A Spiritual Background (Article)

A look at the spirituality

I was raised to view spirituality not as a blind devotee unconsciously submitting to the absolute, but rather as a daily truth guiding us in moments of uncertainty; as something to keep at the forefront of my conscious self.  I was raised to make a choice.  Looking at life as an opportunity to create myself and embrace, as a result, whichever religion “chooses” me.  This path of enlightenment (so-to-speak) has lead me to attend a variety of religious services from Christianity to Hinduism and I've discovered aspects of every faith to have truth.  I expected, however, these truths to be independent of one another bordering on similar but ultimately, different.  I've noticed that every faith is congruent to the others in every conceivable way but one: the axiom of experiences of those who created the faith at the beginning, as a result of their culture and their traditions.   

 

Regardless of the region that a religion was conceived there was a time when we could not understood the stars, the moon, the sun, or our emotions and feelings.  And though we are all essentially the same we differ by how we think, what we think, and why, consequent to our experiences and our biology.  We all needed to understand the world around us, and the worlds inside of us, so we created in our image-something we could understand-a concept that became responsible for everything that we could not understand.  This idea then spread by means of diffusion, and then changed, and evolved (to some degree) because of our cultures, traditions, and the different ways that we perceive the world.  We would eventually create what we all now know today to be God, and religion.  We wouldn’t begin to understand many of these concepts until around the seventeenth century when what we consider to be modern science was realized.  Three and half thousand years after the first few books of the bible had been penned, let alone a general concept of religion.  And we didn't begin to form a better understanding of ourselves, our minds, or our emotions until the nineteenth century.  Needless to say there is a gap between the birth of religion and the realization of the self, and our surroundings.  Still religion, and our concept of God has not evolved with time or a better understanding of ourselves, and of spirituality.

 

I should, at this point, help you to better understand an approach to love that you may, or may not, be familiar with.  One that would open up to you a new perspective that I believe you should be familiar with.  Love, as we generally understand it to be, is a feeling (or ability) that is shared between people whether it be our families, friends or a significant other.  It is something we do, or that we feel, and believe, but most importantly it’s viewed as something that we “feel for” someone.  As Shakespeare so eloquently puts it “Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.  O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is never shaken.  It is the start to every wandering bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.” However, reading this nowhere does he mention a love between people.  He describes it in a way that many of us might describe God.  Of course, though, that wouldn’t surprise most because people contribute this feeling of love to their relationship with God.  We often say that Love is God.  What if instead we considered the reverse, that God is Love.  That love is in all things.  And we then compare God to water and ourselves to a fish.  God is like water and we are the fish and a fish does not believe in water, to a fish water is all there is.  Keep that in mind for the moment as we consider the following parallels between the various religions. 

 

I have noticed similarities throughout the different religions beyond the borrowed, shared, and slightly altered parables of each tenet.  There is a kinship of piety that is a coincidental and unintended reoccurrence that are expressions of love and faith.  Footnotes that bridge our faiths and bind us to one another as deeply underlying principles impossible to ignore.  Consider first, the Law of Attraction, made known by Rhonda Byrne and her book The Secret is the realization of our active thoughts positive or negative attracting to us a like reality.  Simply, if you frequently have positive thoughts you will bring good things into your life.  Does this sound familiar?  It could be mistaken for the Buddhist concept of Karma, which is the creature of our thoughts in relation to our attitude that brings to us more of what we consciously or unconsciously attract to our lives.  Samsara, meaning “continuous flow” is the act of living, and the ability to separate yourself from that every day routine yet realizing that you are also a part of that routine.  That sounds strikingly similar to this idea of love that myself, and so many, have become familiar with.  

 

Lets take a second to return to this idea that Love is God.  Everything you hold true for God, with the exception that we were created in {his} image, project instead towards love.  Imagine, if you will for a moment, that God is not the creator but rather the act of creation and a collection of our combined thought.  Imagine that Love in essence was not a feeling.  It is like whiteness.  Love is the harmony of all feelings.  It is what makes reality comprehendible and the universal attainable.  Love is like water, and that we are the fish, and a fish cannot exist without water.  To the fish water is all that is.  There does not exist anything outside of it.  Love, then, becomes the act of creation.  Love is an act and this life is the means in which we carryout that act.  We instilled ideas of intention to give ourselves meaning (Heaven, Nirvana, Moshka, etc) but without “true” meaning we have the opportunity to create for ourselves our own personal meaning.

Author's Note

An ongoing, possibly never-ending, work in progress.

Reviews

[Karli]

This is really good! I read it like three times, because it's so truthful!:) Good job!