I will preface what follows with this qualifier. I am not lost, nor do I need to be "saved". I live my life according to my beliefs. They have worked very well for me through out my life. I stand ready to revise them if somehow they prove to be inadequate or take me in a direction I don't want to go. I haven't always followed the correct path. Sometimes I have wandered, sometimes I have deliberately violated a principle to see if it works or not. Every time, I have been unhappy and have suffered bad consequences. I also have no desire to convert anyone to my system. I discovered it myself and I believe that is the best way for someone to have a belief - by discovering it for themselves. That process is painful, and takes a lot of effort. But, I think that no belief is meaningful if it isn't "yours" If you don't "own" - it if it hasn't come from within yourself and become part of you.
I will start with the simplistic view of a child. When I was about eight, I decided that I was special. Why I thought this, is still a mystery to me. My parents certainly didn't think so, and neither did most of the world. From that dichotomy - my belief in myself and others lack of belief in me began a search for the source of this belief. What made me think I was special? Why was I alive? Was there a purpose to my life?
Because I was a difficult child, and my home was an unhappy place for me, I spent a great deal of time alone outside as far away from people as I could get. My only companion was my father's hunting dog. We had a bond that goes beyond words. He was my confidant, my companion, my friend, my playmate, and my spirit brother. One fall, he was killed. I was so devastated that I could not eat or go to school. My dog appeared to me in dreams. I thought I saw him on the porch, but no-one was there. When I was forced to return to school, a teacher that had never spoken to me before took me aside and re-assured me that he understood my pain. He made it a point to talk to me every day after that. The compassion he displayed was a healing force for me. I began to interact in school and learn to associate with people. The death of my dog pushed me into life. Before that I was headed for a life of isolation and introspection and perhaps even insanity. (Maybe after reading this you will decide I am insane.)
I decided that something - some force had pushed this man towards me - that he was - in the eyes of a child - a guardian angel. Many, many times in my life since then similar things have happened. At the time most needed, the exact thing or person I need will come to me. It has never failed.
For many years I searched religions, and discarded them all, and read philosophers and decided they have some, but not all of the wisdom, and studied Psychologists and decided they don't have it, either. After searching what was available to me for a better way, I formed this opinion for myself.
I believe that this life-force is like an organism of which I am one part. I believe you are, and so is my dog and so are the pine trees that sit outside my window, and the birds and the air and the sea and the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars. The molecules of air I breathe are the same ones that Galileo, and Socrates and Hitler and Attila the Hun breathed. Their dust whirls about the earth and is ingested and secreted. Only a very minute fraction of the earth has ever actually left here - a few satellites that fell into the sun, and some that whirled out past Pluto and disappeared from our view. In the same way, I believe the spirit that makes us live that is "you" and "me" is an entity of itself. It takes a body for reasons we don't clearly understand, and then leaves that body to go elsewhere, but, like the molecules of dust that whirl about the earth, it never leaves. I am one such spirit in a less evolved state. My task here in this life is to experience everything life has to offer to learn from it, to help others when they need it, to love them when they need it, to feed them when they are hungry, and to be a guide if asked, and to find my own path and follow it as best I can, and finally, as part of the life-force to be a part of it and serve it as it serves me.
I think that these words are inadequate to the task of describing this "life-force". The use of the word "spirit" for example is imprecise since it bears a connotation of ghosts or other-world creatures or something equally silly. Still, I have no other word to describe it. Perhaps that is why ancient men needed to name this force something. Perhaps that's why they invented the concept of "God" to represent the life-force, and "soul" to represent the spirit that dwells within each of us.
But, the danger of naming a thing that is bigger than we are is our need to control it, and our need to establish rules by which it operates, and other rules by which we can bend it to our will. Thus, the perversions of religion which is a man-made convention, are an attempt to super-impose the will of man over a timeless and all-powerful force. This force exists beyond language. It operates in dimensions we can't perceive on a time-scale that is past, present and future all running in spirals, not in the linear way that we, as humans can understand.
