The other weekend my old friends and I were sitting by a pool, our crystals laid out on deck chairs to cleanse in the sunlight. We had just been smoking a leisurely joint and began to talk about life and beauty, you know, the usual. Earlier I had seen my friend rescue a spider from the pool. I looked down beside me and I saw a ladybug on a tiny feather, floating near the edge of the pool. I scooped it up in my palm and lay it down on the concrete. Instantly, our conversation was diverted. We became transfixed at this sign of luck, the orange ladybug. We got on our bellies and watched with amazement as this incy wincy creature lifted its symmetrically patterned shell to reveal its tiny wings. As it attempted to dry its wings in this way, we noticed how intricately designed its shell was. Orange with little black patterns, almost as if they had been drawn on with a fine liner. It had two little eyes and legs smaller than the width of a hair. It was too perfect to be real. But there it stood, drying itself, preparing to fly off to safety.
I'm usually scared of bugs. Even ladybugs. But the love I experienced watching this creature overcame any disgust I could have felt. I'm sure the pot helped, I find it actually helps my brain detach from the feminine chaos of thought stream and focus in on one specific thing. But that's beside the point. We are so busy playing with our phones, worrying what we look like, trying to please other and our own egos, that we forget what a magical place we live in. We strive for our idea of perfection, when perfection already exists all around us. In the tiny ladybug, the veiny leaves of a plant, our own bodies that work effortlessly to keep us alive...
We take so much for granted... I take so much for granted.
I've been a bit disconnected lately, from myself. But what goes down must come back up again, and death always makes way for birth. I thought I was at a spiritual dead-end but when I think about it, I have learnt so much in the past two weeks, and a new theme is coming up for me: Yin and Yang.
Hopefully I'll be posting some more pretty soon :)
Sunday 24 November 2013
Sunday 3 November 2013
My love-hate relationship with religion
When I was in the third grade at my small Catholic school, everyone was preparing for their "Reconciliation" ceremony which would lead onto their receiving of the Holy Communion. While everyone else was nervous at the prospect of confessing all their sins to a priest, I was relieved that I didn't have to do so. My school had told me that I could not take part in these religious ceremonies, as I was baptized Anglican, not Catholic. In every subsequent monthly mass, while everyone else stood and lined up to receive the 'body of Christ', 'the bread', or 'communion', I would have to sit in silence and watch them. This was the beginning of my break from religion. We were taught that God loved everyone. Yet, my school basically told me I was not allowed to enter God's kingdom. As a small child, I recognized that if there really was a God, he would not exclude me based on my baptism or any other factor.
Since that moment I had a strong dislike towards Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, which I haven't been quite able to shake, even in my quest towards tolerance and acceptance of others. I felt that God could not have been real if he killed people or imposed rules on people. I disrespected the church every time I was there for weddings, baptisms or whatever reason. I really disliked (putting it nicely) the last Pope and what he stood for, though the new Pope is kind of more favourable. These beliefs about the church have also not been helped by all the bible bashers in America who want to convert Gay people because of a couple of passages in a book that is centuries old and should not be taken literally, at all. I still don't understand how people don't believe in magic, yet they believe there is a man in the sky who created us all. Go figure...
Anyway, religion has made a few appearances in my life where I have been forced to challenge these ideas that formed when I was so young. By the time I started to think about conspiracies, I had concluded that the Bible was a bunch of crap orchestrated by a patriarchy who desired to control the world with strict doctrines and fear. I then stumbled upon my first conspiracy thread, which talked about how the revelations was a prediction of the Roman Empire and how it had continued into modern day America. That was an extremely long but highly convincing thread about the parallels between society and the ancient text's account of our downfall. It was very compelling to me, but it required me to re-evaluate whether the Bible really was a bunch of bullcrap or whether it was something else, maybe a metaphor or a prediction, rather than a literal transcript of actual events. Some while later, I watched the documentary Zeitgeist, which highlighted the parallels between ancient religions and modern day religions. This again, was compelling to me, as that meant that the Bible had not been simply put together as fiction. It had some basis in history.
The most recent catalyst for a change in attitude has been beginning psychic development classes with my cousin, who can contact spirits and is into what people call "New Age" spirituality. And yet, he believes in angels, specifically Christian angels such as Jesus, Mary, Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and so on. He also refers to the "higher power" as 'God'. I have preferred not to do so, as just the word God symbolizes, to me, restriction, compartmentalization, strict beliefs and doctrines. But as I have developed throughout these classes, and developed more open-mindedness, I have realized that God is just the name for this thing that we can all feel within us. God does not need to mean "a man in the sky who kills people if they disobey him". God can just as well refer to the universe, or the cosmos, love, or the singularity before the big bang.
