A View of A Religion
Let's take a closer look at a view of religion. You might not agree with this view. That's OK with me. I offer it as just something to ponder, if your mind is open to it.
First, what is a "religion" anyway? The dictionary says it is "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects." One group has a certain set of beliefs and practices, while another group has what might be an entirely different set of beliefs and practices. A religion is a set of ideas and rules that are shared by a group as reflecting the "truth."
Clearly, if one group believes that God says something is true and another preaches that God says that same thing is false, they can't both be right. Where do these ideas come from anyway? Is God playing with our minds? More likely, we're playing with our own minds.
There are religious sects that preach non-believers are headed straight to hell, there are others that believe it is sinful to dial the telephone on a certain day. If we examine, with an open mind, the tenets upon which various religions in the world are based, we have to wonder how they can reflect Truth. There's a movie I really like that really brings this point home: "Religulous," with Bill Maher. You can read my review here.
I'm not a religious scholar, but here's the way I see Christianity. It started with a guy who came into this life with a tremendous awareness of Truth. I doubt he was born of a virgin (I think some church elders added that idea later to help increase the sales appeal of their new religion). He was very charismatic, a great motivational speaker, and above all, he knew about love and forgiveness. It turns out forgiveness is the perfect antidote to ego. While ego desires to separate us, and to feed the desire for one to dominate another, forgiveness unites, and dissolves any need to struggle or fight.
So this guy grew up in difficult times; lots of wars, fighting, oppression, victims and victimizers. As a young man he traveled to India and studied with great spiritual thinkers of the day, he was exposed to Eastern religious beliefs, and he asked all of the great questions of life early on. One question he asked was, how can we reach God? How can we experience our creator? Is giving up all worldly possessions, praying for 22 hours a day on a mountaintop or in a monestary a viable path? What is the secret to finding and experiencing Truth?
I think that he discovered the answers on his own. He found and experienced Truth in demonstrating and living unconditional love toward his fellow man. He demonstrated non-judgment, and in the process many were healed. By "healed" I mean, he was able to change people's minds about themselves. Physical healing, after all, begins in the mind.
According to Michelle O'Donnell, disease is a physical manifestation of a belief. The belief may be a personal one, or a belief held by a group, or even everyone in the society. So this guy, known as Jeshua Ben Joseph, was able to shift people's awareness such that they could see that a simple change of mind (or change of heart) could free them of the bondage they were holding themselves to. When we reach a point at which our awareness of the Truth becomes clear enough, we see that we are perfect and whole. At that point, our experience of ourselves shifts and we see our physical body as disease free, a perfect expression of our clarity of self-awareness.
Jeshua's physical presence was powerful indeed. His words touched the hearts of many, and word spread of his healing "powers." The greater the legend became, the more powerful each person's experience was when they were able to meet and be touched by him. I think that, while many who encountered Jeshua in the flesh felt his greatness, there were plenty of others who did not.
The power of love and forgiveness is unfathomable. When we get to the point where we can appreciate something of the depth of God's love for us, we can reach the state of fearlessness, and we no longer identify with anything personal, even including our bodies. The way I see it, pain has a purpose within our bodies: to communicate distress; it is part of the mechanism that helps us keep the body intact and healthy. While pain is a natural communication and awareness-bringing process of the body, the suffering part is entirely optional.
If I drop a hammer on my toe, the pain is registered (the toe says "hey, we've got damage here; repairs are going to need to be made; don't do that again"). Suffering may accompany the pain in the form of self-criticism or fear, or projection into the future ("that was stupid! what an idiot; this is going to hurt for the next two days, it's going to swell up; they'll make fun of my swelled toe at work, and my limp"). All that suffering is ego. And it's all optional.
After speaking out fearlessly about love and forgiveness, Jeshua's popularity began to be a threat to a big egoic force, the Romans and their leaders. After they did away with his body, a huge void was left in the world. "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." While the idea of love and forgiveness remains with us to this day, the concept of "Christianity" was solidified by Jeshua's story. But surprisingly, the part about love and forgiveness is often not so visible in the actions of those calling themselves "Christians."
Egoic entities are held together by fundamental forces, the most important of which may be guilt. In looking back at what "we" (the community as a whole) did to Jeshua, it is easy to feel guilt-ridden. Even before his time, there were religious structures, and after Jeshua's death the church had new tools to use to strengthen and grow. The idea that "Jesus died for our sins" was a powerful one. Several of the Christian sects that developed later based much of their power and appeal on this guilt-laden idea.
Two thousand years later, we can look at the Christian religious extremists to see where the ego leads us when left unchallenged. In the "Left Behind" series, we are treated to scenes of the death and destructions of non-believers:
"Men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood... It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin... Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated."
Wow, that God is really powerful! And mean too. He even tortures the horses who are non-believers!
Today we have religious "leaders" espousing this same point of view, that God deliberately inflicts suffering on us to punish us for our sins. One such man blamed the 9/11 deaths on pagans, abortionists, gays, and the ACLU, and claimed that God unleashed Hurricane Katrina as punishment to the people of the Gulf Coast for performing abortions. On the Haitian earthquake, he said "thousands [are] dying because Haitian slaves 'swore a pact with the devil' for their freedom."
These are all stories. When I was thinking about life eight or ten years ago, it occurred to me that most of what we take as "real" or "true" has just been made up by us (me or someone else). Sometimes, it is a story that has been around for so long, nobody can remember where it originated. Sometimes it is attributed to someone that is given (for whatever reason) some amount of authority, which then makes the story less likely to be questioned. Sometimes, a big group of people will agree on the validity of a certain story, and their sheer number gives the story more weight. After all, we say, "all those people can't be wrong!"
In the eighties, many psychics predicted big earth changes. There arose what appeared to be a consistent view of an unfolding drama of apocalyptic events involving earthquakes and volcanoes. It was just more stories.
Where does the idea that God will punish us for our sins come from? It is guilt! One explanation comes from the thought that we, mankind, decided to experience what it would be like if we forgot our unity, our oneness. As this story goes:
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, possible of both accomplishment and real effects.
[T-27.VIII.6:2-3]
This is a quote from A Course in Miracles, which we'll talk more about later. Here is another description of this, by Andy at http://www.lets-talk.org/separation.htm
I, a thought in the Christ mind, wondered what it would be like to be separate, and, instead of laughing at the absurdness of this impossibility, I entertained the thought of being an individual doing my own thing.
Since separation is impossible in reality, I (this thought) had to split off into a dream. To be effectively split off and different, this dream required a thought system opposite to the thoughts of God. So I made up the ego thought system and adopted it. Now, from the perspective of my insane thought system, I felt guilty about usurping God’s role and feared He would be angry and destroy me.
To get rid of my guilt and fear, I made a world of form and time in which to hide. I split my mind again into a few billion pieces. In this world I can project my guiltiness onto others by (unconsciously) asking them to attack me. I am "innocent," which makes my fear of them normal. Naturally I need to defend myself, and ultimately, if they’re going to be so bad, I have to kill them before they kill me.
This hiding place and projection game would be useless, however, if I could still remember who I was and why I made it up, but I have forgotten both. The false thought system is imprinted in each mind fragment so that each believes it is a body.
But in reality there is no separation. I have been dreaming an insane dream. And I can awaken by using the forgiveness process to disprove the ego thought system and invite God's thoughts back into my mind.
