Religious Education

#1

Okay, so I was baptized and confirmed into the Catholic religion. I went to CCD (sunday school) from preschool until eighth grade and memorized something like thirty prayers. I also memorized about 3423904823094 other Catholic facts and peices of useless trivia required for Confirmation.

And yet... I honestly don't agree with the religion.

So! Would anyone like to enlighten me on their religion? What you believe in, what you stand for, why you like (or don't) like it?

That way we can all leave ADN a little wiser, no?

#2

instead, let's talk about what about Catholicism you particularly don't believe...

Me, I educated myself. Everyone said read the bible, but apparently no one did. I started meditating on it, And begin to study every day. not as a basis for faith but as the education of what a search for faith can do to the state of man.

Mostly, I read over and over again the antedeluvian history. (before the flood), and begin top try and invoke Enoch. to great success. He began to teach me The Language I now use only with reverence and for specific reasons. I was officially denounced by the church of y rearing because I scared them by knowing things and answering questions everyone thought could not be answered and I spoke strange tongues and enacted conversations when i was asleep. and some of what I spoke was identified as proto-hebraic. and so, i began to learn Hebrew.

For me, the religion is more like a great school of mystery, and when you know the spells in the Bible, you might be surprised what was accomplished and what you yourself can achieve.

#3

I don't affiliate myself with any particular religious group, I'm working on turning my forum into a cult...

** oops ** :oops:

My mom introduced us to the church, but she never made us go...I've been to all kinds, and never really been impressed with any of it...I have been able to learn a great deal in far less time on my own and with friends, than by sitting on a hot bench in a building w/no A.C...And yet, still has a building fund...

ANYWAY...

Like raum, I was...A different kind of kid...And as I got older our family would just sit around the house and talk religion on Sunday, cause we weren't about to get up and go tithe for shit...Grandmother went faithfully, untill her Alzheimer's kicked in really hard...

#4

Well I have my own prespective on religion. I have never thought of any religion ever being wrong in anyway. I believe everything lies on how much faith you have in what you believe in. I do believe that there is ONE god and I also believe that all these religions are ulimately part of it.

I believe in this one god and I believe that the story's contained in the holy books of any religion are only a means of protraying right and wrong. It will never be proved in my opinion which religion is the right religion as everyone would have complete faith in their own.

So to conclude there is a god out there. I do pray to him whenever I please and its not bounded to some specail place or to some specail time. I have been to church and read a little bit of the bible and I take the morals from it. Every holy book says "love thy neighbour as thy self" only in a different language so what will become of it at the end of the day. All religious books are trying to pass on the same message of love and faith.

So take the morals and live a life doing good things. It wont matter which god you pray to then. Simple philosphy of mine.

#5

Deepak,

I agree with most everything you said, but that part about the holy books for illustrating right and wrong. that part usually is slammed into the cracks in the good stuff. and you gotta love translation.

#6

:-k you lost me raum. If the holybooks are not what is generally accepted by god as right or wrong and his teachings ... then what is in there ?

#7

Why do we (people) assume that we can explain our existance? Is it possible that we are nothing more than a bowl full of sea monkeys on some great gods desk and are really the most insignificant beings he's created?

Why is it that we believe that the universe is centered around us?

(my comments are meant in a "with all due respect" way)

#8

Ok, Deepak -

the issue I have with what you said is it includes a impossible duality "right and wrong" , for God is One.

The holy writings stand as instruction for living in accordance with divine providence, and all the old good ones except Christianity have general rules for study which include not taking everything in the book literally.

For example, there are truths hidden in verses of the Torah which only reveal their truth when you take every letter beginning all the words in a verse, a phenomenon known as "Temurah" and the basis of acronym.

In the Tao Te Ching, their are picture stories that are illustrated by the root radicals of the characters that make in into no translation into English. Also this holy writing dictates there is no duality; there is Tao, and not even that word is sufficient to describe what in fact is there.

The Chants and idiograms of most peoples, including indigeounous peoples had no dictate of right and wrong.

These include no "right and wrong" but they do include instruction.

