KELLEPICS / Pixabay

In the last blog post, I spoke about the existence of gods (small-g plural), ghosts, and spirits. I concluded based on my own experiences and those of millions around the world that these phenomena are, in fact, real. I also concluded that they aren’t to be messed with in this realm. But what about God, a Supreme Spiritual Being, a Divine Presence or a deity that has the attributes of what we might attribute to God?

EvgeniT / Pixabay

Encounter with a Divine Presence

Many people—myself included, have felt the presence of who or what we might call God. I can testify that it is very different than the presence of a lower spirit or deity. This encounter happened to me at the age of 22 when I lived in Los Angeles. I was walking along Mulholland Drive in the early evening on the top of the mountain-hill that separated the San Fernando Valley from the rest of L.A. It was a mostly empty stretch of two-lane road with switchbacks, with few buildings visible, and the lights of the Valley below me. It was while I was walking that I suddenly *felt* this presence. Felt it in a way that was similar to how I might feel the presence of a person near me before I turn around and actually see them. Except this presence was much larger than me and floating above the switchback I was walking around. This was completely unexpected. For me, the presence I felt was powerful, deeply loving, and brought tears to my eyes. This Divine Presence told me that they loved me, and had wonderful plans for me. I was also told other things too personal to reveal here. This encounter occurred two months before I was scheduled to embark on a nine month cross-country journey, one which would change my perspective on things forever.

Did I feel the presence of the Supreme Spiritual Being? Would I call this presence God? I don’t know whether it would be more insulting to God to say that the presence I encountered was certainly God, or if it would be selling God short to say that I don’t know if it was actually God I was encountering. I do feel confident that the source of this presence was aligned with the greatest force for good in the Universe, and as such, was of the Supreme Spiritual Being. At the same time, I honestly couldn’t say for sure if I felt the presence of God themselves or simply a messenger and/or angel representing God.

Honestly I’m not sure to what extent it matters. I would argue that what was more important in this case was the feeling I had from my encounter with what I believed to be God. If I came away feeling loved and unconditionally loving everyone, and with an overwhelming desire to help humanity in any way I could, then I would consider that to be an encounter with a loving deity. And as such, it really doesn’t matter if my encounter was with an angel, a god of this Earth, a Sun God, or the God of the Universe, nor does it matter if they are separate deities or one and the same. It was, without any doubt whatsoever in my mind, a Divine Presence.

How do we know what is Divine?

The Bible has wisdom about this shared by Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

This is sage advice. This quote is referenced in the Baha’i Faith, as well as a Japanese New Religion I used to be involved with. Ironically, I ended up leaving both religions because I concluded that the fruits they were producing were not free from corruption.

But are we indeed qualified to make such judgments? It probably depends on our character. However, I have observed that if we are being led down the wrong way, we can be corrected if we are open to being corrected. I have observed this in my life many times.

I have felt guided for much of my life. I have been guided when I’ve felt most receptive to being guided. I believe that God/The Universe has guided me in and out of spiritual paths so that I could learn from all of them. I have made decisions that on the surface appeared irrational yet ended up being the best decisions that I have made. And I’ve made blunders—that is where my course can be corrected, and it has been corrected many times. And I believe that anyone is capable of being guided if they have an open enough heart.

What does this then say about the nature a Supreme Spiritual Being?

My personal experiences incline me to rule out atheism, pantheism or pandeism, since these deny the current existence of spirit. My experiences also incline me to rule out polytheism—polytheism might be real, but the worship of lower gods could lead us astray depending on who we worship. That leaves monotheism, monism, panentheism, and animism.

Let’s start with monism. The idea that everything in the Universe comes from a singular origin might be true, especially since such a singularity is postulated in the Big Bang Theory. However, the notion that the entire Universe grew out of a singularity has not been observed, but simply hypothesized by extending the observations we’ve made about the growth of the Universe to a logical beginning point. There is so much about the Universe we don’t know, and much of the prevailing theory about its development depends on the existence of dark matter and dark energy that we’ve only postulated about, but have not yet actually discovered. We can’t rule out that some other process might come into play that could take the early history of the Universe in a different direction. Notably, some Hindu teachings speak of a cycle of universes beginning and ending. Some scientists dispute the notion of a singularity and postulate a cycled birth and death of universes. As such, we can only say that we don’t know whether Monism is true or not.

