The great, I Am, and the way forward
If any religion is truth, then all religions are truth. If any religion is false, then all religions are false.
I’ve heard it said, “I’d like to believe in God but religion gets in my way.”
Let’s think for a moment that the Real, the Ultimate, the Universal, the Cosmic Energy, Yahweh and Allah are indistinguishable, better still accordant and symphonious.
Doesn’t that change everything?
A Sufi teacher said that when you are asked what you believe:
Tell them you’re a Christian because you believe in Jesus. Tell them you’re a Jew because you believe in the Prophets including Moses. Tell them you’re a Muslim because you believe Mohammed was a Prophet, and you’re a Sufi because you believe in the universal teaching of God’s love.
And . . . tell them you are really all of these and you’re none of these because you believe in God. Once you believe in God, there’s no religion because dividing with religion only separates you from other human beings.
It’s no wonder we are leaving religion at an astounding rate.
About a quarter of U.S. adults (27%) now say they think of themselves as spiritual but not religious, up 8 percentage points in five years, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted between April 25 and June 4, 2017.
My point is not to dissuade anyone from their beliefs. Rather, it’s to persuade people to objectively and intently examine their beliefs and the traditions they follow to insure they are not doing so blindly.
When we question, we grow.
There’s a dichotomy that emerges from organized religions, and the following facts are ones that cannot be swept under the rug.
The world’s major religions have origins dating back millennia to times when survival was dependent on being part of a group, “a tribe,” per se. People were easily led because it helped them to remain alive.
Religions developed as a cultural body of doctrine based on metaphor and mythology. Interpretations were powerful in the cultural belief patterns of those eras and provided a moral compass for behavior in society.
Religions, especially western religions, are generally organized around a centralized body of hierarchical power. Power that was and is quite often taken to extreme. Control of a population depended on adherence.
Religions, on a more benevolent note can be seen as an integral part of the recording of history. Religious upbringing and education produced the most scholared men. They learned to read and to write when those skills were only available to a small portion of the population.
It’s difficult to image the arts if religion wasn’t part of human history: architecture, sculpture, painting, and music, to name a few. Historical art remains locked in an inseparable union with religion.
Again, there’s no doubt religion can be the home of unparalleled philanthropy and the parent of a high moral code. Yet, dogmatism is perhaps the endgame or the downfall.
Questions of grandiose scale
Does religion still serve us as human beings? And, is religion necessary for spirituality?
Can we change the paradigm, shifting from the antiquity of the myth and lore to a modern-view?
Can we get the best of “religious offerings” in a secular way?
Tying up loose ends
Getting back to the title: The great, I Am, and the way forward encourages everyone to consider the possibility that all religions are, at their core, identical, no matter how different they appear. Because, “their appearance” is simply the “stories” in which they have wrapped their belief system.
Religion, at it’s best, brings spirituality to the masses.
Science is bridging the gaps between nature and spirituality at fundamental levels. The mass understanding that’s emerged in recent decades tells us that everyone and everything is connected. We always have been and always will be.
The basis of nature is cooperation, not separation. We are each part of the I Am and we are far greater than we have been told.
I propose turning our attention to the perennial questions of who we are, our connection to the source of consciousness, the abilities of our physical bodies, the technology of our time, and the rules of nature. Herein lies the way forward.
We are born into a divine oneness and we are inseparable from it. The question of spirituality hinges on our quest for the I Am. We can choose to participate in this evolution of consciousness or we can continue to cling to our separation.
