God don't hate the Muslims God don't hate the Jews God don't hate the Christians But we all give God the blues I've been trying to get a fix on how I feel about religion. And faith. Especially faith. Despite the best efforts of my namesake and other kindred philosophers, you can’t reason your way to belief in the Abrahamic God. Too many paradoxes and contradictions. The suffering of children. His capricious cruelty. His jealousy. His demands for total obedience. Do we have free will or not? Are the odds stacked against us no matter what we do? Reason can’t handle it. You gotta have faith.
I love this post. A 12 year Catholic school girl, who became a bit of an outlaw in high school, because I dared to ask questions of the school chaplain. I still hold my beliefs of good vs evil, and cling to the idea of an afterlife because I need to believe I’ll be with Ron again, and I can’t imagine no longer existing in any form. Where do our hopes and dreams go? I’ll let you know from the other side X
Fantastic, beautifully written post. Reading it is like looking in a mirror in so many ways. I've been on a very similar journey to you, in my case from hardcore literalist don't-doubt-or-you-may-burn Christianity to what is more a way of being-in-the-world than a system of concrete beliefs. The 'old soul' idea resonates with me deeply too, and I find myself being very influenced by Jung and Ram Dass' way of looking at things these days.
Love your metaphor of the highway and the oversoul. While I still pray to God and conceive of him in terms of a personal being that knows more than I do (as long as I'm incarnated on this plane anyway), I've moved away from treating him as a Zeus-esque figure separate from myself. At the end of the day God's just another metaphor - in the final analysis everything is the same thing, we're all one, all the oversoul, all God.
As a chronic illness/exhaustion sufferer, I relate to your physical woes too, though yours seem a good bit worse than mine. I find it inspiring and moving that you default to gratitude under such circumstances. It seems to me that God (or the divine/universe/oversoul) is really working in you!
It’s a lovely piece of writing, capturing a kind of melancholic beauty that comes with age -- an appreciation (and understanding) of how every moment and everything within is made even more beautiful because it contains and reveals its own impermanence.
You might like reading the perennialists (Rene Guenon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon). They have this take that there is no real conflict between the religions because they're all expressing the same metaphysical insights (Schuon and Coomaraswamy show that best). It's a very beautiful vision, and one where intellect is crucial, as faith is seen as more for those who cannot understand.
I love this post. A 12 year Catholic school girl, who became a bit of an outlaw in high school, because I dared to ask questions of the school chaplain. I still hold my beliefs of good vs evil, and cling to the idea of an afterlife because I need to believe I’ll be with Ron again, and I can’t imagine no longer existing in any form. Where do our hopes and dreams go? I’ll let you know from the other side X
Fantastic, beautifully written post. Reading it is like looking in a mirror in so many ways. I've been on a very similar journey to you, in my case from hardcore literalist don't-doubt-or-you-may-burn Christianity to what is more a way of being-in-the-world than a system of concrete beliefs. The 'old soul' idea resonates with me deeply too, and I find myself being very influenced by Jung and Ram Dass' way of looking at things these days.
Love your metaphor of the highway and the oversoul. While I still pray to God and conceive of him in terms of a personal being that knows more than I do (as long as I'm incarnated on this plane anyway), I've moved away from treating him as a Zeus-esque figure separate from myself. At the end of the day God's just another metaphor - in the final analysis everything is the same thing, we're all one, all the oversoul, all God.
As a chronic illness/exhaustion sufferer, I relate to your physical woes too, though yours seem a good bit worse than mine. I find it inspiring and moving that you default to gratitude under such circumstances. It seems to me that God (or the divine/universe/oversoul) is really working in you!
This is my version of the losing religion story, if you're interested: https://medium.com/the-small-dark-light/losing-my-religion-488d0f8332b4
Found this through FDB’s link.
It’s a lovely piece of writing, capturing a kind of melancholic beauty that comes with age -- an appreciation (and understanding) of how every moment and everything within is made even more beautiful because it contains and reveals its own impermanence.
You might like reading the perennialists (Rene Guenon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon). They have this take that there is no real conflict between the religions because they're all expressing the same metaphysical insights (Schuon and Coomaraswamy show that best). It's a very beautiful vision, and one where intellect is crucial, as faith is seen as more for those who cannot understand.