My[confined]Space

OK… so new religious thread is GO!

I’m not religious. If people ask, I just tell them I’m christian to shut them up. I am theist however, I just don’t believe any of that old testament crap. For me it’s basically just: Love God, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. I don’t tell people to be christian and worship zombie Jesus… I just tell them to spread the love and give hugs. People often ask if I’m Rastafarian because of the way I’m always preaching about unity and love.

And I see God as more of a super powerful human being with flaw, not quite the omnipotent, error free being people make him out to be.

So, my religious views are basic at best. It’s kept me going for the past 5 years of my life, which as been the toughest, but probably not as tough as it’s going to get.

What kind of complicated, multifaceted shit are you guys into and how does it shape your lifestyle and decisions?

Oh god. Me? Well like i told sylvanish i am a “rogue christian” so to say. When i attend church it is at a reform jewish temple but i read the new testament and worship the christ. I guess my parents raised me to be a christian but they never told me to not question religion. One of the biggest things about christianity is that you are supposed to question an “angel of light” for it may be lucifer/satan or a demon trying to deceive you. So whenever i hear god speaking to me i ask myself ” how can i be sure it is god?” So my faith was always strained a bit, my parents never got upset with me for questioning it. My dad was actually very very very deep into witchcraft and satanism before he became a christian so he understood very well where my thoughts were coming from. He just told me i would have to figure it out for myself and that god would help me so long as i am willing to be helped. .And then i asked myself ” how do i know it is not my head just fucking with me ?” I then began questioning if whether or not the things i had witnessed were just merely a product of an overactive imagination. I figured the universe is vast and complex and billions of random things happen in one billionth of a second so why couldn’t those experiences be one of the billion random things going on around us? There was no solidarity or definite answer.
Eventually i became an atheist which helped lead me to more critical thinking and eventually i brushed off the idea of god as some old coping mechanism left over from our primordial bretheren. Plus i could replicate experiments and receive a definite answer.When it came to god i had very little luck replicating an experience and no. I mean look at boiling water; it is such a simple concept yet the science behind all of it is really a complex system of actions.

But then something wild happened to me one day. I began praying out of nowhere to yhvh jehova and Adonai in times of great confusion and sadness. I humbled myself and stopped trying to disprove god or ignore the possibility that actions around me with no discernible explation were just random events. And suddenly i began receiving answers. I would pick up the bible or the Torah and despite my preconcieved notions of man tampering with it or the fact that it may have just been a bunch of patriarchal bullshit i saw the universe unfold. In the litteral hebrew translations There were allusions in some of the scriptures that the earth was older than man by many years.There was descriptors of beings that could only exist via quantum mechanics. And i saw the world around me in all of its complex glory once again as not a series of random events but as a deliberate series of random events. I began noticing that perhaps science is god and god is only possible because of science. The world and universe seemed to act in an intelligent manner despite the fact that matter is not self aware or sentient in any sense. And then i had a revelation that literally made every single one of my neurons and synapses fire off. The world went white and into thousands of colors of which i had never seen echoes of sounds i had never heard and a profound sense of self awareness and extroverted awareness. I saw that god had been there the whole time. He not only was there but the only reason science worked was because he had to use it. I saw that myself and all life around me was the product of programmable matter. For example: I have a computer and with it i can use it to run any program that uses as little or as much of its hardware providing someone programed it to do so. Now programming is intangible i can not touch taste or smell a program but the hardware is tangible. So maybe the reason i couldn’t see or hear god was because i was not programmed to see him in his real form. Maybe my body is a computer and my soul is an operating system. Finally there was a scientific way to explain god. And what made it great is that i figured out can replicate gods abilities on a small scale. And then i read my favorite quote in the bible.

When jesus was told he wasn’t the messiah because he was human he said “it is written that ye are gods.” And from that quote i understood why i could do things god never seems to do. I figured out why god has been missing. He doesn’t need to do anything. He doesn’t have to do what someone else does.

Shortly after that i had an experience. I witnessed and was a part of something absolutely astronomical that had absolutely no rational or logical explanation. Something that no rational or logical man would believe. It was something that even i still have trouble believing.