It can be argued that monotheism has a decidedly mixed history on this Earth. Few would view Jesus as a deceiver of any kind or being anything but good, but many would argue that the Christian religions have evolved in ways Jesus never intended, and they certainly have a bloody history that would be inconsistent with Jesus’s teachings. But is this a fault of monotheism, or the way that it developed with modern religions? It should be noted that Hindus, as members of a religion that could be regarded as monotheistic, polytheistic, or fit into other categories, are not immune to sectarian violence.

Some would argue that the logic of monotheism combined with a rigid good vs. evil dualism ends up creating an artificial distinction between right and wrong. This dualism  results in people and practices being labeled good or evil, and the feeling that “evil” in this case must be eradicated. Certainly the Old Testament provides many examples of cruel, dehumanizing treatment of people conquered by the Israelites and it actually implies the belief that these atrocities were somehow righteous in God’s eyes. In writing about this, I wonder if the ultimate purpose of this passage of the Old Testament is intended to glorify such cruelty, warn us about the overwhelming desire for “good” going horribly wrong, or if it’s there to actually test people on their perception of good and evil.

As for the encounter I had in Los Angeles, I truly do not know if my encounter was with a monotheistic God, but I had little doubt this Divine Presence was connected with infinite goodness. Maybe that’s what is more important, the infinite goodness rather than than the question of monotheism. Therefore, I will put the question of monotheism on the shelf for now.

There is also the theory of panentheism, the belief that the Divine is within and part of everything in the Universe. Related to this is the belief in animism, the belief that all things in the Universe possess their own distinct spiritual essence. These beliefs wouldn’t necessarily be inconsistent with each other–could something be a part of or the creation of the Divine and at the same time be distinct?  Nor would they necessarily contradict monotheism—it could instead a way looking at the Divine from a different angle.

Logically, wouldn’t the Universe be a better place if we were to treat everything as of Divine Origin, from a panentheistic or animistic origin?  This is no small question. In fact, this is the question of our times. Our disregard for the Earth these days may have much to do with how divine we think the Earth is.

Animism has been treated by many scholars as a sort of “primitive proto-religion.” Yet modern human beings may very well be the primitive ones. Many so-called “primitive” cultures believe that all living things have a soul. For the, the question becomes how to interact appropriately with animals, plants, and other resources that the earth gives us. Many cultures have a belief that since these have a spiritual essence, they must be interacted with respectfully. Some cultures will communicate with the spirit of the plant they are about to harvest, the meat animal they are about to slaughter, or the tree or branch they are about to cut down, and offer an explanation and/or thanks and gratitude. I know that I have sometimes felt this way about things that occur in the natural world, and even with objects made by humans.

While to modern human beings this might seem quite silly, compare and contrast this with the way we treat our planet. Think about the way a coal mining company thinks about a mountain when they think about mountain top removal mining. They don’t see the mountain for its beauty and spiritual essence, they see it only for the minerals that they can mine, and will destroy entire forests and streams in the process. Furthermore, we human beings have started what many scientists call Earth’s sixth mass extinction caused entirely by human activity. This extinction even extends to insects, many of whom are responsible for pollinating our plants and thus providing us with the food we need.

As such, from the standpoint of pure logic, it makes sense that we regard everything that we take from the Earth as sacred, and that we take only for necessary reasons. The wanton destruction of habitat and ecosystems must stop if we have a fighting chance to survive as a species.

Another noteworthy way that we can look at the question of animism is to ask ourselves if it is just living things (as we know them) that need to be treated with such regard. Astronomers are looking at other planets in our solar and wondering about their ability to harbor life. They are seeing some strong possibilities in Mars’s past and perhaps even the present.

