzGnOI8

Skeptics
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=2030157220

I wouldn’t say that I now have faith in God. I don’t know that faith means much. I think experience is the thing—everything, actually. Without experience, I’m not sure that one has much of anything—a wish, a hope, a want, perhaps. Faith is an abstract, foreign concept to me. Nevertheless, if I were to describe the primary question that does give me a kind of budding of ill-defined faith, it would be this “why is there anything but nothing” question. I’ve pondered that question for as long as I can remember. If everything is meaningless, then there would be nothing, right? But there’s a whole lot more than nothing. Trees, the sky, air, this desk, the cat over there in the window, all the people living, going to work, day after day, raising families, on and on—they all exist. But why does anything exist at all? Why does matter exist at all?

It’s always been a sort of 51/49 proposition for me whether life ultimately has meaning. This question of why anything but nothing has kept me from the atheist camp and has swung the tables in favor of meaning. However, just because there is possibly meaning, it does not necessarily mean there is a personal meaning–though I wish and hope and want that there is. If there is an architect of the universe, is he, she, it anything like us and is God’s desire the same as ours? The universe does not seem to operate the way that our minds do. It seems much more objective and indiscriminate and so by extension is its meaning just as impersonal?

This leads me to consider the Zen koan, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it really fall?” Is consciousness necessary for all that we know as the world to exist? That’s a fascinating question to ponder because it asks ultimately whether matter or consciousness is the foundation of life. I’ll explore this question in the next article in this series.

by D3 San Francisco

Passage from Annie Dillard and W. Somerset Maugham that Address this Question

Why is there something here instead of nothing? And why are we aware of this question—we people, particles going around and around this black stone? Why are we aware of it?

Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 93.

He was no nearer to the meaning of life than he had been before. Why the world was there and what men had come into existence for at all was as inexplicable as ever. Surely there must be some reason. . . . [There] was no answer at all unless you found it out for yourself.

Maugham, W. Somerset. Of Human Bondage (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 285.

Take a Look at My Other Similar Articles that Ask Hard Questions

What Is the Purpose of Suffering?

Is It Possible to Believe in Any Religion As the Literal Truth?

My Search for God and Judaism

About Me

Books are my “church” in that they help to satisfy my need to explore the mystery of life. At their best, words keep pace with the profound questions of life, honoring their depth and sincerity, without giving pat, flat answers.

I consider myself a mystical agnostic. This is a term that I am borrowing from Karen Armstrong’s fascinating book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have struggled with the hard questions and come to the conclusion that agnosticism is the only truly authentic position I can claim. I do not “know” the answers to the grand mysteries of life. The mystical component describes my intense interest in religions, spirituality, and mysticism as a path to experience the spirituality latent in the self.

by ButterflySha

Life is fraught with suffering, so much so that it’s almost cliché to say. One need not search far to find horrendous examples of suffering on a grand scale. The so-called acts of God are too numerous to count. Some of the biggies in the past 10 years include the tsunami of 2004 (230,000 dead), the Katrina Hurricane of 2005 (1,800 dead), and the Sichuan earthquake in China of 2008 (350,000 dead). There are also man-made catastrophes, which include wars and genocide. Recently, the crisis in Darfur has killed nearly 1,500,000 people. The Holocaust also stands out as one of the most extreme examples in humanity’s history of the unconscionable magnitude of suffering people have inflicted and experienced.

The problem of suffering is one of the primary reasons religions exist as well as one of the biggest stumbling blocks for them. They offer various explanations of, justifications for, and advice to overcome suffering: We must suffer in order to grow. We must suffer so that we can transcend the ever-changing, pain-filled world. We must suffer so that we realize that suffering is but a mind construct that we must work to transform in order to overcome suffering.

All of these explanations seem hollow to me. I often wonder if the outward suffering we see an individual going through is the same as the inward suffering that the individual actually experiences. In other words, is our interpretation of another’s suffering accurate? Does the meaning of the suffering get misrepresented and mistranslated as we ponder it? Suffering is indeed an undeniable reality, but can we ever really know the full extent of another person’s suffering by merely assessing the symptoms of the suffering? I don’t think so. So I don’t know that statistics tell the true story—I don’t know that they can adequately encapsulate the fullness of the suffering question. I think we can only assess our own experience of suffering and draw conclusions from that. What has personal suffering taught you about its purpose?

