Word: prayes
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...essence of plenary indulgences is tricky to nail down. They're granted if you meet specific criteria: go to confession, receive communion, pray for the Pope, visit a particular shrine. How do you know you actually got an indulgence? Faith...
Needy creatures that we are, we put the brain's spiritual centers to use all the time. We pray for peace; we meditate for serenity; we chant for wealth. We travel to Lourdes in search of a miracle; we go to Mecca to show our devotion; we eat hallucinogenic mushrooms to attain transcendent vision and gather in church basements to achieve its sober opposite. But there is nothing we pray - or chant or meditate - for more than health...
...Pray and meditate enough and some changes in the brain become permanent. Long-term meditators - those with 15 years of practice or more - appear to have thicker frontal lobes than nonmeditators. People who describe themselves as highly spiritual tend to exhibit an asymmetry in the thalamus - a feature that other people can develop after just eight weeks of training in meditation skills. "It may be that some people have fundamental asymmetry [in the thalamus] to begin with," Newberg says, "and that leads them down this path, which changes the brain further...
...long ago as 1872, Francis Galton, the man behind eugenics and fingerprinting, reckoned that monarchs should live longer than the rest of us, since millions of people pray for the health of their King or Queen every day. His research showed just the opposite - no surprise, perhaps, given the rich diet and extensive leisure that royal families enjoy. An oft discussed 1988 study by cardiologist Randolph Byrd of San Francisco General Hospital found that heart patients who were prayed for fared better than those who were not. But a larger study in 2005 by cardiologist Herbert Benson at Harvard University...
...Iran for the past 27 years, was to raise the slogan "Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine!" Zawawi recounts how Khomeini declared Israel an unlawful country and named the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan "Jerusalem Day" so Muslims could remember the occupation of the holy city and pray for its liberation. "He was dealing with the question of Palestine from a religious perspective," says Zawawi. "In the mind of Imam Khomeini, there is no compromise. You believe, or you don't believe." Zawawi says the clerical rulers of Iran today, as the inheritors of Khomeinism, are less likely...