Scientists do not yet know how life evolved out of these organic materials on Earth, but the evolution of the first life on Earth happened very early in its history. What if there was little difference spiritually between the first appearance of life on Earth and the organic material that harbored it? A speculative question, most certainly, but it could underline a notion that the difference between life and non-life is smaller than we might think, and that the level of “spirit” in what we consider non-living things may only differ from that of living things in degree and complexity.

And what about a mountain? Mountains are often highly regarded by indigenous cultures and even religions.The Earth is far from being the only celestial body in our Solar System to harbor mountains. Almost all of the tallest mountains are on other planets, and a recent flyby of Pluto has also revealed mountains, as well as other awe-inspiring features.

Artist’s rendering of Jupiter’s moon Io with a view of Jupiter. AlexAntropov86 / Pixabay

Indeed, couldn’t every star in the sky and every planet orbiting them be amazing spiritual phenomena? Our Sun, which formed from the gravitational collapse of matter into a sphere so hot and dense that it initiated nuclear fusion at its core, operating at millions of degrees, has been burning for 4.6 billion years, while a tiny percentage of its mass—less than half of 1%–formed all of the planets and minor planets, moons, asteroid belt, Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. Many peoples have worshiped the Sun throughout history, and why not?—life would not be possible on Earth without it. Even the Moon has inspired worship throughout the ages.

All of the celestial objects in our solar system and other star systems have a story about how they coalesced into planets, moons, and other objects. How they spun off into their own form when their star formed., What elements they are composed of, what atmospheres they may have if any, and how they came to evolve that way. And the awe-inspiring vistas to be be found on their surfaces. The photos we’ve been able to take on and of other planets have been nothing short of spectacular and awe inspiring.

So at this point, I have an image of the divine that I would consider to be pretty much panentheistic and animistic.

I am convinced there is a Divine Presence everywhere in the Universe. And everything in the Universe has spirit and is sacred.  I believe this is important that we realize this with the challenging times we face before us.

MiraCosic / Pixabay

A little over two weeks ago, astrologers reported that Mercury went into “retrograde”. Mercury retrograde is a period of about three weeks when, from the Earth’s standpoint, the planet appears to be moving backwards. Despite there being no solid scientific evidence of the accuracy of astrology, the phenomenon of Mercury retrograde feels real even to people somewhat skeptical of astrology. Based on my own experience and that of others, Mercury retrograde might be real even when it isn’t real.

Astrology then and now

Complex charts aside, the vast majority of astrology was originally based on a model of the Solar System and the Universe that puts the Earth in the middle of everything. Despite some sun-centric thinkers among the Pythagoreans (a rather fascinating group of people) mainstream Greek philosophy believed that the Universe centered around the Earth. Mainstream Greek philosophy also generally believed the Earth to be spherical in shape and that the Universe revolved around the Earth. Despite this earth-centric error which was disproved with the Copernican Revolution many remarkably accurate calculations were made about the stars and planets.

While astrologers today would not dispute the model of the Universe accepted by mainstream science some of the implications of the old model still exist. As such, the assumption about planets going retrograde is based on a model of the Universe which has now been disproved. Astrologers might claim that the appearance of Mercury from Earth is still the most relevant issue. But can they really argue that the assumptions based on the Earth-centric model of the Universe still hold in the new, science-backed model of the Universe?

Of course there are many types of astrology around the world, and even among Western astrologers, a few have changed their calculations to adjust to a heliocentric Solar System model. In 2015, an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune four years earlier created an uproar on the Internet when it published a scientist’s claim four years earlier that most people’s astrological signs were about one month off due to axial precession.  However, the ancient Greeks had the last laugh on this one because they’d actually discovered axial precession and had taken it into account despite not knowing that the earth wasn’t the center of the Universe. The scientist might have been accurate about sidereal astrology, which is based on the position of the constellations and is most commonly used in Hindu astrology. But most Western astrology has relied on a tropical model based on the position of the planets. As such, claims that the Zodiac had shifted were labeled “false” by Snopes.com, though Snopes did not pass judgment on the accuracy of astrology in that article.

