How great it would have been if through my life someone would have been there to teach me spiritual development. Not to be confused with religious education, or indoctrination if that is how you see it, but rather an age based life mentoring, showing my spiritual growth and possibilities.
That is not to say I would change any of my choices through my life. Generally, the only semi real attention concerns state of spirit from a religious perspective. It is possible that some religions are more holistic in their approach, but I have yet to encounter one at close range that is.
 Authority figures in our life do what they can to raise us to know right from wrong and how to stay out of trouble. Their purpose generally is to make life easier for themselves rather than for our own good, excepting parents and other close family.
We are also led into achieving a certain level of achievement in our educational curriculum. What that level of achievement is for us varies from person to person and individual life circumstance, but generally we are expected to start making our own way as best we can once we reach a certain age, or achieve a certain level of educational mastery.
In all of this, with all our adult keepers, and societies watchful eye promoting acceptable behavior, no one really cares about our spiritual life. Most families, do not have spirituality hour, and there is not time set aside in the classroom where children are shown their life from a spiritual perspective.
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to receive spiritual training throughout our life up to this moment? Having a mentor, or many mentors explaining to us with words and ideas that we understand, what our basic human purpose is and why it is important we nurture our spiritual self.
We would not wake up one day as an adult after a period lasting from weeks to decades of never feeling really comfortable with who we are and not knowing how to fix it. When we do come out of our self absorbed life looking around as if for the first time, noticing something serious is lacking, we generally do not know what it is, or why we feel how we feel.
Right now, this instant wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to ask our spiritual adviser why we feel the way we do? I believe as children when we are not shy about asking questions, we are too busy learning about our world to think about our spiritual self. Along the way our spiritual self is hidden from us.
As adults we have a self imposed rule about admitting we do not know, and asking others what they think. That is with the exception of asking our closest friends who are our closest friends because they are almost just like us, or as close as we can find.
Spiritual development does not have to be a process of rebellion against everything you believe, were taught, or think is possible. What your spiritual development should be is learning how you live your life so you recognize the face in the mirror as yourself. You do not want someone acting as you, as you peek out from behind deciding what kind of job they are doing for you.
When I was a child someone told me never to marry an actor, because you could never be certain if they were being real or acting. I have come to realize that it applies to each of us. Being yourself is the best gift you can give to you. Being yourself you may not know where you are headed with any certainty, but you can take comfort in knowing it is you and not some shell living your life for you on the trip.
I am still learning about my spiritual self, and I imagine I will for a long time. I urge you not to wait until you see your end out on the horizon to start filling in the blanks about what your purpose to being alive is and the amazing power of your spiritual self. Start learning about your spiritual side of you now, so you enjoy the trip instead of an unhappy spectator in your life.
Crisalonso asks interesting questions in his post “Can you see the future?” I was perusing blogs when I came across his post which I find very thought provoking. What is most interesting in his post is I too have pondered his questions throughout my lifetime. What I find surprising is my answers changed over time, and now have settled on a final answer.
Crisalonso muses, then states:
There has to be a soul, a coded form of energy which preserves identity during and after this life.
Wow, what a position! It is one of those ideas that mankind has struggled with for centuries and I have no doubt better minds than mine have attacked this statement with more determination and a better plan than mine. A few minutes of searching on the internet, for thoughts of the greatest thinkers of our time answers would be laid bare, or not depending on one’s interest in understanding what is really being said.
I find the best explanation is the proverb aphorism from the Gnostic gospels about it being harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle fitting. How I think this applies to Crisalonso’s thought provoking statement is probably a little different than standard answers we would find.
As children growing into young adults we spend a lot of our time trying to find out who we are, and what we are about. We go through life trying to separate ourselves from everyone else, we want to be unique. I think this is where the eye of the needle comes into play.
If we truly believe we are separate from everyone, and everything else in the universe, then we are. We will never have moments of feeling we are one with the universe. If we happen to feel we are one with the universe, then we have never really been separate from everything, we only pretend we are separate.
