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In the Name of Religion
Whether I am ushered into the next world by a choir of cherubs or a bevy of trident-bearing imps, or whether I just compost quietly in nature’s great recycling system is not a matter on which I spend a great deal of thought.
I am, by genetic endowment half-Jewish, by upbringing Roman Catholic, and by choice, agnostic. I neither deny nor assert the existence of God.
I have seen the great comfort and goodness wrought by small churches of all persuasions in the small communities in which I have lived.
I also see the hell-born misery ultra-orthodoxies of all religious types wreak on people the world over. Be it the Taliban, ultra-Orthodox Jews, the far-right Christians or the Sunni-Shiite internecine wars, you name the orthodoxy, and history books and news archives will drown you in tales of persecution, torture and death.
Throughout history there have been oases of peace and sanity where Jews, Christians and Muslims or Buddhists, Muslims and Hindi have flourished in mutual respect. For four centuries prior to the 11th century, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together under moderate Muslim rule in Cordoba, Spain. During the European Holocaust, Muslim Morocco prided itself on defying Vichy’s order to its French colonies to round up their Jews. The Islamic monarchy instead sheltered them from German and French persecution. But examples like these have been rare. And human carnage done in the name of various deities or “with God on our side” as Dylan sings, is common. The subjugation of women across all orthodoxies and the persecution of religious minorities and homosexuals is as prevalent today as the burning of non-Catholics was in the streets of Seville during the Spanish Inquisition.
The recent news coverage of Ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on an 8-year-old girl and calling her a “whore” even though she wore the modest uniform of the orthodox school she attended resembles Puritan extremism. And the requirement that women in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods ride in the back of buses recalls our hard-fought civil rights battles here at home.
The slaughter of Muslims by former neighbors with whom they had lived in peace for decades in the former Yugoslavia, the genocidal rampages in Africa, the multi-century cover-up of sexual abuse of children in Catholic parishes, all in the name of religion must cause doubt about the existence of God or, at least, about his earthly designates.
I believe in a higher power. I am open, as I was as a young altar boy, to the loving and forgiving God who teaches that the meek shall inherit the earth.
But in observing the ongoing persecution and slaughter conducted on religious grounds, I can’t embrace or even trust religions managed by man in God’s name. I miss the spiritual discipline I knew as a child, but I can’t muster enough faith to forgive institutions willing to fight to accumulate earthly riches and political power — while at the same time perpetuating sexual subjugation of women and children.
This piece was first aired on Vermont Public Radio.
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Show All""" There are 3 Kings of the Heavenly Kingdom (We three Kings Of Orion are ... ) because Noah had 3 sons who populated the world after the Flood. One King is Black, the second White and the 3rd is the Asian King."""
You call it right in this snippet of yours. Haven't you realized that ancient astronomy and astrology are the beginnings of religion by personifying the stars, zodiac, sun and asterisms? Before the beginning of this current 'age' we are in, Pisces, ancient humans had already discovered the night sky and what meanings were given to it. The 3 stars of the belt of Orion are the 3 wise men head towards the guide star of Sirius the Dog Star which leads further to the point on the horizon where the 'sun/son dies on the winter solstice and remains dead for 3 more days and then it rises from the dead on December 25 and begins its march north and brings hope of warmer climes. Seems fanciful but that is what those 'dumb and stupid' ancient people figured. They considered the sun, god, and also the sun of god. Not only that, they had figured out the zodiacal ages, each ~2155 yrs long which is what B.C. or BCE is the change from Aries to Pisces and now we are now near the close of the end of the age of Pisces. From then it did not take much figuring to determine the whole long year of about 26,000 yrs consisting of the 12 ages of zodiac where each new age begins when the next zodiac appear in the morning of the vernal equinox. I prefer the ancient's method, and in about 140 years when Aquarius rises on the morning of the vernal equinox we start counting the years over again and hopefully it will begin this time with the year 0.
Just a little 'history' for you.
Great stuff samosamo; In a word: fascinating.
We got burned to a crisp at the Hotel Pool in Fiji not realizing it was the Vernal Equinox where we weren't casting any shadows. Five days later we were all walking around like stiffs unable to turn our necks or bend over. Then the massive peeling started.
Not checking your Astrological calendar is damn dangerous. Looks like the human race may be extinct before the big Zero Roman date system rolls around. Of course we still have to get by the Dec 2012 Mayan Doomsday prediction when all the planets are going to line up on one side of the solar system. Have I got that right?
This form of government: Fake Democracy has doomed us all. It was the undoing of the Greek and Roman governmental systems as well.
Later...
It is amazing how close all the earliest civilizations were in astronomy as that is what early man could see and study because they all saw the same things. When the spanish invaded the western hemisphere, those invaders were outraged that those indigenous people's calendars and charts of the heavens were very similar to the spanish's own. Not sure how similar the mayan 2012 is to what is but I bet the earth survives but whether the Greeks survive this second time by bankruptcy is yet to be seen or noted that it would happen. I certainly hope they don't crash and burn as some people are trying their best to have that happen.
Thanks for the opportunity to express these beliefs and to participate with you all in the commentary.
I 'meekly' venture another vein of information.
Absolute Truth evolved prior to the Great Flood, then was destroyed in that deluge.
Egyptians had identified the means by which communication from the "Heavens is accomplished, which is inherent in Numbers.
This was the great discovery of the Black Race.