In any case, Western astrology assigns certain characteristics to a pie slice of the Solar System. Each zodiac sign makes up 1/12th of the solar system, though they are no longer the part of the solar system associated with the constellation. Given, though, that the planets are closer to the Earth than the constellations, it would make more sense that the position of the planets would have more of an effect on Earth than the constellations. But back in ancient Greece, no planets beyond Saturn were known to exist.

Comfreak / Pixabay

Still, it’s Greek legends which give life to the constellations, which, like Mercury retrograde, are themselves somewhat of an illusion. They are illusions to the extent that their characteristics are based only on the angle as seen from this part of the Universe. From a completely different point in the Universe, the constellations look very different. So these constellations and planets are based on Earth myths, and specifically Greek legends. (Myths from other parts of the world have been honored with two recent dwarf planet discoveries: Haumea and Makemake.)Yet we are expected to believe that these Greek legends have impact on our personality by virtue of the part of the Solar System we were born in.

Think about it. The Greco-Roman pantheon of gods is, at the most, 3,000 years old.  Most of the planets in the solar system are in the neighborhood of 4,500,000,000 years old. So how is it that a human image of a god less than one-millionth of age of all the planets accurately represent the planet?  The ancient planet that humans call Mercury could care less about the pantheon of gods that humans from a small part of our planet came up with.

The structure of the Solar System

Furthermore, in the way that the Solar System is divided up, there is a certain symmetry to the astrological signs which doesn’t seem to correspond to reality. For example, each of the slices of the Solar System pie are given characteristics of elements–Fire, Earth, Air, and Water— and qualities consisting of either Cardinal, Fixed, or Mutable . Each astrological sign is given a unique combination of elements and qualities, but if you look at them on the chart, they seem to be neatly symmetrical and equally spaced.

Dieter_G / Pixabay

But the more we learn about our Solar System, the more complex and messy it really is. We now know that the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have qualities that make them very different from Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Recent decades of research has pointed to the discovery of a wide array of Trans-Neptunian Objects. Then we have the Asteroid Belt in which its largest known object, Ceres, was once classified as a planet, then an asteroid, but which now has been promoted to “dwarf planet,” the same status as to which Pluto was demoted to in 2006. This shift was based upon the discovery that there might be more than 200 hundred such planets in the Kuiper Belt and 10,000 outside the Kuiper belt.  Many of these have asymmetrical orbits.  (Though it can be argued that the dwarf planets are more similar to the inner planets than the gas giants because unlike the other planets, the gas giants have no solid surface upon one which might stand.)

As such, can astrologers really have an accurate picture of the Solar System, given that we now know it to be far bigger and more complex than the ancient Greeks knew it to be?

Yet many people swear by astrology, and even those who don’t notice some remarkably similar properties identified by astrology.

My personal experience with astrology

I believed in astrology more when I considered myself to be a practicing pagan in the early 1990s. In fact, I astounded pagans and non-pagans alike with my uncanny ability to accurately guess a person’s astrological sign. I remember a party I went to where I guessed the correct signs with six people in a row! Sometimes it was intuition—I remember looking at a woman and my mind saw an image of a lion’s head, so I correctly guessed Leo. Other times, it was me just guessing based on what I perceived their element and their quality to be. Oddly, when I moved away from paganism to a more monotheistic religion, my ability to guess diminished to the point that my accuracy was less than what might be divined by chance.

Devanath / Pixabay

Yet, going back to the 2015 controversy over astrological signs allegedly, having shifted, I remember investigating this claim by reading the sign I supposedly really have. I was born smack in the middle of Cancer, and I have often found its (admittedly vague) description of me to be fairly accurate. So I looked up Gemini, which I supposedly “really” was, and read the description of people under that sign. The first few paragraphs were inconclusive, then later on I found myself saying to myself, “Not really,” “no way,” and finally “hell no!”

