Hardcore Religion Thread

[Protector]

Time to vent again, join me on my magical journey in the land of endless text.

 

Let's start our magical journey with a little God experiment. Imagine the most powerful, beautiful, and wise being. It's hard to do so by picturing it in your mind but it's easier to judge it when someone produces a picture of such being. If someone brought you a picture and said that's how God looks like, you could easily go a step beyond and imagine a better picture. If someone brought you a book of words of God, you could easily outsmart the most wise being from these pages.

 

In many cultures it is forbidden to have a picture of God or say it's name, because if you hear such an awesome name for the first time it will blow your mind, but after enough exposure you will grow tired of it. Our minds are always a step ahead so it's easier to have a blank page and say that's how God looks like. It's just a page but our minds can easily fill the gaps, even when these gaps are infinitely big.

 

We always want to give meaning to things and come closer to the truth. We ask questions and look for answers, that's how we have the world we have today. Our minds give us an ability take in the world and then show how we think it looks like. Closer we are to understanding how the world works, the closer we are to God. We have many sciences and things we've build with that knowledge, our curiosity makes us learn more and more things about the world. Reaching out into infinity trying to learn everything.

 

Like the story of the tower of Babel. Keep going up up, trying to be closer to God but our minds are a step ahead. The tower was never completed, the workers suddenly started speaking in different languages and they couldn't understand each other. Just like now, we have many sciences but not everyone understands what they're about. Many scientists specialize in one thing and when they discover something we don't understand, we fill in the gaps. With more knowledge comes more confusion from these who don't know.

 

We ask questions about the world and how it works but we also have a spiritual need to ask questions about ourselves. There is one world and we have generations of people trying to learn everything about it, but there is only one you and your time is short. Only you will go on a journey to find out more about yourself.

 

It doesn't matter if you learn everything because in the personal journey the possibilities are infinite. Even if you became immortal your journey would go on as long as you live, too. Even with a short life there is no time limit either, you just have to become content with what you have.

 

A lot of the journeys begin when a person has a taste of wisdom from a greater master and then they want more and more and more. In the past there were masters who helped a small groups of people and then left. They say Jesus had just 12 students but now he has millions even though he's dead. What he taught was special to a small group of people and it was written down so millions of people could learn what he taught and it became a religion. That is the difference between a religion and spirituality, religion is for everyone and spirituality is personal.

 

The story of Jesus became a part of the bible and over the years no one is sure what part of his story was real and what's not. Many people wanted to add some corrections to the books and try to make sense of them. In the past these sorts of stories were forbidden to be written down, just like the name of God. Jesus was meant to leave but the books won't let him.

 

He just taught some simple lessons about love and kindness but because of where he was born and what the readers needed, he became a part of local religious movement even though he was against it. Same thing happened to the Buddha, he just wanted to understand suffering and the things he said were not written down for centuries, but later the people wanted more. His story even got a makeover in some versions. Making him blessed by God, having amazing powers and just having these qualities being the focus. Now instead of learning anything, people pray to these who they think got the right idea.

 

I don't think about Christianity of Buddhism, I just imagine I'm having Jesus or Buddha sit next to me and talk about what they used to talk about. It's easier with Lao Tsu, no one knows anything about him but the stuff he wrote, but because there's nothing known about him, the religious people start to create local Gods to pray to and make temples for them.

 

It seems like religion always trying to sell something. You give them complete devotion and in return they take care of your spiritual needs, just pray. Religions reach out to everybody and make up rules. People live in these rules and feel fine because they are told they are fine. These special services are even given to people who don't even need them, like kids. They just want to play but they are told that they should so and so.

 

It's amazing but for most people their spiritual awakening happens when they become atheist. Religion tries to make everyone happy but that doesn't ever work, that's why we have so many of them and almost no one agrees with each other. What people need is not answers as a group but as an individual. Science is supposed to be exact and in exact categories. People cannot be categorized, there is a scientist who studies biology but there is no one who is meant to study you.

 

Not everyone cares that there's a God and not everyone wants to give up their ability to think for themselves. Some real explorations happen when there's no one to hold you down. Some people look for purpose and what to do and get scared when they realize that maybe there is no purpose and nobody judging or looking down on them. For some it's scary but for others it's so much freedom to do whatever they want and that makes them happy.