I’ve included a riveting passage below from Elie Wiesel’s book Night in which he describes seeing the smoke from the crematoria ovens at a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor and one of the most eloquent writers on the subject. Another amazingly insightful author on the Holocaust was survivor Victor Frankl. His book Man’s Search for Meaning describes how we can find meaning in the most horrendous of circumstances, thus transforming and transcending suffering.

Coastal village in Sumatra destroyed by 2004 tsunami (photo from U.S. Federal Government)

Passage from Elie Wiesel’s book Night that Addresses this Question

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.
Never.

Wiesel, Elie. Night (New York: Dell Publishing, 1978), 240.

Crematoria ovens at Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. 

Take a Look at My Other Similar Articles that Ask Hard Questions

Why Is There Anything But Nothing?

Is It Possible to Believe in Any Religion As the Literal Truth?

About Me

Books are my “church” in that they help to satisfy my need to explore the mystery of life. At their best, words keep pace with the questions of life, honoring their depth and sincerity, without giving pat, flat answers.

I consider myself a mystical agnostic. This is a term that I am borrowing from Karen Armstrong’s fascinating book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have struggled with the hard questions and come to the conclusion that agnosticism is the only truly authentic position I can claim. I do not “know” the answers to the grand mysteries of life. The mystical component describes my intense interest in religions, spirituality, and mysticism as a path to experience the spirituality latent in the self.

by austinevan

Image by carulmare

One of the great mysteries for me is how people are intellectually able to believe in a particular religious doctrine as the literal truth. Religious doctrine often defies logic and has little or no basis in our objective experience of the world and of life. For instance, how could one believe that Moses actually parted the Red Sea or that Noah could fit all those animals on the Ark? A great percentage of people in the world do believe in their religion literally, though.

I think it is easier for me to answer “no” to this big question of whether any religion is factually accurate because I was not raised in a religious home. I think it is often more difficult for people who were raised with a religion and for whom religion was presented as the factual truth to question the validity of their religious upbringing because if they were to do this, this questioning could introduce cracks into their cultural and familial foundation.

What do those of us who have no foundation in religion do? In other words, how do we respond to the deep questions of life when we don’t have a go-to source of answers? I believe we construct our own often loosely defined ideas about how life works. Then again, I think everyone, believers, agnostics, and atheists, must do that for themselves—as least to some degree. By what myth do you live?

by Sukanto Debnath

Passage from Joseph Campbell that Addresses this Question

The peoples of all the great civilizations everywhere have been prone to interpret their own symbolic figures literally, and so to regard themselves as favored in a special way, in direct contact with the Absolute. Even the polytheistic Greeks and Romans, Hindus and Chinese, all of whom were able to view the gods and customs of other sympathetically, thought of their own as supreme or, at the very least, superior; and among the monotheistic Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, of course, the gods of others are regarded as no gods at all, but devils, and their worshipers as godless. Mecca, Rome, Jerusalem, and (less emphatically) Benares and Peking have been for centuries, therefore, each in its own way, the navel of the universe, connected directly—as by a hot line—with the Kingdom of Light or of God.

However, today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education. And in this there is serious danger. For not only has it always been the way of the multitudes to interpret their own symbols literally, but such literally read symbolic forms have always been—and still are, in fact—the supports of their civilizations, the support of their moral orders, their cohesion, vitality, and creative powers. With the loss of them there follows uncertainty, and with uncertainty, disequilibrium, since life . . . requires life-supporting illusions; and where these have been dispelled, there is nothing secure to hold on to, no moral law, nothing firm.

Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By (New York: Arkana, 1993), 10.

by Tom T

Take a Look at My Other Similar Articles that Ask Hard Questions

What Is the Purpose of Suffering?

Why Is There Anything But Nothing?

My Search for God and Judaism

About Me

Books are my “church” in that they help to satisfy my need to explore the mystery of life. At their best, words keep pace with the questions of life, honoring their depth and sincerity, without giving pat, flat answers.

I consider myself a mystical agnostic. This is a term that I am borrowing from Karen Armstrong’s fascinating book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have struggled with the hard questions and come to the conclusion that agnosticism is the only truly authentic position I can claim. I do not “know” the answers to the grand mysteries of life. The mystical component describes my intense interest in religions, spirituality, and mysticism as a path to experience the spirituality latent in the self.

by austinevan