So when people report cars breaking down, computers crashing, printers failing, and misunderstandings all over the place during Mercury retrograde, does that mean that this phenomenon is real?

I think the answer is yes and no. I think the phenomenon of Mercury retrograde is real, but not for the reasons astrologers think.

Mercury retrograde and other astrological phenomena are real only because so many people believe it to be real.

My experience is that these thoughts are so powerful that they can even influence people who might not share those thoughts. And so, after I stopped considering myself a pagan and stopped believing in astrology, I discovered after a period of time that this Mercury retrograde thing still appeared to be real. There would be instances where something Mercury retrograde-like would happen, causing me to look online, and then discover that Mercury was indeed in “retrograde.” There were, of course, a few times when this did not happen, and a few times where Mercury retrograde was approaching within two or three weeks but had not yet occurred.

After a while, however, I felt the need to observe this phenomenon and prepare for it, and doing so has often resulted in a lot of positive outcomes. For example, Mercury retrograde appears to be a great time for reflection as well as finishing unfinished business. I have taken full advantage of this time to my benefit. Maybe it is just in my head, but it’s also in the heads of millions of other people.

Like ghosts that humans around the world have seen for millenia, thought waves and their power on the surrounding environment have not been directly observed or quantified by the scientific community. But it doesn’t follow that ghosts or thought waves don’t exist. We just haven’t proven scientifically that they exist. Many people—including many scientists—subscribe to the fallacy that what hasn’t been proven scientifically it doesn’t exist. For this reason, many scientists assume that the Universe is very empty because they think that all that we have thus far found is all that exists.

The value of mystery

We modern humans have become so overconfident in our technological prowess that we have forgotten about the value of mystery. It is okay sometimes to not know for sure whether something exists or not. It is much wiser to base your actions on uncertainty than false certitude. Agnostics seem comfortable with this way of thinking, whereas some atheists’ belief in the non-existence of God is so strong that their fervor and self-righteous thinking begins to resemble that found in fundamentalist followers of religion.

It is better to accept that some things are a mystery rather than express certainty about a belief that is probably at least partially false. It’s fine to believe something but there’s a difference between belief and unfounded certitude. By calling something a belief, you are stating your own sense of what you think is likely true, but you also allow for the possibility of not being 100% correct. The religious people who state with absolute certainty about what will happen to them when they die are making themselves look foolish. They really don’t truly know—they just read something, decided it was the truth, and then closed their minds to the possibility that something else might be true. This in and of itself is sad, but then when they push hard to make other people share that same worldview, disaster can only result.

So is Mercury retrograde real, real in a different way than previously thought, or is it the product of a large number of misinformed people? I’m going to say “quite possibly” to all three statements and then walk away with a smile. Anyone who is honest with themselves and the world around them should do the same.

jill111 / Pixabay

This is a time of year that many people around the world refer to as “The Holiday Season.” In the view of most Western Christians, it is a time when Christmas is celebrated as well as the American Thanksgiving and the Gregorian New Year. I, however, have a slightly different definition of just what consists of the holiday season.

Fundamentally, much of the holiday season is shaped by the period of time around the December Solstice. In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the day characterized by the longest night and the shortest days, and the point from which the days begin to grow longer. It is the time after which the last of the fall harvest is collected. In most agricultural societies, it is the time with the least amount of work and the most amount of time for reflecting. It is a time that would naturally lend itself towards spiritual matters.

Most Christians agree that Jesus was not born on December 25^th.  Many scholars believe that the Catholic Church in the 300s CE declared December 25^th to be the day of Jesus’s birth as an effort to compete against popular religions at the time and draw more people to the Christian religion. Many scholars place the date of Jesus’s birth in either the autumn or the spring. Yet, Christmas as celebrated in December has become the cornerstone for both a religious and secular holiday season. Nevertheless, it is a time of year when many religions celebrate important holidays, not just Christianity. It is worth noting that some common themes often emerge when looking at this holiday season.