Most cultural teachings which establish right and wrong, by the way - have rituals of passage in which the psychological demons built up by those taboos are faced, or define hygiene specific to location and clime or other health conditions. They didn't have the Worl Health Organization, ya know?

It is like if I tell you "don't eat poisonous berrys" every day until, one day, you turn 13 and then I come take you, into a tent, and the men hold you down, and we force you to drink the juice of the berries, which gives you "visions" that reveal to you your place in the scope of our village.

when you come to, you are now one of us and take a wife. Flash forward to five years later, and you are telling your son not to eat the berries, tht will one day make him a man.

vertical,
raum

#9

Why is it that every time I read something Raum writes I feel a little less...sophisticated? Or maybe it's a little more ignorant? (Not that reading it makes me, obviously- you know what I mean, right?) In any case- those are great points you made.

And a HUGE high-five to RIM!! I absolutely agree.

People blindly accept religious books and teachings, and in my opinion that's not too smart a thing to do. How did they get here? Who wrote them? Are they not just a primitive government's way of keeping rule and control over the masses? Not many people embrace the idea of death being the ultimate end. That's what religion is- a comfort zone, a crutch. It's for people who crave meaning in their mundane lives and know that they won't get it in their lifetime. No one wants to admit that our "souls" could very well cease to be once we stop breathing. These books don't prove anything other than the fact that we're a gullible people. We need to think that there's a reason for our suffering. Historically, religion is hope's understudy. You think you're out of hope? You go and run to god. Religion's an excuse, too. Right now in history we're learning about how when the Spaniards first came to America they enslaved the Native Americans in the name of God. Cults (which I consider to be religions) use books and teachings, and mind control, to kill people in the name of god- or satan or whoever. I'm sure there's zillions more incidents, but at the moment I'm rather tired. Soo, yep. That's that.

#10

hopefully reading my posts make you appreciate what you know more, and reaslize there's more than alot out there to learn yet.

I do not know it all,.. I do know alot of things alot of people do not. Other things, I know are almost completely unique to me.

Learn those things unique to you, and we have that in common.

I have absolute proof that death is not the end. PERSONAL.

I died when I was a child. I came back, but not all the way.

My mother aborted me, whiskey and a clothes hanger and i regenerated in the womb. I can tell you that it was 1995 when i had that memory again,.. and it was in a controlled experiment with no drugs or sleep anomolies. I called my mom, and told her what my meditations revealed to me. she admitted it, tried to kill herself, failed, and we did not talk for a year and three months. That was during one of the darkest periods of my life. I was closer to the voices which echo to me things that have only since been verified by studies and historical research than any human alive. I told a military psycholigist and they gae me a clean bill of mental health... and just said "you need to talk to a chaplain, not a shrink"

So I did... he started to set me straight.

I had always wondered why I knew so much, and I know why. I spoke with the unseen before i ever breathed - IN THIS LIFE. I know it was not an illusion, I still do it all the time, and I have learned to control it to degrees, but it has made me almost incompatible with most living people for long periods of time, becuase I do not think in terms of most trivial things. And I have a bigger hold on most of the BIG issues that keep people in check with religion.

The secret: it doesn't matter what you do... you as you mortally understand yourself or have concept of your soul are "refined" into a state of perfect being and capable of transcending the limitations of your personal consciousness... but all the "crap" (even the good crap) gets left in the "mind-pool" of humanity,.. until nothing is left but the common denominator which occasionally manifests. not a good thing.

there are "cosmic-pool cleaners" who treat the pool, and also treat the people who emerge from it,.. but when you die, basically you get pushed back in the pool, until you get fished out or you CAN learn to be strong enough to swim up yourself - That's what happened to me.

Now, when you learn to swim out yourself, you can learn to treat the dark water, and make it something you can subside on. These who consume the darkness to issue forth light, are manifesting the very purpose humanity serves. It's a very costly experience, and there are strategies and your life will never be the same again... but one you do REDEEM the darkness, you will never be satisfied doing anything else.

because that is the purpose of life. to shine forward and liberate the darkness to reveal love.

vertical,
raum
I questioned metioning this, but fuck it...