Aug 12, 2018

12 Steps to Joy (17)

The Word of Life (10)

In the beginning the Word already existed.

The Word was with God,

And the Word was God.

The Word existed in the beginning with God.

God created everything through the Word,

And nothing was created except through the Word.

The Word gave life to everything that was created,

And the life of the Word brought light to everyone.

The light shines in the darkness,

And the darkness can never extinguish it.”

John 1:1-5.

And nothing was created except through the Word.

The Word gave life to everything that was created,

I have made some glib statements in my last few postings that need a bit of explaining. I have said that everything is a ‘field’ that extends throughout the universe. But how is this possible? And what do I mean by the term ‘field’? And how does this relate to God? Isn’t the universe hundreds of millions of light years across? (Actually more than we can see, since we can see only the distance that light can travel over the age of the universe, or traveling 186,000 miles per second for 13.32 billion years) How can this ‘field’ extend across the entire universe?

All very good questions, but we have to look back in time to the very start, 13.7 billion years ago. When the ‘Big Bang’ occurred, it irrupted from an infinitely small point in the nothingness beyond anything we can know. It was like a balloon rapidly expanding, containing all the energy that the entire universe holds today. The temperature was extremely high, starting from near infinity (10 raised to the 29th power, that is 1 followed by 28 zero’s degrees Kelvin, shortly after the period of inflation), and was at about 1 billion degrees at about 100 seconds, but cooled rapidly as it expanded out. Lots of photons formed, and the mixture reached a mix of ¾ hydrogen, ¼ helium by mass, but still moving so rapidly as to be non-transparent. That is, the fundamental energy and particles were all moving so fast the photons (or light particles) could not escape being blocked by flying energy and particles. At 200,000 years, as far as can be determined, all components that exist in the universe, all quarks (it takes three quarks to form a proton) and electrons had formed. ALL! No new components have ever formed since that time. That is right, NO NEW ELECTRONS OR QUARKS HAVE FORMED IN THE 13.5 BILLION YEARS SINCE THEN!(It is the rearrangement of these components that create new elements, but no new components are made.)The temperature was so high at that time that they just banged around, (temperature is the speed of the components in motion colliding – the higher the speed, the more collisions, creating a higher temperature) and were unable to stick together to form atoms due to the violence of the collisions. Oh yes, a few hydrogen atoms were probably there, and maybe a few helium atoms, but it was primarily just a very hot soup of components flying about.

Then at about 380,000 years ago, the temperature (now about 3000 degrees K) reached the point of permitting the photons to erupt, since the radiation field became slower (that is, the components of matter and the photons (light) slowed from their flying around since they were a bit cooler) than the expansion of the universe, and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) becomes visible, and there was light! The remnants of the CMB is still flying around today, and portray themselves as the static in the old am radio stations or television stations.  The spectrum of the CMB contains the information of all the preceding time frame, so we can determine fairly accurately what occurred in that first 380,000 years. Just so we can see the perspective of the expansion of the universe on temperature, the observable average temperature of the universe is now (hold your breath — drum roll please!) a lowly 2.725 degrees Kelvin (K)!

But the key part of the story is that all the components, all the protons in the entire universe, formed in that initial time frame, and no new ones have formed since that time. Quantum physics claims that each portion of every atom, all the quarks and electrons that form the elementary components of all the atoms, are actually a ‘field’ (difficult to describe, but think of it as a ‘soup’ of potential locations of a particle that is spread throughout the entire universe) that formed in that early time frame, and just expanded along with the universe. Nothing new has been created in the 13.3 billion years that have passed since then, just rearrangements of the elementary components that were created in the beginning, and continue to be recreated 10 billion-trillion-trillion-trillion times per second. The creation process is a shift in the probability field that makes the “reality” of a quark or electron or photon for that very brief time, before it vanishes and a new one appears – hopefully close to where it had been a brief time ago, but could appear any place in the universe, governed by the ‘probability’ factor. ‘Probability’ states that the particle should be located at so and so place, but there is a chance that rapidly diminishes as you move away from the ideal location that it might appear someplace different. Take the flip of a coin: there is a 50-50 probability factor that the result will be a head or a tail.

What this says is that God (as portrayed physically as the field) contains everything that exists, in the form of an elementary field of probability extending over the entire universe. The rate of expansion, when traced back over the 13.7 billion years, points out that the size of the universe is at least 10 raised to the 29th power cm, which is larger than the observable universe. That is, we can only see a small portion of the universe that exists, let alone not being able to see anything that may exist outside our universe. (Again, our ability to see further is prevented by the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), and light can only reach us that has been traveling 13.7 billion years, the age of the universe, or less.) beyond that distance the light has not had sufficient time to reach us.

Now let’s talk about God in all this. How does the concept of a Higher Power fit into this discussion of the structure of the universe? The concept of a universal field that has existed since the opening shot of the ‘big bang’ is exactly what can be used to describe the lower frequencies or physical nature of God. Some Christians call this universal body the Christ, that is, the body that Jesus referred to in John’s Gospel in Chapter 14:20: ‘On that day you will know that I am in the Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you’.We are in the Christ, and the Christ is in us; just like quantum physics talks of the universal field that contains everything in the universe, including you and me. Christ, the Word, is constantly creating the ongoing universe, that appears so smooth and continuous – except when the occasional blip that occurs (the universal probability factor) that changes things, usually just a tiny bit that works itself around for a major shift in perspective.

Meditation

Oh my Creator, I place all my trust in your Love for me. I am but one of 7.6 billion souls on this planet, and I know that You are in me, before me, behind me, beside me, under and over me. My body would not exist without You, as You are the fundamental existence that we call the universe. My soul and body are all part of Your Being, but I am only me, given a chance to be Your experience in all the grandeur of life. I place all that I can be under Your care, and pray that I can be Your reflection, the power of Your light, in our world.

MY BOOK, THE 12 STEPS TO JOY AND HAPPINESS,IS NOW AVAILABLE FROM HAY HOUSE, BALBOA PRESS, AMAZON, AND BARNES AND NOBLE, AS WELL AS OTHER SOURCES, IN HARD COVER, SOFT COVER, AND EBOOK FORMATS. Click on the “Learn More” button for further information.

We are bound in the music of life where we dance and weave within that glorious melody, or what some call God. Now, God has said that we are the very image of God (Genesis 1:27), and as images of God, we have the inborn ability to have Joy and Happiness forever present in our life. The author, David L. Peters, is an octogenarian whose life has always been filled with joy, regardless of outward appearances. The wonders of the Kingdom of Heaven is everyone’s birthright, if you know how to let your Creator and the Universe enter your spirit. Jesus put it succinctly: “The Kingdom of God lies within” (Luke 17:21). The Kingdom of God, Paradise, Heaven: these lie within you, right now, waiting for you to only turn and see, and join in the dance. Paradise is right within us, but how do we unlock the door to this wonder of joy? This book lays a path open that the author has followed for almost 80 years, starting as a young boy in rural Ohio, and it operates as advertised. No matter how things look in life, how bad it seems, all one need do is look deeper within and find the joy that can fill life: life is good! The life of abundant joy and happiness is yours for the asking. Dip your toe in the living waters, and taste the Beauty of God that is awaiting. Click on the “Learn More” button for further information