#59

The World vs. Religion: The nature of things according to Yours Truly

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The more and more I delve into faith and the nature of things, the more and more I seem to delve into religious thought. Also, the more and more I consider and the more and more I look, I’m beginning to see trends throughout religions and throughout thought. Not only am I finding trends in thought, but I’m also finding trends in nature as well (and to some extent, instinct as well). The more you examine these various trends, I believe you can start to see a weird sort of ‘logic’ to people and to faith. For example, delving into the Tao recently is only deepening and strengthening my belief that is VERY MUCH about the same thing the Kabbalah is. At same time, they see the same thing, accept the same things and hold the same things up high, yet they express that cherishing in very different ways. The more and more you examine, you notice these similarities all over the place, from shamanism to the Greek pantheon to the more familiar christian God. Despite glaring differences on the surface and in makeup, in essence the beliefs (from religious to every-day) all hold a very similar essence underlying all of them.

So which is right? Seems to be a big task, but I don’t really think it is. In honesty, I believe the answer is hideously simple; everything is just a different way of reaching out to the one ultimate creative force behind everything. For simplicity, I’ll call this God. In shinto, the belief goes that everything has a spirit called a kami. There are lesser kami for very very small things, like a single rock or a single small plant or a single tiger. There are more powerful kami for larger things, such as mountains, all of the tigers or all waterfalls. There are even more powerful ones for even more fundamental forces, such as the sun, anger, or love. The focus of shinto is not a binding belief structure (such as christianity or judaism have), nor does it have a holiest place. Nor does it have a ‘holiest’ kami. It doesn’t focus on an afterlife either. What shinto is about is about focusing on this life and living in harmony with the kami and with other people. Living in harmony with, quite literally, absolutely everything on the planet. Judaism, on the other hand, particularily from a kabbalist angle but overall as well, believes that there is a piece of God in everything, in absolutely everything, from the rocks to the tigers to people. There is also very strict emphasis in living in harmony with the world around you as well as with all people because everything has a piece of God inside and thus, being uncaring for say, the tigers would be the same as being uncaring for God himself. Bruheem kol demuyay eloha; Blessed are all God’s self-protraits. Looking at the issue personally, I have yet to find anything that speaks to the effect that all experience on earth is of Him as well, but I cannot see how there can any other way of being. If all things are of Him and from Him, how can experiences (no matter what sort), being from Him and the creation of the world, be anything but another self-portrait? Perhaps it’s a distorted self-protrait, but it’s still the same if you look deep enough. Even the angry times, even the vicious times, even the times where you’d rather die; he is everything. And that’s just the ultimate similarity. Spirits in everything and living in harmony with those spirits and with people. Living in harmony with the world and living in harmony with other people. The underlying principal is the same; living in harmony with the world and all things in it.

No matter what you look at, you can see similar underlying factors. So, to me, the importance lies not in what one is right, but rather looking for what is being left out. Shamanism heralds and worships aspects of the same God that-is-in-everything for Judaism, yet it leaves out other aspects of Him. Shinto has the principal of Harmony and unity, yet it lacks self-betterment (as well as the betterment for others) in a large way. The Greek Pantheon hit very very effectively on the nature of things and what it means to be human as well as the aspects of the mind, body, and the world as well as various aspects of the ultimate God (zeus being one, aries being another, etc.), yet it lacked the cohesive ultimate God. So at heart, the problem to any religion is not that it’s believing the wrong thing, it’s just not including everything. Absolutely every one, including Judaism which I’m learning to love so well.

With that in mind I find it slightly difficult to believe in any given religion exclusively; for at heart I respect and believe in them all: bruheem kol demuyay eloha. At the same time, I’m also seeing various human-injected interpretations of the same things which, while often are apt and logical in some ways, lack depth. Everything from simple money collection to believing one aspect of God is the best to merely asking forgiveness from Jesus and then recieving it. (despite no work towards mending the rift of disharmony one caused to have to ask forgiveness, despite no work towards making yourself a better person). And then there are issues tacked on to religion simply because people in positions of authority have thought it worthy to be deemed so. The Crusades are a perfect example of this, as are a great many other, smaller issues (one of the biggest being sexual issues). While there are some reasons behind the reasoning, there is absolutely no reason to believe that city of Jerusalem is the most holy place on earth. EVERYTHING came from God, everything is equally important; there is nobody and no place ‘more holy’ than anyone else and there is nobody and no place ‘less holy’ as well. There are those who focus on being more harmonious and have more faith than others, yes, but that doesn’t make you a better person. It just means you operate in a different way. Bruheem kol demuyay eloha.

Thus, I find it hard to completely believe in absolutely everything; there is too much that has merely been ‘added on’ by various priests, rabbis, shamans, monks and others. People often may have the right idea, but at the same time they’re prone to failure and mistakes (we all are, after all). So it’s best to look, then, to the similarities and the things that bring all the beliefs together, to look for the unities and harmonies that naturally occur on the planet. Then you can look, observe and begin to understand. Thus, personally I believe that the world itself on a large scale is the best ‘gospel’ to live by. Thus, I focus on the world more than religion, though religion, too, has a lot of powerful and extremely good message underlying it’s words. It’s all about the meaning behind the words; too often do people forget this. And too often do people fail to see that the meanings behind the words are not exclusive….they belong to all the world and that we, as human beings, have all noticed the same things despite distance, despite different cultures, despite lack of communication between each other. I think that this, beyond all other things, speaks to the existance of ultimate truths behind the world today as well as humanity’s place in this world.