Religions & Teachings about God; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt3.

RELIGIONS & TEACHINGS about GOD

In which we explore what we are taught about God and Life and look at some of the consequences of these teachings.

OK, we get to be apart from God and here we are in a life on Earth, so how do we comfort ourselves and what are we taught about this?

We don’t know why we’re here. The reasons belong to God and She’s not telling, although She ‘loves’ us.

We don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, but we have ‘free will’ and we’re supposed to be ‘good’ or will end up in ‘hell’.

Our circumstances have been dished up to us and we get to lump what we have. Any free will, choice, fate; really?.

Some religions teach we have only One Go at Life and that’s it; ‘that’s all folks, there isn’t any more’. Some religions teach Reincarnation which gives us what?

All religions I have heard about teach that the main idea is to be good and do the right things as defined by that religion and you’ll be safe and will get back to Heaven, bliss, nirvana and so on. So, the only real rewards for life are actually in heaven and thus, off earth. But what about rewards On Earth; aren’t there any, and if so, why not?

There seems to be an awful lot of unhappy people around.

So, what happens to Choice, Free Will, Purpose, or Meaning? What’s the point and Why, Why, Why?

Is there an On-Earth religion? Anyone know of one? What would that be like?

So, What is Religion?

Most of our standard religions have 2 parts.

They teach a set of beliefs or a doctrine or a system or structure that attempts to understand why we are here alive on Earth, allied with methods of building this system into daily life. Another word for religion is ‘law’; we are trying to find the ‘laws’ that govern our existence.

It is the belief system part that attempts to make sense or point or meaning of and for our life and existence; the answers to the why.

It is the rituals and symbols parts that build and keep this system in the awareness of daily life and practice; ‘do this in remembrance of me’.

All religions have teachers who learn and ‘hold’ this belief system and pass it on to the next generation. It is much more difficult to continue a religion/doctrine if its ‘holders’ or ‘keepers’ are eliminated along with their texts.

This discussion deals with the belief system part.

Why are religions so important?

They help us support ourselves in the difficult business of living, by giving meaning to life and guidelines for our behaviour. Our social structures depend on them. This ‘point’ or ‘meaning’ affects our feelings, emotions and consequently our behaviour at a very deep and pervasive level, whether we are conscious of it or not. It affects our psyche. Our emotions and behaviour affect our social structures and why and how we have them. Failure to find any real meaning for life leads to psychological problems, and thus failure to function properly or even to be able to find any ‘place’ or purpose for ourselves within our social structures. The whole point of ‘social structure’ is that any and every person is a part of a social structure that affects and is affected by that person. If ‘selfishness equals the only meaning’  is now our main prerogative for all, which is the general tone broadcast by the media, what happens to other people in that social structure, especially those with less power to be selfish? (at this point of writing, we are seeing some of these breakdowns in social structures. Watch how difficult it is to use the policing system alone to control the behaviour of people for whom society and its values have no meaning.)

Useful human religions are the foundations for building peaceful, loving and fulfilling societies with a place for all. How do we do that?

One of the things about life on Earth that we find the most difficult is that we don’t and can not know the future, and hence we are always kind of ‘flying blind’. Yet we know that the choices we make now affect our future. Therefore the question is what sort of actions of ours help us have better outcomes? We like to think we have things under control here, but we don’t. Does that make us powerless? We use religions as guidance systems for the choices we make in daily life with maybe an eye to the consequences, and these choices are legion; large or small, there are an awful lot of them during even one day.

So, what are these religions and their beliefs and what do they have in common or not?

Life eternal.

Just about all religions that I am aware of have a ‘life eternal’ concept. The disagreement is in how it is spent; in Heaven or Hell, both of which are Off Earth, or Reincarnation on Earth until you ‘get it’ and are then rewarded for that by being able to get off Earth and back to heaven for good, and so on.

Single or multiple source.

Religions can be based on a single source, one god of all there is which we refer to as God, or a multiple source. I’m not going to go into multiple source religions in this discussion because it is not relevant to my ideas about life and how it works. While a single source as unity is difficult to comprehend within our dualistic earth experience, the unity concept is essential for actually understanding our own needs; see below.

Religions can be classified as One-Go or Many lives, as in, Reincarnation.

One-Go religions.

