INTO POSSIBILY OUR GREATEST RABBIT HOLE. LET'S SEE IF WE CAN COME OUT.

As a teacher who speaks to the art of living, I find it an absolutely necessity to belive in some form of higher power. I can tell you, like so many others, that everything I have learned in my life has come from something other than myself, beyond myself. Be it another person, a cat or dog, a child, the ocean, or perhaps something I can't put my finger on. We are too narrow in our construction, and too limited in our experiences in our youth to able to completely trust in our selves to have all the answers. In fact, we sort of do, but it is often that someone or something has to unlock those for us. This is especially true when we get into the spiritual, what I call the intangible nature of life. To share such experiences is important, and to nourish the possibility for things to unlock our wisdom and guide us forward is essentially religion in a nutshell. I would also argue, to put our spiritual experiences into some form of context and to give them a language of some sort. To this avail, our religions attempt this for better or worse, to give a language to our relayionship to "spirit", to the energy of life. Yet all religions become human affairs. They all suffer the challenge of becoming tribal in nature, in that we can so easily demonize the tribes that are not ours. Scriptures are held as so incredibly sacred, and yet all sciptures have been rewritten and reinterpreted over time, leaving them suspect to being so devoutly attached to every word of them.

As people, we tolerate each other in times of prosperity, and we separate in times of fear . And this always shows up in our religions. To this, there is no answer. It is just what we do, and it makes us realize that all human affairs are double edged swords. Things that can be immensely empowering, or things that can be cruel and selfish in the name of whatver name we want to use. Again, I present no answer to this. Remember, this is our ultimate rabbit hole, and rabbit holes always lead us right back to where we started.. For those who seek that one religion that will solve all of humanities problems, I make this one simple argument to prove the tribal nature of thing.S there is no single major religion on earth that has not divided into factions that disagree. That is to say, the minute any religion becomes dominant it splits. And then we are back to who is right and who wins. FOr those who think their religion and God will solve our problems if everyone just gets on board, take a look at your religion. Is everyone on the same page? Maybe your churhc is, bt your religion is vastly divied, and some religions have have erupted into intense violence over who has the right version. So, please, be religious if it serves you, but put aside your pride. Faith, the hands of people does what everything does in the hands of people.

In my personal travels and connections, what I have discovered is that religions provide the opportunity to create community. I have met wise and ignorant people under the roof of every religiou splace I have visited. And I have felt love and compassion under many roofs fronted by the signs of various faiths, and I have been in many religious places that where dry, devoid of energy, people just going through the motions to check a box in their lives.

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE?

Some of the wisest people I have met see religions holding certain pieces of the puzzle. Christianity holds the notion of being able to be lifted and saved in a moment. And for life to forgive us for who we have been, what others ahve done, to give us the energy to evolve without fear or guilt. And it puts forth the powerful notion of the trinity. That is there is the creator of all things, there is us humans who are prone to error, and there is a messeneger in the middle, who can guide people to best case scenarios given their human nature. This is not Christinaity alone, but Christianity quite loudly and assertively presents these cornerstones of faith and surrender, with Jesus as the bridge.

The most peaceful people in world I have found to be Buddhist. The image of the buddha is calm and in a way, rather androgenous. There is both a mascualine and feminine quality to the Budhha. Buddhism and Zen philospohy ask us to observe, and to behave nobly. We are not asked to blindly follow anything. We are asked to find comfort in stillness and then watch and take notes, especially nature which mimics much of how humans behave. I could also rgue that Buddhists are some of the most forgiving people in the world. Something I know pisses many Christians off, just mentioning, but the truth is the truth. There are people on the planet much more forgiving then most Christians. There, I said it. So, I must be anti Christian? Not at all. I know many incredible Christians and coonect strongly with what I would call proper Christians. I sm s big fan of Faith and people wh

Islam is an interesting one. It is so unfortunate that hisyory has created such a violent path for Islam. Yet, this is sort of the path for humanity as a whole. It is also unfortunate that Islam, like every religion on the planet, has been separated into factions who disagree so strongly, even violently, on some things that have been introduced to the religion over the course of its history. Islam prefers not to have any human images associated with its faith, which I find profound. In doing so, it asks people to see the cosmic nature of God, to reflect deeper on the intangible nature of spirit. The patriarch of Islam, Muhammad was a warrior, literally, a general. He had a haram of wives and wasn't afraid to go to war to achieve his means. And yet, his message was not to be the lamb if everyone is eating you for dinner. Violence is not the center of Islam. It was means for the downtrodden tribes of the MIddle East to bond together and seek justice and equality. In this, we have a fair argument, a piece of the puzzle. What do we do if we are being walked over? Do we really just become lambs to the slaughter? Does anybody really practice that as a civialization to some good end?

