Saturday, February 5, 2011

Create Your Own Religion

You have every right to be upset about the title of this article. Your staunch beliefs may lead you to believe I am being sacrilegious or that I am an atheist, which isn’t true. Through my own spiritual journey laced with religion and mayhem and inner reflection I have come to a certain awareness that I wish to share with you.

Everything about this world is fiction.

When I say fiction, I mean, it’s all made up. We give meaning to everything around us. We decide that the sky should be called a sky. We decide that the color blue should be called blue. This is called social constructionism. As a society we had to get together and decide on certain TRUTHS and AGREE so that we can communicate with each other effectively. We decided to build an item and we looked at it and said, “This is a table. This is what the table is used for.” Everyone agree on this, and it is written. We did the same for everything else in our physical space and then we transferred that same authority of defining the world around us to our spiritual beliefs and our expectations for the stages of our lives.

If everything we see is constructed by society then the expectations for our lives and the roles we play in life are fiction too. We made everything up. It’s like someone in the beginning of time said, “Let’s play a game” and then started making up rules. These rules or guidelines help to establish order but later became an enforced standard perpetuated by parents (and religion) who teach children that “this is the way to be”. Anything outside of those standards was viewed as “abnormal” or “wrong,” when really, the whole thing, everything, all of our roles, concepts, language and beliefs are all made up. All of it is fiction.

We, as humans, have an innate desire to understand the reason behind our existence. We need to feel like there is some purpose for us being here so we created concepts to help us grasp onto a value system for our lives. Often, these value systems attributed the creation of our human existence to an act of some higher being(s).

The earliest social systems held polytheistic views. This means that they believed in the existence of multiple Gods who controlled and ruled the earth and its inhabitants. As time went on and civilizations evolved, a more monotheistic view was adopted and spread by civilizations. As time went on these fictionalized concepts concerning life expectations, roles and our existence were passed down from generation to generation as TRUTH.

Today, these TRUTHS have been the breeding ground for much of our civilization’s unrest because no one wants to admit that there is a chance that their TRUTH is wrong. Everyone’s truth is wrong. No one’s truth is the truth because there is no truth; only fictionalized concepts handed down like folklore and passed on as KNOWLEDGE.

No one “knows” anything. Everything is a projection of our beliefs. Every belief is a choice.

If every concept was made up by someone in our ancestral lineage and passed along the years to me then why do I have to follow someone else’s concept? Why can’t I make up my own beliefs about life, love and success? Am I not smart enough to create my own game and rules? Do I need someone else to be my guide because I am not capable of defining my life for myself? Do I not hold the same creative powers of my ancestors who started the game in the first place?

The “truth” is, I can.

And so can you.

Your religion is not only the spiritual belief system you were born in. Your religion is also the set of dominant beliefs that you hold concerning your expectations from life, love and your idea of success. You can decide to play the game and follow the instructions made up by people who lived thousands and thousands of years ago. It may actually benefit you to do that, but, what it really says about you is that you do not believe you have the capability to decide for yourself. You’d rather go along with the crowd just to be safe and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Everyone can’t be a leader. Everyone can’t break the mold. But for those who DO wish to break out of the box of the false TRUTHS enforced upon us which cause us to feel sad about any idea or expression that goes against the game and its expectations, you KNOW what to do.

It begins with a decision to explore what makes you feel good about your existence. What do you believe right now that detracts from making you feel good about who you are and where your life is heading? If you hold a belief system that causes shame, guilt or unrest about matters that have nothing to do with how you treat people and everything to do with who you are on the inside and your likes and dislikes and preferences, you should take a step back and examine WHY you choose to believe this. If your belief system forces you to meet some higher expectation that YOU did not create for yourself, you may be a victim of the “game”. You can choose to stop playing at any time.

Create your own religion. Choose beliefs that lead you to feel happy about who you are and lead you to want to live out your best life by your OWN definition.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Powerful...DAMN TEE

Anonymous said...

Hey, I already knew this. Am glad I found somebody else, that does as well. Life is what you make it, the ones that disagree are weak minded and etc... My name is Estiward, I would like to be your friend, I dont meet people that know this the sameway I do too.

Dwayne said...

Inspiring Post

Anonymous said...

I have always had that small wondering in the back of my head that asks why do I have to call this a window? or maybe a wall? or why do we have to do this or that. I am only 15 and you are so right and that article explains everything! thank you for this! haha(:

Anonymous said...

The weird thing is even though truth to ocan be real to the beholder. Yet I agree with your statement on the inability to think for yourself being a problem.

The sad truth is the responsible parties for what comes next for us are the 'small buck' majority of the world in relation to the terms of how they react to the heralds of government, religion, science, media and probably more.

Perhaps they've been caught by the lulls of a well treaded path of word magic - again another 'accepted truth'. What I mean is the phrase 'small buck' says an awful lot about someone if they paint that impression of themselves by placing their self portrait in that box - a completely rational and logical approach to a biological marvel - us.

A trait many of us are guilty of are placing attributes onto ourselves that attributes to a disorder, a personality type, a stereotype, a race even. All these things have us boxed.

As much as we are placed in this external and physical world, the only place we hold any true relevance of truth is inside your own head - in the internal world, where symbols, emotions, motifs and stories are key. Where Creativity reigns. There is no escaping it. And yes I agree the sense of your own internal and therefore external world is decided here. They are linked but I think we are generally unaware of this - likely because the distractions around us tell us to what to think rather than do this task for ourselves.

Some people find thinking for themselves terrifying, and I mean on a more than superfical level. I mean becoming the annoying child that asks why all the time. Annoying child as a phrase may even put you off it. But isn't that what we really love about children - their inquisitiveness? Thing is now we can communicate with our peers in a way that they find grammatically correct and approachable - really there's always more than one way to say why.

The aspect of creating your own religion does make sense to me - again for making sense of the internal workings of our mind. It should be truth to the person, and that person alone. That mythos is a foundation as to how you percieve this world and if it is brought forth as a genuine thing you can emotively feel as right then fair play to you and keep it up.

I believe no amount of materialistic luxuries can replace the feeling we can gain from this - and the fullness of life we can have from cultivating it. A religion is for life not just for christmas :)


By talking this way particular medical logicals could even refer to me as a schizophrenic if I hit all the right numbers on their quota - simply because they cannot see that unconciously I am just challenging their own beliefs.

I think we are well in a world of adults with the minds of children. Some in many areas of the mind and others in particular parts of the mind that may have kept them pegged internally from being perceptively free.

Maybe evolution is saying it is time to wake up. Or maybe not - it's simply my truth, and to me at least - that is everything.