The nature of the Winter Solstice has an enormous impact on holidays in several different religions. Yule has pre-Christian and Pagan origins, and some form of worship at the time of the Winter Solstice goes back centuries, if not millenia. In Iran, the Winter Solstice is celebrated as Yalda.

The Hindu celebration on January 14 of Makar Sakranti, also known in some parts of India as Lohri or Pangal, is related to the lengthening of the days of the year, despite being three weeks later than the actual December Solstice. It the celebration of the passing of the sun into Capricorn (according to Vedic astrology—Western astrology would date this at Winter Solstice.) Westerners would find familiar some of the themes of this holiday including dedication to the sun and a time for reconciliation between enemies.

The Hawaii-based Himalayan Foundation, publishers of Hinduism Today, saw a need to have a time for Western practitioners of Hinduism to celebrate during the Western holiday season. They decided to institute the holiday of Pancha Ganapti, a five day holiday festival which celebrates the different aspects of the god Ganesha.

Some African-Americans have also sought to redefine the American holiday season for themselves out the need for a spiritual holiday that would reflect their own history, culture and heritage. Kwanzaa was developed as a result. While not tied with a specific religion or spiritual leader.

Other spiritual events and leaders are commemorated during this time as well. Zoroastrians celebrate the passing of their founder Zarathrusta on December 26^th. (Historically, many cultures put as high of an emphasis on the death of religious figures as the date of their birth, as evidenced by the fact that Easter was celebrated before Christmas in the Christian faith.) The Buddhists celebrate Bodhi day on December 8^th, the day they believe Gautama Buddha reached enlightenment. Sikhs celebrate the birth of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib on January 5. He lived from 1666-1708 CE, and was the tenth and last human Sikh Guru. He was very influential in the religion’s development. At his death, he declared that the collection of holy Sikh scripture known as the Granth replace him as the Guru for all Sikhs.

Many Jews living in Christian dominated countries have chosen to give greater emphasis on the Jewish Holiday of Hanukkah, which occurs between early and late December. Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabean revolt against the Selucid Empire between 167-160 BCE. The successful revolt allowed Jews to practice their religion once again after not being allowed to under the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV, and they were able to rededicate the Second Temple.

Finally, it must be noted that the Islamic calendar may or may not have important holidays during this season. The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar whose months are 29 or 30 days and whose years are 354 or 355 days long. Because of the difference in the length of the year between the Islamic calendar and solar calendars like the Gregorian, the dates that Islamic holidays fall will change each year. The “Birth of the Prophet” in Islam fell on December 1 of this year.

The richness of the holiday season combined with the spiritual symbolism of reflection and renewal are among the reasons why I chose the December Solstice as the first day of the year for the Earth Epic Calendar. Its proximity to the beginning of the year to the most widely used calendar in the world is another reason—it makes for an easier transition. But the principal reason I created this calendar is to reflect that incredible amount of gain in our understanding of the world, the Earth and our place within it. I wanted to liberate the calendar from religion, especially when religions date their calendars from the time of their own founding. Religions draw a line between the few hundred or thousand years since their founding and the billions of years prior to that time. I have always known in my heart that such a line was always artificial, and a distortion of our place and heritage on Earth. Only time and God/The Universe will determine whether others choose to pick up on this calendar or not.

Regardless of whether you might choose to take this calendar seriously or not, I truly hope you take advantage of this precious time of year to tune in with this period of reflection, renewal and celebration, in whatever form it may take.

Religious symbols  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s clear to me that I am no longer a follower of the Bahá’í Faith. Nor do I subscribe to any other religious labels, either.

I’m not sure if I was ever fully comfortable calling myself a Bahá’í in the first place. In some ways I think I moved too quickly in declaring myself a Baha’i back in 2007.  I did so partially because I felt the need to connect with another established  spiritual path after leaving the Mahikari spiritual organization.