What about the Jewish faith? Oh goodness. This is challenging. Isreal is the only place I can think of where we refer to all of its people in religious terms. IF someone comes from Syria, we might ask, are you a Muslim? But if someone comes from Isreal, we say, oh your a Jew! Is that good or bad? I don;t don't know, just strange. When speaking abou the Jewish culture it is hard to not feel like you are dancing around stereotypes. Again, we say Jewish culture, not Isreali culture. In this, it is far easier to stereotype and not acknowldge thae vast diversity that is within the Jewish culture and its faith. Stereotype coming, but a positive one, while every culture has had to be creative in its approach to survival, the Jewish culture has been amazing in its ability to find creative ways to prosper and survive. And while some pople might see this as an argument to judge the culture, is the foundation for much of what we see as finincial freedom and opportunity in Western civilization. The West is founded on the notion of the underdog tryig to find its way from under the thimb of kings and empires. The Jewish culture has spent centuries being such an underdog with th same task. And this is why the Jewish culuture has such a strong influence on the West, and has helped to create many pathways, and set examples for how to ascend in life through hard work and creativity. Yes, every culture casts a shadow, and there are cultures that have a tremendous shadow hanging over them.

And then we have Hindusim, One of the richest sources of myth and storytelling. I know, no one wants to attach the notion of myth to their religion, but myths are wonderful things. We lost the ability to appreciate myths for what they are and sometimes I have to wonder if the people who created them knew they where myths, until others decided one day to make them reality on some random day. There is an undeniable complexity to the interaction of personalities among people in life, If we look at the divine nature of things, there is also a complex relationship of what happens "under the hood" of life. I do not know if any other religion has painted such a complete story of these rleations as Hinduism. The challenge, of cours,e is what do you do when you have hundreds of Gods? Can you put them in a meaningful context? Can you pull the meaning out of the storytelling, or are you going to go on an endless act of bowing to one statue after the other? And can you apply this to your internal wisdom, or are all these Gods going to become external things that leave you feeling disempowered waiting for them to arrive on your doorstep? Again, all religions leave us with our selves. We can pull truth, or ignorance out of any of them. There is an immense intelligence that comes out of India. A very long lineage of wisdom. It is an important place in terms of the history of the world, and who isn't spellbound by the sound of a sitar? I would not consider myself a Hindi, but countless people have studied the Hindi religion as a means to understand a greater story of how what could be called divine energy of life is expressed through the life.

SO, WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?

Honestly, I am not completely sure, but I have found living wisely is a thing of permission. That is rarely do others give us the permission to be wise. We need to give our selves permission to be wise. The minute we believe in something, take any stand, there are those who see us as ignorant or blind, perhaps evil. There will be those who will question our character and intelligence, perhaps sanity. Yet every religion has something which leaves the door open for others cast doubt on us. A reason to make us worng. All we need is one sentence, once principle, one story, that is a little out of whack and then we are obviously the delusional fool, and maybe we are in some cases. Welcome to life. Even if we take a broad approach and accept the wisdom and compassion that lies in so many faiths and religions, to whatever degree it does, we can become a devil worshipper to many, amisguided fool who is going to hell for thinikng the the love and wisdom of god could descend through so many, if they so choose. And then, to add madness to all of this, almost every religion, has scripture buried in it to address this very point. That we must careful deciding who is representing God or not. That deception or grace can lie behind any door. And that, just when we think we know, we don't and we aren't supposed to.

The point of thisis that I am asking you to give yourself permission to seek your relationship with God on your terms. Wherever you wind up, there will be people who love and support you and people who will think you are the devil out to ruin their existence. Welcome to life.