Whatever your religious or spiritual beliefs, you are entitled to have them as they are.  Unlike most religions, I do not presume to tell you what you should believe. What is offered here is done with humility, something I ask you to consider.

If you are comfortably aligned with any religion, please click out of this page now.  I have no intent to offend anyone.

I was inspired by a forum posting I saw today in which the writer defended religions as doing a lot of charitable work and bringing important values to the world.  My response, expanded:

While a handful of the smaller religions maintain a purity and spiritually-uplifting presence in the world, all the big religions have become tools to frighten and divide people.  The more enlightened spiritual organizations who do good in the world and promote healthy values wisely do not call themselves religion, for that is a term that has been thoroughly polluted by our culture.

Buddhism is not properly called religion; in it, there is no set of rules or consequences spelled out that are required to be honored for membership, no external punishing god, no enemies designated.  To lump it in with religion is to do Buddhism and Buddhists a great disservice. Alliance with the loving ideas of Buddhism is one of the most powerful ways we can rise above any subscription to destructive,divisive religion.

Humbly, here is what is important to understand about the good that religions do: Their motive is not to spread high values.  It is to fool us, to fan the flames of fear, doubt, division and chaos as we fight with each other about whose religion is best, whose is worthy of condemnation, and which is more righteous in the eyes of some mythical god whom some think looks like us.

Seems to me that when the so-called holy books told us we were made in Gods' image, the original meaning might have been that we ARE God, collectively.  It is this that almost all religion seeks to hide from us.

What is my source for this knowing?  It is my heart, my intuitive sense.    Religions tell me that I should not trust this sense, that it is blasphemous and sinful to do so.  Religions tell us that we need their intermediary if we want their gods' forgiveness.  They tell us that if we want a shot at salvation, unworthy as we may be, we are to trust the books that they tell us God has written.

We are told that we are to believe that God penned these words, and that God found it necessary to significantly edit "Himself" over the years for some reason, as significant elements of the Christian Bible have been expunged or altered.  The truth is available to anyone who cares to do even a little research, but for the "faithful'" this poses a dilemma.

This brings to mind a story I shared in "The Wake Up Book," about when my father was dealing with the impending death of my mother a few years ago.  She had been uncommunicative and beset with dimentia for a long stretch of time, and also not interested much in eating food.  Prescribed appetite stimulants seemed to work, but she spent more months in silence, unable to appreciate life, unable or unwilling to talk, often fighting those who tried to spoon-feed her.  At one point, my father confided that the doctor had suggested he might consider taking my mother off the appetite stimulants as a way of letting her die.  He thought about it for less than a week before he decided he would not stop the medication.  "If she died shortly after the medication was stopped, I would never be able to forgive myself," he said.

I asked him if he really knew that the whole Catholic line on prolonging suffering before death was stupid and counterproductive.  "Yes," he said, "but what if it's not?"

This is the dilemma when faced with speaking ones' truth: Will it offend God, family or friends?  If so, when is expediency the wisest choice?  Please ask your heart this quesition when it comes to living your truth.

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Whatever a religions' founding purpose might have been, religion in our world has nearly exclusively become a tool for manipulation rather than any kind of salvation.

So those who try to make excuses for religion by finding some good in it are really whistling in the dark. Hitler may have been loving to his mother, but would that mean you'd have wanted to go visit him every Sunday? The game is deception and the people have been stupid enough to fall for it, largely out of their own fear and their willingness to act like sheep. Does the fact that Catholic Charities helps many challenged people make OK the fact that the church forbids birth control in an over-populated world while it facilitates its own clergy in abusing young children sexually? Only because of fear do people pretend that they do not see what is happening in front of them.

So many people would rather make it OK that children continue to be abused and that millions starve to death every year.  People find a way to spin it so that it can be accepted. Better that than to risk the ire of the organization that may have the "inside track" in the race to God and paradise.  You don't want to piss off God.  He has that rather final trump card.

"Gonna fry forever" is a pretty nasty possibility. And some religious extremists have the scriptural incentive to blow other folks up with the potential reward of having the sexual favors of many virgins in the afterlife. And my guess is they're not talking about quickies.

The introduction of a charitable facet to big religion is done to fool us, not to help us. The churches must pretend to be benevolent while they go about the task of abusing us.  Charity is just part of the toolbox, practiced to keep the stupid games going: the inner fight and the fight with others. Divided in such away, we condemn ouselves to continuance of the ignorant battle.

As long as there is a damning god in a religion, one who is seen as worshipped because he is superior to other gods, and as long as people are fighting over whether this god is better than another, then the religion is a false religion, a spiritually draining one.  If eternal damnation or any form of unworthiness is part of the picture---any inequality---the religion is false.

We are all one, equal, Divine.  False religion---nearly all of it as we see it on Earth---does not want this known.  Again, as I express the term religion, I do not include Buddhism, though some call it religion.  Buddhism does not see us as separate from God.  Virtually all religion does see us as separate or unworthy from the ultimate Divine.

So you may wisely deduce that it would be rather insane to expect religion to help you find something that it is dedicated to hiding from you. It's like asking a magician if he will show you the secrets to all of his tricks.  If he does that, he has nothing left to sell.

If you are still buying the idea that religion is dedicated to serving us and to helping people, then I would humbly offer the possibility that you are immersed in delusion, accepting an old set of lies that have been repeated so often that you no longer claim the common sense to realize the truth that is clearly in front of you.

Now is the time to stand up and claim your truth.  Sooner or later, you realize that the truth is worth standing up for.  Sooner or later, you realize that perpetuating a set of lies about religion and who you are serves no worthy purpose.  It just drains you of your loving power.

On this day that we celebrate the birth of Dr Martin Luther King, we might remember one of his more juicy quotations:

´Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.  And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites---polar opposites.  So that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love…..    Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

What are you waiting for before you claim your true and loving power?

Whose permission do you need to stake this claim?  

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