Maybe the God in the Bible doesn't even refer to an actual being. Maybe it is a metaphor of a symbol for the thing that connects us all. Reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown tonight has really opened my eyes to the potential symbolism of the Bible. I find it funny that God was the one thing I have strived to reject, when all along I have been lead along the path to find God. I still feel uncomfortable calling it God, I prefer calling it the universe, or love... To me, the universe is God. God is the universe. The universe is within me and it is within everyone else. It's also funny that throughout school we were constantly told that God is within us, and that God is everywhere at once. Because now I can see that this is SO true! We are all connected through God. It's just that everyone takes it too literally and thinks God is a man with a white beard who sits in the clouds! The truth is much more profound than that!
Indeed, we came from God and will one day return to God. But God will not meet us with open arms or a warm embrace.. we will one day return to the gigantic web of the universe where no physical boundaries exist between us. We will not be able to hug God, but we will feel as if we are a PART of God. Oneness!
It still feels wrong saying God. Too Christiany... I feel like a preacher. But there is no wrong way to say it, as long as we are all talking about the same thing I guess, so saying 'God' is a good exercise to reduce my own prejudice.
It feels good writing again! I plan to do a lot more soon :)
Until then,
Peace <3
Since that moment I had a strong dislike towards Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, which I haven't been quite able to shake, even in my quest towards tolerance and acceptance of others. I felt that God could not have been real if he killed people or imposed rules on people. I disrespected the church every time I was there for weddings, baptisms or whatever reason. I really disliked (putting it nicely) the last Pope and what he stood for, though the new Pope is kind of more favourable. These beliefs about the church have also not been helped by all the bible bashers in America who want to convert Gay people because of a couple of passages in a book that is centuries old and should not be taken literally, at all. I still don't understand how people don't believe in magic, yet they believe there is a man in the sky who created us all. Go figure...
Anyway, religion has made a few appearances in my life where I have been forced to challenge these ideas that formed when I was so young. By the time I started to think about conspiracies, I had concluded that the Bible was a bunch of crap orchestrated by a patriarchy who desired to control the world with strict doctrines and fear. I then stumbled upon my first conspiracy thread, which talked about how the revelations was a prediction of the Roman Empire and how it had continued into modern day America. That was an extremely long but highly convincing thread about the parallels between society and the ancient text's account of our downfall. It was very compelling to me, but it required me to re-evaluate whether the Bible really was a bunch of bullcrap or whether it was something else, maybe a metaphor or a prediction, rather than a literal transcript of actual events. Some while later, I watched the documentary Zeitgeist, which highlighted the parallels between ancient religions and modern day religions. This again, was compelling to me, as that meant that the Bible had not been simply put together as fiction. It had some basis in history.
The most recent catalyst for a change in attitude has been beginning psychic development classes with my cousin, who can contact spirits and is into what people call "New Age" spirituality. And yet, he believes in angels, specifically Christian angels such as Jesus, Mary, Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and so on. He also refers to the "higher power" as 'God'. I have preferred not to do so, as just the word God symbolizes, to me, restriction, compartmentalization, strict beliefs and doctrines. But as I have developed throughout these classes, and developed more open-mindedness, I have realized that God is just the name for this thing that we can all feel within us. God does not need to mean "a man in the sky who kills people if they disobey him". God can just as well refer to the universe, or the cosmos, love, or the singularity before the big bang.
Maybe the God in the Bible doesn't even refer to an actual being. Maybe it is a metaphor of a symbol for the thing that connects us all. Reading "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown tonight has really opened my eyes to the potential symbolism of the Bible. I find it funny that God was the one thing I have strived to reject, when all along I have been lead along the path to find God. I still feel uncomfortable calling it God, I prefer calling it the universe, or love... To me, the universe is God. God is the universe. The universe is within me and it is within everyone else. It's also funny that throughout school we were constantly told that God is within us, and that God is everywhere at once. Because now I can see that this is SO true! We are all connected through God. It's just that everyone takes it too literally and thinks God is a man with a white beard who sits in the clouds! The truth is much more profound than that!
Indeed, we came from God and will one day return to God. But God will not meet us with open arms or a warm embrace.. we will one day return to the gigantic web of the universe where no physical boundaries exist between us. We will not be able to hug God, but we will feel as if we are a PART of God. Oneness!
It still feels wrong saying God. Too Christiany... I feel like a preacher. But there is no wrong way to say it, as long as we are all talking about the same thing I guess, so saying 'God' is a good exercise to reduce my own prejudice.
It feels good writing again! I plan to do a lot more soon :)
Until then,
Peace <3
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)