Most Christianity based religions are single life teachings, as in, One Go at life. (Q. Are there any Christian Reincarnation religions?) One-Go religions use authority and require belief in what we are told and lots of rules, and employs fear if we do not believe, i.e. “if you believe this and do the right thing you will be ‘safe’, (of course!). This means that many people are being cowed into behaving ‘properly’ and of course ‘believing’; and then what happens when life bangs you around as it is prone to do? Have you been insufficiently careful? Another theme is, ‘you must believe this or you will go to hell forever’. They are thus fear-based religions. They talk about ‘love’ in the face of what feels to us like an entirely unloving and arbitrary treatment of us personally in our lives. We must lump this single ‘One-Go at it’ life (and hopefully no more) as best we can because we are all sinners; even if we have no idea how we’ve done that. Within this structure concepts such as ‘you are always at choice’ make no sense at all. The basic teaching is that we can’t find out or know for ourselves or we can’t sort it out or understand it for ourselves in human terms. If we think we have, we’re in the wrong religion. We need others to intercede for us with God; a strategy which is a prominent feature of being a peon in any authority structure. (Do I need to spell out that peons get ‘peed on’?)

One-Go religions basically make no sense. One life of itself is such a totally arbitrary thing. We therefore need to be told what to believe to support ourselves in this ‘lottery’ of life. It is actually the fear of whatever is threatened that is driving the need to believe. These beliefs based on fears are unavailable to the logic that they make no sense. Being told what to do and just believe leaves us as children and unable to work it out ourselves, or even begin to do so. These are the key elements in any power and control authority structure, and why do we need one of those between us and God if we are all children of God?

There is also a great deal about the fighting between God and the devil, or good and evil. This concept moves us straight out of the unity of God and into the duality of the human world on Earth. As soon as we do that we have gone into judging whether or how something is good or bad, and can never come to any concept of unity such as ‘it’s all good’ which tends to come from more Eastern religions.

[I also wonder how much a One-Go teaching leads to a sort of ‘camping’ attitude to Life on Earth. “Sauve qui peu” (save yourself if you can)]

The problem with these teachings is that we now have various psychological methods for actually finding out why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing, as well as finding information from past lives. Such enquiries are not even particularly difficult to carry out. None of such concepts ‘fit’ into these belief systems any more. These old wine-skins are having a lot of trouble with the new wines.

One-Go as well as Off-Earth.

One-Go religions also teach that the rewards for your behaviour are either heaven or hell (with nothing in between?), neither of which are on earth, as in, they are Off-Earth, Thus there is no concept of real rewards on earth; much less what they might be.

This is not to say that some of these doctrines and rules for living are not ultimately useful to us, but I am saying that these understandings are incomplete, and not that useful as maps for finding fulfillment on earth.

Reincarnation.

Reincarnation religions teach many lives. The divide between One-Go and Many generally corresponds to the basic division between East and West. ‘Many lives’ makes more sense in terms of meaning and point, but some reincarnation religions ascribe blame and judgement to someone’s current life circumstances as being an outcome of their previous life. Neither does the West necessarily envy the social structures, civic utilities or legal systems of cultures based on these religions. You have been born in great circumstances, you must have earned it. Congratulate yourself. You have been born in rotten circumstances or low caste etc and therefore you deserve it and are left in it. The ‘karma’ still has blame attached to it, as in, no-one in their right mind would choose to suffer as many people do in really rotten circumstances.

There is also other ‘stuff’ about Reincarnation and being an animal in past or future lives, but as human beings ‘made in the image’, our concerns are with understanding our selves as part of God, and there’s enough in that to keep us occupied.

Reincarnation as well as Off-Earth.

Once again, the rewards for ‘getting it’ are Off-Earth. The reward is generally thought of as ‘Nirvana’ and probably feels pretty heavenly. But I am not sure this is the whole story either. (My observations follow below.)

Also most of these religions teach that ‘heaven’ is the state we wish to be in, and thus this reward is Off-Earth, or the body is regarded as not important, as well as being a temple; all very confusing. Buddhists learn that all is suffering and aim at getting off the wheel of Life (again Off-Earth) by ‘being good’.

It also seems to me that the attention given to the ‘spirit’ comes at the expense of ignoring the body, which appears to be regarded as basically something that simply carts you around throughout this life.

Sin and Suffering.

We need to be apart from God to See Her properly and experience and find ourselves, but we generally hate it and want to get back to the ‘heavenly’ feeling of being a part. Most religions that I can think of imply that we must have done something wrong or offended God in some manner to be ‘thrown out’ or evicted from Heaven, so to speak.

This understanding system that I am proposing says yes, it’s uncomfortable, but there is a good reason for this discomfort, because there is something better at the end of the process, and in fact, there is no other way.

Apart from that, what happens to Explore, which is a primary drive for Life?

Religions and Women.

No current mainstream religion that I know of is able to treat women as equals or fully mobilize their abilities within their hierarchies; (Buddhism fully addresses this in both Eastern and Western societies???). This basically leaves out half the population.

In fact, the main religions that I am aware of have a very heavy emphasis on a single (un-relational) male who becomes enlightened in some sort of ‘heavenly’ (off-earth) manner and who now has all the answers and can tell everyone else what to do (this looks like ‘authority’ to me).