@lotus: Cool.

I grew up with my nose buried in books. My mother and father, both raised Catholic from old traditions, made me attend Catholic school for 5 years of my life before deciding it wasn’t worth paying for anymore. It made me wonder why they didn’t always teach about the Bible and Jesus Christ in the public schools where kids could wear what they wanted and could talk back to teachers without consequence. I then realized there were religions other than Christianity that had different ideas. It sent me into a confused, almost blinding rage. Why hadn’t they told me about them? Upon attending public schools at grade 6 age 11, I’d completely lost my position in my belief of God so much that I almost lost faith. I was an Atheist for about a year it hurt me so internally. When I regained my composure, I reconsidered myself. Afterall, my life has been fashioned around many religions, the most common being Christianity.

Since then, I have a weird view on religion. I guess you could call me an Agnostic, but that wouldn’t do it justice. Atheism is a hard, cold and spiritless belief, while Christianity is a demanding, disciplinary and almost scary practice. I’ve studied many religions over a few years of my life and they all induced a simple fact: There is one God, and he loves us. Christianity, Judaism, Moslem, Hinduism, whatever – there is a key supreme ruler of the universe, and “He” is responsible for our being today.

Well, I rendered “He” into an “It”.

There are significant differences in God in the eyes of many religions. Christians see God as a huge robed man with a great big bushy beard. Allah is a (still bearded) dude wearing a turban (big suprise). I cast aside these images of God and what he could possibly “look” like, and molded this idea that perhaps the God we see is obsolete. Maybe there is a God that we’ve failed to realize has no image, no gender, and no powers to force upon free will of men. Atheists ask all the time “Why doesn’t God just swoop down from Heaven and fix everything?” In my mind, because God doesn’t have a body.

I like to call this imaginary force the Life Force. It’s been there before anything existed, and it’s what designed and created the universe and its immense glory. This force is what causes us to be born, to pass into death, to experience good times in our life, and to experience more difficult ones. It’s what carried our ancestors through the Ice Age, hunting for food and making clothes, supporting their pack in the harshest of conditions. It’s what gives us our emotions, our thoughts, our ideals, and the freedom to choose as we wish. It’s what makes politicians work up the courage to lead other people, to make a shy teenaged boy knock on the front door of his crush’s home, to give an Olympic racer the strength to win the 100 yard dash before millions of viewers. Its what makes people fall in love and have a family.

As for an afterlife.. Well, anyone who hasn’t died yet doesn’t really know, now do they?

Recondomoe:
Your above statement can be applied to any religion.
I know many Muslim girls who are promiscuous and get drunk, even though they are brought under the most strict religious teachings.

Religion has nothing to do with the sins that people commit… it only tries to prevent them from doing so. We are all inherently evil. not because of some guy with horns and pitchfork, it just how we are. And nothing will stop that until we are all pluged into the Matrix.

Alright, here’s me:

As I’ve mentioned before, my family is very *pagan* (for lack of a better term) and my spirit and perception of nature and reality is tempered by the ‘witchcraft’ my ancestors have passed down to me. However, I will try to dispel some of the illusions about that: We don’t believe in nor worship anything we cannot feel and experience for ourselves. Our festivals and celebrations are based on the tangible and undeniable patterns of life and nature. We celebrate the changing of seasons and the wonders of life and death and the human experience upon this world.

We recognize many gods and goddesses, but NOT as disconnected entities sitting on clouds and playing games with us. To us, the gods and goddesses are the personifications of BIG IDEAS, Emotions and Aspects of reality, that through the conscious *projection* of those experiences into a SYMBOL, as a god or a goddess, we can psychically/psychologically understand and control those experiences in our day to day lives. I can banish fear and embrace love through the mental action of my will by speaking to that -part of my brain- in the third person, thus I separate myself from the Fear or whatever emotion, and can Choose how I want it to affect me. In a way, it’s like the ritualized control of a self created multiple-personality Order. All the gods and goddesses we “worship”, are Symbols of different facets within Ourselves.

