Why Non-Religious Self-Reliance? Part 2
Non-religious self-reliance: It is not a phrase you hear much. This is what this article asks you to consider for yourself. Is it time for you to consider letting go of your religion, time to ask, "Why not me?" when figuring out who should be responsible for your own beliefs? Isn't this what the "new age" is really all about--trusting our own loving power? Explore this article to see how you might free yourself from conditioned beliefs that may not serve you.
We talked in the first article in this series about all the reasons we stay with whatever religion we were raised with or that we find ourselves involved with now. In this article, the reasons to shift away from any dogmatic religious beliefs will be explored.
Why would we not look within the self to discover spiritual beliefs rather than simply stick with status quo, the surely easier road at almost any time? Communally, we have never learned to trust ourselves. And that has been the agenda of most religion.
The purpose of any truly worthwhile religion would be to unite and empower its followers. Nearly all of the world’s religions today do the polar opposite with their teachings and example: they sap the spiritual strength of their membership and separate us from each other. Some would point to Buddhism as an exception. It is not a religion in the common sense of the word as it has no dogma, no belief in a fiery eternal fate for non-believers, no Big and Wrathful Being hanging out in the clouds to judge us.
Our planet’s people are now in the process of letting go of most of what we call religion. Bravo for us! Religion as we know it has been sapping the spiritual life out of its members for centuries. It keeps its followers stupid, shamed and fearful that they could become skewered on the fire of God’s eternal barbeque.
We might re-think the validity of any given religion if there were the slightest reliable evidence to support it. There is none. We have writings by those who lived way before our time that believers ascribe to being the word of a supreme being. Why would we put our faith in such writings? Even within the Biblical and Islamic texts, the various books within them are loaded with contradictions. Religious scholars can find all kinds of “answers” for these contradictions, but there are so many of them that they simply cannot be explained away
If you take even a brief look at how the Catholics have gutted the Bible of spiritually powerful content over the years, you cannot fail to come to the conclusion that their editing was much more about controlling its followers than about nurturing them.
Many Muslims will tell you that they are a peaceful people. Is it surprising, then, that their “holy” book prescribes violence and death on those who are not Muslim? The major Christian religions suggest that they, too, have a loving and tolerant way despite provable history: the Crusades, the Inquisition, the church’s silence while Hitler slaughtered Jews, their silence and hiding as their priests abuse children.
Today, we see the Jewish nation of
Do we think that the Catholic Church’s problems with sexual behavior on the part of their clergy is a relatively recent thing? The first pope, Peter, was married and most Catholic clergy were allowed to marry long after the time of Christ. “Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman”, wrote
The psychological truism that the Church leaders have never figured out is this: That which you suppress will express itself in spades. It does not take a Freud to figure out why priests abuse others, particularly defenseless children, sexually. They have been required to suppress natural sexual instinct. If one is not allowed to express sex in an acceptable way, it will often find a way to express itself perversely.
They fought over the issue of clergy marriage for centuries. Some popes fathered children while others engaged the services of prostitutes, even during times priests were not allowed to marry. Eleventh Century Pope Urban II, decreed that the wives of Catholic clergy be sold into slavery and that their children be abandoned to the streets. How Christian!
A ninth century Catholic council openly admitted that abortions and killing of infants were being practiced in convents and monasteries to hide the promiscuous activities of the frocked. We make excuses for the church, despite the mounting number of proven cases. We witness evidence that the church leaders prioritized the reputation of the church over that of the protection of the sexual purity of children in suppressing information about abuses. And they did this while transferring around the predators geographically so they could abuse more children. What more evidence is needed to see the church for what it is?
Such corruption is not limited to the Catholic Church. They are evidenced in virtually all the major religions. What might this truth be teaching us? Maybe what is to be learned is that we are better served to trust our own definitions and practices of spirituality and morality rather than allow it to be thrust upon us by those who have proven that they are anything but trustworthy.
