Spirituality Guide

Having somewhere between one and two billion followers, Christianity is probably the most well known religion in the world. It also has one of the most well known histories, full of bloodshed endured and caused.

Origins [Source]: “Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The Christian Church traces its history to Jesus and the Twelve Apostles, and saw the early bishops of the Church as the successors of the Apostles in general. Central to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican Churches is Apostolic Succession, the belief that the bishops are the spiritual successors of the original twelve apostles, through the historically unbroken chain of consecration.”

Beliefs: Most Christian churches place special emphasis on the worship of the only god and not of other gods or false idols. Obeying the ten commandments and repentance of sins are also of great importance along with attending church on Sundays. The latter has, in recent time, slowly come under examination as to whether or not it is a true necessity.

God: In the Christian religion, the is only one true god, which is often broken down into the trinity: God the father, God the son (Jesus), and the holy spirit. It is through worship and repentance to Jesus that believers are able to enter a happy afterlife.

Principles:
The Ten Commandments:
1. You shall have no other Gods but me.
2. You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
4. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
5. Respect your father and mother.
6. You must not kill.
7. You must not commit adultery.
8. You must not steal.
9. You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.
10. You must not be envious of your neighbour’s goods. You shall not be envious of his house nor his wife, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Other sources of information:
Christianity @ Wikipedia
Christianity @ Religious Tolerance
Christianity.com

Buddhism has long been a major religion, its origins stretching far into the past and now claiming to have 300 million followers. A way of life as well as a religion, the Buddhist principles are followed by many who don’t claim to be Buddhist.

Origins: Buddhism’s origins take root about 2,500 years ago when Siddhartha Gotama, known as the Buddha, became ‘enlightened’ when he was about 35 years old. Little of Siddhartha’s life can be regarded as established with historical fact, but it’s said Siddhartha’s father saw a wise man upon Siddhartha’s birth and the wise man said he would be a great king or a great holy man. While some consider Buddhism to be purely a way of life, it is still considered a religion.

Beliefs: There are many beliefs associated with Buddhism, but well known are the three noble truths: Life is suffering, suffering is caused by craving and aversion, and that suffering can be overcome and happiness is attainable. As Buddhism is regarded as a way of life, there are basic principles, but believers are encouraged to test these truths for themselves.

God: The Buddha was not a god nor did he claim to be. Buddhism claims to transcend a personal god. “Buddhists sometimes pay respect to images of the Buddha, not in worship, nor to ask for favours. A statue of the Buddha with hands rested gently in its lap and a compassionate smile reminds us to strive to develop peace and love within ourselves. Bowing to the statue is an expression of gratitude for the teaching.” [Source]

Principles [Source]:
The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Other sources of information:
BuddhaNet
Buddhism @ Wikipedia
Buddhism @ About.com

Fast becoming recognized as one of the world’s fastest spreading religions, Baha’i now claims to have more than five million followers.

Origins: Baha’i was founded by Bahá’u'lláh in 19th-century Persia. Bahá’u'lláh claimed to be the most recent of holy messengers in a line that includes Moses, Krishna, and Jesus. The Baha’i regard him as the bringer of a new religion like Jesus or Mohammed. He also claimed to be a descendant of Abraham through Abraham’s third wife.

Beliefs: As it says on the Baha’i site, the Baha’i teachings are essentially of unity and love. They believe that all messengers of god have gradually revealed the teachings of the one major religion over time and that all religions are truly to the one god who has sent the messengers such as Krishna and Jesus. “Together, the world’s great religions are expressions of a single unfolding Divine plan…” [Source]

God: Baha’i teaches that there is only one god and that god is too great for humans to understand. God is thus revealed through his manifestations. A person’s purpose on earth is to learn to know and love God through such methods as prayer and reflection.

Social Principles [Source]:
Unity of God
Unity of religion
Unity of humankind
Gender equality
Elimination of all forms of prejudice
World peace
Harmony of religion and science
Independent investigation of truth
Universal compulsory education
Universal auxiliary language
Obedience to government and non-involvement in partisan politics
Elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty

Other sources of information:
Baha’i.org
Baha’i Faith @ Wikipedia
Bahá’u'lláh @ Wikipedia

Finally, as promised, I am going to start my series on major religions of the world. The thing to remember about these introductions is that they will be brief. I just plain don’t have the time to go through every little nuance and detail of each religion.

At the end of each post, I will post other sources of information so you can learn even more than what I provide in these posts, which, admittedly, won’t be much. However, my goal is to give everyone a little taste of the religions out there. If you like the taste, then it’s your choice to pursue things further.

I will only post the barest basics. Please don’t make judgments based purely on what I post. That is like judging the entire forest for what you see on one branch of one tree. You could miss something

I am posting them in alphabetical order. This is just to take care of any judgments before they can happen. I’d rather avoid any conflicts and this helps take care of a few.