That, is placed within the context of a perpetually changing and growing universe, emergent and blossoming. Everything we do and believe is rooted in ancient history but None of it is set in stones that don’t crumble over time. In truth it is scientific at it’s core, because we look at everything with a mind of theory and harmony. Nothing is absolute and static or definitive fact. Every witch’s “Book of Shadows” is true to THEM and them alone, because it is a living thing we create as we grow. Each symbol, word, spell, poem, picture, *whatever*, is cast into it, becoming a part of our personal shadow.

We see the Universe and Consciousness, as a whole. the All and the Void. We symbolize the Outer and Inner duality and the duality of This and That, Man and Woman, with the Mother Goddess and the Father God. The Giver and the Taker, the Force of Creation and the Force of Destruction. These are not separate entities from us, they ARE us. Law and Order, Good and Evil, this basic energy manifests in our reality in many ways and it forms every complex and simple pattern we can identify.

Within our reality and our experience of life and the symbolization of it we are perpetually Spelling it out. Numbers and letters create a grid of manifestation and crystallization with which we perceive and understand the living omniscience we exist within. We see the ONE whole that many call Universe, God or Allah, we see the fractal TWO sides of it (The Hologram is both Laser and Target), the Triune-Truth of Past, Present, Future / Mind, Body, Spirit / Maiden, Mother, Crone / Left, Right, Center / Star, Stuff, Space / Etc… Four, Six, Eight and Twelve have mytho-mathematical significance that I am going to pass in explaining for their own sake (which I feel is obvious because they are derivative of Two and/or Three), FIVE is profound for it’s physical balance and biological function in our lives: Five Senses, Five Fingers on each hand, Five Elements (which refer to states of matter; not to ignorance of the Periodic Elements); ….I didn’t mean to get lost on a tangent about mystical numerical science, just pointing out it’s significance to my spiritual beliefs as Symbols of Big Ideas. I won’t even mention 7 and 9. Heh.

The energy of existence can be studied on a cosmic and a microscopic scale all within our Sacred Experience and I’m gonna touch on the Gods and Goddesses once more in their astrological aspect, the Celestial Bodies, the Sun and Moon and all the Planets. Astrology is a tricky thing to explain or understand within contexts of religion and science. It gets muddied by newspaper horoscopes that look at the position of the Sun and how that relates to a Sign, while ignoring all the others. Proper astrology as it factors into our beliefs requires a complete knowledge of ALL the signs, ALL the celestial bodies, and all of their movements in relation to each other and us. Where the Moon was aligned, where Venus was aligned, where Saturn was aligned, where every single Celestial Body was positioned at the exact moment of your birth, as a sort of system of lenses to focus the Star Light that fused with your flesh to create the current Being you are. Newspaper horoscopes are just one person’s interpretation of only the Suns position. But that is like looking at only one shade of one color in a vibrant painting and ignoring all the other colors. A person’s sun-sign might touch on a bit of a personality, but it is only one facet of the gem and even when a person is aware of their entire astrological make-up they must understand that is just a tool for active personal interpretation. The more I study my astrology the more I understand my psyche and the effects of cosmic gravitational energy on my behavior and my subtle self, but I’m going off on a tangent again.

Our/My beliefs are rooted in the earth and the patterns of nature. Our witchcraft is an artistic tradition of herbology, zoology, medicine, meditation and momentum. It is Sacred Science centered on the here and now. Our mysticism is a means of symbolizing the Inner Quest, the search within for meaning and understanding and knowledge about Self and the Universe. We are Psychonauts and Ontologists in the frame of a Garden. We are not afraid to pick up a stick and chase away pests and predators that would harm us and we love and cultivate the food and friends that nourish us while we tend our plants and walk our path. The rituals we practice and the spells we cast, these are mantras, means of self-training the mind to be at Our Control, instead a chaotic mystery that Controls Us. We understand ourselves and the balance of life through reflection on Nature and the perfect balance of Chaos and Order that is seen in every growing thing, in every storm and every molecule. We know ourselves as the embodiments of Divine Energy by our ability to Change. We accept the responsibility of our Godly power to consciously create and destroy and we seek to live in harmony with our environment, We Create that which Creates Us. This is what is meant by the rarely understood phrase: As Above, So Below.

