after 6 years, maybe looking for a new church/religion..

by orbison11 18 Replies latest jw friends

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  dolphman

  Check this out:

  Once you get past the main dogmas of every major religion, you find that they all begin teaching THE SAME ONE TRUE RELIGION.

  Take for instance the religions below. Look at their corresponding "mystical" or "esoteric" fields of study

  Judaism = (Kabbalah)

  Islam = (Sufism)

  Hinduism (Tantric)

  Buhdissm (Tantric)

  Each one of these religion's mystical and esoteric components teaches exactly the same concepts as the others. That's right, Kabbalah, Sufism, Buhdissm, and Hinduism, once they are stripped away of whatever cultural and political inclanations and are left with their higher arts and esoteric studies intact, pretty much teach the one same true religion. That everything is God, and than man can attain and actually know god through direct mystical experience, as opposed to having to sit through 3 meetings a week and a day in field service spent hoping to not run into anyone from school.

  It's true. Do the research. Why waste time having blind faith in something when you can really know that a god exists. Don't be fooled by an organized religion that says the only reward for you waits in an afterlife and until then, be content with chasing a carrot on the end of stick into whatever madness they put you through. Spirituality IS NOT the same as organized religion. Jesus's teachings fundamentally aren't any different than buhddas, or the myriad of Hindu and Sufi saints that have appeared throughout the ages.
• 

  Nosferatu

  If I were to choose a new religion, it would have to be SETI:

  For many centuries, extraterrestrial spiritual beings have been a part of the faith of Western religions. They appear in the form of immortal angels, servants of God who visit Earth with special messages of guidance and salvation. With the rise of modern science and the development of radio astronomy, a new faith has emerged for some scientific visionaries, who believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial material life. It is their hope that such life might have evolved on other planets among the billions of stars in our galaxy, producing higher forms of intelligence which could communicate to us the knowledge and wisdom of their experience, perhaps even imparting the secrets of peace and immortality. Yet a careful analysis of this idea reveals the futility of a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and the religious motivations behind it. Such an analysis, however, can lead to a new appreciation for the miracle of human life as we know it.

  http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1998/PSCF9-98Spradley.html
• 

  Scully

  dolphman writes (twice!):

  Tantric

  I've heard good things about Tantric stuff bringing you closer to god (or at least screaming his name a lot....)

  Love, Scully
• 

  sunshineToo

  I would like to visit some local churches, and see how they are.
• 

  Carmel

  Of course there is already one world religion that acknowledges the existance of life and "peoples" on other planets.

  carmel
• 

  Carmel

  Woops! forgot the cutnpaste!

  "The earth has its inhabitants, the water and the air contain many living beings and all the elements have their nature spirits, then how is it possible to conceive that these stupendous stellar bodies are not inhabited? Verily, they are peopled, but let it be known that the dwellers accord with the elements of their respective spheres. These living beings do not have states of consciousness like unto those who live on the surface of this globe: the power of adaptation and environment moulds their bodies and states of consciousness, just as our bodies and minds are suited to our planet."

  (Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 114)
• 

  Kenneson

  I attend Catholic Church. We are no strangers to the Scriptures. Moreover, I like the liturgy and the fellowship. We hold 24 hour prayer in our chapel; there are always two people present. My time slot is on Friday nights from 10 to 11 p.m. Church members are involved in all types of outreaches: soup kitchen (I manage the local kitchen), prison visitation, elder care services, etc. Jehovah's Witnesses have nothing over us when it comes to unity between races. We have blacks, Filipinos, Asians, Hispanics and Caucasians who attend services and participate in different church activities--and we all get along.
• 

  jgnat

  Orbison/Wendy, how about staying away for organized religion a little longer, and feeding your soul for yourself? How about a book?

  I will go looking for a good one....HERE'S ONE!

  A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey by Brian D. McLaren , Brian D. McLaren

  A New Kind of Christian's conversation between a pastor and his daughter's high school science teacher reveals that wisdom for life's most pressing spiritual questions can come from the most unlikely sources. This stirring fable captures a new spirit of Christianity--where personal, daily interaction with God is more important than institutional church structures, where faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally "right," and where one's direction is more important than one's present location. Brian McLaren's delightful account offers a wise and wondrous approach for revitalizing Christian spiritual life and Christian congregations.
• 

  scalzo

  Wendy: Are you still following this thread? I sympathize with your situation (sounds pretty familiar). If your spiritual person is dying it's because, unfortunately, most JW's are very fleshly and mechanistic in their thinking, which automatically raises a barrier to the Spirit. That's not to say that many churches don't fall into their own traps. It seems like the pendulum is always to one side or the other, and we're all riding it. Either you veer off towards a dry, mechanical, quid-pro-quo religious mindset or you're off into touchy-feely nothing-matters-ness. (How do you like my word inventions?) My mistake for years was operating based on a relationship with a group. Whether you think the group is right or wrong is irrelevent. If your "spiritual" relationship is *primarily* with the group, then God is always going to be secondary. IMHO, God must be primary in your life if you really want to be his servant (remember a lot of "religious" people don't really want to serve God, they just want to be religious). This doesn't go into specifics, and I definitely do NOT think that I have it all worked out, because I wrestle still with what I call "the church thing." (BTW, regarding the Belief-O-Matic link in the first reply, very clever, but it leaves out a lot of stuff that is very major to JW's or ex-JW's, the primary one being whether the GB et al are the "faithful and discreet slave" of MT 24:45.) Ross