thats fair albeit unrealistic expectation. However, what so called Chrisitains have done throughout history really doesn't effect one's own ability to follow the teachings to ego transcendence.
its like saying guns are bad because they have killed people. would that prevent you from using a gun if a situation arose where you needed one though?
All Im doing is reporting my experience. I used to be one of those spiritual but non but not religious people and a devout atheist prior to that. I owned a Bible for the sole purpose of disproving it.
After expewriencing ego transcendence on drugs, I decided I want to pursue spiritual growth, but I did not know to do it, besides reading some spiritual books and pathetic attempts at meditation which I usually became bored with after 10 or 15 minutes. I was solely dependent on drugs for my spiritual experiences and it was very frustrating. yet i could never have imagined myself joining a church, alone a christian church. i also believed that gnostic christianity was the only right christianity.
i even got caught up in the teachings of a new age organization (which I now believe is incredibly corrupt) that mixed gnostic concepts with eastern ones. this orginzation pretty much did nothing but critisice the catholic church non stop.
i started to feel disollusioned because i no longer believed (actually i never really believed in the first place, but some part of me wanted it to be true because i kept reading it) in the new age teachings. it was one of those websites with channeled information, im sure youve seen them before. Yet I found blatant misinformation about the real world which could be proven with a quick google search presented as channelled information from Jesus Christ. I figured if I cant even trust "Jesus" on earthly matters, why should I trust him on heavenly matters?
so that ended my foray into the new age movement. yet i was still left with this problem. I was very unhappy in my life, always had been except when i was a young child. ever since starting kindergarten, i had been pretty miserable except during summers when i could be alone. I always struggled to fit and get along with the other kids. in college, i struggled with not knowing what to study, because i didnt really want to do anything. But I knew that I had experienced something very special on psychedelics, something i could not forget no matter how hard i tried. I felt like they offered a promise to heal my messed up psyche that caused me to be so miserable all my life. I felt like i had contacted the divine. yet i could not seem to integrate the experiences into my every day life. I became very depressed because nothing in life was satisfactory to me. every time id hear a beautiful piece of music or catch sight of a sunset, i would feel filled with a longing, a longing for the paradise id experienced on psychedelics.
but i just didnt understand how to make it a reality rather than just a fantasy. the reason the new age website appealed to me was because in part because it offered spiritual "tools", which were mostly incredibly long prayers which were so ridiculously long that you never wanted to begin saying one for fear that you wouldn't have the motivation to finish. but thats when it hit me. i realized that the new age website, was really just a ripoff of traditional religion. sure it presented as being superior and all but when it really came down to it, what did they say to do? to pray. a couple years later, i found a good LSD connection which was a new drug for me, in the past I had used only marjuana and mushrooms.
for some reason, LSD made me feel compelled to study the Bible and the catholic church. it was quite strange but every time i would trip, i would feel like i had suddenly become a devout christian and i actually liked the feeling. LSD also allowed me to peer deep into my psyche and explore things like what effect prayer had. I could see how saying hail marys caused certain energies to flow into my mind, which brought me nearer to God. So LSD helped to give me the essential thing i had been lacking before, faith. on LSD it was obvious to me that things like praying, going to church, receiving sacraments had effects on the psyche. In fact, thats why people do them. Thats why almost every culture that has ever existed has performed rituals. People do them because they work. It might seem strange to a scientific minded person, which I used to be, but thats just the kind of beings we are.
so after seeing that these things work, i decided to experiment more with these new forms of energy. I became catholic and started going to mass and receiving communion, which had such a powerful effect on me that i cannot believe it was mere placebo, especially because i was so dissolutioned with life at the time that i didn't really care that i was receiving communion or expect anything from it.
i also began studying the Bible and i realized that i had been making things unecessarily complicated and confusing. the Bible to me, is basically the story of good and evil and the message is that good will be rewarded while evil will be punished. the reason its so long is because humans are so thick skulled that we need it drilled home to us continually.
but anyway, i now finally understand what this spirituality business that has confused me so many for so many years is all about. its simply being good instead of evil. it comes down to having good will towards all people. Its so simple.
The different spiritual tools like prayer, meditation, sacraments, etc are aids to help us change our hearts from evil to good. practicing spirituality in a structered way, like under the guise of a particular religion, is a very good way to instill good spiritual habits. Some souls need that structure and I think I am one of them, because I am so disorganized. another reason ive found that a church or outside influence is helpful is because it tells you what to do. if instead you create your own spiritual practice, your ego will trick you into creating one that it doesn't find threatening.
so thats how i came to be a practicing catholic and its nice. its nice to meet other people in your church who wouldnt hesitate to help you if you ever were in trouble, its nice to meet people with spiritual interests in this insanely materialistic country, its nice to have a priest you can trust and one of the priests at my church is probably the nicest person ive ever met. he is from india and everyone loves him.
the inside of the church is beautiful, the music is beautiful, i love the medieval feel to it. you see, the catholic church is an extremely medieval organization. very little has changed in the past 1,000 years and I have always been fascinated by that time period in history, so the fact that there is this relic leftover from another era and I can go there every week and do pretty much the exact same thing that my ancestors did in Europe in the middle ages, i find pretty cool.
i just feel like christianity and religion in general is so misunderstood in modern times. i look at it as a means giving structure to the spiritual life. it's really just a reflection of the human psyche. you see, the stories in the Bible, the mythology, the image of a man hanging on a cross, the beautiful church architecture which glorifies God, the rituals, etc of all these things have powerful psychological effects which help reinforce the teachings. the reason humans developed these things and they caught on so well, is because they are powerful images and stories.
sure, we could make spirituality all dry and boring. we could explain the concepts without any stories, no noah's ark, no david and golieth, no epic battles, no kings, princes, magicians and beautiful maidens, no adam and eve and a serpent, no churches, etc. but those are the very things which add color and humanity to it. they make it more fun and interesting.
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