Boundaries between good and evil became fully developed when Druid Priests speaking the English/Dene language enclosed space within a fixed border, such as in the Megaliths of Stonehenge. They found that they gained social power by inclusion of like minded and exclusion of those who did not believe in their authority. The function of a Boundary is to identify the political model being advanced against any form of disorder relative to the inner belief.
When the law of boundaries met the belief system of the Semites they found no place within for themselves, so they united themselves around the belief system of Moses and they claimed the whole world.
Hebrew/Jewish history has dealt with this paradox according to their belief in the Messiah who would defeat Boundaries by delivering the world to this Tribe.
This scenario (over thousands of years) produced the concept of Kings which spread East and West from Israel.
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem (we say it Temlaham) these 3 Kings came to witness His birth.
From circa 333 onward the concept of the World King spread to the Atlantic and to the Pacific. Mongols took it up and conquered China in 907 A.D. Genghis Khan took the idea to its greatest extent but could not conquer the descendants of the Family of Jesus, who finally escaped the Mongol conquest by shipping to the Northwest coast Of America. This brought about Ezekiel's vision of the two Sticks, the Cross and the haida Totem Pole.
The term Khitan from which came the name Cathay for China, is a devolution of the term Christian and it transferred itself with these migrants to Kitanmaax, which is also called Hazelton BC.
The House of Jesus descendants in Canada describe ourselves as Haaxw, Suffering, and our House took possession of the River Canyons of the Skeena, Nass and Fraser Rivers by introducing the culture of Potlatch, giving in order to receive. Laax Sal means Fishing Platform and is the root of the term Salish.
Chief Kitsilano owns the City of Vancouver and the Province of British Columbia on these grounds. The name Kitsilano means Christ in wool. Wool of course arrived with the Spanish and they allied with the House of Haaxw,recognizing Kitsilano as King, granting us the monopoly on Wool blankets. Capilano then challenged us by claiming to be the "True Wool Blanket Person." Others then added the term a-lano to their claims.
Capilano prevailed over our family after the English displaced the Spanish and because the Matriarchy of the House of Haaxw was based in the North at Kitanmaax, which translates "Christ Fishing with Fire." This identity is associated with one of the Sons of Noah. Cutoff from the Mother Clan and the wealth of the North, Kitsilano could no longer Potlatch. The English outlawed Potlatch in 1884 and Chief Kitsilano was driven out of Tscin Haaxw, Inner Vancouver Harbor, in 1929.
In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada found that our Titles are legally valid and must be affirmed by Canada.
I am the Son of Haaxw and of Alma (Isaiah 7;14).
I was born 'as Jesus was,' without a real father.
I AM HIM.
I like this quote by Lenny Bruce:
"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God."
"Religions" appear to originate from the "mystical" or unitive experience of one person. Some instances are clearer than others. The essential teachings of both Christ and Buddha strongly suggest that they not only had "experienced" unitive consciousness, but were established in that state. The level of awareness of other "founders" such as Zoroaster or Abraham seem much less evident.
In the language of Yoga: a being who is fully "enlightened" has (at minimum) all 7 chakras (subtle energy centers) unblocked, undistorted, and open - with energy freely flowing in and out of them. They are like a fully transparent windows, through which the Infinite in all its glory can be glimpsed.
(con't from above)
That said, the "religions" which arise in their wake are created by humans in whom consciousness is substantially less ripened than the one in whose footsteps they hope to follow.
While subsequent generations of followers may experience "sincerity" - evolved levels of awareness always need to be earned through sustained inner work, and can never be attained merely through imitation. In addition - precisely because there are gradations of "levels of liberated awareness" - not all founders can be said to be "fully enlightened" (or completely free of the self-centered ego).
(con't from above)
Those beings that follow these great souls ("Mahatmas") are just like the rest of us. Some more evolved than others - but in whom the higher energy centers ----- (chakras 4-7: 4th - profound love and compassion; 5th - longing for the infinite and finding one's deep and unique "voice;" 6th - higher intuitive faculties; and 7th - the process of merging one's individual consciousness with the Infinite) ------ are not yet fully open.
Thus, "religions" generally tend to be dominated by leaders who only have access to the first three centers: concerns about survival ("I eat you or you eat me"); sex (the powerful procreative and pleasure principle) and power (whose your Daddy?). In this way exoteric religion has so often been the occasion for primitive behavior - and a source of fragmentation, strife and immaturity, rather than interdependent harmony and Oneness.
So why is your religion with chakras (which there is no real evidence for) et al, any different from all these others? And as you are not the founder and one with infinite consciousness, aren't you doing just the same as all these others you criticise? Incidentally, have you ever met anyone who is one with infinite consciousness? Not many of them about, are there? Some claim to be, but the fact they often drive around in Roll's Royce's tends to put me off. Maybe the real truth is, you're just here a human, flesh and blood, and in a few decades you die and vanish forever. Painful, unjust, heartbreaking, but maybe that's the truth that anyone who is a spiritual adult must face up to instead of inventing systems and dreams to run away from that unpalatable fact.
,/p>http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip-larkin/aubade/
I have no use for an all seeing and all knowing god who still demands that one of his believers sacrifice his son to prove his love for him, or a god that says it is okie dokie to own slaves just as long as you treat them OK. Or that you can sell your daughter into servitude just as long as you get a good price for her. No, you can keep your all loving god who says it's OK to kill those people who don't believe and take all of their land and all of their goods. In fact I have absolutely no use for all of the belivers in such a god!