I am not pushing any religion. I don’t think people need religion by any means. Plenty of people I know function and live perfectly fine lives without an ounce of any religious belief touching them. However, I do encourage open minds and that’s why I’m introducing all these religions, however briefly.

I hate to feel the need to make all these things clear, but I, like many others, have been scarred by religious fanaticism. That makes me cautious. However, I do hope you enjoy your introduction to the various religions.

While you could say my journey to and up the mountain was driven by randomly picking a spot on a map and everything that occurred was just something my own mind conjured up. Yes, you could definitely say that.

I’m not going to dispute that what happens to us in this in life is made up a lot of things we cause. Life is what we make of it and we often reap what we sow, so to say. A negative person is going to find other negative people to be around or is going to be alone, thus enforcing the negativity towards life and others.

However, if you said that about my journey, I would point you to athletes who say that you never truly know yourself until you find your physical limits. You never truly find the person inside until you have breached all barriers of doubt and fear.

So if you are uncomfortable with calling my journey a spiritual one or with me saying I found the peace I was meant to find by going there, then think of it like an athlete thinks: I went hiking.

On that hike I wanted to turn back many times for many reasons, but I kept on because I had a goal I wanted to accomplish. It was only when I stopped wanting to turn back that I felt like I accomplished that goal.

And having accomplished that goal, I feel like a better person.

Funny how so many of us say the same thing, just in different ways…

(I’m posting these in reverse order so you can read them from top to bottom.)

Occasionally we are ‘called’ – or ‘feel inclined’ if you’re not comfortable with the term ‘called’ – to do things and go to places we wouldn’t usually go. Recently I started to become more and more agitated for no apparent reason until it occurred to me to travel to a mountain range to the west. I was still concerned about the journey, but it felt right to go there.

My partner and I didn’t get into the actual mountains until the third day of our trip, but it was worth the wait. There is something about the mountains that helps me to feel connected to things. It also helps me to realize there is so much more than just what is going on in the present and what I have in front of me. The mountains mean so much more and hold so much more than my daily life.

I picked the place I wanted to go based purely on my ‘gut’ instinct. The place I picked had drawn me since I first saw it on the map and I knew it was the place to go. I didn’t know what I would do when I got there or what I would learn – if anything – but I did know that I had to be there. I had to experience it.

When we finally found the place we were meant to go – a nearly hidden walking trail off the main road (if you can call it a road with all the dirt, rocks, bumps, and other difficulties). We got out of the car, took our water and camera, and headed on our way.

(I’m posting these in reverse order so you can read them from top to bottom.)

The journey up the mountain wasn’t as steep as other mountain trails I had climbed, but it was much longer. Climbing/walking up began to become a challenge for me on all fronts – mentally, physically, and emotionally – and I began to wonder why I was putting myself through all this.

The first trial came physically as I began sweating profusely and needing breaks to catch my breath. It was hard not to entertain the idea of turning back, but I squashed the thoughts and kept moving on. I knew that it was a matter of mind over body and that I could keep going.

The next trial brought the mental. My mind began focusing on ‘that next hill’ and how steep the next part would be. I began to doubt myself, wondering how far I could possibly go when I wasn’t exactly in the fittest shape of my life.

My partner and I took a break and I told him that I was starting to defeat myself mentally when it came to this journey. He remained quiet most of the time, making sure I drank water and rested, knowing that this journey was about me and something I needed to do. The mental barriers lessened as I recognized them for what they were – mental and nothing more.

We travelled on and that’s when I began to get emotional. Many times I almost started crying, both at the thought of continuing on without knowing how long the trail was and at the thought of turning back before reaching the end. I began taking longer rests not only to revive myself physically but to revive myself emotionally.

(I’m posting these in reverse order so you can read them from top to bottom.)

Having dealt with the physical, emotional, and mental challenges while on the mountain path, I began talking to my partner about what I had been through and wondering if getting past those challenges was what I had been meant to accomplish at this point.

I rested once more as he went ahead to see if there was any sign that we were close to the end of the trail, and I began to think about what I had told him. The place I rested was a large flat rock with more rocks like it nearby. Nowhere else on the trail was there anything like it. The flat rock was massive, easily taking three of me laid foot to head across it both ways.

Dark clouds became more condensed and I felt the first of the cold rain drops land on my hot skin. I considered further how I felt about having pushed all of my limits and accomplished so much, even though we hadn’t reached the end of the trail.

My partner and I met up, and we found that the trail headed downward once more, with no lookout to be found even though we had been climbing upward for kilometers. We looked at each other and debated whether going forward would be a bad thing to do with the storm so close.