I’d been involved with Mahikari for the previous eleven years but had become very disenchanted with the frequency of contradictions, hypocrisies, and incidences of lying, manipulation and coercion that I was witnessing in the Mahikari organization. Near the peak of my frustrations, I picked up a copy of a Bahá’í book that had been in my personal collection for some time. I began reading the Bahá’í books alongside my daily Mahikari readings and found that the Bahá’í writings made a lot more sense to me than Mahikari. But in some ways, I think I might have more running away from Mahikari than running towards the Bahá’í Faith. And now I’m at the point where I find a lot in the Bahá’í organization and even the Bahá’í writings that I simply don’t agree with. I will always respect the Bahá’ís and consider them my friends (as opposed to Mahikari, which I consider  to be a harmful cult) but I do not consider myself to *be* a Bahá’í–either by my definition or the religion’s definition. The specific reasons why I’ll delineate in a future post.

I understand the desire to throw oneself so completely into a practice as to make it part of one’s identity and that was part of my motivation. But now I think that identifying with a religion so much as to say “I am” something–whether it be a Christian,  Buddhist, Bahá’í or Muslim creates two problems: 1) the risk of engaging in identity politics that could lead to identifying non-followers as the “other” and perhaps lead to conflict–even if that’s not the initial intention, and 2) religious identities– even as broad and inclusive as that of “Unitarian”–often keep people from seeing the truth in paths different from one’s own.

Then again, I’ve changed spiritual paths a lot in this lifetime. I make zero apologies for that. I was baptized Catholic mainly to keep the peace in a religiously divided extended family, but grew up in a liberal mainline Protestant church that I still have a lot of fond memories of.  Nevertheless,  I explored a number of religions in college. In the early 90s I was drawn to Paganism  due to the desire to be involved with earth-based spirituality. But I grew frustrated with the Pagan community I’d been involved with as it seemed too amoral and fractured to make any real difference. In 1996 I was drawn to Mahikari because its told a great story that seemed to explain today’s uncertain times quite well and aI had a great desire to get involves in a spiritual path I perceived to be addressing these uncertain times.

These continual changes are not due to indecisiveness. I think having a healthy grounding in multiple religions can give perspectives that someone in the same religion their entire life might not have.  Furthermore, I suspect that I have been guided into and out of these multiple paths by God/the Universe (which I imagine to be one and the same) for the purpose of my spiritual growth.

I’ve sometimes joked that I’m coming out of my “Bob Dylan born-again” phase. I was never a born-again Christian,  but for various reasons, from 1996 until the present I embraced religious paths that were more conservative in their nature (even if considered heretical by conservative American Christians). I was following what I felt drawn and guided to at the time.  I feel that I might not fully understand the reasons for this “conservative phase” of my life until some time in the future–maybe even in a future life. Part of it was based on my desire for a well-defined way forward in these uncertain times in which life on Earth is itself threatened. It also well could be that I needed to learn firsthand what it is like to be in a religion that is more conservative and more restrictive in its nature. One of the reasons for that might be to enable me to help others recover from religions that make them feel like sinners for deviating from religious doctrine.

I find myself moving away from doctrine altogether at this point. My religious beliefs have essentially been Unitarian for my entire adult life, but influenced or altered by whatever other path I was involved with the time.

While my beliefs may most resemble that of the Unitarians, the spiritual community and practice that I’m most drawn to at this point is the Quakers–that is, their “unprogrammed” services. While the vast majority of Quakers identify as Christian, a small minority consider themselves to be “non-Christian Quakers.”  In any case, the focus of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) is more on communing directly with God, and “unprogrammed Quakers” do this through sitting in Quaker meetings in silence unless and until someone feels “moved by the Spirit to speak.”

To my surprise, I found that happening to me at only the second Quaker meeting I ever attended.  Someone spoke a few minutes before I did, and immediately after a sentence popped into my mind.  I sort of meditated on the sentence for awhile and kept running it through my head. Then it occurred to me that the nature of the way it just popped into my mind already fully formed might mean that the idea originated outside of me–i.e. from God. So I stood up and spoke.

I said, “Silence is an open door, rather than a closed door with words written upon it.” Right now, that statement is the most accurate reflection of my feelings about religion and my religious practice at this time.