My experience and understanding of religion, as an American, is that religion is the beast of biblical lore. The insight came when I came to recognize knowledge as an emotion, and not an experience and understanding of things. Religion is ego driven ideology. Its objectives are:
- certainty,
- entitlement,
- control.
None of which are American, none of which are related to God and our creation. None of these are even possible, yet they are claimed, by way of religion, as true, by religious people. And damn you if you don’t treat these ideologies as if they are real! Ideologies fail, and others are blamed. The ideology is treated as God, while God—reality—is rejected.
Ego driven ideology was the condemning false god of my earlier life. Ego driven ideology, religion, IS the beast.
If not religion, then what?
Spirituality is the key to Godly living. Not religion. (It is also the key to genius.) Spirituality is trusting in God. Religion is trusting in our understanding of God. (Hint, we’ve no good clue about God, and nothing in language is real.) My faith is in God, not my understanding of God. In fact, for me, I have no understanding of God, only bewilderment.
Yet I do have the experience of God’s provisioning, love, sustenance. That hole inside of me is no longer there, now that I live spiritually, not religiously. My faith, trust, reliance is on God, not my understanding of God—which was really a reliance on myself.
I lost the NEED for certainty, entitlement and control, and since those were never really here, I am no longer disappointed either. Not by these life traps. Until you’ve grown into a spiritual life, you cannot imagine the value and benefits of loosing those desires.
It is better than that, too. No longer trying “really hard” things that were never going to work, I learned about, and now do things, that do work. Mistakes invest me with experience, understanding, and competence, because I learn from them. My efforts are immensely more productive.
Information cannot threaten us.
The very essence of spirituality, is trusting beyond your ability to see and understand. That’s why we loose the need to “know.” Since we don’t know anything, we only have an experience and understanding of things, information cannot cause doubt—as we are not certain in the first place, ever.
The cascades of entitlement and control, that arise from certainty, are threatened by information. Reality casts doubt on the certainty, reality not caring whatsoever about our opinions and desires. Lies/falsehoods need agreement to sustain their delusion of being real and accurate. Dogma. Learning is foreclosed.
Certainty is something the stupid have in abundance.
I teach, define, education as: the life long discovery of how much you’ll never know. But education is sold to the public as the means of mastering things—a way to certainty, entitlement and control—a lie.
This dynamic of discovery is also foreclosed by religion, by ego driven ideology. And as experiences accumulate in life, the demands for an insane loyalty to your ego driven ideology grows, because reality says “nay nay.” Thus the sting of “mea culpa.” You have to deny and lie all that much more. Observe political leaders, ask who’s beastly and who’s Godly?
Reality is what it is, regardless of what we think it is, or want it to be.
Religion is about our understanding of “God” not God, so all beliefs are religious beliefs.
“Fiction Culture” is a secular term for beliefs. What is a belief, if not certainty, begetting entitlement, exhibiting control? Faith, not belief. Experience and understanding, not knowledge. Secularists are as religious as anyone, because they are asserting their own explanation of things.
And when you’re essentially making shit up, and reality isn’t the limit, your imagination and ability to sell bullshit becomes your “new” reality. A falsehood, schizophrenic, insane. Atheism is a religion too, specifically about God.
Duh?
Spirituality is the acceptance and embrace, that we do not know, cannot know. We do experience reality, from which we build an understanding of it. A tenuous understanding. Traditions are collective understandings that hold up over time, across cultures. They too though, are just words, not reality. Forget about certainty, entitlement and control. Politics are always about doing the wrong thing, the works of ego driven ideology. Evil.
Do you live for certainty, entitlement and control?
Thanks for the visit. Please share this if you like. See you next time!
Clarity, unity, organization, action. Let’s not fail where it counts.
Be American. Stay American!
David Weeks, Information Developer, Tampa, Florida.