If there is a universal something that keeps the universe as we know it, we are a part of it whether we like it or not. As we are a part of it, when we are done with our bodies, our souls must travel back to this all that is. I think the idea of standing in the middle of all that is, trumpet in my hand, proclaiming the glory of all that is while I am not a part of it, a flawed thought. Who would not wish to reclaim their part of all that is, was, and ever will be?
If we visualize a body of water large enough to jump in and imagine that body of water is all that is, what will we do standing next to it? Will we stand next to it, knowing that one step away we are a part of everything, and everything is a part of us, or would we walk away telling ourselves that we have no interest going back to being a part of all that is.
While a very few may decide, ‘I have no interest in rejoining all that is because I will lose myself as the water mixes in me and through me’, most people will be in the water as soon as they understand they can.
They will mix in with all the souls that are a part of all that is, sharing their lifetime experience, celebrating the feeling of completeness, mingling and rejoining all that is. All will truly be one with the universe as we know it, and we will know we have returned from our journey and experienced what we set out to experience in the manner we chose as we lived this lifetime.
As for Crisalonso’s question further into his post:
The question is, can we alter our past, present and future or is it all written beforehand?
I am of the belief we arrive with a specific plan, but we have the choice to follow it each step of the way, or not, as we decide. If this were not so, it would be a matter of randomness whether one turns into a saint or sinner to use common words for ideas.
Time has to be a human concept, there is no reason why we can not be born again in the same month of the same year in the same or different place holding the script we want to follow this time. To do any less would be a waste of our concept of time. Why would we want to wait who know how long for an exact set of circumstances to repeat themselves for something we want to experience when it occurred already exactly the way we wish it to?
When I was in my late teens I was very much into God. I wanted to become exactly what God wanted me to become. Hedging my bets, I used to ask for proof. Proof would show up. I would ask for more proof, and more proof would happen.
Then one day I realized that no matter how much proof I asked for, and how many times in a row that proof would be given, proof made no real difference.
Trying to become something I was not did not make me a better person. I wasn’t any more popular. I never had a change of opinion on any subject that mattered. I realized little by little that asking for proof was like arguing with the wind. I could make a lot of noise arguing with the wind, but the wind would never care.
So it is with trying to become what I was not. Change did not make me perfect no matter how much proof there is to support my belief. Change did not really make my life better. Change did not really change anything that was important.
So it was with trying to be perfect. I chose to live the life I was living instead of the life I thought I should be living. I found that all trying to live the perfect life did for me was make me feel guilty.
I felt guilty about so much some days. I would feel guilty about how I felt about all the women I saw each day. I would feel guilty about wanting more in my life. I would feel guilty for not being satisfied with the way I looked. I would find myself feeling guilty for feeling guilty when I had so much and everyone else had so little. I started feeling like an pious fake, and that would make me feel guilty too.
Over the years I realized it is a study in futility to try to change me into something that may be more perfect for what I believe.
I am what I am, and that is enough. I am a perfect me in fact! Whether I am the picture perfect idea of what my belief system thinks I should be, or something less, I am what I am. What I am is the perfect me with my own uniquely perfect faults and flaws.
Competing with an ideal is a competition I could never win. God, and no one else should ever expect me to be different than what I am. If it was necessary for me to be someone else I would not be here to begin with. Someone else would be here, or I would be different. If I were indeed different what would be the point of being the original me to start with?
When I am gone from here…if I find out I am wrong about all this, I will have to cry foul. Nothing of such magnitude such as God – and I do not pretend to comprehend even imagine a sliver of the whole of God – would create or allow me to be created only to be changed into someone else. What would be the point?
But of course, this may be higher level spiritual thinking, or fooling myself, believing everything is perfect as it is?
Hmmm….or maybe Ommmm.
My belief system has changed over the years in interesting ways. As a child I had no belief system. How could I? I did not know belief systems existed. I was taken to church every Sunday by my Mother, but I never thought anything of it. I was to sit and be as quiet as possible for an hour or so. I had no real idea what was going on or what church was all about.
