A Simple Explanation of the Sign of the Cross

As I have explained before, I am a follower of Jesus. Raised in the Protestant tradition, as a child I learned the hymns and liturgy of the Methodist Church. One thing I did not learn was the sign of the cross.  American Protestants do not move their hand across their body to form the Sign of the Cross. This tradition is considered old-fashioned and apt to confuse people who are not Catholic or Orthodox. However, I have noticed that American children of all and no faiths seem to know how to form the cross when reciting the secular oath: "Cross my heart and hope to die," so it seems to me that the practice does remain in the culture, albeit divorced from meaning.

Christ Pantokrator mosaic, Ravenna, 6th century: Jesus' hand is shown lifted in blessing in the position used by Orthodox priests (evoking the abbreviation of his name in Greek, "IC XC").

There's an excellent discussion and description of how to trace the sign of the cross at wikihow.com:

Crossing oneself is a common practice for Christians in liturgical churches, especially but not limited to the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Anglican (Episcopal) churches. It is used to begin and end prayers and ceremonies, as well as occasionally as a stand-alone practice of asking God to bless oneself. Many Christians also make the sign of the cross when they hear the name of the Blessed Trinity.

The sign of the cross is made by touching the hand sequentially to the forehead, lower chest or stomach, and both shoulders, accompanied by the Trinitarian formula: at the forehead In the name of the Father (or In nomine Patris in Latin); at the stomach or heart and of the Son (et Filii); across the shoulders and of the Holy Spirit/Ghost (et Spiritus Sancti); and finally: Amen.

I make the sign of the cross many times a day. I cross myself when I notice the clock reading 1:11, 11:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55, 1:23, 12:34, and 4:56. I love those times of day and whenever I notice them I make the cross. I make the sign of the cross when I am standing in the wings of the theater waiting for my cue to go onstage. I make the sign of the cross after close calls with disaster, like stepping off a curb and not being hit by that speeding car I didn't see. And so forth...  Why? Are these merely superstitious gestures? Hex signs for luck? What do they have to do with universal consciousness, for heaven's sake?

Here is the Simple Explanation of the sign of cross. 

The seminal idea of the Simple Explanation is "Spirit down, mud up."

As the diagram above indicates, our bodies are made of countless particles, molecules, cells, etc., all combining to support the unit of consciousness that forms your "self." 

If our bodies are composed of matter, and our souls of  non-material consciousness, then how do they interface? How do they communicate? What is the mechanism for crossing over from spirit to matter? Researching this article this morning, I learned a new phrase: "hypostatic union." Hypostatic union is a religious meme that refers to Christ co-existing as both fully human and fully divine. The Simple Explanation would suggest that all entities in our universe live in a state of hypostatic union of consciousness and matter.

After decades of contemplation, I recognized the Simple Explanation that matter is consciousness repeated as a fractal pattern of information, aggregation, and cooperation from sub-atomic through galactic scales. (If you don't understand fractals, don't worry. It's not necessary for this discussion.)

The second most important idea of the Simple Explanation is the Golden Rule of reaching out to others, holding hands, and building together to form the next level up. This Golden Rule pattern applies equally throughout all scales in the universe, from sub-atomic particles reaching out to "hold hands" with other particles to form atoms, and atoms reaching out to form molecules, and molecules reaching out to form elements, up through cells, up through organs and organisms, up through planets and galaxies--every thing in our universe follows this pattern. 

With humans, the Golden Rule pattern repeats as individuals reach out to form families and working groups and societies. The individual must cooperate with those nearby to "hold hands" and work together to raise the children, get the projects done, and fulfill the many needs of community like providing shelter, entertainment, and food. When we don't cooperate, things go poorly, both for the individuals involved and the surrounding community. The natural state of proper functioning is cooperation. 

These two Simple principles are why the Bible instructs people to first "love God" (acknowledging your Spirit Down origin), and then to "love your neighbor as yourself" (stating the Golden Rule of reaching out from your "mud" to work in cooperation with others).

Simply put, the sign of the cross traces the entirety of the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything onto your body as a remembrance of our place in this universe.

