I don't know how to start so excuse me if some contents are out of place. I grew up in a Jewish family and despite the visits to temple and hebrew school I never really grasped any of these biblical stories as fact. I believed that they were "just stories" to set examples for how people should live and be a good person. Junior high I got a bit depressed, turned to drugs and lived apathetically as an atheist.
Looking back, I'll say I was pretty blind. I guess The Thing was to goto punk shows, smoke pot, and just make fun of each other. I wasn't doing really well in school and I screwed myself out of being on the track team due to my low gpa. One thing led to another and I delved into depression through using x and god help me if I was going to make it out alive.
I found this place called The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park. They have music festivals and other events throughout the year there. At first, it was just a place where I could find any drug I wanted and go nuts, but it became something far greater than any drug binge.
This was the first place I ate that special fungus that changed my whole perspective of life. I'm not going to go into explicit detail but I basically came out of that park believing in god.
I don't know how to explain it but I just felt so happy about everything around me. Being that the Suwannee River runs through the park, I swam in it and just felt amazing.(wasn't tripping) I just had this incredible earthy feeling and in a sense, I guess I could say it was spiritually uplifting. I felt a greater picture of everything and didn't know how to express it. It was surreal how "everything" appeared.
It was fantastic. The utmost greatest example of feeling alive or reborn. And I cried as we all left the park the next day.
It was the most beautiful thing that I ever experienced and I cannot even begin to describe it. Just the feeling... I don't know... but every time I go back, even when I don't trip, I get the same feeling and get choked up while leaving.
No other festival or campgrounds could mimic the vibes and atmosphere that place radiated.
I goto UF now... One of my teammates has been trying to get me to come to his youth group meetings for the longest time and finally last friday I went. I was curious to see what they do and say. Never been to a church in my life and the only accounts of church I care to recall are the ones of the black churches that preach the gospel like it's about to go out of style.
But when I came to this meeting, it was clear to me. All these kids, one way or another, came to congrugate with those who want to feel closer to god. And I paralelled it to me being at that park or just anywhere outdoors for that matter. I never understood why this guy would skip some of his workouts to goto these meetings as much as possible until then. I didn't feel anything from it. I didn't like the pastor and felt like it was a cult-like arrangement, but I guess many activities could be deemed cult-like. It didn't feel natural. I didn't like it.
This Jewish kid came to talk to me afterwards. I asked, "Why're you here if you're Jewish? Shouldn't you be at Hillel House?" He went on about how he's a part of a Jewish group called Jews for Jesus and talked to me about God and what I believed. I told him I believe in God and don't think I should pick up a bible to validate my belief. AND THEN he said, "you don't." It blew my mind to hear this from someone who enjoys reading the bible so much. He went on with this how Adam walked with God without any bible to live by. He then went into how one must accept Jesus to be with God.... blablablablabla and I felt like I was cleverly being talked into this Christianty or being a part of if this Jews for Jesus. Then the pastor came and made me feel awkward.
Ultimately this is my never-ending question... How can one accept Jesus and goto heaven when another religion just as ancient has a different set of rules to obtain nirvana, eternal salvation, or whatever the brighter end of the tunnel may be?
I just want to love, believe and live with just believing in God. Am I wrong? Can anybody be right?
anyhow, thought I'd share my thoughts... sorry for being so long
*edited - Spirituality belongs in the title.
-------------------- The best way to live is to be like water For water benefits all things and goes against none of them It provides for all people and even cleanses those places a man is loath to go In this way it is just like Tao ~Daodejing
Edited by Cracka_X (07/20/06 08:22 PM)
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"I just want to love, believe and live with just believing in God. Am I wrong? Can anybody be right?"
Yeah man, I'm glad I read your post. I'm in this group called "I hate living in the Bible Belt" and this guy came and evangelized (it's an online group) and so I was talking to him about things, about circular dogma by assuming the Bible is right, and using it as proof of God, etc....
and we kept messaging back and forth but we kept getting more and more unwilling to listen to each other.
I mean.... if Jesus was here to save all of mankind, and there were no other way, he would be making all other religions obsolete... so why hasn't that happened? Why are there still so many to choose from? If he's the surest escape vessel, the easiest no brainer way to ascend......
why aren't people ascending?
I'm a bit puzzled as to what this Jesus thing actually is. People say "I'm saved" ..... saved from what? What does being saved mean? Is it like saying "I'm white" or "I like Tool" ?
See, if a Buddhist said "I'm saved" that means something profound, because he must have attained nirvana, or stream entry, and he has fruits and results.
What fruits do you have by praying "Jesus, I believe in you, come into my heart."
Well ideally, Jesus would come into your heart, open your heart chakra, either at once, or in time, and you would begin a transcendce ..... why then, if Jesus saves..... does he save so few? Becuase if Jesus saved, that SIMPLY, wouldn't all the catholics not have gone on crusades in the dark ages? Wouldn't all the Puritans have not killed people for eating ergot and tripping out, thinking they are witches? Wouldn't most of the Christians right now not support any war whatsoever, and be critical of the mis-appropriations of Jesus's teachings by the current establishment.....
wouldn't they be against censorship, though still against foul content? Wouldn't they be loving, awakened, deep people, inspired to tears by looking at a tree, or a smile on a young child's face. Embracing Osama and saying, man, Osama, we love you, please stop the fighitng.... and man Bush, we love you, please stop the fighting. and man, Macho Man Randy Savage, we love you, please stop the fighting?
