Spiritual Resources

Spiritual Resources: Encyclopedia II - Tlingit - Culture

The Tlingit culture is multifaceted and complex, a characteristic of Northwest Pacific Coast peoples with access to easily exploited rich resources. In Tlingit culture a heavy emphasis is placed upon family and kinship, and on a rich tradition of oratory. Wealth and economic power are important indicators of status, but so is generosity and proper behavior, all signs of "good breeding" and ties to aristocracy. Art and spirituality are incorporated in nearly all areas of Tlingit culture, with even everyday objects such as spoons and storage boxes decorated and imbued with spiritual power and historical associations. ...

Martial arts, Martial arts - Overview, Martial arts - History, Martial arts - Martial arts in Asia, Martial arts - Martial arts in Europe, Martial arts - Martial arts in North America, Martial arts - Martial arts internationally, Martial arts - Comparisons between martial arts, Martial arts - Classification, Martial arts - Technical aspects, Martial arts - Testing and Competition, Martial arts - Forms, Martial arts - Light and medium-contact sparring, Martial arts - Full-contact fighting, Martial arts - Martial arts and self defense, Martial arts - Martial arts as sport, Martial arts - Martial arts and dance, Martial arts - Notable styles of martial arts, Martial arts - Further resources

Spiritual Resources: Alternative Health Dictionary on Human Resources Chi Gong

Human Resources Chi Gong: A form of Qigong (chi gong) taught by Warner Chen, O.M.D., L.Ac., Ph.D., of New York City. Chen describes chi as a vital force or vital energy similar to electricity.

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Spiritual Resources: Alternative Health Dictionary on Alternative 12 Steps

Alternative 12 Steps: Nontheistic derivative of the Twelve Steps, expounded by Martha Cleveland, Ph.D., and Arlys G. in The Alternative 12 Steps: A Secular Guide To Recovery (1992). Three of their Steps affirm spiritual resources or spiritual energy.

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Spiritual Resources: Alternative Health Dictionary on Imagineering

Imagineering: Subject of Imagineering For Health: Self-Healing through the Use of the Mind (1981), by Serge King, Ph.D. The source of King's doctorate in psychology is California Western University, a nonaccredited correspondence school whose name was changed in the 1980s to California Coast University.a means of doing practically anything, Imagineering comprises cooperative healing, emotivational therapy, idea therapy, verbal therapy, and visual therapy. Its theory posits spiritual resources.

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Spiritual Resources: Alternate Health Therapy Dictionary on Belief -Systems

Belief -Systems - The belief or faith that the patient holds as his innermost cultural, spiritual, and psychological resources for healing. For modern man the healer may be a physician or priest. For American Indians and Mexicans it is the curandero or shaman. For Alaskan Eskimos it is an angakok and so forth. Each concept has its own specific practices that help the person with faith to be healed. The key to faith healing is belief. All healers must understand the patient-belief system in order to achieve success in treating most disorders.

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Spiritual Resources: Alternative Health Dictionary on Johrei

Johrei: purificatory method that defines the Johrei Fellowship, a worldwide interfaith association with a center in New York City. Reportedly, sessions take about twenty minutes, do not entail physical contact, and are always free of charge. Besides the method, the word Johrei denotes a paradisiacal doctrine anda something that, through the focusing of Divine Light, naturally eases physical and mental distress. Japanese businessman Mokichi Okada founded the movement in 1935. Okada had learned God's Divine Plan for the New Age through a series of divine revelations. Johrei's principles include the Law of Purification, which holds that sickness is simply Nature's way of restoring health, and the Law of Spiritual Affinity, which holds that innumerable spiritual cords dominate human existence. Another principle is that one's health and material resources are functions of one's spiritual condition.

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Spiritual Resources: New Age Spiritual Dictionary on Numerology

numerology

Any system of prediction effected by use of numbers. It appears the different numerology "systems" give similar results. The power involved, therefore, may be a psi power rather than a system based upon occult meanings of numbers arrangements, etc.

