Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Spiritual ways of looking at religious figures?
curiouscats
Indiana, USA New
I was wondering, has anyone here started looking at certain figures in religion in a new way since beginning their spiritual journey? This has interested me for a while, and after looking into spirituality and opening my mind, I began to see how certain religious figures can be thought of in a way that's outside of the paradigm offered by organized religion, for example, like this:
http://josministries.prophpbb.com/topic17416.html
Anyone else have experience with this? The opened mind and willingness to think about things differently has been a great benefit from meditation, and I was curious if anyone had similar experiences.
0
Comments
Sometimes.
Yes
Thus have I heard "Wisdom is seeing things in a non-habitual manner !" ~William James~
I feel it can be a little disconcerting if one has strong previous religious convictions. Some are very susceptible and do not find it easy to contemplate what may be quite challenging insights.
Personally I found your link very interesting.
It is true that some figures have very twisted histories - there was a tradition in ancient times where each new religion would take as it's demons the gods of the previous religion. Look for example at the history of Astaroth-Astarte.
But if you start to unfold all of that, your inner mythology becomes very muddled and unclear. You could argue that it is spiritually unhealthy
it's a question of what do you want to be, a spiritual practitioner or a scholar of comparative religion.
Smile, and let everything be your teacher.
Yes, definitely. The more I see/read/hear/think, the less inclined I am to see religious figures as deities, or connected to deities. For some reason, humankind seems intent on worshipping something/someone, and so religious figures tend to acquire mystic properties/powers, not because they proclaimed them, but because those who followed imbued them.
I never really had a great capacity to worship; any that I may have had seems to have ebbed. This puts my views of religious figures rather far outside the paradigm offered by organized religion (though not at all in the way of those interesting people in your link).