ABOUT RELIGION

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On balance religion is a snare, a delusion, a burden and a cause of death, destruction and pain. Other than that, it is o.k.

ruveyn

I guess you can call me Neopagan. I practice bits of Wicca and take aspects from Celtic paganism and druidism....little bits of everything that I like. This isn't helping my case, is it?

But I often worship with others and celebrate various holidays. I use traditions and folklore to build up on my practices. I think that religions have a lot to give people if they keep an open mind and try to understand where everyone's coming from. Even though I don't believe that Jesus was the son of God, and am not really sure if he even existed or not, I still have respect for him and his beliefs and can use that figure and idea to aide my own spirituality.

I have never worshiped anybody and I am not sure what that is all about. Is it a kind of blind obedience to whatever is advised? Is it a matter of kneeling down in an abject position and muttering religious formulas? Is it praying for a god to change things because you don't like the way god did what he did? Hard to know.

I suppose if there are any gods I would worship for extreme ability to give pleasure and wisdom I would choose the 3 Marx brothers. I think there were one or two more but they made little impact. Groucho, of course was the head man while Harpo and Chico gave great support. And, of course, as a triumvirate, they work out well. Since they are all dead they are quite spiritual and I find them far more congenial than any other gods I have come across.

Sorry for being pedantic (but hey, this is WP) but it seems to me that you're not affiliated with any 1 religion, which would make you spiritual and not religious.

Remember that spiritualism is a broad concept that includes religion. If someone's religious they are also spiritual, but the opposite is not necessarily true.

And just to be clear, I'm not passing any judgement on your beliefs. I'm just being a pedantic ass.

Hehe don't worry, I know . No worries.

I guess I consider myself religious because I do partake in practices that belong to a religion. Religious and spiritual are sort of loose terms anyway, I see being religious as believing in a dogma set by a religion, be it one or many, and following a set of practices. Paganism tends to be sort of loosey goosey, I guess I am sort of in between being spiritual and religious. The practices I partake in and the gods/goddesses I worship are all part of a religion, but the ways in which I view them are more spiritual. Eh, I'm not making any sense tonight. I'll try again later.

Once or twice a year when I am up early sunday morning I find myself slipping into our community church. Its a marvelous limestone church with two towers (Crows nests) its around a century old and has the most amazing pipe organ as its centerpiece. I take the back bench and wait for the BASS. Im not kidding, I go to church for Five Reasons. The Main one The BASS PIPE, that puts my hair up like nothing else. The other 4 in descending importance as follows

#2: The smell... No other structure shy of a century old could smell the same. Its smells like
generations of memories.

#3 The Arcitecture... They just don't build things the way they used to.

#3 The Atmosphere... These Church people aren't fitting together the way people in groups fit anywhere else, and the looks in their eyes and on their faces are much different. During and after mass when I catch a glance, there's a calmness and security in the others eyes.

Beats the look on the faces of the cashiers in the busy lines where I make most of my outside contact. Usually these people would rather that I don't mention anything at all,
The line is meant to flow. Don't confuse the flow... now off you go.

#4 To look for the reason that I came in the preachers daily point. The message that My God slipped into the moment just for me. It can be tough to find it, all fogged up in pomp, But If I randomly chose to go to church that day, and if randomness as an event is really just misunderstood deliberacy, then the answer lies in the event as it unfolds.

Works GOOD

My God is simple, My God is Goodness beyond human comprehension. Here's the beauty of my God. If something really sucks for me or others, who am I or others to say that it sucks beyond ourselves. The sucky situation could be up to, hugely beneficial for someone or thing else in a superficially or truly separated (or not) scenario. My God knows all there is to know up until now, And that's GOOD, If I knew what my God Knows,( by saying 'know's' I'm talking about complete knowledge without thought) my existence would have to be ENERGY itself. The dimensions of energy are potentially filling the vacuum of space, and the spaces in between.
That Is where and what my God is. GOOD ENERGY That deserveth respect,
I kinda feel that religion is system of explaining this to the kindergarten class.
Our Community church is the HOT SPOT for good things around here... with out a doubt... and I respect all the ritual in the experience, admire it even, can't do it, don't got the groove. [i]


Nothing wrong with our christian church around here, they even go to the third world with local money and help... WOW... I love it... its tough to deal with the crowd but they are amazingly calm while rejoicing and kind and much just cleaner in spirit than people elsewhere.

..........................God Bless The Community PIPE ORGANS LOW PIPE...............................

If it is beyond human comprehension, it is beyond your comprehension which means you do not know what you are talking about.

ruveyn

Easy Bud...

You spend any time working pizza?

If you did, You would learn a thing or two about bull sh#t.

Try a bit harder would you?

For me worship is about taking a chosen outer other as a blueprint for my own inner transformation. And I agree - whatever you choose should be able to produce EXTREME pleasure and wisdom. I don't think it matters, the object. But the meaning it represents for us and how much it inspires us does.

There are many individuals, living and historical, that I admire but worship is another thing altogether. Nobody, as far as I know, can indicate an entire form and concept to match my particular experiences and understanding. Nor do I care to search for one. For we are all, each one of us, unique in possibilities and it is our problem in life to discover who and what we are and what we can become. If there is such a thing as a mission in life, that is it.

Discovering who we are is exactly as you said - a problem. I prefer to leave that as one of the unsolvable mysteries of the universe. I'm more interested in what I want to become - in terms of a state of mind. And won't settle for anything less than an ultimate state.

So the idea is not exactly to find an object that matches you internally, but rather to find your ideals and project these onto a chosen external object/being that best fits with these.

The reason for this is because by constantly associating ourselves with this 'symbol' of our ideals it is much faster to achieve a transformation from a mere mundane existence into something much higher. Without the reliance on a symbol of our projected ideals the search for the answers about our existence can only continue in a tentative and pedestrian way.

The way it works is through a process of familiarisation - this is the definition of meditation according to the tradition I follow at least. Yes I think it's possible to transform one's state of mind through reliance on constant familiarisation of certain thoughts alone. We do this all the time without effort - for better or worse, probably mostly worse - given the state of the world we live in. But there is something powerful about the usage of symbols, and I'm not sure if I can explain even a fraction of it . It's something about working on a deeper level of the mind that a symbol can connect to directly, whereas ordinary conceptual thought only wishes it could.

Too vague and undefined to be useful. Whatever "ultimate" means it conveys merely some sort of admirable endpoint totally uncommunicated.

Sand - if it comes across as vague it's because I'm trying to avoid preaching my beliefs explicitly. But if you want to unleash me I will! And what exactly is wrong with an admirable uncommunicated endpoint?

Because it is a noisy way of saying nothing. Whether it is admirable or not is not explicit and it has all the characteristics of a scam.

Take an orgasm for instance: it's an admirable uncommunicated endpoint. So it follows it's a scam?! lol