You can be spiritual without the church. God will love you even if you don’t pay tithes or call him/her Brahma, Yahweh or Allah. It is possible to use both the teachings of Jesus and Buddha to chart your own spiritual journey. You can worship God through nature just as you can slap a tambourine in a choir stand. You can find truth in all of this creation not just in one book.
The one thing I love about spirituality is that it allows you to chart your own spiritual path, call the Creator what you want, use whatever methods for connection that you like but most important it allows you to maintain your own identity, culture and heritage with no conformity. Spirituality transcends race and religious beliefs and gives opportunity for true freedom.
It’s important in this age of conformity, cliques, clubs, denominations and social groupings that you be yourself. Society would make you believe that you can’t know God unless you belong to a church and there are several scriptures that can prove both sides of the argument but common sense should let you know that God is bigger than a church building, loves all people and has created many paths to meet with him/her. It’s time to come out the denominational and religious boxes and begin to experience God for yourself not according to what someone else says.
We are getting ready to enter a new age of great spirituality in which religious traditions and lies will have to take a back seat. I welcome this age with full enthusiasm because it’s time mankind evolve to a higher level of existence and thinking. Religion has done its job of dividing, conquering, misleading and murdering and if you look at the state of the world today and some of the misfits running it you can see that religion has brought us down to an animal like state. I look at the Christian crusades that killed and persecuted millions in the name of God, forced indigenous people to give up their spirituality and take on theirs. I look at Jihad and see the millions down through the ages that have been persecuted and killed in the name of Allah and at those who were forced to take on Islam in order to be spared death. I am more convinced than ever that spirituality is the way.
I don’t hate religion. I feel that some people may need religion and that’s okay but for the most part there are a lot of intelligent people who see the truth and desire to move on in their spirituality and beliefs but religion persecutes, chastises, labels and denounces those who step outside of tradition in order to pursue their own path. If organized religion would be tolerant of others beliefs and respectful of freedom of choice then perhaps I wouldn’t be so defensive.
Here is my dream:
What can bring people of all races, cultures and heritage together under one happy banner? Spirituality. One of the things I love most about spirituality is that I am free to be me. I am free to pursue God in whatever way works for me, while holding on to my culture and identity. It’s beautiful and wonderful when people of all walks of life can come together for the sole purpose of worshipping God, calling the Creator by whatever name they choose, presenting themselves in their own manner without fear of being judged or rejected. I believe in my heart that mankind will one day reach this point and my only hope is that I live to not only see it but be a part of it.
