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Spirituality Vs. Dogmatic Religiosity: A Guide for the Spiritually Perplexed
by Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff | Waking Times
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It will have to transcend a personal god and avoid dogma and theology. Encompassing both the natural and the spiritual, it will have to be based on a sense of intelligence arising from the spirit of all things, natural and spiritual, considered as a meaningful unity.” ~Albert Einstein
Man has become a spiritually neutered animal, a subtracted being disconnected from the whole – in mind, body, and soul. What has been cut from him is Nature itself, more specifically, and consequently, his own spiritual nature: his connection with his inner animal – awe and creature -astonishment that has the potential to transcend itself and achieve the numinous, the kind of overwhelming interconnected feeling that can be felt balls to bones, ovaries to marrow, and has the potential to make god-animals/animal-gods of us all.
Alas, the loss of Soul has become untenable. We have forgotten how to speak a language older than words, because we rely far too much on outdated traditions reeking of parochial values grown unhealthy and uncouth. Dogmatic religion is a direct result of this phenomenon. Hegel’s “silent weaving of the spirit” has unraveled into discordant knots of anxiety and neurosis. It is time to counteract dysfunctional religiosity and its dogmatic ideals and antiquated values with an updated spirituality that heals the dissociative split between Cosmos and Psyche, between Nature and the human soul.
Our overly-religious culture can be reborn, but in order to be reborn into a spiritual one it must first learn how to die. It must die a beautiful death, with the mighty seeds of spirituality planted into its rotting corpse. Nietzsche once declared, “God is dead!” But it wasn’t enough. It sent shockwaves of change in patterns of thought, at least for those who actually think, but it was met with a religious cognitive dissonance that absorbed it and continued on.
We simply weren’t ready for God to be dead. We weren’t ready for the end of religion itself. But now, with burgeoning spiritual practices and modes of enlightenment rising all over the planet, each able to see past the Big Con of religion. Now we are ready. We’re ready to ride the wave of the Great Mystery. We’re ready to hold the pain of being mortal creatures living out short lives within an unfathomably ancient cosmos. We’re ready to open up, to release our death anxiety, and to surrender to something greater.
Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat http://philosophers-stone.co.uk
Source: http://www.phoenixisrisen.co.uk/?p=10091
