Just about 32 light-years from our solar system (which is incredibly close, cosmically speaking) an angry red dwarf star named AU Microscopii is absolutely tormenting one of its very own planets, AU Microscopii b. Piece by piece, the stellar beast seems to be eviscerating the world’s atmosphere with its high-energy radiation. It’s quite chaotic over there, to say the least.
A stellar new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is offering up some clues about how planets as enormous as the gas giant Jupiter could form. Researchers used the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and an international astronomy facility called Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect large dusty clumps located close to a young star. The clumps may collapse and one day create planets. The findings were published July 25 in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Our picture of cosmic evolution could be thrown into doubt by the discovery of a massive galaxy that seems to lack dark matter.
Dark matter, which accounts for around 85% of the matter in the universe, seems to be absent from the galaxy NGC 1277, part of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies. The galaxy, located 240 million light-years from Earth, is the first Milky Way-sized conglomeration of stars, planets, dust and gas found to be missing dark matter.
“When we possess the God-seeing life, we feel ourselves to be living in God; and from out of that life in which we feel God in ourselves, there shines forth upon the face of our inward being a brightness which enlightens our reason, and is an intermediary between ourselves and God. And if we with our enlightened reason abide within ourselves in this brightness, we feel that our created life immerses itself in its eternal life. But when we follow the brightness above reason with a simple sight, and a leaning out of ourselves, toward our highest life, there we experience the transformation of our whole selves in God; and thereby we feel ourselves to be wholly enwrapped in God.
“After this, there follows a third way of feeling, namely, that we feel ourselves to be one with God; for, through the transformation in God, we feel ourselves to be swallowed up in the fathomless abyss of our eternal blessedness, wherein we can nevermore find any distinction between ourselves and God. And this is our highest feeling, which we cannot experience in any other way than in the immersion in love. And therefore, so soon as we are uplifted and drawn into our highest feeling, all our powers stand idle in an essential fruition; but our powers do not pass away into nothingness, for then we should lose our created being.”
What Ruysbroeck calls “the God-seeing life” doesn’t mean that anyone literally sees God, but more that one feels themselves to be in the presence of God. We read in scripture of people talking to God and God answering them, but that doesn’t happen now because man has become too densely material resulting in blockage of his spiritual faculties. If we awaken and develop those faculties, we become the people who possess the God-seeing life.
God is all about Light. Mystics have said that for ages. So it should not be surprising that when we awaken to God’s presence, God shines forth within us as brilliant Light, a Spiritual Light that is different from physical light. Light carries information in it. Even science is beginning to realize that characteristic of physical light, but the information carried in Spiritual Light is of greater importance to our immortal life. When we follow that Light, we do experience a gradual transformation to a higher version of ourselves. And as we are transformed, the world we live is is going through a similar transformation.
According to Ruysbroeck, the next stage in spiritual development is to become One with God, one with the All. That is one large step ahead, and some may break down the process into smaller steps, but becoming one with God is certainly the ultimate Goal. Ruysbroeck says this total immersion is God is one of Love, and that is true. Universal Love is part of what we develop as we approach that stage of being.
Ruysbroeck adds that our powers do not fade away when this happens as that would mean losing our created being, or individuality. Just as a board in a fence is part of the fence, yet still itself, so we become part of God and still retain our individuality. This may not happen in one lifetime, but the process will continue after the death of the physical body, as long as we start now and make as much progress as we can.
The three-decade old Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a swarm of space boulders around the asteroid Dimorphos. If that name sounds familiar, it is the same asteroid that NASA deliberately slammed the 1,200 pound DART spacecraft into in September 2022.
The mission was the first time humans set out to change the movement of an object in space. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed head-on into Dimorphos at 13,000 miles per hour on September 26, 2022 in an effort to change the asteroid’s velocity.
In three years, the “black hole merger,” a rare astroпomical occurreпce, will take place. A siпgle Ƅlack hole will be created when two extremely large Ƅlack holes meet and merge. Due to the fact that the poiпt of coпʋergeпce will Ƅe visible to telescopes, this enables researchers to more thoroughly examine the characteristics aпd Ƅehavior of Ƅlack holes. Scieпtists aпd aпyoпe who enjoy scieпce are likely to be very interested in this big aпd fasciпatiпg occurrence.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have traced an incredibly bright gamma-ray burst (GRB) back to its source, a violent collision between two neutron stars.