Religions largely boast that they have secret knowledge about the will of God, an inside track to Salvation. In reality, their prime intent is rather to have control of the social and religious behavior of people via the propagation of fear and division.
Most religion tells us to not trust ourselves: “You’re too stupid to have your own beliefs about God. Here: believe in this book that is riddled with contradictions. “God is Love, it says, yet it shows you His willingness to throw you into eternal fires if you mess up. This book says love one another, but know that those who practice other religions are inferior and must be overcome by any means. God wants you to smite these folks!
In Catholic grade school, I sat through six boring Mass ceremonies per week, much of which was in Latin at the time, so we had no idea what we were saying. Some of the heaviest dogma was kept in English so we could brainwash ourselves with something we understood. One that lingers in memory that was repeated in every service: “Lord, I am not worthy”. What a numbingly stupid “prayer” that was!
Schizophrenia propagation is what it was: “You’re a child of God. You are beautiful and wonderful, but unworthy. You need our church to make you worthy, but be fearful of messing up, vigilant always for the devil to be tempting you into something that could damn you forever.”
Please understand my intent with this article. I am not damning or judging anyone as bad. My purpose with this article is not to judge or condemn, but to observe what is happening in the world. Though you may see truth in what you have read here, I ask you to refrain from condemning anyone or any institution. Please consider forgiving. And please consider walking away from any institution that sucks your energy, feeds you lies and suggests that you are either inferior or superior to anyone. We are all equals. Extremists have taught us that crusades and suicide bombers do not solve anything. They simply feed the fires of fear or arrogance. As Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
We are now faced with a time when we are being challenged to communally trust ourselves to make our own spiritual choices, and to live consistently with them. We are being challenged to see that we are worthy of lives of loving happiness and contentment. It is time for us to see that no outside authority is required to grant us permission, forgiveness or the keys to some pearly gate. We forgive and allow ourselves.
The time has come to think for ourselves, but in a new way that can take some getting used to: we are being asked to think with heart.
Thinking with our egoic heads has gotten us to where we are now, when religious differences and the importance we have placed upon them have us fighting on fronts all over the planet. It is ignorant! Thinking with the heart is what we are faced with doing---leaving the head out of the matter!
How does one think with the heart? There are abundant techniques and tools, yet simply being aware of your heart when responding to any life experiences is a great start. Ask yourself, “What is the loving way to respond to what I am experiencing?”
Maybe most importantly in the intent to live from the heart is this: Remember that anything that is called “power” is not really power at all unless it is based in love. Today, the terms “power” and “love”, as Dr. Martin Luther King observed, have been seen as polar opposites.
As we move more and more quickly towards an era of harmony, and as old institutions like religion are fast fading away, one of the best reminders about where we are going comes from Jimi Hendrix, the guitar legend of the 1960s:
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.”
Peace. Why not me?
Peace is at hand. All we are challenged to do is to trust it, believe it. You and I and all of Us are worthy of it.
Why Not Me? Non-Religious Self Reliance-Part One
How do we identify ourselves spiritually and religiously? Most importantly, does this identification match up with the way we live our lives? The process of spiritual empowerment has much to do with how we answer these questions.
It has come to light recently that the Catholic Church has begun using Facebook in an effort to recruit potential priests to its fold. Their slogan in this effort is “Why Not Me?”
Let’s look at some potential answers to that question, not only for those who might be considering a religious vocation of any kind, but from the perspective of one who may be questioning religious labels by which we identify ourselves.
From the outset, let me be clear that my premise in this article is that the vast majority of all religion as we practice it in our world at this time is spiritually counter-productive. If we are, indeed, in the process of communally evolving into a more harmonious and loving planet, then the purpose of any worthy religion would be to lovingly unite and empower us. Most religion divides and weakens us, casting non-believers as inferior, seeing proponents as superior and falsely creating a god that is schizophrenically both all-loving and quite wrathful.