The rudimentary characteristics of numbers are

1 will, initiating power, striving;

2 love-wisdom, maintaining, humanity;

3 active intelligence, mediating, creativity;

4 conflict, foundation, future;

5 exactness, change, freedom;

6 devotion, family, harmony;

7 spirituality, right-relationship, community;

8 power, resources, responsibility;

9 universality, joy, service;

0 higher expression of the quality of the number it acompanies.

(See also: Numerology, Body Mind and Soul)

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Spiritual Resources: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Frey, Freyr, Fro

Frey, Freyr, Fro (Icelandic, Scandinavian) (from fro seed; Anglo-Saxon frea; Swedish frojda rejoice)

The Norse god associated with the earth: in theosophy he represents the planetary chain whose soul-world (Alfhem) was his "teething gift in the morning of time." Frey and his sister Freya, goddess of the planet Venus, are the children of Njord, the Norse Saturn-Chronos.

At the formation of the globe earth, in which Frey embodied, the dwarfs fashioned for Frey the magic ship Skidbladnir (from skida ski + blad blade)

which contains the seeds of all living things but which can be folded up like a kerchief when its lifetime has elapsed. Frey is also owner of the magic sword (spiritual will) which is invincible in battle against giants (matter) provided the wielder is pure and resourceful. He is the god of sunshine and fertility.

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Spiritual Resources: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on Faith Healing, Drugless Healing

Faith Healing, Drugless Healing Apart from the regular medical and surgical practice, widespread forms of drugless healing are employed today. Public opinion generally is either frankly skeptical about the whole matter, or believes that such afford safe and easy means of relief and escape from suffering and disease.

As a whole, these forms of faith or magnetic healing depend on the "inborn or inherent, ability of the 'healer' or practitioner to convey healthy life-force from himself to the diseased person. This is the key to success, or the lack of success, in all cases, and in all kinds of healing of whatever so-called 'school'" (SOPh 622). If the practitioner succeeds in conveying the vitality of the pranic fluids from his own healthy body to the diseased body or organ of another person, that healthy life-force "expels" or changes the inharmonious vibrations in the afflicted part and, by restoring harmony there, brings about health. Such cures can be permanent; usually they are temporary, lasting from a few days to a few years.

All these methods were known to the ancients. Unfortunately, the Western lack of any true psychology leaves unexplained the rationale of these healing systems -- whether by hypnotism, magnetism, mesmerism, or healing by faith as practiced by the Christian Scientists and faith-healers -- and gives no hint of their end results. The potential dangers incurred, both physical and superphysical, are unsuspected. The magnetic healer's emanation of his vitality and will-force inevitably carries and implants in the person it affects something of his own quality of mind, heart, and body. The germs of any latent disease, hidden vice, or mental bias will complicate any supposed cure.

Moreover, the subtle infection on inner lines karmically links for the future both healer and patient in the outcome. Even diseased or evil-minded persons of strong will and animal vitality can displace a disease and, by driving it back onto some inner level of the sufferer's constitution, can make a seeming cure. Howsoever it is displaced out of sight, it cannot be denied out of existence, and sooner or later it will reappear in a more untimely, unnatural, and probably a more dangerous form because of its suppression at the moment of its endeavor to exhaust itself in physical expression. Physical disease, originating in wrong thought in this or a former life, becomes visible on the most material level in working its way out of the system for good. It is positively pernicious for a healer to act upon the will, conscience, or moral integrity of the sick person by hypnotizing his mind, will, and conscience into believing that sickness does not exist, or that he is a victim of fate instead of suffering from his own past actions. Any such control of another's conscious life is a form of suggestion or hypnotism, and falls under what was formerly called black magic.