The ring on your finger likely contains atoms forged in neutron star collisions like this, also known as “kilonovas.” That’s because, as well as blasting out long-duration GRBs, kilonovas are believed to be the sites at which the universe’s heaviest elements, which cannot be synthesized in the nuclear furnaces at the heart of stars, are forged.
“Toys and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes torpor, sometimes sloth; this is thy daily slavery. By little and little, if you do not better look to it, the sacred dogmata will be blotted out of thy mind. How many things be there, which when a mere naturalist, thou hast barely considered of according to their nature, thou does let pass without any further use? Whereas thou should in all things so join action and contemplation, that thou might at the same time attend all present occasions, to perform everything duly and carefully and yet so intend the contemplative part too, that no part of that delight and pleasure, which the contemplative knowledge of everything according to its true nature does afford, might be lost. Or, that the true and contemplative knowledge of everything according to its own nature, might of itself (action being subject to many lets and impediments) afford unto thee sufficient pleasure and happiness. Not apparent, but not concealed. And when will thou attain to the happiness of true simplicity and unaffected gravity? When will thou rejoice in the certain knowledge of every particular object according to its true nature; as what the matter and substance of it is; what use it is for in the world: how long it can subsist: what things it does consist of; who they are that are capable of it, and who can give it and take it away?”
What Aurelius is calling “toys and fooleries” isn’t limited to the toys of children. He is talking about anything that distracts us from the serious side of life. Things like television, video games, and being on a cell phone so much you don’t notice anything around you. It is really sad that when I go to a fitness center to work out, there are always a few people who ignore the club rules and talk on their cell phones the whole time they are on the treadmills, stationary bikes, or even weight machines. The same happens in the supermarket. Aurelius is correctly labeling this attachment to these things as a form of slavery.
The harm of getting too caught up in and attached to things in the material world is that it tends to cause us to ignore our obligation to develop our spiritual side. That is why the Forces of Darkness work so hard to get us to spend more time with video games, cell phones, television, etc. When Aurelius talks of being a “mere naturalist,” he doesn’t mean someone who is out in the natural world all the time, but one who is caught up in the physical realm of matter.
What Aurelius is saying here is that instead of idly acting on anything that we find interesting, distracting, comforting, etc., we should think about what we are doing and act on the things that benefit us instead. There is nothing wrong with playing video games a little, but not for hours a day. I personally like to play solitaire on my Kindle Fire for twenty minutes or so each night before I go to sleep. It helps me relax. But I know better than to spend two or three hours playing such games. So when we contemplate what action we are planning to take, we need to ask if that action helps us grow, or not. We need to ask if there are some other actions we should be doing instead. Most of all, we need to be sure we are spending a reasonable amount of time on spiritual development. That doesn’t mean just doing techniques for a few minutes. It means reading books that help stimulate spiritual growth. It means that when we watch movies nd television shows, we choose those that do not promote violence, anger, vengeance, and other negative behavior.
When we contemplate, we must think of what is the true nature of things. We must forgive the violent behavior of some animals because we know that it is not their true spiritual nature that is guiding them to do such things. Poisonous plants are not poisonous because they hate us. They are poisonous because their physical self is a product of the Darkness in the world and within all of us. Instead of condemning such plants and animals, we should seek to help them change. Likewise, we should seek to help other humans change. Foolish people sometimes depict angels destroying demons and devils by cutting them up with swords, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contemplation should teach us that such behavior is just joining the darkness, not stopping it. The Angels and Beings of Light stop the demons by convincing them to change their ways. We must change our ways as well.
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Our existence doesn’t really make sense. When the Universe was created, matter and a substance called antimatter should have obliterated each other. But that didn’t happen. If scientists can unravel the mysteries of antimatter, it could help us understand why there is life on this planet and possibly on planets elsewhere.
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Link contributed by Gene Savoy, Jr.