Harsh words indeed oh kyrolima!!

I too find that Christianity, whilst full of much goodness, does require a degree of mental gymnastics to comprehend and, after a fashion, accept.

We must also remember that Christianity as we have it today consists of the handing down of stories which were actually written down many years after the time of the Christ, and we all know how Chinese whispers and political expediency can alter the transmission of such info.

Whilst not specifically related to Christianity, we should also recall that the number of people subscribing to a religious faith/creed greatly exceed those who reject this.And before anyone takes me to task for this ,Im aware that the truth of any path cannot be determined by the number who traverse it.

Every religion is just politics! It creates believers, NOT free individuals. A person who believes is not free any longer. And NO! There is no "grey" area between the two polarities!
Either it is a religion OR it is a path of selfdiscovery! Maybe one can excerpt some useful concepts - but that's all, imo!
There is no value in playing the believers game!

What? This is just flat out backwards thinking.

Buddhism is a religion. Buddhism is very obviously a path of self discovery. Many christians, muslims, jews, and hindus are also religious yet on a path of self discovery.

I agree the abhamaic religions make essentially zero sense to me, but to say that you are either on a path of self discovery or religious isn't right by any stretch of the imagination.

I think the spiritual path is like a mountain. There are many paths up the mountain and every person is on the exact path they need to be on. Furthermore there are as many paths up the mountain as there are seekers.

I'm no christian, i thought i had made this clear.

@UC


Yes, but then they're not serious about god, spirit or the other dimension but about their delusions. Yes, there are a lot of people whoare deluded, but i was talking about authentic christians!

@Hyperspace fool
Sure, you have the right to discuss things and to be critical if they are engaging you. I just wouldn't take the initiative. Well, i'm more the kinda guy who tries to find similaritys. I once had a talk with some jehovas witness type creationists and it was interesting because their belief seems to be rooted in the joy of nature and the firm feeling, that something so beautiful must have been god-made. I can understand that.

@dioxi


Yea and like joedirt said, it is possible. The burningman meetup for instance. But not everyone got the cash and time for transcontinental flights


And yes, polytrip, one has to accept themselves. But it is still sad, that my way of living and thinking is basically forbidden.

From early childhood I questioned the validity of a god that was love and vengeance at the save time. I have many experiences that suggest theres more than meets the eye to consciousness and spirituality but christianity ddnt cover all the bases.

Then I read a book called "Mystic Christ". It gave me a better understanding of how religion could have perverted the real intent of scripture. From that point on I determined that there is real truth in the bible if you understand the alternate transltions of key words and phrases. This alternate view, for me, points to a belief system that is more in line with eastern belief systems and has nothing to do with accepting christ as my lord and saviour or the idea of burning in hell for eternity.

Its a good read. Chk it out
http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Ch...Walker-III/dp/0972931708

-I agree, just do your own thing, don't follow any religions, why limit yourself just cos others do??- don't be a slave to a tradition that has made healthy people feel bad about their healthy urges...Quit copying man made foolish religions, and choose to life a natural free life and live and learn from your own experiences. If there is a god he will support you, why do you need a church to connect you to this god??-mad!!

-Sorry, but what a load of rubbish.

-If being a good Christian and going to heaven means going to a dull Church, then i'm quite happy to choose to go to hell!!

I think it was the Dali Lama who said about Christianity 'You're religion is very good... I would become a Christian if it were not for Christians' I think that about sums it up right there.

The things that the bible teaches I really can't find fault with, providing one takes into account the times in which it was written, the ethnicity of the target audience, and, most importantly, realizing the entire book is written in metaphors and allegorys.

