Quantum Shaman (tm)

Condensed from a debate on an online forum...
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While religion and its accompanying rituals may be a comfort to some, it is important to take a step back and remember that the things we believe today are often little more than a program uploaded into our awareness through our culture, our parents, our peers, our history, and our society.  In the big picture, to believe that the act of immersing someone in water is going to have an effect on their immortal soul is no different than believing a common rock may become a diamond if one just wishes for it hard enough, or that the moon is made of green cheese because that is what their great-grandmother thought.  Believe what you will, but know that your belief will not affect the reality of what-is. 

As a little girl, I was baptized at the age of 7.  The whole shebang.  The whole big ritual in the tradition of the Southern Baptist Church.  For those unfamiliar with the ceremony, it goes something like this: The preacher stands in the pulpit for an hour on Sunday morning, shouting hellfire and brimstone.  Yes, literally.  No exaggeration.  Sometimes he even speaks in tongues.  On a really good day, he faints. At the end of the performance, the organist begins to play and sinful parishoners are encouraged to walk down the long red aisle and "accept Jesus into your heart and be baptized in his name."  We are told our sins will be washed away and we will be born again and gifted with eternal life in the kingdom of heaven, forever and ever, amen.

What does that really mean?  On the one hand, we have parents struggling with whether or not to let their kids believe in Santa Claus, with psychologists citing the potential anxiety the child may suffer when s/he discovers the truth.  And on the other hand, we have those same parents uploading their children with a fantasmagorical religious mythos that offers immortality, forgiveness from on high, and a mansion in the sky, yet never stopping to consider the anguish the child will suffer when s/he comes to realize that fairy tales are fairy tales, whether presented under the guise of good, clean cultural fun, or under the heavy cloak of religion.  The truth is, that while some may believe absolutely in their gods and devils, there is no more proof for either than there is proof for Santa Claus - and so to program children with such belief systems may be as detrimental as any lie told with intent.

To those inside an existing belief system (such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other organized religion), the belief system itself will most often blind the believers to any other interpretation, leading to the old adage, perception is reality.  My mother believed whole-heartedly that the right thing to do was to have her 7-year-old daughter baptized in the name of Jesus, and yet even at the time it was all happening, I kept looking around, wondering when the guys from Candid Camera were going to jump out and say, "Just kidding, kid!  No one REALLY believes that dunking you in that cold water on an otherwise insignificant Sunday morning is going to get you a front row seat in heaven!" 

What was amazing to me then - and still to this day - was the fact that those who were already enmeshed in the belief system clearly could not see beyond it - but far more detrimental was the realization that they seemed to NEED others to believe as they believed. To NOT share the belief system, to DECLINE baptism, was blasphemy - the only unpardonable sin in the eyes of the Baptist faith. Bottom line:  believe as WE believe, or else. And so history is cluttered with religious wars, the violence of the Crusades, and the burning of the witches - just to name a few of the atrocities that inevitably result when religion and common sense collide.

In the church I attended, there was a 1-week interval from the time one walked down the aisle until one was actually baptized.  The thing I remember most from that week was seriously, deeply wondering what was wrong with the adults.  Did they really BELIEVE this stuff? Could they possibly think that a man born of a virgin who was impregnated by a holy ghost could somehow have the power to save another's soul?  And even if it were all true, how did this peculiar ritual of immersing someone in water play into the grand equation of religious salvation?

It didn't make sense.

It still doesn't.

Even IF God exists, I cannot imagine that s/he would grant or deny admittance to heaven based on whether one had been subjected to some ritual which is, ultimately, only a symbolic rite of passage rooted in a single belief system.  Baptism is a ritual created by Man - nothing more, nothing less.

So is it necessary to be baptized in the name of Jesus?  No more necessary than it would be to be slathered in vegetable oil in the name of Buddha, or smeared with mud in the name of Raxxmu of Mars.  Rituals are the byproducts of belief systems - and belief systems are the byproducts of fear.  They may hold great power & significance for those who are part of that system, but for anyone outside of it, the ritual is little more than a peculiarity - and may often be barbaric and frightening.  To a Christian, for example, it is commonplace to hear the words, "Eat my body, drink my blood, and you will never die," yet to someone not indoctrinated into that faith, those same words may be interpreted as symbolic cannibalism and vampirism, altogether horrific. So, it's important to understand that the rituals of one religion will have no significance to someone of another religion, or someone with no religious belief at all.

For as long as man lives in fear of death, he will never know life.

"The destruction of faith is the beginning of evolution."  (Quantum Shaman)

 

       
All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  Quantum Shaman^TM  is a trademark of QuantumShaman.Com^TM and reserves all rights 
 

I saw your promo about What is God? and started reading some of your forum, and there's something I don't understand.  You seem to be saying that believing in God is wrong for anyone on a spirit quest, and that doesn't make sense to me.  If beliefs are just intangible ideas, what difference does it make? And how could it hurt someone to believe in God, whether he or she is real or not?

