Believe it or not this was originally a comment to someone else's Facebook (FB) post. (I'd be a fun FB friend to have wouldn't I.)
The purpose of any religion or spirituality is to awaken us
to Truth or Ultimate Reality. This is mainly that we are all part of a Larger
Whole, that includes Everything. As such the most accurate (although not
necessarily the most helpful) conception of God is simply that God is The
Entirety, including eternity in both directions. And I actually do not think
this conception of God is inconsistent with any of the great religions or at
least not any more inconsistent with them than they are with themselves.
The big bang theory tells us that it all started from a single point, God if you like or The Entirety as I prefer, and has been expanding and manifesting Itself in countless ways since. This and nearer to our time frame, evolution – that we evolved from single cell organism here on earth, tells us that each individual cell in our body shares this same lineage and is thus connected to everything in the past, present, and as it continues to unfold, the future. All this is behind the mysticism (defined as the experience of God or The Entirety) that started and propagated the early spread of all the great religions.
As such the religions aim or purpose is to guide us in experiencing this oneness and thus getting along with others and our surroundings since Ultimate Reality is that we are hopelessly connected to everything else and we cannot be truly fulfilled, peaceful, and happy individually or collectively unless we are embracing our Collective Identity and working to enhance It. Among countless things this includes fair competition with the loser still given dignity and the ability for fulfilling/useful pursuits, as well as more traditional religious pursuits of looking out for the least fortunate and giving them a fulfilling/useful place in society, etc.
After a while though religions generally morph into something completely different than what they were founded upon or what a religion's purpose actually is. This normally occurs slowly over time and mostly without awareness from the people making the detrimental changes. Some of those subtle changes that gain momentum and at some point become the predominant activity of the religion include:
Basically, the people who have prestigious/important/powerful positions in the religion are blinded by thinking they deserve the position. Yet they also know they are lost/broken/separate and focus on that and are desperately searching for the solution and fixated on that. And if they are lost/broken/separate in their prestigious/important/powerful positions the sheep must be even more so.
They think they are the successful ones and nearest to God with their prestigious/important/powerful positions and thus think they ought to share how they succeeded to get there as the answer. They do not realize these powerful positions are things that block them from God (like the rich man) and therefore their ideas often point in the wrong direction and are self serving even when they are very well intentioned.
This leads them to shift towards a personal approach to religion so they can focus on their own connection to God without having to be burdened by humanity’s problems, other than prescribing actions for others to take. This shift to a personal approach and in some way saving souls in a way removed from becoming one or whole with our surroundings is the fallacy at the heart of how religion becomes “worldy” and guides people in the wrong direction. What we need to be born again from is our selfishness/separateness; and what we need to be saved from is our selfishness/separateness, both in order to unite with God/Ultimate Reality/The Entirety.
The big bang theory tells us that it all started from a single point, God if you like or The Entirety as I prefer, and has been expanding and manifesting Itself in countless ways since. This and nearer to our time frame, evolution – that we evolved from single cell organism here on earth, tells us that each individual cell in our body shares this same lineage and is thus connected to everything in the past, present, and as it continues to unfold, the future. All this is behind the mysticism (defined as the experience of God or The Entirety) that started and propagated the early spread of all the great religions.
As such the religions aim or purpose is to guide us in experiencing this oneness and thus getting along with others and our surroundings since Ultimate Reality is that we are hopelessly connected to everything else and we cannot be truly fulfilled, peaceful, and happy individually or collectively unless we are embracing our Collective Identity and working to enhance It. Among countless things this includes fair competition with the loser still given dignity and the ability for fulfilling/useful pursuits, as well as more traditional religious pursuits of looking out for the least fortunate and giving them a fulfilling/useful place in society, etc.
After a while though religions generally morph into something completely different than what they were founded upon or what a religion's purpose actually is. This normally occurs slowly over time and mostly without awareness from the people making the detrimental changes. Some of those subtle changes that gain momentum and at some point become the predominant activity of the religion include:
Basically, the people who have prestigious/important/powerful positions in the religion are blinded by thinking they deserve the position. Yet they also know they are lost/broken/separate and focus on that and are desperately searching for the solution and fixated on that. And if they are lost/broken/separate in their prestigious/important/powerful positions the sheep must be even more so.