This understanding easily embraces technology and science because everything we natural beings create, is therefore also natural. The witch, just like proper scientists, simply temper the creation and incorporation of any THING into ones life with Testing and Questioning of “Does this thing benefit me?”

But remembering that our definition of the ‘Self’ extends beyond just my individual body. My ‘Self’ is my planet, my species, and my whole universe. The ant and the shark, the forest and the factories, are all a part of me and my existence. So we fight against that which harms all of us the way the body fights against sickness. Hence the environmentalism that factors into so much of our lives on a “public” scale.

So, back to me and my personal beliefs, I came from a family like this, but also in my family were Roman Catholics. Bizarre, I know, and believe me, I have been in some INTENSE dinner time conversations, but for anyone who knows their theological history, they won’t find it too surprising; after all, our traditional celebration of Yule and other festivals are not really that far removed from the Churches & the Commercial bastardization of said celebrations. So long as the core spirit of love is there, who really gives a shit about the symbols and rituals, (other than stubborn fools who stand to lose something from change) The Catholics who married into our family were the ones who saved us and hid us from the torches of the Inquisitors and also the ones who gave me the incentive to set out on my own spirit quest, to better understand myself by learning about all the rest; which was why I studied philosophy and theology and a bit of history and other similar topics in University. But I paid more attention to my experiences outside of class and found I learned more about life on the lips of my friends than in texts and classes, which only strengthened my pagan understanding.

My motive for working for the government was the goal of Being the Change I wanted to see in the world. I wanted to be on the ‘knife edge’ and be a part of the factors that directly shape and guide the politics and social issues of the world, in the way I felt I was best suited, knowing my skills and abilities, feeling that I could have a real and positive effect for the good of the Human Species if I could get into such a position of global power and consequence. But I foiled my own plans through my own unrestrained spiritual exploration.

What that taught me however, was a lesson of personal accountability and responsibility to one’s own self. I couldn’t sacrifice any piece of myself to become something I’m not. I couldn’t cut off a side of my “peg” to force myself to fit into a “hole” I wasn’t meant for.

So, I embraced my psychonautical ways and set out on a spiritual path to understand and explore ~Consciousness~, because I feel that is the most important part of the Human Experience. I became a Yoga teacher~student and a practitioner of Tantra and from one month to the next I fall in and out of my pattern of Teaching and Learning, or more accurately: Sharing and Remembering.

The way I’ve seen it: Atheism says “Nothing is Sacred”. Religion says “This is Sacred, That is Not (Holy vs Unholy)”. Tantra says “Everything is Sacred”. Right and Wrong is an illusion of subjectivity. Proper science is none of those things, and should be a part of all of them, for it is Growth, it is the seeking of knowledge and understanding and there is no reason to not seek an understanding of “God and all of His Creations” as the ultimate form of worship, nor to seek an understanding of everything for purely selfish and singular reasons.

The world is the soil from which I grow, and the better I understand every molecule and element that makes the dirt I am rooted it, the healthier I become.

I’ll finish this long winded babble with a quote from Frank Herbert’s ‘Destination: Void’:

“The Zen master tells us that an omnipresent idea can be hidden by its own omnipresence– the forest lost among the trees. In our normal daily behavior we are most estranged, most in the grip of an illusory idea of the self. Every enchanting inclination of pride and its ego, of convention and its master -social training- conspires to maintain that illusion. The semanticist calls it inertia of old premises. And this is what holds our analysis of consciousness within fixed limits.”

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TL;DR > I am a sex-witch. I dance naked every full moon and have wicked 3 day parties eight times a year.

PEACE OUT BITCHES!

@sylvanish

Goddamn that is some deep shit. It’s been ages since i last heard a good explanation/argument for the pagans.

I believe in real butter on popcorn. I believe in long walks in the rain, sad songs at midnight, boysenberry pie, total surrender to the communists, and long, warm, sloppy kisses.