I like to believe the intent for religion is to find spirituality. However, many of our tribe have not been overly welcomed into the doors of a lot of churches in our past and may have suffered beyond just not getting what we needed from them spiritually. It can be easy to deduce that often individuals may find comfortability in injecting their fears and prejudice into dogma where the recipients are conditioned to believe “on faith” instead of using the mental aspects that they were imbued with by their creator. To me, that would be like having a poem interpreted for you and the only meaning is the one someone provides you. I’m actually not here to debate or criticize the concept, but to challenge my peers to not let our ability to seek our spiritual path be diminished by any prejudice we ourselves may harbor at terms like church, religion, and/or prayer.
Unfortunately, a mechanism designed to bring enlightenment and fulfillment can easily be manipulated into spreading prejudice, fear and condemnation. It’s not my path to fix any of these institutions, but to recognize them as stumbling blocks for my spiritual growth. Quite simply, if a religion does not feed ones spiritual self, then it is probably not going to do what is intended. Perhaps you have merely outgrown the constructs of its intent for your own journey. I like to picture that there is really just one higher being, I’ll refer to this as GOD for clarity, although I’m speaking to the concept, not the dude. Consider that this is so encompassing, so massive that we cannot fully contemplate what it means in its entirety. A cell in the body is one of countless others and does what it does without the awareness of any of the other cell’s duties and responsibilities vital to the life of the organism that sustains it. The cell cannot understand what the entity is as a whole. Each of us could easily be perceived as being individuals linked together for a whole that we cannot conceive from our stance. Maybe GOD is so big, that we can only relate to it on a concept that we can personally understand. What if all of the Gods of all of the religions was really just one thing? I mean, what if we were all granted some understanding that something was bigger than us, and in our quest, all these faces happened in relation to what we can fathom? What if that God was so cool that it didn’t care how we thought of it at all? Maybe it’s more like a diamond and each little side of it, each little facet is a different perspective to those of us with limited vision.
I was recently introduced to a concept presented by Deirdre Hebert that if spirituality is our body then religion is our clothes. Someone else’s clothes, even if you love and respect them, may not fit you or may simply just not be your style. This does not mean you should just go naked. My personal preferences aside, that has its own issues. Conversely, if we judge all religions by any disdain we may have incurred at any point in our history, then are we not hypocritically just as guilty as the initial offender?
I believe we all truly know that love is love. I believe we all are full of potential to grow our spirit. I know we get sidetracked in this process and I know we can be effective at it as well. I don’t believe that anything is all good or all bad, but that there is propensity for both. While a character asset is a valuable trait, if it is left unchecked, it can quickly become a defect and be a damaging force in our lives to ourselves and our relationships. Just because you don’t like what someone else may have to offer does not mean that you cannot find that within yourself. Beliefs are personal. If all these different concepts could really just be one, why can't we just trust what is in our own hearts? Maybe we were made exactly how we were supposed to be to fulfill our spirt's journey on this plan. My road provides me with this ability and I hope to share it with my peers.