It's still easiest for me to say I'm an atheist. There's far less confusion, far less muddy water. The conversation is always short, albeit pointless. The truth is, however far more complicated. I am, to summarize succinctly (yeah, as if I ever do that), an agnostic spiritualist.
Do I believe in God? Kind of. I think I believe in the same God Yehoshua believed in (that's Jesus to all of you Christians). This isn't the God described in the old testament (who's origin is a conflation of polytheistic near-eastern gods and the god of Israel, YHW). In dead the languistically accurate translation of Genesis is "El created the heavens..." and "The Gods created man..." El, by the way, is a name for the local equivalent of Cronus, or Saturn. If the plural form Elohim is to refer to the children of El (think Zeus), then there's parallels between Greek mythology and ancient Jews. In fact, Sumerian and Jewish Genesis stories read extremely similarly. Then came to mono-theist movement (Moses), and the one God to rule them all. Think about it. "Thou shalt not worship any gods before me." That's not "There are no other gods to worship but me." Even with the birth of mono-theistic Judaism, they still believed in other gods, but they were to worship only THEIR god.
Yehoshua spent much of his time re-defining scripture. Scripture had been used, primarily, as a means of the church to control the population (as is the case of every religion). Yehoshua stood up and simply said that the church was wrong. While he pulled from the Torah often, most times he turned the traditional interpretation on its head. Think about it. The Torah says to stone the sinner. Yehoshua said that those without sin should cast the stones. He ultimately re-defined God as a loving, forgiving, tolerant God, rather than the petty, vengeful, blood-thirsty god of the Torah.
I'm shaped by my past, including my indoctrination in Christianity, my subsequent atheism, my voyage into psychic, and the coincidences. I feel a powerful energy, but it isn't what created us, not physically. I believe it to be a spiritual manifestation of us. Whether it created our souls or results from them, it seems to be a part of them, linking all of us together. The pain of one man is the pain of all men (and I use man and men in the non-sex specific way, as short for human). I feel, with this energy, that a wound of one person becomes a wound for it, and this matches the non-violent, loving, and tolerant philosophy that Yehoshua preached. If I'm right about that, which I don't claim to be, then being close to this energy would allow you to speak directly to someone's soul, which could help motivate physical changes. Perhaps heal. Perhaps resurrect.
What is a soul to me? The soul is an energy form, an extension of us. I believe that even animals have them, that anything with a sophisticated nervous system does. At the least, the soul is a byproduct of our own nervous system. When we die, that signature doesn't go away, but rather many things can happen to it. If the soul is at peace, then it can be absorbed into the collective. If it is not, it could remain in place, or could be destroyed. Either way it could find a similar nervous system and re-embed. I believe this link between souls to be the key to telepathy, and the physical ramifications to be the basis of telekinetics.
None of my beliefs, however, should matter to anyone else. This is where I am, and I can no more say I'm right than anyone else. The truth is, we don't know yet. We may never really know. Humans lack infinite capacity, despite our self-confidence. I know that there is no one religion that is right, because I know that one cannot be right and all others wrong.
Religion has within it two opposing premises. The first, it is rooted in the mechanics of control. That is, religion is the means by which a few elite maintain power over the masses. Even after Yehoshua worked to undermine the idea of a central church, Rome made one in which he is their Messiah. The existence of that church directly contradicts his teachings.
Yet religion is also rooted in us. It is an attempt to understand our world and ourselves, and as such, there is wisdom in it. The less power-centric the religion, the more wisdom it seems to possess. To ignore such wisdom is foolish.
Religion must be viewed, overall, for what it is. This has left me to answer the question of my religion very differently than I once did. My answer now is, "The question is more important than the answer." The fool may take this to mean the question "what religion are you" is important, as it is not. What this means is that wondering, and attempting to determine if there is a God, is more important than finding the answer. Why? As soon as you know the answer, you stop looking for it. Since none of use really CAN know the answer, than closest we can come is to keep searching, keep trying to understand, and keep seeking to learn. Regardless of your religion, this process will bring you far closer to the answer than some man on a stage. I'm not talking about a speaker at a "self help" seminar, either, though they are one and the same.
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