I've spent most of my life wrestling with religions.....or religious beliefs.....
Haven't found one, yet, that satisfies me...
I'm not even sure about the existance of God, or gods, or a higher power....
Maybe...maybe not...
I am sure there is a spiritual world....whether it is seperate from our known physical universe, or an alternate plain, I have no idea.....
What I am sure of are the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, kind and mean....you get the idea....those precepts that distinguish us from all other animals......
If there is a God...and only one...then I think all the books....the bible, the koran, the talmud, the mormon scriptures, the sayings of confucious, etc. are divinely inspired....but they are written by humans.....they are guidance for living......they embody a living dynamic.......they are full of metaphors and parables and illustrations for living good, fufilling, decent lives.......
And if there is a God....and he/she is what all the major religions teach.....kind, loving, forgiving, understanding, patient, etc....then I think all the stories or wrathfullness and anger are just that...stories to scare...because humans learned, way back in the beginning, that fear is a powerful motivator......
It is only in recent times that we are beginning to learn that as powerful a motivator as fear is, it is also an extrodinarily damaging force...and it really doesn't work as well as we have historically believed....we are now learning that trust and kindness and egalitarianism go much further as forces of change than fear ever did.....
So...back to my struggle with religion....
I think I'm content with living as decent a life as I can, at any given moment in time....
I will always try to be fair. I will do as much as I can for others. I will give love with my whole heart, understanding that the heart has a boundless capacity to love. I will always try to be respectful, understanding that I will be more sucessful at times than others. I will try to not be mean. When I catch myself being mean, or mean-spirited, I will stop.....
And I will have faith, that if in the end, there is a God, He/She will judge me by my actions and forgive my transgressions....
In the meantime, I have another sick fish...who, if there is a God, is one of God's creatures...and it needs me to go medicate the water...I did manage to get him into a wading pool, out of the pond....so I can treat 75 gallons instead of 2,400....
Ah...............
7 years ago
2 comments:
Hi Ducky,
Great post! and an interesting topic. Here's my two cent worth (in Canadian money of course).
I believe there is only one "God". An d you are right about how there have been figures throughout history who have had tremendous spiritual insight - people who "figured it out". If you look at the historical timeline then the Buddha was the first to have the insight that the world we see is not reality and that our true selves emanate from something that is in the background and outside of our train of conscious thought. Jesus and Muhammed and the others all came later and expanded on these beliefs.
In my mind spirituality is a sense of connectedness. With ourselves, our fellow human beings and the natural world around us. There are numerous pathways to achieve that connection. Religion is just one of those pathways. My pathway to spirituality has been through a pursuit of Truth. To bring the unconscious into conscious is the most important thing we can do in this lifetime. That is the primary reason I became a scientist - I loved the disciplined thinking and testing ideas against a standard to see how they fit against the concept of reality.
The problem has been that people have taken the words of Jesus and others and distorted them into something self-serving and ugly. Unfortunately human beings have inflicted more pain upon each other in the name of their Religion which is in fact a gross distortion of the words and legacy these great spiritual teachers have left us.
Unfortunately fundamentalist religions, be they Christian or Moslem, Sikh, or Hinu, and their pervasive ignorance continue to exist in this enlightened day and age. We have moved forward tremendously in terms of technology but a large portion of the world still live in faith, fear and ignorance.
My father did one thing for me that I will always be grateful for. When the nice Church lady came to the door on a Saturdy afternoon to ask if she could take me and my Hellbound brothers to Sunday school the old man said "religion is for people who don't have the courage to think for themselves" and he closed the door in her face.
I think it is the abuse of the teachings of Jesus by those who have turned it into religious ideology that has given spirituality a bad name.
Good luck with your fish.
Darrell
I think a bit of scientist lurks in me....
I have always been facinated with the idea of proving....or testing ideas....weighing things against a measurable standard, or outcome...
I like to promote evidenced based practices in children's mental health because they are measurable...there is a standard of acountability for both the clint/child and the clinician/practitioner....
On the other hand, it is important to not get so caught up in standards and clean lines and previous measurments that we lose the concpt of 'promising practices'...of our ability to think outside the norms and try new ideas that have no standards....
Sometimes I feel so connected to some spiritual plain....I can sense others who are there, as well...I know it sounds crazy...and I'm not just talking about folks who have died...but folks who are alive...
This is particularly true of my sister...she is alive and well and kicking, many miles from me...and we have been quasi estranged for years....we email..but we don't speak or see one another...don't ask why...I can't figure it out, either...but that is how she is able to have a relationship with me...so we 'chat' through email...
but there are times when we are in the same reality...close...in a different playing field than the temporal...
Same thing with my mother...she died over fifty years ago...but there are times....weird....
Oh well....connecting across domains is very real to me....
Thanks for taking the time to write...
Reg
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