Because in all authentic religions there is a supra-rational element, a transcendent element, that sits at its core – its heart – and everything else 'forms' itself around that. One might call it Word or Logos or Aum or Dao or what have you, it is ageless and Eternal, it is, in Itself, utterly transcendent and unknowable, and it is that which is immanently present in the 'ground' of every living thing, every mode of being, and it is that by, through, in and with, all being is united and related ... all is one.
This is really fascinating. Where would I read more that explains that concept in particular?
The 'vocation' of all being, the 'calling' of all being, is not only to respond to that primordial, Eternal Call, but to add one's voice to it, so that the Single, Simple, One(-note, or sound or tone), becomes a harmonious melody, a theophany, and that is what doing religion is.
This is also fascinating - where can I read more in depth about this?
What are the criteria by which that is determined?
tin invent their own religion,
I once knew someone who was trying to invent a form of deism he felt would be more rational than religion (he was a former Orthodox priest)
He collected some other deists who had their own ideas. Very frustrating individuals to talk to.
But not everybody is trying to invent their own religion.
Some people are followers, to varying degrees, of a non-orthodox branch of a religion - which is authentic to its devotees, all the more despite charges of "hErEsY" or "cRaZy cUlT" from the smug majority - Many if not most religions are a heretical spinoff of another religion -
Or some people are "truth-seekers" trying to figure out what is true
Or some people are just trying to get by and hope that G-d thinks about them from time to time.
If psychology teaches us anything, it's that we are prone to make the same choices, the same errors, over and over again.
Well... that's what therapy is for
(I happened to have a pretty intense session today with someone who wrapped up by saying "I didn't know any of these things you just told me"
People sometimes have ideas in their heads that make me SMH but they really didn't know otherwise. Like I didn't know a lot of things when I was young - and I'm talking about just regular life and relationship skills)
Used diligently therapy can help people stop making the same mistakes.
But one thing I can tell you, is that such a path, when it is authentic, is wholly and utterly real, in body, mind, spirit and soul ... it is solitary and sorrowful, desolate and alone – it is to walk the vale of tears, and those tears are your own – it exists because it needs must in a contingent cosmos such as ours, but its a hard path, a life of loss and loneliness.
Sometimes people who are not spiritually inclined at all have lives of loss and loneliness, for a bajillion different reasons.
I might have described some aspects of my social or even family experience a bit like that sometimes, but not my spiritual experience as such.
If anything pursuing what I did helped me find like minded people and be less alone.
I feel like there's an all-or-nothing or black-and-white thinking approach here - which I'm not sure is
quite right - it sounds almost like you are saying "Either follow an orthodox religion to the T, OR follow a terrifying sorrowful desolate path alone" One extreme or the other. I'm not sure that is what you mean to convey by this... but neither has been much of a reflection of my experience or my husband's. Not in terms of spirituality. Other things maybe, a bit, but not in regards to religious life
The path is Great Burden, and whosoever walks that path pays a great price, and its rewards are not in this world.
If you're a prophet or a founder of a religion maybe (though not all great teachers necessarily intended to found a new religion) but if you live in a country with religious freedom (which I hope I will still have by the end of the decade) just being someone who is trying to figure out what is true by learning about different religious ideas does not necessarily put you in that place
Lastly, I would add that on the spiritual path there lies somewhere ahead 'the dark night of the soul' – which one can read about in any number of intellectual and emotional essays – but the experience of that renders everything 'as chaff before the wind', it is a whole-person experience, its is beyond experience, it is beyond that place governed by reason and rationality, void of every support ... and if that does not terrify the solitary seeker, then there's a case of 'fools rush in, where angels fear to tread'.
This sounds like greatness, but also very abstract.
All of this is amazing and intriguing, I'm just not sure I quite get what you are trying to convey.
One last note - if following an orthodox path is somehow required in order to get to the headwaters - using the river analogy - that may seem doable enough for religions where behavior - either ritual or ethical - is key. To the extent that
belief is involved or required - well that changes the shape of things considerably doesn't it?