They think they are the successful ones and nearest to God with their prestigious/important/powerful positions and thus think they ought to share how they succeeded to get there as the answer. They do not realize these powerful positions are things that block them from God (like the rich man) and therefore their ideas often point in the wrong direction and are self serving even when they are very well intentioned.
This leads them to shift towards a personal approach to religion so they can focus on their own connection to God without having to be burdened by humanity’s problems, other than prescribing actions for others to take. This shift to a personal approach and in some way saving souls in a way removed from becoming one or whole with our surroundings is the fallacy at the heart of how religion becomes “worldy” and guides people in the wrong direction. What we need to be born again from is our selfishness/separateness; and what we need to be saved from is our selfishness/separateness, both in order to unite with God/Ultimate Reality/The Entirety.
Spiritual/Religious teachers/leaders have to meet people and
society where it is at because they need community and in order to possibly
reach them and often being out numbered they are pulled more towards the worldly
society than vice versa.
Spiritual/Religious teachers/leaders are put on a pedestal
that separates them from others and even more so than with most people the
leaders and the flock each want to impress the other, which pushes each to
become more lost and separate as they try to hide their brokenness/incompleteness
from each other.
The powerful in society outside religion have various ways
of marginalizing, suppressing, and squashing anything too threatening, and any
authentic religion will be exactly that.
We cannot make people “have life or live” which means to act
from our source within as led by The Source of All, and whether on a local
small church scale or ruling a country scale, if you have to motivate,
convince, and coerce people to do things reliably in accordance with what
leaders desire, decide, and decree you are going to have to rely on something beyond
true religion and move to various forms of worldliness.)
It ends up turning the religion into something focused on helping individuals focus on saving themselves, which is a selfish pursuit and the opposite direction of how to actually be saved. Being saved means being reunited with God/The Entirety by becoming whole with our surroundings and living from the parts of us that know we are always hopelessly united with everything else.
It ends up turning the religion into something focused on helping individuals focus on saving themselves, which is a selfish pursuit and the opposite direction of how to actually be saved. Being saved means being reunited with God/The Entirety by becoming whole with our surroundings and living from the parts of us that know we are always hopelessly united with everything else.
These things and many more boil down to 3 broad reasons
religions morph from their true purpose.
1 – The leaders do not want to actually practice the
challenging, uncomfortable, humbling parts of the religion.
2 – The leaders and the flock do not trust the individual
members to be able and willing to successfully practice the challenging,
uncomfortable, humbling parts of the religion, and make it out the other side
transformed.
3 – People who know from experiencing the source within that
knows the Source of All, are generally only interested in living from that
source and helping others to find and live from it. As such they are not very helpful to those
trying to run a country or even a church.
Before moving on to look at how we live from those parts of us, let me reiterate what I mentioned in the beginning. What I am saying here is actually consistent with the essential founding tenets of all the great religions and not a contradiction of them. As such, many of their principles and methods for uniting or being saved or awakened or enlightened are completely viable.
At an individual level we have feelings and thinking that guide us in our interactions with each other and the world around us, and then we have whatever it is inside us that is doing the feeling and thinking. Whatever it is that seems to be doing the feeling and thinking seems to be what we individually most identify with as being who we are. I like to refer to it as our deepest self or soul*, and it is the part of us that knows we are a tiny part of everything else and a larger part of lots of smaller wholes or communities, like our family, workplace, friends, etc. All useful religious/spiritual principles and methods are centered around experiencing and living from that part of ourselves.
The is the place where we can simply BE with the Source of all being, and as I alluded to at the very beginning every cell in our body shares the lineage of evolution from the same spot and even further back from the Big Bang with even non-living things. And if we are able to get to the quiet/silence/felt emptiness beyond our feeling and thinking we will learn this because we will experience it. It is aptly called a spiritual experience, awakening, enlightenment, being saved, being born again, etc.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to get past our feelings and thinking to this place. Our feelings are often telling us that we cannot be part of everything else because it is too scary and dangerous and the fact of the matter is that it is scary and dangerous. Our thinking is generally trying to figure out a way to 1- preferably make it safe enough to be with and then live from this part of us, or 2- if our feelings and thinking have (mostly) unconsciously concluded that is not possible, then to eek out the best (mostly) separate existence we can.
