Religion V/S spirituality.
Religion can be philosophy of life, to inspire us and help us learn. It can also be a tool of manipulation and spiritual control.
If we are able to see all the religions in the world as one big expression of the unknown, then we can maybe see they cannot all be right. Maybe there are some bits and pieces of life philosophy in all religions. It is not that easy just to find a religious product that totally fits us. Maybe we all in the end have to make our own connection to our own understanding of spirituality.
Still people use their religion as a
reason to suppress each other's freedom - over their own lives, ways
of loving and even create wars, based on different views about God.
The human kind has always strived for getting to know the spiritual
aspects of existence. What is outside what we can perceive with our
eyes? Many cultures had their spiritual believes directly connected to
the forces of nature, and this was necessary to keep balance and
respect for the planet.
So what is spirituality? It seems like many religions have got a fixed
answer to this and use people's fear of the unknown as a tool for
control. In old cultures and still very much alive in many indigenous
tribes, the question about spirituality is a very individual quest and
is often directly connected to nature spirits. If nature truly is an
image and reflection of something bigger, something divine, then it
should be in everyone's best interest to get a true and individual
relationship to these forces. And we do not need people to tell us how
it is, or to read a book to get to know God, when God is in everything
around us.
In our world religion has become a tool of power.
Controlling our need for a spiritual understanding,
controlling our relationship to magic, healing and wonders
and also controlling our bodies, sexuality and desires.
It is not so long time
ago the church told us that if you masturbate you go to hell and that
looking at someone with desire is a great sin. And they still throw
curses on homosexuality and open sexual behavior or even women being
free of control by the man. In this specter, nature, or God if you
wish, has created us sinful, without any other way to escape the
torment of hell, than paying to the church in form or earthly money
and being spiritual submissive.
Could it be that many organized religions are there to control us and actually keep us away from the essence of nature and the spirit world.
For quite some time ago now,
we had many vise men and women who knew about plants, energies and
spirits, and many got tortured and burned because of their teachings.
They were called witches or sorcerers. The church did not like that
people with knowledge about plants or energies, could compete with the
church promise of salvation against an earthly money donation.
So what about Christianity? This religion has some history based on blood,
going to different tribes, destroying their culture, destroying their
power places, to build churches on them. Most of the Christian
religious traditions are also stolen from old spiritual rituals.
Rituals that actually had a sense connected to the rhythm of the
planet and the universe and fertility and death.
Now this system of
spiritual occupants preach love and fear together, acknowledging Jesus
as a healer, but telling that healing, if performed by others others,
is the act of the devil.
Today less witches and shamans are burning,
but the information still got lost. And still you have missionaries
going deep into the jungle where
nature is untouched, to tell the
tribes, that it is sinful to be naked or have more sex partners.
A small story on how many religious teaching can be twisted and
abused: The Garden of Eden story. Adam is bored in paradise. God makes
duality to keep him entertained in form of a woman. They are created
for each other, naked, obviously to play sexually without the borders
of shame, judgment and guilt.
Then they get tricked to eat the apple. (Since God is everything, the beginning and the end, also the snake represents a shape of the same God.) The apple makes them see they are naked, feel shame, and they cower themselves.
They have got tricked
away from their natural state of mind and feel shame for their bodies
and sexuality for the first time. The ultimate sin is born. What God
created for them to enjoy, love and sexuality is denied.
God see they have covered themselves and then throw them out of the Garden of Eden, because they are afraid of love and their own nature. They see themselves and what God created as sinful.
After this, people who
already have this sinful relationship to their nature, write the
Bible.
Maybe it should all be cast aside and we just focus on the
beginning. When humans where living happy, naked and horny in
paradise.