Religion as we know it today is dying, and with good reason. People’s allegiance to religion is the cause of more death, pain and suffering than any other social cause. It has been the central cause of most wars and persecution.
Why do we identify ourselves with any particular religion?
Why We Continue With a Current Religious Identification
For the most part, there are three reasons that any reasonably intelligent people stick with a religion in which they were raised.
(1)Fear of Eternal Damnation or Extended Time in Some Purgatory
In the months leading up to the passing of my mother last year, my father experienced much emotional challenge as she descended into dementia, still holding on to half a lifetime of resentment and anger. For well over a year, she was continually embarrassed about her “bladder problems” and had little interest or capacity for communicating with anyone. She had stopped eating anything except ice cream and crackers.
The doctors put her on appetite stimulants. It seemed to work. She was eating better and putting some weight back on. Yet, she was “vacant” almost all of the time.
After months in this semi-vegetative state, her doctor approached my Dad and suggested he might consider taking her off the appetite stimulants as a way of letting her go. He and I talked about it. He was going to think about it. Soon after, we talked again.
“I would feel guilty for the rest of my life if she died after the medication was stopped”, he said.
It was his decision to make, yet I was compelled to explore: “Dad, you know that the whole guilt thing and the eternal damnation stuff that your church puts out is a bunch of crap, don’t you?”
His response, “Well, yeah, but what if it isn’t?”
This is the kind of thinking so many religious people carry like a weight around their shoulders. For fear of frying in eternal fires, we live a life that makes it fine to shoot a horse to save it from pain, let we cannot let our people die a natural death. Such thinking is simply ignorant.
(2) Fear of Rejection by Family or Peers
High up on the Fear Meter along with eternal damnation is the prospect of being disowned by family or friends. If all your family and friends identify themselves with a given religion, you risk their rejection if you decide that the religion does not really work for you.
Maybe you’ll continue to go to church, temple or synagogue on the weekend, but outside of that little show, you don’t really practice the religion, live it. This is a most destructive and prevalent example of cowardice.
Maybe you have agonized over the conflict, figuring that you will stick with the religion you have until your parents have passed, sparing them the disappointment of your “betrayal”. You are willing to wear a false mask in the name of family peace and harmony, all the while realizing that you are not being true to yourself.
This appears to be a major factor in, for example, France. While 41.6 million of France's 65 million population identifies itself as Catholic, only about 2 million attend church each week, according to Jacques Carton of the Bishops Conference in France. In the United States, the numbers are not so striking, apparently due in large part to the fact that our society here is much more focused on appearances and guilt.
(3) Laziness or Simple Distraction
In lives that seem to be more and more filled with financial challenge, responsibilities and daily pressures on many levels, it’s easy to forget the spiritual aspects of our lives. Given the oxyomoronic nature of most religion---the fact that it is literally anti-spiritual---it can easily be just another item on your list of things that pull you in two different directions at the same time. When it comes to making a change in how you see your religion, your mind tells you that there are more important things to deal with, so you sit with the status quo.
You have got other things on your mind, and at least your religion lets you fit in and also feel morally superior to other people, so long as you think about it selfishly, without much compassion.
We are living in a world of change at increasing speed. For many of us, it is a time in which we are being challenged to shed the old ways of thinking that have not worked for us. For many, this is the step now being faced in finding true spiritual empowerment. Is it what you are being challenged to deal with in your process of enlightenment?
Non-religious self-reliance: It's a mouthful you do not hear much. We have not been taught to rely upon ourselves but upon institutions that do not want us thinking for ourselves. Please explore within yourself whether it is time to let go of your religion, time to ask, "Why not me?" when figuring out who should be responsible for your own beliefs? Isn't this what "The Shift" is really all about--trusting our own loving power?
Coming soon: The Case for Letting Most Religion Go: Non-religious Self-Reliance--Part Two