What is this salvation?
So to me the ultimate catcher is.... does Jesus REALLY save? Or is it just kind of a thing, where it makes you less afraid of death, more happy becuase you congregate with your peers, and you gradually learn and study about love, eventually becoming more Jesus like, but he's just a role model, an archetype to mold yourself into?
If so then doesn't Jesus not save at all, and YOU are employing gnosticism.... i.e. trying to be Jesus, and transform yourself?
I mean, God is supposed to intervene (and I think this happens a lot actually) and instill a direct, quantifiable, perceptible transformation and salvatoin into you just for believing, right?
or is it such a huge gradual process? If all the rewards are in heaven, then you don't have to work for them? Because if you have to work for them, you get the rewards before heaven, in addition to the assurance of heaven by fruit of reward?
It is very easy to see it as cultish and brainwashy, and to therefore side with the gnostics.... Jesus was enlightened, he said, look dudes, love, tolerate, question authorities....... and then people were like "no that won't do" and they started talking about hell and making a religion out of things.
I've heard Jesus didn't want people to start a religion after him.
I dunno.
The other issues is scripture vs experience. If unity with God is a humbling and naked experience, there shant be words to find for it.... so why do we expect to laboriously pine over words in order to get to God... shouldn't we get rid of words, and judgements, and ideas, and just be, so that in the silence of being we can finally tune in?
The brain of course, puts puzzle pieces together, and when it gets caught in dogma, it eventually synthesizes sense out of it, painting an alteration of your reality, and perhaps this paves the way to freedom.
But honeslty, if I have a say, rather than God having the ultimate say.... to me it sounds like... Christianity is a layman's religion.... so very very simple and mainly for those who really really need structure and rigid rules, in order to feel it.
Jesus.... well.... it'd be cool if he's real, and that he saves. But for me, his religion gives him a bad rap. Not his fault though.....
Now there have been a few times I felt Jesus's love..... 1) when I attended a hell sermon and knew I was fucked for eternity in agony, and then attained salvatoin through praying for forgiveness by confessing my sins with everyone else. that felt great.... but it was being free from an artificial hell that felt great.... but boy did i love love love everyone/thing for about 5 minutes afterward, and I wanted to hold the love forever. 2. similar situations with that youth group. 3. taking LSA and learning some things about letting thoughts disappear without holding onto them, feeling love, being convinced then that Jesus is real and this is his love feeling.
--- marijuana makes me think Jesus is the devil though, he looks like a loony cartoon character with a devil right behind the skin. curious.
maybe it is trying to teach me something about judgements, face values, and duality.
marijuana is not a lovey drug though, LSA is.
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My beef is that it is not Jesus that turns people into Christians, it is HELL...... "Jesus loves you" .... welll okay, that's nice. Or 'IF YOU DON'T ACCEPT JESUS YOU WILL BURN IN HELLFIRE, AND IT WILL NEVER END!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW TERRIBLE THAT IS? YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE. yOU WILL GO THERE FOR NOT BELIEVING, AND YOU WILL GO THERE FOR LYING. YOU ARE GUILTY!!!!"
now THAT has you saying "okay man... okay... I believe in Jesus and I will join your reigion, please save me"
but a simple "Jesus loves you" is like "ahh that's nice....." and you go about your day.
hell is the biggest conversion point it seems like to me, it's what keeps you trapped in the dogma, and trapped in a false duality... not recognizing that yin/yang are part of a whole, and each contain both....... unable to think critically because you have fear blocking your exit out of the faith. surely if the world is logical, the church did this to keep people adhering to them.
now sure, many many people might be moved to tears by the story of Jesus just simply giving himself for our futures, and they might convert just on that alone.... but the hell thing.....
well look at tv. hell sells. ----------------- but this brings me to another pondering... is the hell thing there to intiate you into, and beyond your deepest darkest fears, so that you can be free of them? Do they deliberately put you through hell by teaching you about hell, so you can step through your shadow, and then Christ is applicable as being eternally saved, because you now have faith that no matter how terrified you get, it won't matter, because you wont' manifest the deepest, darkest fears, because Jesus is there...
is that what it's for? see that makes a lot of sense..... throwing you into the fire and showing you that you have a way out, always...... it plants Jesus so deep into your mind, and links him so much to the fear mechanism, that if you start dying one day you will automatically turn to him and feel better.
and maybe in that way, Jesus saves from hell, and brings eternal life, because he helps you transcend death by completely embracing and transmuting the dark side of it... and he's planted right there in your head right next to death, because you were initiated into fear, and brought out of it?
like a baby needing it's blanket.... except you are promised a blanket that never disappears and will always see you through, and so your subconscious believes it, weaning fear of death away and allowing you to explore the other side once you do die, without fear, and in faith??
and then there's the astral plane.... belief systems setting up a heaven realm and making Jesus real, even if he isn't?
see it can get pretty tricky. i could be wrong about everything and the Bible could be how it is.
-------------------- I am the MacDaddy of Heimlich County, I play it Straight Up Yo! ....I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human...... Om Namah Shivaya, I tell you What!
Edited by leery11 (07/19/06 04:44 PM)
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