What is the true meaning – the true purpose – of religion? To find God? To save yourself? To redeem yourself? To have a pathway to morality?
No, I don’t think any of those statements fully captures the main purpose – the real, subconscious drive that lights us up inside and compels us to seek and devote ourselves to any cause or religion. I think it might be more accurate that the main driver is connection.
Connection to God. Connection to others. Connection to this world. Connection to a higher purpose. Isn’t connection just love, as another word?
Again and again I am pulled to the belief that we as humans are inter-connected – a social consciousness. A symbiotic ‘net’ that for some reason does not know of it’s inherent symbiotic ‘net-ness.’ That we are operating in autonomy is an illusion, a conscious construction, because we are really ONE, subconsciously, in the heart.
It seems possible to me that each religion that we have ever seen is only trying to regain that connection. But I think the tragedy here is that because the religion is consciously created, and borne out of the conscious thought preconceptions (that we have lived and been programmed with for millennia) that presuppose that we are separate in the first place, they may be doomed to fall short of that which they ultimately strive for: TRUE connectedness.
True connectedness does not put up walls. True connectedness tears them down. Connectedness does not need religion. Connectedness is connectedness. It doesn’t need rules to engage. It just is.
In my heart I feel that the pervasive illusion of our time is this thought that we are separate. Separate in race, separate in religion, separate in nationality, separate in education, creed, in even morality. Separateness seems to me a pervasive weed in our collective subconscious – our heart – that is always whispering in our ears that we are different, that they are not us. That seems to me an evil in itself, to use such a strong word. Who put this idea in our hearts? Who pushes this agenda among us? How did the seed of this thought get incepted in the first place?
Perhaps we were once conscious of our connectedness, in a past time too far back for collective memory to fathom. But somehow, in some way, we’ve let this external world creep up and convince us that there are walls and they were always meant to be there. For our safety. For our benefit.
How can we take down these walls? How can we see the world and ourselves the way we ought to? Maybe we should ask ourselves what we are so afraid of, and then dive deeper into the pool. In order to keep swimming in the face of our insurmountable panic.
Amie Zor 