MY SPIRITUAL BELIEFS - PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

My religious beliefs:

I am intensely spiritual but I do not believe in organized religion.  Personally I think spirituality is every bit as personal as sex, actually more so, and should be practiced in the privacy of one’s home.  Spirituality should not be a public spectacle but between each soul and their creator.  Personally, I do not need another mortal being interfering in my relationship with my creator, nor do I believe myself qualified to tutor anyone else on their spirituality and relationship with their creator. 

I have read many different holy books, read about all different types of organized spirituality, and am extremely open-minded and understanding about peoples’ various expressions of their faith.  However you pray, I support it, and in fact find religion an interesting subject, academically. 

However, I also believe that organized religion has caused more war and devastation to the human race than any other concept on this planet.  It makes faith a competitive endeavor and should be abolished, or at the very, very least, made non-denominational across the board, world-wide so that the conflicts are removed.  

I think nature-based religions are the closest to getting it right.  Even Jesus Christ said: split a piece of wood and I am there.  Lift a stone and you will find me.  God is inside you and all around you, not in the buildings of wood and stone. 

I’ve always believed that calling churches God’s houses was arrogant.  God lives in God’s own creations, not those of humans.  My creator is in my heart all the time, and I feel more spiritual walking on a beach, or in a woods, or with the sun warming my face than I ever did inside a church.

I suppose if I had to choose a religion, it would be Native American spirituality, specifically the Longhouse Religion of the Iroquois, because I have ancestral connections to the Oneidas and have learned some of the rituals and practiced them privately. 

I attended a Catholic high school that was very progressive, and was involved with that religion for several years, but I found much hypocrisy in the church.  In fact, I was so incensed one Sunday that I left church and never went back.  It had nothing to do with Christ, but in the Catholic church itself.  And the thing that offended me was just a tiny symptom of the cancer that grows in Catholicism. 

I saw a sticker on some guy’s backpack once that said: “Jesus save me from your followers.”  And that is a perfect summation of all religions for me.  It all boils down to human interpretation of the creator, which is imperfect at best.