Having grown up in a very small, very religious community I have always found it challenging to reverse my cultural programming from my childhood. It is just embedded so deeply sometimes it unexpectedly surfaces.
One thing that I came across that really answered all my questions was the work of Joseph Campbell. He spent over 50 years of his life researching the history, origins, and meaning of many of the common religious structures in existence today. In short he nailed it. Unfortunately he is no longer with us but his foundation lives on where you can access much of his oeuvre concerning his pioneering work in mythology and comparative religion.
For me the best way to wrap my head around his work was in a 3 part video series called Mythos which was compiled of lectures he made just before his death. They are just amazing.
Separating oneself from organized religion and stepping into spirituality is quite a challenge, in many ways they are complete and total opposites. Our cultural conditioning just isn't set up to encourage the understanding of essential truths. I typically define essential truths as is an unalterable and permanent fact. You could say that the thing that some call ocean is perceivable by every human on the planet. Its existence is an essential truth... the concepts about the nature of that thing, are what I call cultural or human truths and may vary in different cultures and peoples. This is a more local reality as opposed to a universal one. Concepts of truth can be a gray area for sure and have been subject of debate for centuries.
However for the sake of this article I will say that essential truths are as follows. We have always as humans been creating or manifesting our own versions of reality. Secondly, our "salvation" or freedom to live has never been something existing outside of our own power, this responsibility and connection to the Universe comes from within us individually.
The core concept of the Universe (I use the word Universe rather than God) is love and acceptance.
At this point you might be thinking this sounds like the opposite of what you have always been told... So for now just consider the possibility... I am not asking you to believe in anything here.
So let's have a look at structured religions then. Structured religions have for thousands of years created suffering to the human race. They have defiled women's sexuality and femininity and taught men to distrust females keeping them controlled and subservient. Over the ages hundreds of thousands of people have had their moral and civil rights stripped from them, been murdered, persecuted, maimed, burned, tortured and abused all in the name of structured religion. Books have been banned, burned and concepts and ideas contrary to those of structured religions have been eliminated. This is easily provable, just pick up a history book. Somehow this doesn't sound like love and acceptance to me, how about you? In short structured religion has created great disharmony within love, the very thing it claims to be based upon.
Structured religions create an emotional disconnection. They teach us the answers to life lie outside of ourselves and that we require a sort of religious middle-man to have access to them. We inflict upon ourselves a great deal of shame and guilt by absorbing belief systems such as ‘we’re unworthy sinners’ and have to act and be a certain way to receive ‘God’s approval’. This is conditional love claiming to be unconditional. We were taught we don't deserve the things we want because we aren't good enough in God’s eyes to receive them. We are told that we have no right to know or believe our wisdom within. We have been robbed of worthiness and deservedness.
These outer-based religions created entire societies and generations of people who are essentially co-dependent; people who have lost all faith in themselves and seeking answers from the outside or an external source. Why on earth would we go to ourselves for happiness? After all weren’t we are no-good sinners? Who’d want to retreat to an inner place of guilt and shame? Obviously these systems taught us that it’s up to conditions outside of us to provide solutions, directions and happiness because what was on the inside was ‘pathetically useless’.
The dogmatic nature of religion is limited and closed to any other possibility other than that prescribed by its own belief structure. It lives in the past and attempts to control the future. This myth is logically ineffective and totally ridiculous and the complete opposite of what is true. The reality is we have no control over situations outside of ourselves. We can’t think for another person and have no ability or right to control their decisions or behaviour. Inevitably, basing our happiness on another person to provide it for us is self-defeating. Life and other people can’t live up to what we want them to be or do to keep us safe, secure and happy. This convoluted system of external-based expectations will always leave us angry, empty, grief-stricken and damaged.
The most damaged, fearful and destructive people are those who are the most disconnected from themselves and from their inner truth. These people are lost, anxious, fearful and angry. Sound familiar? Ever notice the hypocrisy of those who call themselves religious? They are constantly seeking an external source to stop the inner pain and survive. Survival is a key word here. They are merely surviving, not living and certainly not free. They feel empty and are tortured with shame, pain and guilt. They have simply lost themselves and have no idea that their true self is a glorious complete being whose natural state feels and knows peace, love and contentment.
Centuries of religious programming, dictates to us making the conditions of life and other people’s behavior about us. If someone is angry it must be our fault because something is wrong with us. We have essentially handed our power over to these external sources and become disempowered victims. We have lost the ability to understand our own emotions which are the indicators of our personal truths. We have become focused on trying to change and fix situations and people to make us feel happy and safe. We keep ourselves attached to and submerged in pain.
Religion would have us believe that we are by nature carnal and if left to our own devices will automatically do the "wrong" thing. Consider that there is no essential truth of right and wrong, they don't exist in ultimate reality. These are merely cultural truths that we humans have invented and vary from culture to culture. Thus a control structure is created. Religion needs to exist to tell us what to do, who to be and what to believe. Religion is the ultimate example of conditional love, and we have become its dependents robbed of our free will. Its all about control which is the exact opposite of the truth of our soul and love & acceptance – which is free, unconditionally loving and limitless. And because limitation and oppression are not easily accepted by humankind, religion has incorporated the use of fear tactics such as guilt, shame and damnation to exercise this control.
Religion also asks us to believe and have faith; we have given our power to it. Adopting a belief system is dangerous because it exasperates the condition of the other and now we have conflict. If a particular religion holds itself to be the true nature of God/Universe then what happens when other religions disagree. Who is "right" and who is "wrong" and who is willing to fight or die for what they believe in?? It’s this separatism (exercising of conditions and superiority) that’s created the fear and inner emptiness that’s been responsible for the destruction within individuals and relationships, and between races and opposing religions.
The essence of spirituality is the search to know our real self, to discover the true nature of our consciousness. Spirituality embraces possibility and exists in the present. Any individual who works on a spiritual self-development takes responsibility for their own life and therefore connects with the language of their own soul. They do not need to control others. They automatically become a loving, expansive, healthy, happy and inspirational being who serves others in loving and inspiring ways. In short, if we’re "at one" with ourselves, we are complete and simultaneously "at one" with the Universe. There is nothing to believe in here, except ourselves and there is no "I'm right" and "you're wrong" because each individual path belongs to the individual. We are essentially whole and balanced. This is the only way to create and sustain healthy and loving relationships with ourselves, others and life.
We are thus empowered when we learn unite with our consciousness, we know ourselves as all-loving and Divine beings. We are a part of the Universe which we share united with every other human. Conflict is not a reality in this scenario. We acknowledge ourselves as a miracle and shamelessly love and embrace ourselves. We lose the guilt, fear and lack of deservedness. Then and only then, can we learn how to manifest our own happiness. Then, and only then can we know and honor ourselves making decisions and choices based on the truth of our soul which has always been love, success, happiness, glorious relationships and pure abundance.
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