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The Critical Angle of Attack

© Thomas James Martin

The angle of attack is related to the amount of lift. Lift will increase as the angle of attack is increased up to the point (usually around 17 degrees) where the aircraft stalls, the critical angle of attack.
~Civil Air Patrol document

Recently I read a number of accounts of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) at this exceptional website, Near Death Experiences and the Afterlife. While I had read much of the literature on the subject in past years, such as physician Raymond Moody's Life After Life or Dannion Brinkley's Saved by the Light, I was once again struck by how much the theme of unconditional or unselfish love runs through the knowledge gained during the experience.

Time after time, I came across such passages as this one from Arthur Yensen's 1932 NDE:

"When I asked what a person should do while on Earth to make it better for him when he dies," he [Spirit] answered, 'All you can do is to develop along the lines of unselfish love.'"

The conclusions from all this study of the Near Death Experience is that anything we can do to show love to our fellow humans is worthwhile and even maybe polishes our halos in the hereafter. Though sometimes a person must make great sacrifices, even risking one's life for another, often the love we give can be as simple as a smile to someone having a bad day or a word of encouragement to a young person searching for her/his path in life.

Shamefully, I sometimes experience unselfish love when I make the small sacrifice of not eating all the chocolate chip cookies that one's spouse is expecting to find in the kitchen cabinet or taking my turn to do the dishes and clean the kitchen without requiring any rewards from my spouse. (For such sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty however, I have been known to deign to accept a small but elegantly engraved bronze medallion with Oak Leaf Cluster.)

So far, so good, you say. We have heard all this before. I have even had friends who have tacked up on their walls reminders to Love One Another, as a great Master once said. In fact, I have even placed said poster on said wall before.

Before I was married, one girlfriend even remarked upon that poster. She said that it was too simplistic. (I don't think she said "childish.") Oh well, I believe that I did mention to her before we broke up (thankfully) that the words may be simple, but I have not managed to live very many of my days by that wise saying.

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