I remember the first time I had a religious conflict was when I asked the reasoning behind a story the class we were told by a Nun. I was sent to the priest for my indiscretion. As a Teenager, I had a lot of questions, and some answers were missing logic, common sense, or were not bible based. During my teenage years I drifted into something resembling animism. Little pieces of God sprinkled all over my little piece of the world, and across all earth and space.
Of course some people were not too happy with the idea that I could possibly think that God is everywhere, and not at some far off undefined spot watching how I spend my life, adding and removing weights to a scale whose purpose determines where I will spend eternity. My own life was complete though, because if I could see God in weeds growing in the yard, I could certainly imagine a little piece of God living in every human being in my world. That thought did not make some people happy, they felt I must be awful full of myself, to think God resides in each of us.
Slowly in the following years, God retreated from my life and reformed out in some distant undefined place. As this slow retreat happened, so did my dissatisfaction with organized religion which started looking more like a combination of a clique and business. Where belonging meant upholding the party line, and belief system, whatever it was depending on which church. The Church party line changed depending on where I went. This constant changing of ideology did not mesh with me for a church trying to have one unified face.
It certainly started looking once more as if God was in each human, plant, animal, rock, and piece of sand. Perhaps there was more to the idea of God than God hanging out somewhere far away waiting to decide my eternal fate. What if everything I knew or could conceive about my physical and spiritual self was because God had a thought once upon a time and I am a result of that thought? The idea seemed to tie up a lot of loose ends for me. God simply had a thought and everything I know is a result of that thought whenever and wherever it occurred.
I tried to put God on a scale I could comprehend and relate to. Something that was not as magnificent as the creation of the universe and distantly experiencing everything in it. My pets were a fair starting point. I decided yes, I do experience more with them than I could without them. Whenever I am around them I am part of them and they are a part of me as we share almost the same space. I saw them young and happy, I see them sick, I see them as they grow older. In a small way I experience their life as they live it.
I do not stand with a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it and a line drawn down the middle, one side good and one side bad, keeping a running tally of how I perceive them. My pets are, and they do not decide what is good or not. I do not have the trouble of trying to decide whether they are more good than bad, or bad than good. I do not have to consider whether they do something because they are tired, sick, distressed, or just mean and angry.
After I worked my way through this, I decided this must be how the world is from God’s perspective. It is not important whether I think God is in everything in the universe, that God is in some distant place, or whether God lives in me or not. Deciding those ideas is not important, and something that I can not really determine no matter how I try. Once I arrived at this thought, my beliefs became simpler, yet more encompassing.
Other posts of possible interest:
Scientology verses the right to believe what we choose
Basic truth, sharing, and the fundamentals of belief
I was invited to go to church last Sunday. It was a denomination and service I had never attended before, so how could I refuse? I have in the past managed to scare away the missionaries that would arrive at my front door to recruit me some time ago. The last pair, were two young men from the closest Mormon Church group. After fifteen to twenty minutes of talking and discussing, they were getting concerned about there own belief system and left with a promise that they would have some of their Elders come and speak with me. I thanked them and said I welcomed the future conversation. That was about seven months ago and I am still waiting….
I am always surprised about the groups of people who all feel they have the real version of Christianity and everyone else is peddling something that looks real, but does not quite get you through the golden gates into the promised land – whatever that may turn out to be.
In the past when the world was much larger, it was not unusual for a Town, City, Province, or even Country to be one religion. That was the way it was. The rulers ruled and the rest followed, or were put to death, or if they were lucky banished, which was about the same fate.
As the world became a smaller place, religion lost its iron clad grip little by little on people over the world. People were starting to think and have opinions and for the first time in history were not killed for disagreeing or having an alternative view about some facet of their religion.
Of course the fundamentalists never went away, they were always there pointing out the wrongs in any new thinking that flowed into town on the lips of travelers. Because the pen is mightier than the sword, some of those ideas took root, and people changed their thinking just a little bit about how religion should be. So here we are now, with more versions of Christianity in the world than most towns have residents.