For many religions women are passive recipients if allowed in at all. These religions are based on male perceptions of the world only. All of them leave women with no knowledge or realisation or description of just exactly what women’s real attributes and strengths are. The failure to fully incorporate women into any religion’s structure shows us that that religion is covertly or overtly discounting women, and such a religion is, by definition, simply incomplete and way past its use-by date according to me. How can any religion be taken seriously when it effectively discounts half of humanity? Future generations will wonder how on earth women put up with this nonsense.

Religions and Nature.

Where are the religions that give Nature her voice in our lives? We can get whiffs of the possibilities with Wicca or Shamanism or North American Indian or Toltec teachings, but these are hardly mainstream. Nature is God too and we are part of Nature. If we can’t respect Nature and the natural world around us, we can’t respect anything.

Where are ‘till and keep’ in our lives? This was the prime directive given to Adam and Eve by God. I don’t see much of this. How much of the natural world has been anything but ‘kept’?

It is long past time for an understanding system that leads to respect for women and respect for Nature and Life.

‘Big’ structures.

Some religions have large authority structures and some have almost none.

Large authority structures are built on having a ‘top dog’ in the know and of course able to talk to God and receive His commandments, and lots of subservients who ‘don’t know’ and have to do as they are told. Such an authority structure may not necessarily behave in the way that they teach. All authority structures I know of lose the plot eventually and start to exist only for themselves and their own power structures. If people knew for themselves how to find point and meaning for their own lives without a ‘top dog’ or an authority structure to do it for them, there is no need for the structure at all.

To recapitulate

·      We are here on Earth in a beautiful and amazing environment (hopefully not too mucked up) of staggering creativity.

·      We are not here just to look for ways to get back to Heaven, which is something we already know anyway.

·      We are here to explore and learn who we are; to know ourselves and to create and learn to be like God, and become a partner to God and ‘do God’ i.e. do the same as God in our own unique way.

·      We have to be separate from God to be able to See God; we have to learn to be apart as the child must grow up to be an adult who can then appreciate and partner the adult from whom she came. Growing up is not necessarily comfortable or easy but it has its compensations.

·      We have lives of great diversity with multiple themes to help us define ourselves to ourselves. As with all our many dramas and plays that we watch on the stage, they may not all be wonderful or nice, but they are pretty enthralling and absorbing nevertheless and we learn as we go along. These lives are for us to explore our limits and to use to find out who we are.

·      We get to find out for ourselves who we are, as in, no-one else can do it for you; it is actually impossible to be ‘told’ unless you already know, otherwise you will not hear what is being said.

·      We are not here because we’ve done the wrong thing or God is cross with us; far from it. It takes time – all the time in the world and out of it – to explore your self and who and what is there.

·      Playing harps for eternity in heaven or cooking or freezing in hell does not satisfy the drive/emotion of ‘Explore’ and thus makes no sense for God or us. What else do you propose?

So, out of all this, what would be nice?

·      An understanding of how we choose the lives we lead in line with our highest good, as in, benefit for all. What for and why, giving us point and meaning to our endeavours that is logical within its own rules. This would support us, physically, mentally, emotionally, and ‘spiritually’ (PMES).

·      Rewards on earth while we are alive, and tools for how to get there and what it looks like on the way. ie a map.

·      A full, equal and important place for women and nature.

·      Requiring no hierarchy or authority structure; learn how to talk to God/Life yourself; none of this threatening as a means to make us behave properly.

·      Based on human psychology that is natural and makes sense and we can see it in everyday life, and thus remind ourselves, if we wish. No ‘believing’ required.

This would be a Useful Understanding System (UUS) or a Useful Guidance System for Life on Earth

This UUS is a psychological map. It does not tell you about yourself personally; it is basically a structure and map and tools for finding your own Self for yourself. The tools work best and make most sense within this structure, but can be used without this understanding system; so there is no need to believe in anything, including one life or many. However, using these tools helps you to understand this structure and live it and grow.

It is a,

Why and How to Use your Life (your external world/circumstances) to find/identify/understand/Know and Own your own Self and develop your own Relationship/Partnership with God, and thus Life.

It works within

·      a framework of universal laws, viz Mirror Laws and personality filters such as MBTI , all of which need to be applied to See ourselves properly and

·      a framework of understanding our past lives and how our actions then, with the decisions we made about them then, have influenced this current life, as in, how we have got to where we are.

It is a how to take responsibility which leads to conscious personal choice and empowerment and a proper engagement with Life; a ‘talking with God’, so to speak, and thus will give us meaning for our lives and our choices, conscious or unconscious.

If we do not understand the reason for our separation and apartness, we do not know what to do or what is required. Few religions have the kind of understanding I am proposing built in to them.