I call myself a pagan because I reject the man-made religion of Christianity. But, I am not a Pagan, either. They believe in gods of this and that, and I only believe in one life-force, and in the spirit that dwells within me and every living thing. It's not merely a concept - it is my belief, and as such it is sacred - to me.
glee
I will start with the simplistic view of a child. When I was about eight, I decided that I was special. Why I thought this, is still a mystery to me. My parents certainly didn't think so, and neither did most of the world. From that dichotomy - my belief in myself and others lack of belief in me began a search for the source of this belief. What made me think I was special? Why was I alive? Was there a purpose to my life?
Because I was a difficult child, and my home was an unhappy place for me, I spent a great deal of time alone outside as far away from people as I could get. My only companion was my father's hunting dog. We had a bond that goes beyond words. He was my confidant, my companion, my friend, my playmate, and my spirit brother. One fall, he was killed. I was so devastated that I could not eat or go to school. My dog appeared to me in dreams. I thought I saw him on the porch, but no-one was there. When I was forced to return to school, a teacher that had never spoken to me before took me aside and re-assured me that he understood my pain. He made it a point to talk to me every day after that. The compassion he displayed was a healing force for me. I began to interact in school and learn to associate with people. The death of my dog pushed me into life. Before that I was headed for a life of isolation and introspection and perhaps even insanity. (Maybe after reading this you will decide I am insane.)
I decided that something - some force had pushed this man towards me - that he was - in the eyes of a child - a guardian angel. Many, many times in my life since then similar things have happened. At the time most needed, the exact thing or person I need will come to me. It has never failed.
For many years I searched religions, and discarded them all, and read philosophers and decided they have some, but not all of the wisdom, and studied Psychologists and decided they don't have it, either. After searching what was available to me for a better way, I formed this opinion for myself.
I believe that this life-force is like an organism of which I am one part. I believe you are, and so is my dog and so are the pine trees that sit outside my window, and the birds and the air and the sea and the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars. The molecules of air I breathe are the same ones that Galileo, and Socrates and Hitler and Attila the Hun breathed. Their dust whirls about the earth and is ingested and secreted. Only a very minute fraction of the earth has ever actually left here - a few satellites that fell into the sun, and some that whirled out past Pluto and disappeared from our view. In the same way, I believe the spirit that makes us live that is "you" and "me" is an entity of itself. It takes a body for reasons we don't clearly understand, and then leaves that body to go elsewhere, but, like the molecules of dust that whirl about the earth, it never leaves. I am one such spirit in a less evolved state. My task here in this life is to experience everything life has to offer to learn from it, to help others when they need it, to love them when they need it, to feed them when they are hungry, and to be a guide if asked, and to find my own path and follow it as best I can, and finally, as part of the life-force to be a part of it and serve it as it serves me.
I think that these words are inadequate to the task of describing this "life-force". The use of the word "spirit" for example is imprecise since it bears a connotation of ghosts or other-world creatures or something equally silly. Still, I have no other word to describe it. Perhaps that is why ancient men needed to name this force something. Perhaps that's why they invented the concept of "God" to represent the life-force, and "soul" to represent the spirit that dwells within each of us.
But, the danger of naming a thing that is bigger than we are is our need to control it, and our need to establish rules by which it operates, and other rules by which we can bend it to our will. Thus, the perversions of religion which is a man-made convention, are an attempt to super-impose the will of man over a timeless and all-powerful force. This force exists beyond language. It operates in dimensions we can't perceive on a time-scale that is past, present and future all running in spirals, not in the linear way that we, as humans can understand.
I call myself a pagan because I reject the man-made religion of Christianity. But, I am not a Pagan, either. They believe in gods of this and that, and I only believe in one life-force, and in the spirit that dwells within me and every living thing. It's not merely a concept - it is my belief, and as such it is sacred - to me.
glee
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