• Starting at the top, Spirit -- Universal Consciousness
• Moving the hand down -- spirit descends into matter, into "mud", into "flesh"
• Moving the hand from side to side, shoulder to shoulder -- reaching out to others to work together with love, information, and assistance to form the next level up. 
• Each movement passes through the center, which is the gateway to God / Universal Consciousness / Holy Spirit.

Notice that the icons of Christ that depict the sign of the cross refer to Him in his role as "Pantokrator," which means Creator of All. The Simple Explanation refers to this Pantokrator as the Universal Unit of Consciousness. I like how the Pantokrator icon below shows Jesus has both Spirit and Mud, depicted through the representation of His face. We are all both Spirit and Mud. Spirit down, mud up. Holy Spirit centers us and gives us access to Universal Consciousness through the middle. And now, having written this, I cross myself.

The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocrator, encaustic on panel (Saint Catherine's Monastery). The two different facial expressions on either side may emphasize Christ's two natures as fully God and fully human.

Simple Explanation Far Too Popular in Ukraine and Russia

My blog has always been relatively popular in Russia. Years ago I conjured up images of Russians bundled up against the Winter's cold, hunkered down around their laptops in Siberia, with nothing better to do than become enlightened. Ah, what an idealist I am.   

Now that the world is no longer so naively trustworthy (or is it merely I who am less naively trusting?), I submit for your consideration this screenshot of the week's Simple Explanation audience stats. You will note the unholy number of Ukrainian and Russian readers, as well as a thoroughly puzzling entry called "Unknown Region," which I can't imagine is legit.

These are the Posts that were viewed. I suspect the Ukrainian or Russian views are of the Inner Life of a Cell video repost. I seem to recall calling into question that particular post's popularity in Comments a couple of years ago.

What do you-all think? Election hacking? Spies? If so, whose? AI cyber-bots? Again, whose? I admit these numbers are low, possibly too low to be of use to malicious hackers. Or maybe not. Maybe these are just doorways to somewhere else where the real hits pile up. 

I've reported this phenomenon to Google any number of times this year. Doubtless they're quite torn up over it.

Likely I shall simply relax and continue to imagine enlightened Siberians in their fireplace-warmed rooms, clacking away on laptops. I mean, what else can I do?

Torus Slinky
cyd ropp, ph.d.

A Simple Explanation of Ravenna's Garden of Eden Mosaic

As I was standing here this morning researching a different article (which I will write tomorrow instead), I ran across this image of a 5th century mosaic in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, Italy. Mind you, the only reason I clicked on the Ravenna, Italy, wikipedia article in the first place is because I have a friend named Ravenna and I was casually curious about her name's origin. A silly yet serendipitous research method. 

This mosaic caught my eye. I was initially drawn to the image because yesterday I happened to watch a television show on HGTV where a woman had wallpaper in her living room that looked exactly like this mosaic. She was very attached to the wallpaper and did not want it removed. She actually cried as it was defaced by the contractor. 

This mosaic is known as the Garden of Eden mosaic in the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. 5th century CE. Ravenna, Italy. One wonders how this is a representation of the Garden of Eden until you realize this is a top view of proto-toruses seeding our universe during creation.
By Petar Milošević - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39937959

Top view of torus looks like a sphere with proto-energy exploding outward from the middle (energy; joy) and containment from the outer edge (gravity; love).

No wonder the lady loved her wallpaper and was loathe to let the decorator take it down! Now I understand why she was so attached to it, for I believe she unwittingly sensed the joy of creation whenever she gazed at this design. 

 

There's a near-zero chance you were ever born--Reprint from The Humans by Matt Haig

Here's a short reprint of a lovely passage from Matt Haig's book, The Humans. My brother, Bill, turned me on to Matt Haig only recently. Now that I have activated my library card, I'm catching up on his books. For your consideration:

“I looked at Isobel and I saw a miracle. It was ridiculous, I know. but a human, in its own small way, was a kind of miraculous achievement, in mathematical terms.

For a start, it wasn’t very likely that Isobel’s mother and father would have met. And even if they had met, the chances of their having a baby would have been pretty slim, given the numerous agonies surrounding the human dating process.

Her mother would have had about a hundred thousand eggs ovulating inside her, and her father would have had five trillion sperm during that same length of time. But even then, even that one-in-five-hundred-million-million-million chance of existing was a terrible understatement and did the coincidence of a human life nowhere near justice.

