I write this realizing we live in a society where there is sensitivity and outrage around expression of beliefs that are different from yours, where we are taught to conform and make people comply into submission of the majority. I understand that a scholar can take apart what I have written, and dissect it with facts they have learned, studied and found. I appreciate the knowledge we all have at our fingertips and our persistence in feeling a need to “tell it how it is” to the next person. I disagree with the idea that you must conform to my ideas and beliefs for your life. I believe in good and evil and free-will, and we all know when something has “gone too far”. So, as I write this, I hope the person reading this realizes there are much bigger issues than my challenging my decision to pivot from one religion as I journey to closer to God. Christianity might be for you, and I love that for you. I find wisdom in many faiths and over years of studying eastern philosophies and religions, have found a home there.
It became a bit much for me to continue with a religion that had a message, I only partially agreed with. My entire life I “grew up” and was taught to believe in God. That hasn’t changed, but my understanding of who He is and how to get to him, has. I didn’t know how Jesus fit into Christianity until I became an adult. As a child, Baptist church was more about the hymns, worship and press and curls for Easter Sunday. Growing up, instead of giving advice “I’ll pray for you”–mostly said with snark, and any rebellion was met with a harsh idea of God which made me in some ways wonder, who am I really praying to? I was and still am so grateful for what I gained through going back to Christianity and finding a church, for the year that I walked that path. I met really sweet people and many friends who have become like family, and even my husband, on that path. However, a time came where I realized that there were inconsistencies with my true moral understanding and belief system about human beings in general. When I say inconsistencies, they just wouldn’t line up with what I understood the Bible to mean and how man would communicate that message. More than anything, I would say that I genuinely feel some religious leaders and/or how I have witnessed various aspects of the practice, have turned me away from Christianity.
The experiences that I faced with my church community were mostly positive, however, some left me with a nasty taste in my mouth that made me feel like, Evangelical Christianity and eventually Abrahamic religions as a whole, prevented me from truly loving and accepting all people as they are. The overall messages I encountered are ones laced with fear, judgment and this idea that we are all inherently bad or sinners. I began to feel like I had to perform for God, I had to follow this set of rules that had little to do with my character but were inherently sacrificial and didn’t leave room for me to live my truth and my life right where I was at. In Christianity, beyond my duty to work, to raise a family and to do things for my community at large, I also had an expectation to serve a purpose at the church as part of “Worship”. This is where that performative narrative came into my head. Then this was followed by a much larger set of rules or traditions that most Abrahamic religions have, prayer for a certain amount of time, reading your bible or text for a certain amount of time. I see nothing wrong with this, to each their own, but if I am not doing these “practices” I am not really a “you name the religion”, am I? At a more fundamental level of spiritual practice, that work is worship, how you live every day is too, and I find myself constantly contemplating my existence, and the mystical aspect of it all!
“From the Hindu perspective, all of life is sacred, and performing our duty is dharma. Dharma is a rich term that means “way of righteousness, religion and fulfillment of duty.” From this lofty view, every deed is a part of our religious practice. Everything we do is an act of worship and faith. There are no purely secular activities. Our worship in the temple is part of our dharma, and our work or occupation is part of our dharma.” – An excerpt from Work is Worship
I don’t need time set aside to do that. Naturally, we come to pauses in the day, if you have evolved, sitting in silence and contemplation about God, the Universe or what makes you comfortable, just becomes a natural part of your life which is meditation. I saw it put well this way:
“Devotion and meditation are the two fundamental approaches in Hinduism to attain God. In their simplest form, in meditation a worshipper meditates upon God inwardly, while in devotion he worships outwardly by focusing his mind upon an image or a form of God.” – Devotion and Meditation in Hinduism
If you think about it, you might constantly be in meditation and worshipping God, regularly! This didn’t need to be accomplished by going to a church or temple, it just, is. Without further delving into my current practices, I will carry on…
I no longer believed that someone was going to come “save me”, but it was up to me to save myself every single day through self-work, disciplining my character and making right choices. I no longer believed that Heaven and Hell were part of an afterlife but were created by our everyday decisions on this earth. To me, our choices today affect how we live in both this life and our next life and we are not doomed to eternal damnation, but more-so less karmic favor in another life, for living evil. In reading Journey to God by Sanjeev Sareen, I found a lot of parallels between my Perennial beliefs and what the journey for a God seeker really are.
Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha…”These masters who came from time to time in all religions didn’t say anything from the platform of mere beliefs. They didn’t say that since its natural for people to have different beliefs, so here is our idea bout God and this is what we believe about God. But they said it from the level of realization, they knew God. Which is through efforts, and the y wanted others to realize Him with all seriousness the way they did.
Instead of pursuing the path they showed, most people in all religions just chose to believe in these masters and started worshipping them as Gods themselves…” – An Excerpt from Journey to God
I said, a big fat YES, to this! Now I understand, if you are a Christian then you don’t believe there is any way to get to the father without going through the son (Jesus). This is why Christians must worship Jesus. However, this is where my faith changed. So, for every person on this earth who has no access to knowing Jesus or the Bible, have they no access to God?
Were Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs and so on so forth…not able to get into the Kingdom of God because they didn’t know Jesus? This question becomes a rabbit hole and there are scholars who can easily argue around this idea and probably pull the facts, but in my journey…this was enough for me to decide the religious dogma made me decide that a religion of non-religion was more where I was at. It was where I discovered more than anything I am a Perennial Philosopher. This is a very thick subject to learn about and understand, but coined by Aldous Huxley, this is basically a philosophy which understand the “divine reality” common to all faiths. I am still working my way through this text, but recommend the book The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley.
I have met some wonderful people from all faith traditions and their nature is that of goodness, defined by character and not by what religion they identify with. Many don’t even identify with religion itself but have a revered faith in God and or just solid moral values and ethics and seek to display that love and appreciation for humanity and life, through their day-to-day actions. Who am I to judge how you identify yourself? That is between you and you! I digress. You can achieve this closeness to God, the One or however you define it for yourself by taking wisdom from all these traditions. I have the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, Quran, Upanishads and many other religious texts, that I will sift through and find more in common than not. When you look at the timeline of religions, these are peoples that were separated by continents and languages, yet, once their texts were translated, many said similar things and stated similar wisdoms to live by. This itself is proof of divinity, to me. While certain countries have a dominant religion and many were founded on just one, here in the West, we are a country that was absolutely built on Christianity. However, religion in many places has gotten a bad name and it is my personal opinion that we just help people turn to God, period, to find their true north and have something to hold onto. If the stink got you like it got me, I would recommend you don’t let it turn you off to God altogether, explore other traditions and you will be surprised by how much more you have in common with your fellow human being, than not.
“At the core of the Perennial Philosophy we find four fundamental doctrines.
First: the phenomenal world of matter and of individualized consciousness–the world of things and animals and men and even gods–is the manifestation of a Divine Ground within which all partial realities have their being, and apart from which they would be non-existent.
Second: human beings are capable not merely of knowing about the Divine Ground by inference; they can also realize its existence by a direct intuition, superior to discursive reasoning. This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
Third: man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self, which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the soul. It is possible for a man, if he so desires, to identify himself with the spirit and therefore with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or like nature with the spirit.
Fourth: man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.”
-The Perennial Philosophy as Explained by Aldous Huxley
The perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis),[note 1] also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown.
I almost allowed one religion to turn me away from God altogether, but wisdom and a knowing reminded me that it is not religion itself, it is what man has done in religions name. Church is still a beautiful place to go, with wonderful words of advice to listen to from stories of the Bible enmeshed beautifully from stories of the congregation. I enjoy divine conversations with my Hindu neighbors and lunch with my atheist friends. I have no desire to live in a way that says, I cannot associate with you because you don’t believe what I believe. We are in a time where there is real evil prevailing, and to that end…again free-will says I can choose to associate with you or not. More often than not though, regardless of my community’s religious faith or lackthereof, I have met some beautiful minds. Wherever you are on your path, I respect you, I respect your belief and I hope you choose good over evil all the days of your life.