Beanieboy,
I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian. I thought I would give you an Eastern Orthodox perspective of what I read that you say, as well as Orthodox answers (as best as I am able, being that I am a sinner).
The practice is that you push the negative electromagnetic field away, and replace it with your own healthy em field.
I am confused. What is a "negative electromagnetic field"? What is a "healthy em field"? In physics, electromagnetic fields are not negative or positive, as they are directional vector fields (vectors can be defined positive or negative, it's a relative thing). So what you are talking about likely has nothing to do with physics. Is this some sort of spiritual force? A different dimension? A realization? What do you mean when you say "em field"?
In the meantime, my sister and brother-in-law were troubled by it. It has been experimented with in hospitals. The bible talks of the laying on of hands to heal. Even from a lay perspective, it feels good to be held when you are feeling sick or sad.
Do you have any list of peer-reviewed publications where you find this being tested to any effect? I don't want to sound rude; I'm just curious where you get your information, so I may learn more about this.
Laying on of hands certainly can heal, but it is not seen as the laying on of hands, or the person's power, but Christ's power within the person that causes healing.
What you are talking about is certainly outside the Tradition of the Church, outside of Christian understanding or experience (the laying on of hands you refer to is not at all what St. James refers to). That does not make it wrong, by any stretch of the imagination. Church Tradition is not about medical science. The principles of vaccination and germ theory are not found wihtin the Scriptures.
This is why I would be interested to learn more about the methods. I know nothing about these possible medical techniques you discuss.
Somehow, this was translated into my mom worried about me drifting from the faith. My missionary brother-in-law agreed to drive me to the airport to put me on the right track, as a favor to my mother. He asked me if there was a lot of new age practice in the city, and I said that I knew of someone that did the I Ching, Buddhists, etc., but there is nothing "new" about New Age.
Scripture says very-much the same thing. ?There is nothing new under the sun.? So any innovation can actually find its roots in very old belief. We as Orthodox accept that everything started with God, so every idea had to have its origins with Him somehow. But that does not mean that every old idea is true, or correct, or good. There have been many bad ideas perpetuated over the ages. Arguably, almost all ideas are bad in some way, almost all of them fall short of perfection. They are always warped, distorted, simplified, and so don't hold the beauty of reality. The New Age has some very beautiful, very true things about it. It appreciates the beauty and blessing of Nature, and the goodness of the human person. But I believe that it falls far short of other ways of life.
He asked me how my life with God was, and I said that it changed drastically. For one thing, I no longer pray to an external God, but pray within.
What do you see prayer as? What is prayer to you?
Orthodox hold that prayer is a communion of words (though not only of words), where we speak with God and the saints. Where, when we pray as a community, God reaches down from heaven to earth, being present in our midst, and bringing Heaven down all around us, with all its hosts, and we truly do not know where we are. We are called to pray without ceasing, even in our sleep, meditating constantly upon God.
I said, "Wow. I'm sorry that's all you see, because I think you are a great person."
He said, "The only good in me is who God is."
I said, "So, nonchristians have no good?"
This is a bit of a logical jump. We must accept first that the only good comes from God, and that non-Christians do not have God. We, as Orthodox Christians, accept that good does indeed come from God, and from Him alone. But we do not accept that non-Christians do not have God in their lives in some way. Their very existence, their very being, was formed by God, and so He is intimately connected in their lives also.
I asked, "Then you haven't asked Jesus into your heart? Why look to heaven if Jesus is dwelling inside you? If your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, why look up at the clouds? Don't you find it unsettling when someone says, "Are you there God? Are you listening?" when they claim to have them in their heart, and God is right beside them? Isn't it odd to look up, and wonder if God is looking down from the clouds, or the stars, yet read that God is everywhere at once?"
God is certainly above us, and also within us (more or less, depending on the person). But ?in us? does not mean the same thing as ?part of us?. We believe that God is present everywhere, but not imminent everywhere. Otherwise, everywhere would be equally special, which is the same as saying that nowhere would be special. Why go to Church, when it is just as holy and noble to be in the fields? Why be by your mother's side when she dies? Is it not the same to be anywhere else? For God is with her and with you, and you would be united.