I searched my feelings and that was when I truly felt like I had accomplished what I was meant to accomplish on that trail. No longer did the thought of turning back reduce me to tears and feelings of unease. In fact, I felt revived, peaceful, changed. I had a new burst of energy.

The rain flooded down on us as we descended, washing away all the dirt, sweat, and strain from the journey up. Though cold with the wind and a bit intimidating with the thunder and lightning, I felt the rain completed everything, washing away the grime of the past to leave the slightly newer, changed me.

The standard view towards intuition is one of wariness or outright scorn because intuition is equated along the same line as psychic or ‘sensitive’. However, if you use the word ‘instinct’ instead, then you are far more likely to get an attentive and accepting audience.

It’s interesting how two words can mean basically the same thing and yet the connotations attached to those words can influence how you think and feel.

I’m not saying that intuition and instinct are the same thing, but I am trying to point out the similarities. Both come from places other than our conscious minds and both are things we react to even though we may not realize what it is we are reacting to.

Intuition is defined as “direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.”

Whereas instinct is defined as “an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species.”

I feel the need to make this distinction because, while instinct is a commonly used word mainly without negative feelings attached, it’s often mixed up with intuition, which I feel is a more spiritual experience.

When I write for this site, I let my intuition guide me. I had fully planned on starting my exploration of the major religions, but something in me compelled me to talk about intuition and instinct. Intuition is something that has been influencing me lately. While I don’t want a lot of my personal life and beliefs to come to play on this site, it seems they have anyway.

Despite the negative attachments to ‘intuition’ I will be talking about it on this site. Whether you feel guided or inclined to feel the same about it as I do is completely up to you, and I certainly won’t judge you for it.

Last week we talked about how to break down religion into four main groups: Theism, Deism, “Ever-Present” and Nontheism. I then broke theism down into its various categories.

Today I’m going to do the same thing with deism, ‘ever-present’ and nontheism.

Deism is the belief that yes, god(s)/being(s) does exist, but god/gods does not interfere with the world/universe. The break down of this category is similar to the breakdown of theism but without quite the ‘black and white’ definitions.

In pandeism, you have the belief that the creator came before the universe, created the universe, and is now on the same level as or is the universe.

In polydeism, many gods came together to create the universe, but after it was created, they stopped interacting with it.

“Ever-present” – a term I made up – describes the broader belief that gods/beings are present in everything. This category can be broken down into four subcategories:

Pantheism takes away the division between god and the universe, making them equally one.

Panentheism, similar to pantheism, also believes that the universe and god are joined together. However, this belief puts god as greater than the universe.

Cosmotheism is a combination of both man and creator. This belief is that the cosmos and man are essentially one. What man wants, the cosmos want, and vice versa.

Animism, put simply, is the belief that everything has a soul and is thus important at some level.

Nontheism is broken down into Atheism and Agnosticism, which I have talked about before here

As you can see, there is a lot to religion even at a broader level than individual religions. That’s why I wanted to explore the broader categories before getting into the individual religions. In future posts, I will begin exploring individual religions.

In the last post, we broke down religion (or rather, religious belief systems) into four main categories: Theism, Deism, “Ever-Present”, and Nontheism. Today I am going to break down theism further into subcategories of identification
You’ll recall that theism is the belief that gods/beings exist and they also interact with the world/universe.

Theism can further be broken down into monotheism and polytheism. If you look at the prefixes ‘mono’ and ‘poly’, it’s easy to keep their definitions straight.

Monotheism is the belief that there is one and only one god. This is a fairly well known line of belief and is the current state of what you could call the evolution of religions being primarily polytheistic and moving to monotheism over time.

An interesting belief falling under the monotheism category is ‘misotheism’ which encompasses the belief that there is one god but that one god is evil instead of the benevolent good god of many other religions.

Where mono means one, poly means many. Those who have polytheistic beliefs believe that there is more than one god/being wandering around in the great ‘out there’.

The subcategories of polytheism are mostly to do with leaning towards one god in one area or another.

Henotheism, while believing in more than one god, believes that one god is supreme above all others.

Monolatry doesn’t believe so much that one god is supreme as it believes only one god should be worshiped.

Lastly, the one with the fun name – kathenotheism – is more of an equal opportunity worshiper. It believes in more than one god and worshiping one of the many, but the difference is that each god will get their turn in supremacy.

In future posts, I’ll break down the remaining three categories of religion.

When it comes to religion and spirituality, the subjects within the main subject are often more widespread and complicated than people realize.

Coming up on this site, I will be exploring individual religions and the basics in their beliefs. Before I do that, however, I would like to explore religion just a bit more.

To make it easier, I think it’s best to start in the broadest senses and then narrow down to specifics. When it comes to religion, the broadest category would be if you believe something or not, but I am going a bit narrower than that with some definitions in the realm of belief.