 

Lots of people go to some great masters for advise but sometimes they don't leave and they stay with the master and have an experience of a religious person. 'The master is so great, I shouldn't leave, yet. What if I can learn more from him?' Some even want to throw away their other aspirations and just study spirituality their whole life. They learn so much but stay with the same system. If they were passionate about anything else, they could have excelled in it. Great artist, writer, family person.

 

The student should find the right time to leave or master should find the right time to let go. Many masters hide among normal people and many normal people learned from many masters. Guru means light bearer, a person who helps another person reach enlightenment when the time is right. Many people just stick around one guru waiting for something amazing to happen. It becomes like an addiction, you get a taste and then you're hooked. You see people coming to meet the guru and leaving happy to learn something but you already know it because you've been with him this whole time but didn't reach enlightenment.

 

It's like death, for the moment you learn an amazing truth you are alive, but when you don't feel the same way of reading many more books and talking to many more people you just wait for just a little spark of that feeling to feel the same way you did before. Life should be full of many experiences or else it feels short. Routines are boring, that time you discovered spirituality you abolished the system, but by living your new life you've created a new one.

 

After being sick of the society and materialist thinking or something, you might decide to return to nature because you decided that it better. You might get tired of it, too, but it's OK, you can find something else. Maybe you will decide to come back wiser, knowing the rules you will know how to break them. One day science will allows us to go into space, someday it will be the next step for many.

 

It's important to have an open horizon. Religion wants to put you into a box, but it's funny how the so called founders of these religions don't want that. Many know Jesus was against his local religion, if he existed if he was a person if he was a he. But I think the most interesting way out of religion inside of religion is in the very beginning of the bible. Many want to scary you with God and what he might do, there are many laws that are punishable with hell and such, but you you accept the reasoning I gave in the very beginning about the nature of God then the story of Adam and Eve will look the most interesting now.

 

The God made Adam and Eve, told them not to eat from the fruit of knowledge but they did anyway so he kicked them out. The fruit of knowledge gave them the ability to judge and understand dualistic thinking. They used to live with God but now they couldn't because it was impossible, not because God was mad. They went to the real world while God was left in the imagination, from the very start the bible was telling us the God wasn't real. Or at least he exists in nonexistence. God created the existence so since all of existence could fit inside God's palm, he could never be real like us.

 

Religious texts want you to believe their way of thinking but a spiritual text makes you think and makes you ask yourself questions. You could have accepted the story of Adam and Eve as true creation of humanity, doubt it completely, or think of what it implies and what lesson it has. I could never have come up with my reasoning if I didn't doubt its validity. I know we didn't just come from nowhere, there is something more. Have to keep asking, have to fill in the gaps. It might not be the real intention behind the original writing of the story but I made it my own.

 

Was that boring or what? Have a song for all your trouble

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evyy3rBgcM4

 

[Everything]

I don't really care anymore, I think it's all the same. Religion or not. There is allways yin-yang. Knowing it or not. Wether you think it's dark, there is still yin yang and when you think it's bright, there is still yin yang. It's all the same. You win, you loose, it's the same thing. Wether you let go or you hold on, it's the same thing. There's no diffrence. It's all the same thing. It's all this or that, this and that, this is that. Religion, no religion. Christ, anti christ. Obedience, rebeliousness. It's exactly the same thing. They both contain the two. If you go disobedient, you think you have made a choice, but not, you are still containing both obedience and disobedience any choice.

 

Wether you choose good or bad, there is allways both containing in any choice. Choosing good does not avoid bad nor does it diminish it. There's not even a choice being made. Making a choice and not making a choice is the same thing. It doesn't matter which one it is, since they're exactly the same thing. Wether you are free or not, thinking about freedom and believing you don't have it, while you choice to believe that and if you were not free you could not choose to believe that, so you're free, but what if you chose bondage the you're not free and how can someone have the freedom to choose bondage when choosing bondage suddenly makes you bound. Then it must be so that time is a waving of polarities from being bound to your freedom towards choosing bondage. And in the end, you realize that they're both the same and there's really no such thing as polarity. It's all one thing. They are both one thing. Bound to your freedom and choosing bondage. There is really no time seperating the two. It's one sentence, and it all exists right now. Allways has. We just experience time as pretending that there is a "not now", but there is no "not now." A "not now" does not exist now and will never exist now. That is Law

[i am]

Reminds of a great bluegrass musician I knew, r.i.p.