Think about it, and not just Christianity but all religions. All religious texts seem to be feeble grasps at trying to explain the ineffible, and those of us here at the Nexus should definately relate to the struggles they would have trying to write down for future generations their encounters with the divine. For instance, take something like the creation myth in the bible. Logic and evidence clearly shows that planet Earth wasn't created 7,000 years ago so the creation story of the bible isn't accurate at face value. However, did the original author intend that story to be taken literally like our scholars have interpreted as (and now are having a hard time backing up that interpretation)? I don't think so. To me, the whole story of the fall in the Garden of Eden is an allegory for the fall from childish innocence. In the Garden (the perfect paradise), Adam (every man) and Eve (every woman) was in a state of perfect harmony with God (the one soul that runs through us all, as revealed when one has the god experience on DMT). However, due to a choice that man and woman made, they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Right in the name of the supposed 'forbidden' tree is the nature of this metaphor: the 'knowledge' of 'good' and 'evil', meaning a dualistic way of behaving, seeing one thing as good, one thing as bad. As a result, god removed them from the garden thus bringing about mankind's need for a type of salvation, but it was never supposed to be the kind of salvation Christianity has been pushing for thousands of years. This return to god is a running theme in the bible, and if we can remove our current interpretations of it and accept it with new eyes opened by psychedelics, the entire thing reads like a story that was written FOR you ABOUT your journey, from birth and the innocence of childhood to the fall and your eventual (and inevitable) return to God. All the stuff about judgment and attaching these character traits to god as being angry, or being this or that I think is a classic example of the game telephone, where once the story is passed down so many times the entire message becomes distorted. You sort of have to ween out the parts that don't make sense and try to grasp the underlying message. The bible can be interpreted as every man and woman coming to grips with what life on planet earth is about (minus all the stuff about Jewish history, remember who the bible was written by), and when one brings back into the bible the books that were thrown out such as the gospel of Phillip (which was thrown out of the bibilcal canon back around 350ad for reasons not fully known) then the entire thing really does seem like Jesus and God were talking about your journey home. Even Christ himself said: "Does it not stand written in your Law," replied Jesus, "'I said, you are gods'? (John 10:34)

I don't merely discuss things with them, and I am not all that critical actually. I find plenty of truth in all religions, though I am more of a mystic, experientialist & indidividualist than a 'group faith' type.

What I do is systematically break down their belief through a keener understanding of their faith than they themselves have. Having read the Bible many times through, and studied Qabbalah and its gematria, I can quote passages with the best of them. Furthermore, I know that the Holy Spirit is real.

I show them that they are practicing something other than the religion of Jesus. That they are promoting and proselytizing for an ethical system that has very little to do with the life & teachings of Yeshua Ben Yoseph.

When I ask them if they have seen miracles, I am not making fun of them necessarily. I myself HAVE seen miracles... many many many of them.

I don't need permission to engage anyone with my thoughts. Certainly not someone who comes to me trying to project their belief system onto me. If someone is making their system work, I have nothing but praise for them. It is only when people have the nerve to judge and evangelize while they themselves have never experienced the truth of what they preach, that I feel somewhat obliged to burst bubbles.

[EDIT: The same goes for the faith based aspects of the religion we call science.]

"Judge not, lest ye yourself be judged."
"Do not point to the splinter in another's eye whilst ignoring the stick in your own."

I don't try and hurt anyone, and I only treat them how I would like them to treat me. If/when I lose the plot, or act irrationally, I would be grateful to anyone who takes the time to wake me up a bit.

Personally, if you want to go in a Christian-ish pathway to truth... I prefer the Course In Miracles to the Old & New Testament. It is more effective IMHO. But the Bible is still one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time... hands down.

IMO IMO IMO...

OK, but it doesn't mean others think like you and you can hand down opinions like facts. Adding "in my opinion" is a good idea for these kind of steep claims!
For example:



If someone finds his path in christianity, it doesn't make it any less good of a path than others. It's THEIR path, not the WRONG path. Saying someone's following the wrong path is simply ignorant

I don't think so! I strongly disagree! I call them a bunch of hypocrits with no insight at all!

I don't say: Those are "bad people" - even a christian can be a good fella.

But my standpoint is pretty well undermined! Christianity, which basically means - though shall follow christ, the son of god - THIS man was a human being like everyone of us. The only difference between him and us is, that he was a rebel and most likely one of the ancient masters. The church wrote it down and degraded the message to a point where we can not trust anything written. In the church there is no holyness, just moronic rituals. And one thing they got all in common: Believe in god and come to heaven, instead of - enjoy your life and treat everything with care and love!...

To me every religion is a lie - because we're living NOW and not 2000 years ago.

FK political correctness!
We get tought to be "not hurting anyones feelings". Trust me, it's time to scratch on the surface of mediocre society rules!

--:idea: I know a religion that's as valid today as it has ever been. Forget those Golden Buddhas and all that pity party priest and pope crap-I'm gonna tell you what i believe in, what my religion is. It's the only religion we cannot live without. This sacred religion supports us and gives us all we need. I call it "nature".