These patterns of feelings and thinking and the combination get very ingrained and operate on autopilot most of the time with the objective of protecting this place within that we most identify with being us. And all useful religious/spiritual practices try to take us out of this autopilot and move us deeper to awaken the source of it all within us that will then experience and know it is part of the Ultimate Source. Most of us though need an extra push from calamity or love or normally both to actually move beyond being focused on protecting our source that connects to the Ultimate Source to being focused on being with our source and trying to live from it.
If we get this extra push and experience an awakening, we still generally need a great deal of faith and a supportive community of some sort in order to not attempt to put our internal source back in a bunker. Just as importantly we need a humility born of knowing we are such a tiny part of It All, and thus the glory we will know and feel when we are united with our source that experiences and knows The Source is the Glory of The Father, of which we now realize we are a part.
Before moving on to look at how we live from those parts of us, let me reiterate what I mentioned in the beginning. What I am saying here is actually consistent with the essential founding tenets of all the great religions and not a contradiction of them. As such, many of their principles and methods for uniting or being saved or awakened or enlightened are completely viable.
At an individual level we have feelings and thinking that guide us in our interactions with each other and the world around us, and then we have whatever it is inside us that is doing the feeling and thinking. Whatever it is that seems to be doing the feeling and thinking seems to be what we individually most identify with as being who we are. I like to refer to it as our deepest self or soul*, and it is the part of us that knows we are a tiny part of everything else and a larger part of lots of smaller wholes or communities, like our family, workplace, friends, etc. All useful religious/spiritual principles and methods are centered around experiencing and living from that part of ourselves.
The is the place where we can simply BE with the Source of all being, and as I alluded to at the very beginning every cell in our body shares the lineage of evolution from the same spot and even further back from the Big Bang with even non-living things. And if we are able to get to the quiet/silence/felt emptiness beyond our feeling and thinking we will learn this because we will experience it. It is aptly called a spiritual experience, awakening, enlightenment, being saved, being born again, etc.
Unfortunately, it is really hard to get past our feelings and thinking to this place. Our feelings are often telling us that we cannot be part of everything else because it is too scary and dangerous and the fact of the matter is that it is scary and dangerous. Our thinking is generally trying to figure out a way to 1- preferably make it safe enough to be with and then live from this part of us, or 2- if our feelings and thinking have (mostly) unconsciously concluded that is not possible, then to eek out the best (mostly) separate existence we can.
These patterns of feelings and thinking and the combination get very ingrained and operate on autopilot most of the time with the objective of protecting this place within that we most identify with being us. And all useful religious/spiritual practices try to take us out of this autopilot and move us deeper to awaken the source of it all within us that will then experience and know it is part of the Ultimate Source. Most of us though need an extra push from calamity or love or normally both to actually move beyond being focused on protecting our source that connects to the Ultimate Source to being focused on being with our source and trying to live from it.
If we get this extra push and experience an awakening, we still generally need a great deal of faith and a supportive community of some sort in order to not attempt to put our internal source back in a bunker. Just as importantly we need a humility born of knowing we are such a tiny part of It All, and thus the glory we will know and feel when we are united with our source that experiences and knows The Source is the Glory of The Father, of which we now realize we are a part.
When our priority is to protect our deepest self/source of being
from the vulnerability of being a small part of everything else and our
thinking and feeling are unconsciously used for this purpose, our thinking and
feeling become our jailer. Crucially
though, we need to realize even these unconscious thoughts and feelings
originate from our source, which has been hurt by life and is trying to avoid
more hurt. To the extent we realize this
we will then know that the path to our source of being/image of God is actually
through the hurt that is propagating the thinking and feeling that is trying to
protect us. And when we realize this,
experiencing that hurt becomes a profound and cherished experience because it
is coming home again and embracing who and what we most deeply are, rather than
running from or trying to change ourself to something acceptable, which is
rejecting ourself and God at the same time (saying what God made is
unacceptable).
*Calling it our deep and personal inherent image of God or
Christ within would also be accurate, or even as many use heart or gut in this
regard.
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