 

He loved Bill Monroe. And Flatt & Scruggs. He would only play that music in the most traditional way, and scoffed at anything new. "That's not how Bill would have done it". What those pioneers did became indoctrinated. Bluegrass LAW.

 

But...all of those artists were pioneers, breaking traditions and creating new things! Why is it that the most free and adventurous and open minded people attract the most rigid, controlling, following, blind people and societies to them?

 

Look at this awesome new thing! Lets do it and never come up with a new thing again.

 

And on top of that let's create organization around this way of doing things. It's such a good idea that we should make it law, make up a bunch of rules around it, and force other people to agree with it. Yeah, that seems cool.

Edited July 18, 2013 by i am

[i am]

It's not all the same and it does matter.

 

To me, anyways. If you understand the system, you are aware. I'm sure some people would prefer not to know they're enslaved. I mean if you can't do anything about it?..

 

But personally I want to know. I guess it's a zen thing...at first you don't know. So youre happy. Then you start getting little glimpses, so you struggle and fight and try to learn more and break free of your bonds.

 

If you're lucky enough to really get it figured out...you go back to what you were doing in the first place before you knew, except now you know, and so it's better. And you're happy again.

Edited July 18, 2013 by i am

[Marblehead]

Chop wood, carry water.

 

Attain enlightenment.

 

Chop wood, carry water.

[i am]

That's the "story" I was thinking of, yep.

[Everything]

It's not all the same and it does matter.

Yes, it does matter. But it also doesn't matter. Do you know why? Because they're both exactly the same. There's absolutely not even the slightest of diffrence in between the two, they've allways existed side by side and they come from the exact same center, and they extend in exactly the same way that your body does. They're the same, just like we have five fingers and not ten.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Everything

[Protector]

People care about the silliest things. Some people care so much about what others think that they think they can die of embarrassment. Embarrassment doesn't damage any organs yet the person starts freaking out. Objects not made from gold cost more then gold itself. A piece of paper with words on it.

If a speck of dust in the vast cosmos of space feels bad the universe won't implode on itself. A piece of metal is worth more then another piece of metal, but there is a planet made of diamond somewhere in space.

Space is infinite and imagination is just as big, nothing really matters. It doesn't matter to such an extent that someone can value someone else's life more then their own. No one knows that the memory you have is more important then money itself. But it will go, and your body will go, everything will go and will be gone. For now this speck of dust will play make believe and will become the most important thing in the universe.

[Everything]

People care about the silliest things. Some people care so much about what others think that they think they can die of embarrassment. Embarrassment doesn't damage any organs yet the person starts freaking out. Objects not made from gold cost more then gold itself. A piece of paper with words on it.

If a speck of dust in the vast cosmos of space feels bad the universe won't implode on itself. A piece of metal is worth more then another piece of metal, but there is a planet made of diamond somewhere in space.

Space is infinite and imagination is just as big, nothing really matters. It doesn't matter to such an extent that someone can value someone else's life more then their own. No one knows that the memory you have is more important then money itself. But it will go, and your body will go, everything will go and will be gone. For now this speck of dust will play make believe and will become the most important thing in the universe.

As they are caring, they are also not caring. The not caring part will naturally come about, when it is time to return to the source of both. Then they will not care about the money they care so much about and then it will just be money they care about. So they will see that both what is behind their backs and what is in front, is both in front of them and allways has been. It all exists together in one single experience, one single package of experience. All being here, in front of them. Above and bellow, behind and ahead. Left and right. These 3 dimensions of space actually all exists in the same space. And there is only one dimension of space and 3 dimensions of time.

 

There is no backwards or forwards, it's both one and the same thing. When you are moving backwards and you are moving forwards, both of these experiences are actually happening right in front of you. Who you truely are is never actually moving. Allways has been right here and now. These physical everchanging experiences are not that physical as one might think. These are not who you are, it is what you experience and it is in actual fact extremely fluid and changing. You are the experiencer of these 3 dimensions and without you giving it any meaning, it would not be experienced at all. You could start defining space in new ways and experience other concepts of experiences. Perhaps much more alien then physical consciousness as we know it. Perhaps you could explore non-physical dimensions of light consciousness. Or universes of plasma beings. The possibilities are endless.

 

Welcome home.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Everything

[Protector]

Then they will eventually stop caring about that too