You see, when you looked at a human’s face, you had to comprehend the luck that brought that person there. Isobel Martin had a total of 150,000 generations before her, and that only includes the humans. That was 150,000 increasingly unlikely copulations resulting in increasingly unlikely children. That was a one-in-quadrillion chance multiplied by another quadrillion for every generation.

Or around twenty thousand times more than the number of the atoms in the universe. But even that was only the start of it, because humans had only been around for three million Earth years, certainly a very short time compared to the three-and-a-half-billion years since life first appeared on this planet.

Therefore, mathematically, rounding things up, there was no chance at all that Isobel Martin could have existed. A zero in ten-to-the-power-of-forever chance. And yet there she was, in front of me, and I was quite taken aback by it all; I really was. Suddenly it made me realize why religion was such a big thing around here. Because, yes, sure, God could not exist. But then neither could humans. So,if they believed in themselves—the logic must go—why not believe in something that was only a fraction more unlikely?”

(p. 197-198, The Humans, by Matt Haig. Simon &Schuster, 2013)

A Simple Explanation of Sun's gamma-ray output surprises

Okay. Here's another fresh discovery from the worlds of astronomy and physics that has the scientists stumped. From a Science News article by science-writer Lisa Grossman:

 "The sun doesn't directly make high-energy gamma rays. Instead, cosmic rays -- protons that zip through space with some of the highest energies known in nature -- smack into solar protons, producing high-energy gamma rays in the process...

"Theorists have predicted that cosmic rays whose paths have been scrambled by the sun's tangled magnetic fields should send high-energy gamma rays shooting back out of the sun, where astronomers can see them.

"Scientists have discovered that the sun puts out more high-energy gamma rays than predicted.. But what's really weird is that the rays with the highest energies appear when the star is supposed to be at its most sluggish..."

Quoting astrophysicist John Beacom of Ohio State University, "The almost certain thing that's going on here is the magnetic fields are much more powerful, much more variable and much more weirdly shaped than we expect...

"Strangest of all,  the sun emitted gamma rays from different parts of its surface at different times in its cycle. During the solar minimum, gamma rays came mainly from near the equator. During the slar maximum, when the sun's activity level was high, they clustered near the poles."

In other words, scientists are puzzled that high-energy gamma rays do not appear to be propelled outward by the sun's magnetic fields but quite the contrary--it is only when magnetic energy is at its lowest that the gamma rays escape the sun's gravity. This finding is the opposite of what was predicted, and it has stumped the scientific community.

However, this finding is not surprising at all when you consider my Simple Explanation cosmology: The Simple Explanation is that the high-energy gamma rays are not coming from space and colliding with the sun's protons, and then splitting off. Rather, the high-energy gamma rays are being generated at the center of the sun by the proto-torus lurking therein. The Simple Explanation predicts that an extremely high-energy, toroidal source lies at the heart of every body in the galaxy. This proto-torus is like the irritant within a mollusk that forms the seed that begets pearls. The proto-torus originates the gravity around which all bodies form. In addition to gravity, the proto-torus kicks out the highest energy in the universe that goes on to interact in various ways with matter. These mysterious high-energy rays that are now being measured flying out of various bodies in our system, are not from outer space but are being generated by the middles.

It makes perfect sense, under my model, for these gamma rays to most easily escape the sun during low magnetic activity, which would otherwise keep the energy swirling within the sun's grasp. When solar activity is high, the easiest escape route is at the poles, because the pole is a direct artifact of the torus at the center, and energy naturally flows freely along that route. When solar activity is low, high-energy gamma rays can burst directly outward from the middle and do not need to flow along the pole.

Here are some of the articles supporting my hypothesis:

Strange New Particles Fly Out of Antartica

Circumgalactic Medium--It's a Torus!

Scientist Find Torus of Dark Matter Enveloping our Galaxy

NASA Illustrates Galactic Plane in Super Massive Black Hole--It's a Torus!

Toroidal Forces. Proto-Energy

Drawings of Toroidal Forces, Universal Forces

I have been noting this hypothesis and prediction for many years now on this blog, and reprinting the evidence as it is discovered by science. I am not a physicist, but a meta-analyst and original cosmologist with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric. 
Perhaps an actual physicist could read these articles and try shifting his or her perspective to see this.