Received this question in a private email and wanted to address it, since it seems to tie in to a lot of recent discussions here at The Shaman's Rattle, and there is apparently a lot of confusion on this subject that bears clarification.

First, I don't necessarily think "believing in God is wrong for anyone on a spirit quest" - for one simple reason.  The idea of "wrong" is nothing more than a humanform assignation based on one's personal point of view.  If someone wants to believe in God or the Easter bunny, it makes no difference to me.  I don't think they're "wrong", but as a seer, I also don't see that their beliefs are founded in anything more than fear-based hope - i.e., "wishful thinking". 

What I do believe based on a lifetime of seeking and a lot of direct experience, is that when man puts God outside of himself and then worships it, he is disempowering himself and - worse - segregating himself from his own natural and innate abilities.  As long as someone truly believes God is going to save him or grant him eternal life, that person has no real incentive to do the work of self-realization.  I often hear the phrase, "We are saved by grace."  To me, that's not only a dangerous assumption, but a sad bit of programming that keeps the individual always at the level of victim/slave/child.  What saves us (if anything can) is our own efforts to evolve beyond the sum of our parts.  It is a choice and that choice is based not only in free will, but the power of intent.

So, in a nutshell, the "belief" in the traditional version of "god" can hurt people by rendering them spiritually impotent and placing them in a position of servitude to an organization that has nothing at all to do with what God really is - the creative/omnipotent force within each and every living being.  Even if organized religion was well-intentioned in the beginning, I cannot help but feel that it has become its own definition of "evil" over a period of time.  By disempowering its followers through subjugation of their own individual abilities, the church takes on the role of suppressor, whereby a man's "soul" may be sold back to him for those 20 pieces of silver in the collection plate every Sunday.  In the quantum shaman's world, the only real "sin" is to keep another from flourishing in their journey - and the church as an organization is the master of that form of sin.

Perhaps one reason I am so adamant about this at the moment is that I have recently witnessed up close and personal the damaging effects "religion" can have on the human spirit.  My mother, who is in a long process of dying of colon cancer, has been an avid "believer" all her life.  But now, as she faces the end of her days, it is clear to me that her "faith" is failing in light of the clarity impending Death can give us, and though she continues to say the "right" words, I can see in her heart that she is alone and terrified as she comes to understand that the church really hasn't given her a foundation capable of supporting her in her final days.  In short, her "belief" in God (sold to her by the church) kept her from exploring her own abilities.  I know now that she was/is a gifted seer in her own right, but because the church has always preached that such things are "of the devil", she suppressed the ability and actually spent a lot of time feeling guilty or "dirty" because of it. 

So, yes, what we "believe" that cannot be validated through experience into Knowledge... can and does harm people's journey.  I'm sure there are "shades of gray", but for the most part, I see no advantage to believing in anything that would require me to "worship" it.  To me, THAT is what doesn't make sense.

Your mileage may vary.  :)

All material in this blog (essays, rants, images, poetry, et al) is copyright © by Della Van Hise, and may not be reprinted elsewhere without the prior written permission of the author.  Quantum Shaman^TM  is a trademark of QuantumShaman.Com^TM and reserves all rights to this material.  This includes all print and electronic media, including other blogs, other websites, and so on.  Thanks for respecting copyrights.
 

In a recent discussion with a member of the Ba’ha’i faith, we began to touch on the idea that organized religion may indeed actually disempower the individual rather than providing any real sense of truth or any real tools of spiritual development.

I do think part of the challenge we face on the philosophical/spiritual level has to do with the limitations of language. The words faith, belief, truth, religion, spirit, god, just for starters, are going to mean something entirely different to all of us, even within our collective agreement.  We struggle with this quite often over at The Shaman's Rattle.

"Although a person of good deeds is acceptable at the Threshold of the Almighty, yet it is first 'to know,' and then 'to do.'  ('Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Baha v3, p549)

Knowing very little about the Ba'ha'i faith, I can only respond to the words here, out of context.  It is the words "at the threshold of the Almighty" which give me pause, because the implication is that "the Almighty" is an entity separate from the self, and therefore someone or something his "followers" must adhere to in order to receive his favor.  If I'm wrong about this with regard to the Ba’ha’i faith, my apologies, but this is getting toward the crux of my problem with most organized religions, where the entire doctrine is written around an "extant" manifestation of Spirit.

