What if our religion was each other? If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church. The holy water – the rivers, lakes, and oceans. What if meditation was our relationships? If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self knowledge. If love was the center of our being?
This sentiment feels very aligned with the true forefathers of our continent, the indigenous people of North and South America. Many of their beliefs have been all but extinguished, but the wisdom that they practiced is every bit as wise today as it was back when our European ancestors were slaughtering them.
Organized religion has so many positive teachings within. I have spoken with people of many different faiths and denominations and queried them about their belief system and the values that are taught within their religion. So much of humanity believes the same rudimentary beliefs.
Why then, is organized religion, the single biggest killer of humanity since the dawn of time? More people have been killed in disagreement over a specific faith than all of the territorial wars and diseases put together.
I think this is one of the single largest conundrums of humanity. It is the cause that led me away from Judaism and any other organized religion so that I might slowly collect ideas that help me stay on a path of what I believe makes up a human being of value.
In reading what Ganga has expressed above, it is very clear that by stripping away any form of dogma that stems from a particular religion and focusing all of those spiritual qualities onto our lives as they stand and onto our planet and our environment, we find the essence of what almost any of the religions wants us to feel about our existence. As soon as those religions transpose a story or a dogma onto these qualities, it starts to instantly divide human beings into respective counts of belief, based almost entirely upon whatever a person’s ancestors believed before them.
With a large volume of people sharing a specific belief system, a power base is created by that belief. Whomever is in charge of localizing that belief into a specific community, find themselves in a unique position of power that can either be leveraged entirely in a benevolent and compassionate manner or any other negative option that their human instincts direct them to.
I believe that as soon as spirituality is collectively embodied into the hands of a specific human being, it is almost instantly tainted by the personality of the human whom it has been embodied within.
We are at our core essence, frail creatures, subject to emotions and ego. If a spiritual leader recognizes the power that is bestowed upon them as a spokesperson who is speaking on behalf of a God, their ego almost always pollutes the spirituality in one way or another. There are thousands of examples of this throughout history.
The indigenous people of our continent were not following pious leaders who portend to deliver the proverbial stairway to heaven. To the contrary, they saw the world through the perspective that Ganga has projected above. They were no match for a different race of humanity that was collectively propelled to believe they were acting on behalf of a king who was God’s chosen leader of their nation. The mass hypnosis that facilitated large volumes of soldiers to arrive on this continent and ultimately wiped out more than 40 million human beings in the name of a king from a far away land was overwhelmingly powerful and intensely destructive.
It feels to me that as a specie, we are long past the tipping point of all of humanity abandoning these beliefs in favor of seeing the world through the commonality of one Earth, one humanity. I think this is a tragedy that has been man-made and feels entirely irreconcilable based upon devout belief systems that are generational.
As someone who is not seeing the world through those filters, I cannot help but wonder why if there truly were a deity that has created all of us, why they would not bestow kindness, compassion, understanding, communication, warmth and tolerance into everyone. Why are they allowing us to become ever more violent, non-communicative, ignorant, arrogant and destructive? All of the teachings in the respective religions that dominate the planet teach exactly the opposite qualities. So if the teachings are massively disparate than the daily practices, in my humble opinion, whatever deity could have possibly existed would reappear plain as day and straighten this out right away. A God of magnitude would never ever tolerate their directive to be polluted by a human ego.
The only way I can find my own peace with any of this, is to continue to share wisdom from wherever I find it. I work to change the planet, one thought at a time and I hope that my simple work spreads so that others might eventually find their way into a more harmonious existence with one another.
You might say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will live as one.
Happy Sunday!
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