Okay, class. Welcome to today’s lesson, where we will um… do whatever we do. 🙂
There will be a short review of definitions. The definitions are my wording. They are found in other places, as well.
God – The Whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
Religion – The codification of one person’s enlightenment or awakening experience, usually.
Religion is also often a set of rules telling people what will save them or make them happy, which almost never works 100% because it cannot account for individual, group and cultural variations, nor is it based in Truth, but in fact is only an attempt to control groups of people through fear. (See definitions for truth and lie.)
Sin – to miss the mark. It’s an archery term. Look it up.
Sinner – someone who misses the mark.
Heaven – a model of a “good” place where “good” people go after they die, used to control people while they are alive. OR how we feel when we notice the truth, a sense of bliss and connection.
Hell – a model of a “bad” place where “bad” people go after they die, used to control people while they are alive. OR how we fell when we lie, a sense of separation from God and others, a sense of loneliness.
Spiritual – something beyond the physical, sometimes described as energy, God, chi, prana, life force, The Force, grokking, etc.
Spirituality – attitudes, practices, ways of living that connect us to something that feels like it is beyond the physical.
Mystic – one who feels a direct connection to Spirit or God in some way. Most religions have them. We call them Christ, Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed and Moses. There are other mystics, too: saints, poets, artists, scientists and teachers. You know them.
Addiction – Anything we habitually and compulsively try to substitute for our Source, which I call God.
Truth – that which feels expansive, happy, right and joyful when you say it to yourself and check the feelings in your body. These feeings are usually described as light, open, expansive, etc.
Lie – that which feels contracted, unhappy, wrong and upsetting when you say it to yourself and check the feelings in your body. These feelings are usually described as heavy, tight, closed, contracted, etc.
Here is a way to check what it feels like when you lie:
Can you remember a time when you lied to someone you loved? (We’ve all done it.)
Feel the physical feelings in your body when you remember this time you lied to someone you loved. (Not emotions like sad or angry, but physical feelings that you feel in your body.)
Got it? Great.
That is how it feels when you lie to someone you love. Sometimes it is a similar feeling with a similar “flavor.” For example, maybe you felt a tightness in the pit of the stomach. Later, you check another thought that is a lie, and you feel nauseated and sick to your stomach. Close enough. Both are how you feel when you lie to someone you love.
Finding the Truth feeling is an interesting one. I used to tell people to think of their name (if they’ve got a nickname it doesn’t work as well) or a math equation, like 1 plus 1 equals 2. That will sometimes get you to a feeling of openness, lightness, expansiveness, but not necessarily. Just keep checking thoughts. You’ll find the feeling. You’ve felt it hundreds of times in your life.
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Okay, that’s it for definitions right now. If you want other things defined, write a Comment. I’ll add it if it fits.
The impetus for writing this particular blog comes from discussions I’ve had recently with a gorgeous man with long hair who is just this close to what I would want in a husband. He feels about the same about me. In fact, if we had similar spiritual paths, we’d even be able to share our work, which for me would be a total dream come true. Long hair, shared sexual preferences, all wonderful, but without the shared spirituality, no go. I love him. I just don’t see sharing my life with him.
He is a fundamentalist Christian. Let’s call him Bryce.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. He has every right to think that way. We had to talk about this, though. He calls himself a “new” Christian. About a year ago he had what sounds to me like a totally valid spiritual experience. He was pissed off about his wife leaving him. He talked with a minister who told him to go home and pray. He went home, knelt on the floor and had a very angry loud conversation with God.
Next, he felt a wave of bliss wash through him. He says it was like honey.
The way he describes this tallies with my own spiritual experiences. I sense he is telling the truth and that he really did have an experience of God. He has had this again a couple of times.
Note that there was no minister, no Bible, nothing like that intervening between him and this experience. I’ve had similar experiences in so many ways and so many places now that I cannot recount them all.
What I disagree with is when Bryce then takes this experience and thinks that because a fundamentalist Christian minister told him to pray, and then this happened, that everything this minister says is true. *sigh*
A friend of mine told me the Mormon church uses this same tactic to convert people. They tell them that if they have this experience it means Mormonism is true.
Does it? Check! How does it feel in your body? Tight and contracted? Or open and expansive?
The Christian religion as we have it today was largely based on the work of the apostle Paul. The model of God is that of a “king.” Why? Because that is what illiterate people 2000 years ago could understand. People working fields and trades for a living didn’t have the time or the luxury back then to learn to read. Things are a little different now in many parts of the world, especially the US of A.
The “king” model works pretty well, even today, for illiterate or under-educated people who have not learned to question things and think for themselves. Hell, it works for some educated people, especially, those with some reason to want someone else to do their thinking for them. People who want things in black and white, all spelled out.
This includes my very own sister, God love her.
She was going through drug recovery and working the 12 Steps. I totally support the 12 Steps themselves, by the way. They do a world of good. The groups have some beliefs that are untrue, but the 12 Steps tend to work to bring people to truth.
Step 1. Admitted we were powerless over (name your addiction).
Step 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (True, a problem is never solved at the level of thinking that created it. Einstein noticed that, too.)
Step 3. Made a conscious decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood God.
This is where my sister and I diverged. She spent 3 years trying out various ways to understand God. She did my own very favorite spiritual path, A Course in Miracles. All of it. Every one of the 365 daily lessons. And when she was done with 3 years of exploration, she decided to be a fundamentalist Christian, to home school her children and to teach them Creationism.
She has every right to do that. If you ask me whether I’d rather have a sister who is addicted to drugs or a sister who is a fundamentalist Christian, the answer is a no-brainer. If that’s the choice, she can be as fundamentalist as she wants. At least she is not evangelical, meaning she is not out there trying to tell others what to believe.
And she even lets me say whatever I wish to her children. She says they are going to have to learn to deal with it in the world, so they might as well hear what I really think. She’s a jewel and I love her.
But back to Bryce.
He has a GED because he had to quit school to raise a child at a very early age. He makes straight A’s when he is in school, but he hasn’t had a lot of education in logic, logical fallacies, or thinking for himself.
He was abandoned by his parents at a very very young age, like before high school. He lived on the streets and had to learn to fight. Heartbreaking in a way, if you knew him. He’s as gentle a man as you’d ever care to meet. (Gorgeous, too, but I digress.)
So, it makes sense that without parental guidance from about age 12, that there is still a 12-year old type of thinking he has, still some desire to find an authority to tell him what to think.
He just doesn’t quite trust himself. He can feel the contraction in his body when he lies. He tells me he does, anyway. But he doesn’t think he can make good decisions (particularly about women). Frankly, if he had checked that contraction, he might never have been with some of them. I don’t know. Not that his reality should have been any different than it is. He’s a fine man, as is. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. He, my sister and I are all living proof. We’ve all had direct experiences of God… and I mean in our bodies. Undeniable, immistakable. No question in our minds or hearts.
I don’t know what Bryce (or anyone else) needs to do with his life, his beliefs or his religion and spirituality (two different things – see definitions). That’s totally his business.
Sure, I love talking about it.
He asks me questions. I answer.
He makes statements I can’t agree with and I explain my perspective.
Or not.
He’s trying to go with the idea that the Bible is literally true. I wouldn’t do that.
Here’s a list of inconsistencies in the New Testament alone:
http://www.thenazareneway.com/new_testament_biblical_inconsistencies.htm
If you’d rather read it in fiction, pick up a copy of Robert A. Heinlein’s JOB: A Comedy of Justice. Great reading, very educational. Fun.
That’s part of what this blog is for me: fun.
Thank you for visiting. Make Comments below, if you wish.
Love, Ann
Ann's Tale 