can religion satisfy a spiritual seeker?
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
It took a lot of deliberation to write this article, because I want to be clear in presenting the problem with religious ideas and methodologies without creating a critique or condemnation of religion’s dogma or its adherents. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I’ll begin by noting that religion does actually serve a purpose for its multitude of followers. However, it does not lead most serious seekers to what lies beyond the egoic mind and the commonly accepted concept of reality. Religion deals with suffering, but it does not end it. And, as world history shows, it has often been the excuse for it.
what is meant by ‘religion’?
For the purpose of our discussion, religion is defined as:
1. the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods and
2. the body of beliefs of religions and cults.
It’s fairly clear that most “spiritual teachings” also fall into this category of religion, because they offer a body of beliefs (reincarnation, karma, angels, spirit guides, twin flames, higher consciousness, the law of attraction, psychic powers, etc.), concepts of rewards and punishments for behavior (e.g., karma, reincarnation, enlightenment, etc.), and rituals (meditations, contemplations, visualizations, etc.).
spiritual seekers
Psychologist Diana Raab noted that spiritual seekers “are those who follow the path of self-discovery. The path can be a lifelong path or one sought as a result of a life-changing event, such as trauma.” While we may think of spiritual seekers as free spirits unbounded by groupthink, a great many, if not most, gravitate or belong to an organization.
Some seekers say that they don’t really know what they are looking for, but they’ll know when they find it.
Since the thrust of my writings are for those seeking some ultimate truth beyond the body, physical world, and thought, I usually pose the question: What do you want? If you want to find the source of what you are beyond the body, mind, and ego, then religions, cults, and other organizations have little to offer unless you somehow extricate yourself from the dogma and conflicting teachings and find a way to engage in your own self-enquiry.
While religions may contain the seeds to guide you on your own enquiry, their body of teachings is too covered up in dross to promote the clarity of mind needed to best serve the serious seeker. Or more bluntly, since the biggest obstacle to the awakened state is one’s hardfast body of beliefs, indulging in religious beliefs is more of a hindrance than help.
what do religious people need?
Billions of people follow what we have come to know as the major religions — Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. There are countless others involved in cults, smaller religions, and in a less defined category called spirituality.
Taking a closer look at what people are and what they need, perhaps we can see why religions exist and, at the same time, why they have failed to move our world any closer to the eternal peace and brotherhood that each one holds up as the ideal. Quite often, throughout history, for example, we have seen “peace on earth” interpreted as “peace for my group, but not necessarily for anyone else’s.”
Religions do offer their followers a sense of security, hope, community, and salvation. But to uncover what lies beyond thought, neither religious teachings nor religious leaders, in general, are of much use. In this sense, religion is more of an impediment than an aid.
the fault of religion
Religion tells you who you are instead of you finding out for yourself.
Religious teachings require a willingness to accept other people’s ideas (the ideas of religious leaders and founders, and scriptures written by ancient peoples) about the way life works and what role you play in it. For those looking to fit into a ready-made set of commandments, admonitions, rewards, punishments, and rules, religion provides a convenient, albeit flawed, solution to life’s problems. But if one seeks clarity of mind to behold the entirety of consciousness and what one is beyond all else, religion may be woefully inadequate.
While many religious ideals are based on the teachings of spiritual leaders (such as the Buddha or Lao Tzu, for example) who in their lifetimes taught about how to end suffering, live in harmony, and find the ineffable, the institution and dogma of most religions offer little more than distorted interpretations and literal explanations of scripture instead of metaphorical ones.
the unwise teaching the words of the wise
Religious leaders,— priests, rabbis, imams, ministers, preachers, bishops, popes, etc. — lacking the awareness and spiritual insight of the founding spiritual teacher, are incapable of grasping the depth of the original teachings for lack of personal experience and spiritual wisdom. Or worse, they use religious teachings to consolidate and ensure their own power and wealth, and to indulge in their vices.
The spiritual teacher or sage whose words and deeds have been concretized into a religion presented something that cannot be realized through learning, memorization, repetition, scriptures, prayer, or worship. Learning or memorizing the sage’s teachings does not equate to one’s own personal realization.
Religion offers something far afield of the clear, original message that inspired its creation.
The words of a mystic are neither empty nor confusing until they are placed in the hands of religious leaders.
is religion for followers?
It may seem harsh to say, but religion seems to be fit only for followers, not in a derisive sense, but in a practical way. Most people need to follow some idea or person that offers hope and security.
The fact that life is a continuous flow of good, bad, and neutral events, thoughts, and actions confounds a mind that is encumbered by the sense of self, the ego. Realizing that we exist only in the absolute present, and that we ARE the absolute present, is the only way to behold what life really is in its totality. Yet religion is fixed in time and rife with antiquated, draconian, misinterpreted, misunderstood, and ancient ideas, practices, and commandments.
A mind that seeks clarity, combined with religious teachings that confound the mind, results in psychological conflict and confusion. This is an unspoken truth that has driven religious people to the brink of sanity for thousands of years, often to the point of punishing themselves and others for their own internal conflict. How can one reconcile, for example, a god that is all-loving yet is also said to be vengeful, wrathful, and jealous? How can a god rescue a person from a catastrophe yet have caused the catastrophe in the first place?
“External theological learning moves like a moon and fades
when the sun of experience comes up.”
— Twelfth-century Persian poet Sanai (b. 1080 CE)
free thinkers are outliers
Free thinkers are outliers. Religion has pejorative terms for them — sinners, heretics, and blasphemers.
There is little quarter in religion for those who desire to see clearly, beyond the skewed and problematic rhetoric of someone else’s teachings. At best such seekers may attempt to work within the system, carefully trying not to upset the clergy or rile the wrath of the orthodox or zealous followers. And at worst they are murdered, tortured, or banished for their independence. A number of spiritual leaders whose legacy led to the creation of a new religion were once rebels within an established religion. Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammed come to mind. Others split off into factions to create a better fit for their own spiritual demands. Out of Islam came Sufism, from Christianity came Gnosticism, from Judaism came Kabbala, from Hinduism arose Buddhism, and so on.
do religious people cause suffering?
Suffering is the result of conflict; and religion breeds conflict because it is not in step with the present, it defies logic, it’s rooted in outdated ideas, it has created gods with conflicted human minds, and it demands obedience, blind faith, and unconditional acceptance.
Religious followers cause suffering. It takes human beings to set religious ideas into action. In each generation religions seem to be interpreted anew so that some ideas are ignored and others are used to justify causing harm to others in the name of a god or gods.
“Religion is like a game of telephone…
We have no idea what the first message was.”
— Tasha Shayne
accepting the totality of what we are
If we do not accept the totality and reality of what we are, we remain in eternal conflict. And if we won’t see that religious and political leaders are pretending to be something that they are not and that they know something they have no way of knowing, their followers are completing the circuit of codependency. This, in turn, perpetuates a lot of nonsense, violence, unfairness, and suffering borne of outlandish and conflicted teachings.
To quote my daughter Tasha, a brilliant writer, “Religion is like a game of telephone…We have no idea what the first message was.”
