This months topic is religion and spirituality. First off, it is my belief that religion is not necessarily spiritual. Many people claim to be of various religions but are about as spiritual as a dog turd (obviously I have no knowledge that dog turds aren’t spiritual, but hopefully you get my meaning !) People can on the other hand be spiritual but of no religion.
Religion is essentially a belief system, usually constrained by rules and regulations. These rules and regulations are usually enforced by a ruling class within the religion. For instance, the Vatican is the ruling class of the Catholic Church.
Religion is supposed to be a pathway to spiritualism from what we are lead to believe. Religion is based upon a set of rules and beliefs dating back many millenia. True religions stick by their governing orders and instructions. Hokey religions simply keep changing their fundamental beliefs to cure favour, the case of homosexuality in the Church of England being a prime example. Islam sticks by its fundamental beliefs, which is why it is gaining followers and Christianity loosing. Demonolatry is lucky in that we are generally left to work things out for ourselves and have very few fundamental orders – we all know what we are about anyway, so stuff those who don’t !
Spirituality simply requires an honest practitioner who is not afraid to believe that there is more to life than X Factor and the gathering of money and material goods. Be at peace with yourself and your beliefs. Believe not for what you can get out of it,but because you can. Spiritual people are usually far happier than non spiritual people. Religious but non spiritual people are usually angry souls. Where and what are you ?