Religion vs Faith

I think we all get caught up and get sooo emotional when people start talking "religion." Immediately people start to get in their corners and get their defenses up and come out fighting. People it's not religion that is the main point here, it's really FAITH!
Man has always from his very first breath has been searching for his "god" his creator. We have this need so deep within our spirit that it becomes a life long search for something. We may not have a name for "it" but we know that "it" is out there and waiting for us to come to "it" to come home so to speak.
Faith is believing in something that you know is there but you can't see it you just KNOW it without question and it really doesn't make any human sense. It makes sense to your inter being your soul so to speak. When you have faith in something that you know is bigger than yourself you start to seek alone time with yourself and your spirit "it". You do begin finding certain emotions and an awareness that you never had before in your world and your life and the meaning and purpose of your life here on this earth. There in comes faith. There is a God and He is our purpose and creator. We find peace within when we find and accept that he does have a path for us to follow. But it's just getting up every morning believing that this is going to be a great day because I am totally loved and accepted in such away that is so awesome and unbeieviably beautiful. Faith is not religion. Religion is man made not made by God. Faith is our own path that we each take to find our own God and fill our spirit with his love and his grace everyday. Anyway, that is a short version of what I am trying to confess to you what my heart is telling me in my journey on my personal path. Faith is very much a journey that we embark for a lifetime and has many ups and downs but also brings up much joy and peace.

Ah, great post brother...boy you and I have come a long way through the religion seperations havent we.

Religion can be mans worst limitation, to the relationship of the spirit. If the spirit is wanting to teach something to the one of faith, religion may keep that persons eyes tied shut in pre impacted thoughts that wont allow the spirit to guide them.

Being we are siblings, we know the paths eachother has experienced of the spirit. Religion placed boundaries on me and my ideas of God, it put God in this box. Shedding religion, I opened the box and this great light burst forth...

Yes, faith, not blind faith, is essential, it is intuition, inner knowledge not yet conscious to the outer self. However, an analogy might help to explain the difference between true religion and false religion.

Imagine you've crash landed in a remote forest. Some things want to eat you, something are beautiful and attractive, some people you encounter are friendly, others not. You know you don't belong here but you don't quite remember where you've come from. You make friends in a village and come to live there. Some people just want to be your friend others want you to make life easier for them or use you to simplify their life. You know there's somewhere else you’re from but you don't know how to get there. One person says they can show you where you’re from and you trust them, have some faith in what he says, follow him and he takes you over the hill to the next valley. It's not that he was lying, this was as far as he had ever been and thought it must be your distant home. Some time later another person says he knows where your home is and he takes you to the valley beyond the valley the other person took you to. Again, he wasn’t lying, it’s because that's as far as he'd ever been. For a time you follow a group that says after you die you'll go home and they had a great teach but he's dead so you just have to wait. When you get tired of that and more of the same, you strike out on your own for awhile search and search and eventually after being misled, endangered by other encounters you find your way back to the village. It’s not that you might not have eventually found your way home but you just have no idea how truly far away and difficult the journey home is. Finally, your next door neighbor from back home, who works for the search and rescue comes and offers to take you back home. Now, in all these other situations, trust, faith was needed. Some times, is was innocent and misguided or naive. If you ignore your intuition and run on the mind you’d be inclined to refuse the offer, after all nothing has been true so far, so why bother? Now there are lots of people in the village that are telling you their right and he’s wrong for all kinds of ego or selfish reasons. But if you listen to your intuition and cultivate even a little faith you can try one more time again and this time prove to yourself, by experience, that it is true, that this person can really does take you home.

Now, are all the paths the same? Are any of the guides really the same? Could any of them worked as well for you as another? This is the difference between true religion and the social popular and historic religions of today.

