R is for Religion

Religion can be helpful. Having something to believe in can bolster people's resolve to live through tough times. The spiritual aspect can help people cope with the sometimes heartbreaking difficulties that arise in life. Religion can help people become more forgiving of one another's foibles. That is what happens when religion is used in the right way.

Religion can also be a terrible thing. Religious fanatics can come to believe that those who don't see the world as they do are bad people who deserve to suffer. Zealots actually do their belief system a disservice, causing people to close their minds to any aspects of religion and go in the opposite direction, becoming acerbic nihilists.

I have no problem with believers of whatever stripe, or with non-believers, so long as they are not overbearing. I have issues with people who tell me that if I don't believe as they do, I'm a bad person who is condemned to some sort of eternal suffering. Any deity that would do such a thing simply because a person doesn't worship zir seems like an egomaniac, and I have no interest in paying tribute to an egomaniac.

Conversely, I don't care for people who tell me that if I have any spiritual beliefs, or even feel that certain aspects of metaphysical or spiritual speculation are possible, that I'm an ignorant dupe.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but since nobody knows for sure what the truth is, I keep an open mind.

The reason I'm thinking so much about this is the fact that I find it difficult when I come to overtly religious blogs on the A to Z challenge. I could just leave and say nothing, and that might even be the best thing to do. But I somehow feel rude not even leaving an acknowledgement that I visited. 

I usually do something like remark on the beauty of the picture with their post, or tell them they have a nice family, or congratulate them on an event if they are blogging about such. I leave religion out of my comment and concentrate on basic politeness. Then I cross my fingers and hope that they are of a more liberal spirit, even if they are devout, and won't come nipping at my heels trying to convert me with threats of fire and brimstone. It isn't that I fear them, or their fire and brimstone. The fact is, I don't want to end up being rude, which is what usually happens when people persist in trying to shove unpalatable ideals down my throat.

Religion is like an axe or a knife. It is a tool. It can be used productively or destructively.

~Naila~

Cross-posted to:

Crazy Town in Looney Land

One Love

Turn It Over To a Higher Power

He calls it the Holy Spirit. One could also call it the Universe. There is no one right way. There is the way that works for you, and that is the right way for you.

We need to let go of trying to control everything. We need to let go of our ego. It isn't easy.

~Naila~

Giving a Gift to People of Different Religions

I respectfully disagree with this man's thoughts, although, of course, he is certainly welcome to conduct his life as he wishes and does not require my permission.

I will admit that I'm not religious in the conventional sense. I practice Pagan/nature worship, but I do so in my own way.

I think it would be a nice gesture of tolerance and an attempt at understanding if a non-Pagan were to give me a gift in honor of one of our holidays. I would accept that gift graciously.

~Gunnar~

A Call to All Beings of Light

One of the most beautiful, glorious messages that I have ever had the joy of encountering.

All paths shall converge! We should not be fighting with each other over religion. Each person's path is their own, and there are many.

~Aurora~

Maharishi Mahesh on Desire as a Catalyst for Change

Uploaded on Oct 24, 2011
http://www.TM.org How a desire rises with the full support of Natural Law in an orderly brain - Maharishi

1. (Dr. Hagelin:) Thank you so very much, Maharishi, for these beautiful, very compassionate and lucid
remarks today. As Maharishi said, bliss is not difficult; it only takes a few minutes to locate a chair and
experience the bliss of unbounded awareness with Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation program.
Invincibility for a country is a matter of days--just a matter of organizing and training groups of peace promoting
experts. So the world is poised for a complete transformation. And Maharishi is compassionately
offering that scientifically proven knowledge, and the only scientifically proven knowledge that has the
capacity to bring peace and to transform civilization quickly, easily and delightfully. Maharishi, this week
and next week, much of the world is moving towards a holiday time of celebration of Christmas and
Hanukkah and Kwaanza. The hubbub of politics in Washington, D.C., has settled down with Congress gone
and the international diplomatic community also leaving to go home to their countries to celebrate a period
of rest and of peace. And the questions this week are focusing on deeper issues of enlightenment, of God
realization, and of prayer. The first question is a follow-up of Maharishi's remark of last week about desire:
Maharishi has said that the ability to fulfill one's desires is the key to living an invincible life. Maharishi
explained that when a desire is consciously created at the source of thought, the ocean of consciousness, then
that desire will be fulfilled because it has the support of all the laws of nature. Maharishi, what kind of desire
will be created from the source of thought? Will it be an individual's desire or God's desire?

2. Maharishi: Every desire is for fulfillment. A wave may be rising but not knowing that the point of rising
itself is the source, is the goal of it. When the wave settles down, then it is ocean. When it rises into
something, then it becomes isolated, and it comes in space and time. And when it sinks, it goes beyond
boundaries, beyond space and time. If this silence at the source of thought is open to our awareness, then our
awareness is the field of all possibility.

3. As opposed to thoughts arising from the source of thought, thoughts may arise as the winds of the
environment. The eyes see this and speech hears this, and the thoughts float from one area of surface to the
other area of surface. This is life of the sensory perception. And when one transcends, then one gets to the
source of all thoughts. Source of all seeing is in that field which is the basis of all, the source of thought, the
source of hearing, the source of touch, the source of all the five senses.

4. Whatever we want in the field of vision, get to the source of thought from where the vision begins, and
then you'll be able to see anything within your Self. That is Vedic education, from where you can have what
you want within your Self.

5. The conscious mind could be thinking consciously at the source of thought, the transcendental field of
life, the field of the Veda. Veda we define to be the Constitution of the Universe, the laws of Nature that
conduct the galactic universe here, there and everywhere.

6. The purpose of Vedic University and the University of Peace, is to open TC, Atma, the Unified Field to
our single awareness. The formula is yogasthah kuru karmani. That means: "Established in the state of
Unity-established in Unified Field-you perform action."

7. When you are established in the Unified Field, then your performance is the performance of the Unified
Field, it is the expression of the whole creation. You are there as the silent doer of the entire universal
administration of the enormous ever-expanding universe. This is Vedic education, education of total
knowledge.

8. Giving the students this knowledge in their education years will be fulfilling the government's parental
role for the people.

9. There are all kinds of gross and subtle practices that express humanity rising to divinity. Devotional
practices, songs, melodies, prayers, mass meetings in churches, collective meditation, collective devotional
practices. What is special in our message is the practical experience of that Unified Field, and the
transformation of the atmosphere through these collective meditations.

10. The main thing is conscious awareness of the totality of the Constitution of the Universe, totality of
Natural Law, which is so simple through the programs of the Peace Government.

11. Education should be experience of the Self primarily. Once the experience of the Self is there, the child
will succeed in anything he would want to do, because Natural Law will do all that he can do.

12. Parents will be fortunate to give children Total Knowledge.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started teaching Transcendental Meditation in 1957.

Try to Understand

I am not terribly knowledgeable about Islam. The Muslims that I know are definitely peaceful people. It was upsetting to see the way they were attacked following 9/11, being grouped with extremists.

Extremism of any kind is always destructive.

We need to try harder to understand one another.

In the end, we all bleed red.

~Adam~

The Lord's Supper

Here is a unique cartoon explaining why one must be baptized in order to receive the sacrament. 

I was raised Catholic, and I honestly don't think I ever heard this explained, although, to be fair, I'm in my late forties now, and catechism classes were a long time ago.

~Illsa~