--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradhatu@...> wrote: > > On Apr 12, 2012, at 10:27 PM, Xenophaneros Anartaxius wrote: > > > [Temporary Internet connexion during my travels] > > I found at an early age that making up one's own religion saves > > a lot of work and results in a much more pleasant life. You can > > choose a god, or no god, and what you must do or not do. To > > quote Mark Twain: 'Nothing so needs reforming as other people's > > habits.' It is especially useful to get others to follow in > > one's wake. Alas, I was not successful in this, so must go it > > alone.
Alas? I would consider you fortunate. :-) > > Without realising it, most make up their own religion anyway. > > That inner heretic of the mind is a busy bee. But in the end, > > you find out that whatever spiritual path you thought you > > followed or created, was wrong. > > Robert Thurman, who's a professor at Columbia, was talking to > another prof. and was surprised to find out that before about > 600 AD IIRC, it was considered normal for each person to have > their own belief system, in effect each person had their own > religion. It wasn't actually till later with the continued rise > of organized religion that beliefs became uniform and established > with "rights" and "wrongs". So in the overall history of religion, > the idea of holding a fixed or canonical set of beliefs is > actually rather new. Fascinating insight. There is a reason Mr. Thurman is known for more than producing a lovely daughter. :-) I would suggest that the catastrophe theory "tipping point" from ascendency to decline in any spiritual tradition happens the day it tries to codify or formalize itself into a set of rules and regs and "It's OK to believe this, and definitely NOT OK to believe this other thing" guidelines. Up to that point it was IMO a viable path potentially leading somewhere interesting; afterwards it's just a circular track on which spiritual joggers chase their own tails. On the other hand, there are many who have never known any spiritual approach that was NOT based on definitions of "right" and "wrong" with regard to its dogma and principles and what they can and cannot legitimately believe. They've never seen any other way of doing things. I would count true-blue TMers in this number. I would count myself fortunate to have seen other ways of doing things.