I thought your story was very entertaining however it really didn't come close to what I was trying to convey about FAITH. True faith does BELIEVE. It believes first of all what it can not see. Second, it GROWS. It's like a seed planted in your heart and you give it a little water (tears) and the seed takes root and starts to grow. Your heart (soul) begins to feel THINGS that are crazy that make no sense but yet somehow you KNOW they are TRUE and that this seed is producing FAITH. Your spirit begins to help you grow and help you know where to find what you are looking for. Religion really doesn't help us much with faith. Religion gives us rules and practices to follow to show the religious world that we are CHRISTIANS. Which by the way Christian really means Christ lead. And I feel my faith is Christ lead. He leads me 24/7 in my thoughts, dreams, past, present, and future. My faith has lead me to TRUST that He, as Paul says in the book of Romans, is able to keep me until that day. That day of course being the day of his return. My faith is a hope in something I can not humanly see but with spirit eyes I can see clearly. It is real and my God is touchable and reachable. Religion didn't teach me that my faith did.

reply to post by Grandma

(this thread was by my Mother, known now as Grandma on ATS this was before she had a login name, and i was letting her use my ID. )
great thread mom! you are the OG conspiracy theorist from the JFK era...denying ignorance for decades! i am so proud of the way your mind is so open and clear now after so many years of muddle. COOL ON YOU!
HERE
is a link to the thread that explains her sudden awakening to the realm of endless love and joy and possibilities of faith instead of religion...she used to be strict methiodist, and didn't believe in other forms of christianity much less anything like Ra and other "heretical" subjects on religion. this changed her life and made her who she is now.

Hi grandma and welcome to ATS i look forward to reading more from you.
As you know there is a wealth of knowledge and great thinkers on this site im looking forward to a healthy discussion on this subject and many more.

reply to post by MinMin


Thank you Minmin for your warm welcome. I am really enjoying this site very much altho sometimes I feel a little "dumb" when I try to wrap my head around what others are posting. I too welcome healthy discussions on these topics. Again thank you for your kind words.

great thread Enigma.
Somehow, I think if people took their faith out of other mens ideas and languages, and put it in the ineffable, things would shape up and people would have productive loving debates about spirituality, instead of heated ones that solicit negative emotions and further divide so the kings can conquer.
If everyone was open minded enough to see that everything is empty, and there is only eternally wise source love to keep it seeming otherwise, there would be no limit to what we could accomplish.
I watch people argue and debate over religious arguments, and all I see is a perceptual/language barrier, if people could just let go of what other people influenced them to think, and just think purely for themselves, take a look at things newly without bias, people would see, and people would hear.

man life after death does have its down falls i mean ... i cant handle most enhusiastic christians in the now world imagine if that was eternal even other religions # what would you do if allah had it.. imagine having to learn aribic id rather be an infedel or sum othe bunch of crap religon or what ever i think in death i would be more crazy and talk to my self the irony is life now seems to have a lot with getting away from crazy people

man life after death does have its down falls i mean ... i cant handle most enhusiastic christians in the now world imagine if that was eternal even other religions # what would you do if allah had it.. imagine having to learn aribic id rather be an infedel or sum othe bunch of crap religon or what ever i think in death i would be more crazy and talk to my self the irony is life now seems to have a lot with getting away from crazy people

reply to post by Grimnal


Thats the thing, we get wrapped up in 3d based perceptions, and forget what god is all about in the first place, god and the afterlife are ineffable, and I'd bet all of reality that they do not resemble the 3rd dimension in the way we typically assume they do. Its probably like comparing the mirrors reflection with the actual being, infinite dimensions of difference.
maybe try to imagine for a moment, a religion, that was based on silence and emptiness rather than words and ideas, a religion that acknowledges all words and ideas are biased because of their human origin.
Just imagine god and heaven without thinking of anything that has to do with your 3d experience.
Dogmas/religions were invented as magical methods to reach a specific purpose, but this is left out of todays understanding of most religion. They (not all religions fall under this idea as some do explain the magic of/behind spiritualism)are taken as absolute truth denying all other, when really, they are only absolute truth within that belief system if you so choose to accept it. Each were designed just like any other ritually based belief system to reach a certain means, usually enlightenment or true pure realization or an experience of god. The modern outlook of what religion is, is so diluted and disconnected to the original understanding that it hardly works anymore, and works better to divide and conquer the people.


[edit on 11/21/2008 by psychedeliack]