Who is to say who is right and who is wrong. If you pretend for a moment to be looking at the earth from space, it is as we see in pictures, just a little blue and white marble surrounded by a sea of emptiness. It should become obvious when immersed in the view that we are all one, and connected to each other and everything contained on this little blue and white marble floating in space. It is also a little hard to find any supreme being when looking at earth from space.
Unless that is you take time to consider how exact and perfect everything about our earth has to be in order for life to survive and thrive. Or while gazing you think that we are really only a few hundred years from the way people on earth lived for possible millions of years, and how ignorant we really are. For all our modern knowledge there is so little we really can do. Then a Godhead becomes apparent to us, but the whys and wherefores are still a little hazy at best, with humans not much more advanced than an ant hill or beehive.
Back to the Sunday service I attended. It was focused, and fun. There was singing, music, a short skit, prayer and celebration. I found that what I watched unfold in front of me sitting as a visitor fit well with my beliefs. Of course I noticed some differences from other services I have attended over the years, no surprise there. All in all it was fun and I enjoyed the experience more than I have some other services I have attended. Try it out some time, if for no other reason than to validate your own religious beliefs.
We are strange animals, we really are. I remember a poll taken sometime in the past about how people felt about themselves and other people they know concerning everyone’s chance of going straight to heaven after they die. An overwhelming majority of people thought that they were certainly going to heaven, but their family members and neighbors were most likely not.
I am sure in the face of our upcoming election for the presidency, the list would be much larger, and would now have political overtones as a deciding factor. If you are a Democrat, anyone showing signs of being republican are certainly going to hell. If you are a Republican, anyone with democratic leanings is certainly suspect, and most will probably go to hell also.
The heaven/hell thinking also pervades religious beliefs. No matter what religion one is and no matter what tolerance that religious belief promotes, most people are sure others that are not of their particular blend of religion are going to have a tough time finding those pearly gates. With the tens of thousands of flavors of Christianity, not to mention other major religions and their thousands of subsets, it looks like everyones vision of heaven is going to be a pretty empty place to live after we pass on.
As I get older, I have more friends and acquaintances develop some serious medical issues. Of course it is easy to determine the cause. They obviously eat wrong, do not exercise, drink, or do none of those things, and that is the problem. Likely they did drugs when they were young, and smoked different types inhaled products. There is no doubt why they became so ill, anyone can see that.
Of course in my case, my body was born in perfect condition, any probability of a future medical condition is non existent. I also have spent my life doing all the things I should do, and none of the those things which may have an influence on my health in a negative way. By golly it is quite a shock the first time something does not work as expected!
As I am sure most people do, I looked for someone or something to blame. Something they put in food, or something I breathed in when visiting some big polluted city. It was probably caused by eating some unwashed fruit, or consumed fish that had DDT, or mercury in its body.
Once I went through that list, it is on to the spiritual side of why something is not right. God is punishing me, and until I figure it out and made it right, I will remain ill. Once I figure out what it was I did that was wrong, my health will be restored, and everything will be good again with my body.
If I went through all my memories and can not find anything, then it must be God has forgotten about me. I did not actively practice my religion by going to church often enough. Or maybe I have too many differing views that stray to far away from the mainline concepts of my faith of choice. Once I get back in line with the mainstream majority with my faith, my health problems will go away.
If that does not work, there is the other side of religion. The Devil, or Satan if you will has been allowed to torment me by God. I am the modern day version of Job, and the devil has decided to get right down to it and attack my physical health in an attempt to make my spirit weak. I can not believe this was allowed to happen, but now that I have figured it out, I know all I have to do is wait and continue living a righteous life, and everything will be restored, just as it was for Job.
Finally reality starts to creep in, and the truth becomes apparent. Stuff happens with our bodies. We have one tens of millions of cells from disparate body parts all trying to function and reproduce, and sometimes a cell gets it wrong. It is nobody’s fault and there is no spiritual connection. It just happens….
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