The first way to break down religion is into four categories: Theism, Deism, what I call “ever-present”, and Nontheism.

Theism is that yes, gods or like beings do exist and they interact with the world/universe.

Deism is like theism in that the belief is that gods/beings exist. However, in deism, the belief is that they do not interact/intervene with the universe.

“Ever-Present” – a term that has no official status and is something I’m probably using incorrectly – is the category of belief that encompasses a diety in everything. There are sub-classes of exactly what has a soul or is a diety, but I will explore that later.

Lastly, we have Nontheism where we have Atheism and Agnosticism. This gets a little tricky when you break it down because some Agnostics have a personal faith, but we’ll talk about that later.

And there you have your Intro to Religions 101. In future posts I’ll be breaking these categories down before exploring individual religions groups.

Yesterday I began talking about something mentioned in The Matrix and got a little off tangent. I apologize for that. It’s beginning to become a bad habit of mine.

Back to the main topic:

In the Matrix trilogy – the second movie, I believe – there is a conversation in which it is said that, basically, humans as they are could not tolerate paradise, heaven, Eden, whatever you would like to call it. Humans define their lives through their suffering.

Is this true? What does it mean for humanity? What does it have to do with spirituality?

Simplified, what your answer is to the first question could just be a matter of whether you are an optimist or pessimist. That’s simplifying it quite a bit, but it works.

With a world with such emphasis put on hard work and working to earn what you need, it’s easy to say that it is true. However, in the past decades, we have shifted into such a world of haves and have-nots that a life of hard work get truly get you nowhere.

So do we truly define ourselves through our suffering or is that merely the biggest label we have been given to define ourselves with?

What does this have to do with spirituality? Think of the mind maps. With the mind mapping you are trying to figure out the inner, subconscious beliefs and where they come from. Now, if a small group of ‘big haves’ in the world are telling you that you have to work hard for your whole life, told your parents that, told their parents that…

If you haven’t seen The Matrix trilogy, I recommend you give it a try. If you can watch it and take a step further into the area of critical thinking, you might just start thinking of some interesting possibilities when it comes to the source of what makes you, you.

In the Matrix trilogy – the second movie, I believe – there is a conversation in which it is said that, basically, humans as they are could not tolerate paradise, heaven, Eden, whatever you would like to call it. Humans define their lives through their suffering.

Is this true? What does it mean for humanity? What does it have to do with spirituality?

To answer the last question first: A lot, actually.

When you define (or try to define) human nature, you then step into the territory of what makes us who we are. That can venture into a multitude of different subjects such as the soul, the mind, the Self, how humans got started out, how life on this planet got started… You can see where I’m going. There are a lot of subjects.

The same goes with the second question. You move into territory like global consciousness, evolution, our future as a species…

Now, perhaps, you can begin to see why spirituality can be so hard to define.

Even the answer to the first question can have a lot of implications. No matter what the answer, why? If yes, is it inherent or learned? If it is inherent, where from? Why?

“Why?” is always the big question, isn’t it?

Which brings me to the next question – why am I telling you about this? What am I on about?
I suppose the first thing (I seem to get in a habit of multi-part entries on this site) I would like to point out is simply all the questions.

If not proof, this should show you that no one knows all the answers. We, in our current state, simply cannot know anything without doubt.

This is where the protests start, but ‘knowing without doubt’ and ‘believing without doubt’ are two separate things – as much as some would like to try to convince people otherwise.

More to come…

Something to know about changing your life, your Self, is that is not comfortable. It isn’t easy, it isn’t a key to automatic happiness (though it can bring you happiness), and there will probably be more than one time that you just want to quit exploring and go back to what you know.

Because, after all, isn’t the evil you know better than the evil you don’t?

This path isn’t always going to be ‘aha!’ and ‘wonderful!’ because it’s likely that you’ll be facing past events and beliefs that are upsetting. You may realize that people you once held close to you are not actually good for you. You may have to leave behind what you used to love.

If you’re not willing to do that, I am not going to judge you. Change is hard. Even if what you have is hell, it’s still hard to pick up and head for the unknown heaven.

Going back to the graffiti on your wall, if you’ve ever tried to clean anything like that, you’ll know it takes a lot of time and a lot of scrubbing. Just remember, though, that all that scrubbing, as hard as it is, can reveal some truly beautiful things underneath.

Why am I warning you yet again? I suppose it’s simply from personal experience. When you start working with these sorts of things, you can often open issues and things that don’t particularly like being ignored once they have opened.

You may experience memory triggers, needing to change your environment, and even needing to change the people you associate with. Not easy, by any means.

But if you’re ready, then best wishes for your journey.