My take on the whole thing is this...
I dislike the word religion because I find it very restrictive, for example I consider myself to be a follower of Christ Yeshua but I would stop short
of calling myself a Christian only because I do not care to associate myself with any mainstream church or organization. I also consider the wisdom
of other ancient philosophies and personally find that many ancient philosophies share common links..
So I will refer to it as spirituality...and for me spirituality is about experiencing the spiritual.
I believe that the core component of spirituality comes from the direct experience itself.
It is my opinion that the Torah was written by a shamanic, nomadic tribal people who were attempting to describe various altered states of
consciousness as well as direct mystical experiences.
My problem with organized religion is that the emphasis on direct spiritual experiences has been completely deluded.
What you have usually with organized religion is a large group of people that have never experienced anything truly mystical simply sitting around and
reading about other peoples mystical experiences...
Experiences that happened thousands of years ago.
So basically I'm saying the focus of mainstream religion is mainly on preservation of Dogma and storytelling.
The problem is the Torah was not written to be a
just a storybook. The "story" part of the Torah is like the garment...the outer layer, a
protective shell if you will...The story format of the Torah is there to preserve the inner layer of mystery that is encrypted within the Hebrew
language.
....those who are truly in love with the Torah
are allowed to glimpse beneath the outer layer into the inner mysteries of God's word and
therein lies not only a blue print of creation itself but also a road map to altered states of consciousness and direct mystical experience.
For example in the Torah there are 72 names for god and they each denote a certain individual aspect of God's divine personality.
The word "God" is not one of those names.
If you look at Hebrew tradition...inner silence was the primary method of prayer...
Theoretically this practice has some of the same consciousness altering effects that Buddhist meditation would provide.
Mathew 6:6-8
""But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in
secret will reward you. "And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for
their many words. "So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him"
edit on 9121414 by Eliyahu because: (no reason given)
edit on 9121414 by Eliyahu because: (no reason
given)
edit on 9121414 by Eliyahu because: (no reason given)