When Spirit is externalized is when followers are created.  It can't be any other way, because whenever Spirit is externalized and turned into an entity (such as the Christian god), a series of rules and regulations for pleasing this entity are automatically generated (what shall we do to be saved, oh lord?), followed closely by a series of taboos and boundaries which the entity's followers are cautioned against crossing, lest they suffer this or that ill fate (whether going to hell or being reincarnated as a dung beetle).  In short, it is within the limitations of those rules and regulations, taboos and boundaries, that the Self begins to be pigeon-holed into what is acceptable or unacceptable within the bounds of that particular religion - and most times, the results are like a program of behavior/belief which the follower uploads almost unknowingly at first.  And once the program is uploaded and becomes a belief system, it simply is the reality of the follower, regardless of what basis it may or may not have in any sense of truth/reality.

The individual becomes disempowered at a spiritual level when programmed to believe that the real power lies outside of herself.  And so the journey I have undertaken (both as practitioner and counselor) involves removing all those old belief systems in order to bring the individual into contact with the godforce within themselves.  God still exists, but the individual is god, and so the relationship becomes intimate, personal, and ultimately self-empowering - because the boundaries between self and god are removed, the rules & regulations & taboos fall aside, and what occurs is what is often called a "spiritual awakening" or "shamanic awakening", in which the individual embraces "god" within herself, as herself, and begins to take responsibility for her actions in every aspect of her life.

I feel this was the original goal of most of the original teachers - Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, and many others - but the problem is that the organized aspect of religion cannot help but create boundaries and limitations which ultimately impact the spiritual potential of its followers.  In seeking to form an agreement (a religion is a collective agreement), the original Intent of the teachings becomes watered down, rendered down into "shoulds and shouldn'ts", and the vast majority of that religion's followers are sheep - and, in fact, many even refer to themselves in such a manner in Christianity.  Granted, perhaps that is an extreme, but the general point I'm trying to make can't be denied.  Jesus himself would be the first to cast the church as it stands today asunder - because in so many ways it goes against everything he was attempting to teach.

Near as I can determine through vision quests, meditations and truth-seeking, Jesus was a shaman who figured it out for himself, did the long and difficult task of stripping away the programs put onto him by his society, and emerged in the aftermath of it all as an enlightened spirit.  He tried teaching this to a few select disciples, and maybe at that one-on-one level of instruction, some of them actually grasped it and went on to achieve their own enlightenment.  But what has followed since has been, simply, followers.  For centuries.  Now, instead of being told to “Do and you may be able to save yourself from the obliteration of Self at death,” followers are simply told, “Believe and you will be saved from hell.”  The Intent has been lost, replaced with a much watered-down, more palatable version of “Salvation in 5 minutes – just believe!”  Doesn’t work that way.   Jesus knew it.  Buddha knew it.  And at some level, we all know it – but the problem is that too many people are too afraid of finding out that they’ve been wrong all their lives that they would rather go right on being wrong, because at least they’re comfortable in the familiar territory of long-held beliefs.  The earth was once flat, too.  The moon was made of green cheese.  Epilepsy was a sign of possession by the devil.

Do you, for example, follow the religious path you are on through blind faith--that is, in spite of no evidence for it or, worse, in spite of evidence against it? (I'll be pretty shocked if you say yes to that!) Neither do I, nor does any Christian I've ever met.

Again, we're at the limits of language, but at the core level, I would say that I do not follow any "path".  I forge my own, based on truths I have found to be universal truths/higher truths, if you prefer  (no matter what the source - Buddhist, Christian, Toltec, Star Trek) - but I always pause to reflect on the validity of whatever truth I am practicing.  The problem is, a lot of the people I work with in the capacity of spiritual counselor are actually afraid of their own abilities because of the programs put onto them by their former religion - so in that regard, I will have to say that most of the Christians I have met really do follow their religion based largely on blind faith.  Perhaps they felt some spark of spirit-calling in the initial stage of their journey, but by the time I make their acquaintance, that spark has been rendered down into "Thou shalt not" fill in the blank.  Many have lived their lives believing that if they work hard enough in the church or pray hard enough or tithe more, their god will favor them with a better life... and when it doesn't happen, all too often the church leaders either place the blame on them ("You didn't pray hard enough"), or respond with the typical rhetoric, "God moves in mysterious ways and ours is not to question why."

That's where I have a major problem with "organized" religion - because in the organization of what the congregation "should" or "shouldn't" believe, the individual gets swept under the rug and herded into the pew like one more sheep in the fold.  Most simply do not have the tools (emotional, spiritual, rational) for seeing beyond the belief system and into the core of whatever truth may (or may not) lie beyond the organized belief system itself.

Without the "inner spark" of religion, I doubt that most people would bother with the rest.

I think a lot of people start off with that inner spark, but instead of leading them on a journey of self-exploration, it leads them in search of an "agreement".  And that's the danger of organized religion, in my opinion.  The reason there are so many religions, ultimately, is because none of them can really agree on what is truth.  That is where the individual's own sense of spiritual responsibility must come in to play.  We learn and grow by Do-ing, not by believing.

“The destruction of faith is the beginning of evolution.” 
Orlando, 2000