On the other hand, we are morally obligated to help the sick and suffering in the right ways of treating the body, mind, and soul; right because involving the arousing of the patient's own inner powers of spiritual, moral, and intellectual resistance against the weaknesses in himself. The wrong ways consist in the overpowering -- however good the motive of the practitioner may be -- of the moral instincts, will, and conscience of the sufferer, thereby rendering him weaker than before. In genuine mesmerism the vital emanation from a pure-minded, unselfish, healthy operator arouses the inert or disordered forces of the diseased organ or body, causing them to vibrate harmoniously and naturally. Thus the sufferer makes himself whole or healthy, and has no bad reaction. The best of all drugless healing methods is where the sufferer is brought into a state of hope, self-confidence, and the higher kind of resignation bringing peace and inner quiet, all of which works in harmony with the body's natural resources of health and healing. This is the kind of faith-cure used by Jesus and others of similar spiritual and intellectual stature.

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Spiritual Resources: New Age Spirituality Dictionary on Society of Friends

Society of Friends

Better known as Quakers, an Anglo-American pacifist sectarian movement originating in the religious confusion of the English Civil War and Commonwealth era (1640-60). George Fox (1624-91), a "seeker" discontented with both the Church of England and the Puritan and other sectarian alternatives that flourished during the period, attracted a radical group of followers through his prophetic words and deeds.

According to one tradition, Fox and his followers became known as Quakers when, refusing to swear oaths or otherwise respect the status of the law courts, they urged magistrates to tremble before God rather than the law.

More correctly known as the "Society of Friends (of Truth)," they distinguished themselves theologically from other Christians through their doctrine of the "Inward" or "Inner Light," the manifestation of the divine within each individual that, when recognized and nurtured, inevitably led to religious truth. Friends in Britain flourished despite adversity. Many were jailed for their pacifist and other nonconforming ways, while others organized their resources to alleviate these sufferings until relief came in the form of the Toleration Act of 1689. Barred from the universities and professions, they benefited from their reputation for honesty and hard work and often were successful in business.

Friends rejected hierarchy and churchly authority, organizing instead according to local weekly meetings for worship and progressively less frequent and geographically more encompassing regional meetings for governance. Weekly meetings were not led by ministers, but a clerk was present to record their proceedings. Worship was conducted in silence in a bare meeting house, with individuals speaking only when prompted by the Inner Light. The "friendly persuasion" was transplanted to the New World in 1682 by William Penn, an aristocratic convert who secured a royal land grant in payment of debts owed his family.

The Pennsylvania colony was based on Quaker principles of consensus and fair dealing in its governance; its capital, Philadelphia-"the city of brotherly love"-reflected in its name and spacious layout Penn's hopes for a peaceable society. English demands for support in the French and Indian Wars, however, led to a series of compromises and finally, in 1756, the renunciation of governmental power by the Quakers, who nevertheless continued to constitute a commercial elite in the region. Quakers in the new American nation continued to cope with the problems engendered by their pacifism, which led to suffering but also proved instrumental in securing governmental recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors.

Quakers pursued a peacemaking role by opposing both violence and the injustices that provoked it. Their Inner Light doctrine was incompatible with social inequality, so that women enjoyed equal status to men. Quakers such as John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and, later, Levi Coffin, were active in the lateeighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century campaign against slavery. Many contemporary British Quakers also became active in reform causes. Their plain speech and dress, modified over time, were also manifestations of this egalitarianism.

Internal divisions manifested themselves early in the nineteenth century in the United States, when social and geographical divisions expressed themselves in theological forms. From 1826 to 1827 followers of Elias Hicks (1748-1830) near Philadelphia rejected the local elite's embracing of evangelical Protestant tenets and symbols, and called for a return to early Quaker practice.

Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), an English Friend, pressed the evangelical cause further, while John Wilbur's (1774-1856) followers tried to combine the two emphases. Richmond, Indiana, emerged, in the first half of the nineteenth century, as a focus of Gurneyite settlement that was later influenced by the Holiness movement. In the twentieth century, the Philadelphia Meeting-part of the larger General Conference-became the center for Friends concerned with philanthropic and peacemaking activity, while the Friends United Meeting (Richmond, Indiana) and Evangelical Friends Alliance (Cleveland, Ohio) represented more evangelical strains. In the 1990s, Friends in the United States of various affiliations numbered in excess of one hundred thousand; this was somewhat over half of the worldwide membership, with roughly 20 percent of the remainder in Britain.

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