This philosophy is what I like to call ?I'll just stay in bed? philosophy. It does have many merits, but to the extreme, it is often just an excuse for laziness. I am not saying that is how you use it, but that is a chief weakness and temptation of such a view. Certainly, I believe that God is more in some things and some people than in other things and other people. This is why Orthodox pray to saints. We pray not to the saints themselves, but to God within them, as He is so wonderfully alive within them, reflected and illuminating their own lives as examples for us.
When we praise ourselves, instead of God, we are praising the part of us that is uncreated. But none of us is uncreated. So we praise nothing. But this is exactly what sin is. When we praise ourselves, our ?ego? (as the Buddhists call it), we end up deep within sin, lost in a void within which there is no hope.
I said, "For me, I have never been able to tell where I end and God begins. Maybe I am part of God, and God isn't a seperate entity. I'm not saying that everyone should bow down before me, because everyone else is part of God as well. However, knowing that if I can hear my thoughts, then God hears my thoughts, is much more reassuring than praying up to the clouds, hearing no response, and hoping that God isn't asleep or watching TV, and paying attention."
I love what you say here, for it is so profound! It is often difficult to figure out, as a Christian, where God ends and we begin. There is certainly a delineation. Saint Gregory of Palamas called it the difference between essence and energy. But that delineation can be very difficult to distinguish sometimes, and absolute at other times. What God's essence is, we cannot understand, it is beyond us, bigger than us, forever out of our reach. We can only say what it is not, and not what it is. God's energy (His activity within us, and Divine Nature growing within us), however, is how we enter into a relationship with Him. As we enter into this relationship, we partake in the divine nature. We become one with God in terms of His energies. As our God Jesus Christ states in the Scriptures, "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:22-26). From this we see the difference from the Son and the rest of the world, the unknowable essence of God, and also how we are to become one with God, partaking in the divine nature. But these are difficult mysteries, and I understand them little. I pray always to grow in understanding, though I am a wretched sinner...
He tried to turn the conversation around to how we are sinners...
This is exactly where I was going! We are sinners. There is something wrong with us. We are sick. We haven't become one with God the Father yet. We haven't partaken of the divine nature. After all, if we had, there would be no war. If Buddhists had, there would be no monastic squabbling. They'd all have gotten to Nirvana by now (even the Dahli Lama admits that he is far from Nirvana). We live in a sick world that tends to make us worse and worse, destroying our bodies, our minds, and our spirits. This destruction God cannot look upon. God cannot look at sin itself. Sin is the lack of created things. Sin, in a platonic sense, doesn't exist. So God cannot look upon something that does not exist. Even Satan himself has some good in him, for he still exists after a fashion. And God looks upon Satan in Job. He certainly looks upon us. As we are cleansed in the waters of Baptism from sin, God looks upon us as children, born again of water and the Spirit. We have far to grow, and in a fallen world, it isn't easy. We are diseased, but the cure now lives within us, cleansing us, sometimes by fire.
We agreed to disagree, he believing that I was on the highway to hell, and me unable to convince him that the plane only goes to Minneapolis.
A good thing you didn't fly Western. I think they sometimes make it to Minneapolis with connections at the Stygia, or one of the other lower regions.
Do you think that what ever you are is simply sin?
No. Nor do I think anyone or anything is ?simply sin?. Anything ?simply sin? wouldn't exist. None of it could be created.
Do you think that me brother-in-law was right?
Part of what he said was right. Part of what you said was. I think, to be blunt, that he is closer to the Truth. For one needs to know he is lost in order to be found. Once you are found, though, I think you will find yourself in a much better place.
If you have any questions about Orthodoxy, you can ask them here, PM me, or ask in the Orthodox forums.
If you allow me, I will pray for your journey.
Paul