--Try disbelieving in Nature and it'll hurricane your ass boi, to kingdom come!!

Yippie ! Hail nature, Hail!!

Worship nature!?

He's a witch! Build a bridge out of him!!!

I think the word 'simple' is pivotal here. Some people are just not made to blindly believe in everything that's told to them.

Not every religious person has to be like that. You could try to be a complicated christian, budhist, atheïst or agnost. Blind faith just isn't for everybody.

Please elaborate

Perhaps I will at some point. Talking about things that violate the apparent laws of physics or human understanding tends to rub some people around here the wrong way from what I can see. For some reason, people see such things as assaults on their worldview.

I don't have time now to give my more miraculous experiences the proper attention and explication they deserve. They are personal to me as well, and I can't really stomach the thought of exposing them to ridicule or even prurient curiosity. There is no way to convince anyone of miracles who haven't themselves seen them. It would simply be some fantastic story by some dude you have no reason to trust.

I also would expect that my intelligent comrades here wouldn't take anything unfounded in hard reason at face value. I wouldn't. In fact, I lose respect for people who just believe what I tell them... despite the fact that I never intentionally mislead anyone or make up stuff to fuck with people.

Let's just say I have a lot of experience with things that are unexplainable. As do you all. Whether you are able to see it that way is your choice. Miracles are happening all the time. Things like DMT can expose you to experiences that are not easily put into rational boxes, as most of you know full well.

Much of my experiences with miracles could be called supernatural. Some of it is full on impossible. A great deal of it was while stone cold sober. I am not a believer or a wishful thinker. At this point, there are things I know with a granite certainty which most people in the world would have trouble imagining let alone believing.

I appreciate the curiosity though Purges.

a reading of John Lamb Lash's 'Not In His Image'
should convert any lingering sympathies & justifications for the christian virus
into a white-hot seething rage...

you can't be a simple, happy christian because christianity (ditto judaism & even more so, islam) is a twisted, deviant ploy by parasitic, psychotic archons to destroy the human psyche & knowledge of our birthright as the luminous child of the divine Aeon Gaia-Sophia.

christianity is rotten to the core. and it is high time that shit is flushed !!!

I get that people here have a negative view of religion as a whole, especially Christianity since it's the most prevalent in our culture and I must admit, I feel the same way about them now and I can proudly say I have flushed my entire system of the 'virus' that is Christianity, however I'm not so sure the OP wants or needs to here all that.

Coming from a devout upbringing, it was very, very challenging for me to finally accept that Christianity as a whole was just wrong. This takes more faith then it does to believe in the religion itself I've found. When you've spent your whole life looking out for a god that claims to care about you, and when you've spent all of your mental and physical energies trying to follow strict commandments that your church and community pushes on you, it's not so easy a process to just 'flush that shit'. Believe me, it can take years to come to a point where your able to look at the whole organized religion thing and laugh.

Religion is a lot like a drug, and like most drugs, it's hard to just quit cold turkey. Think about how religion feeds the ego. The Christian faith is hinged upon the fact that it can make you feel bad about yourself. The ego LOVES it when it can revel in it's own misery (especially my own...). My church and school (I went to a religious high school) would teach me non-stop about how offensive I and my actions were to god and I needed to repent... constantly repent... many, many times a day for doing things as stupid as being attracted to a pretty girl. Well the ego doesn't miss a step with this and just reinforces all the stuff your being told 'you're such a sinner' 'why would god love you? you're worthless' 'you're going to spend an eternity in hell if you don't fall in line', that sort of thing.

If god truly does exist in our conciousness and is the truest part of ourselves, how ironic that the teachings that are supposed to bring you closer to god actually assist the ego in moving your further from god. The ego says that your a terrible person and should look outside yourself for redemption. What psychedelics tell us directly is that this isn't true, god was inside of you the whole time. See the paradox? Religious dogma says your unworthy of god's love without a savior, psychedelic understanding says not only are you more than worthy, you ARE god's love itself and are thus your own savior.

To the OP I say this: don't worry about it so much. What your going through is a natural unfolding of your own understanding, you're true spiritual 'growing up' and it can be an anxious process. I spent two years of my life living in a bomb shelter without any light agonzing over the title of this thread: 'why can't i be a simple happy christian?'. You will get your own answer in time, as I did, when your ready for it, but it can't come from someone in this thread. It can only come from your own experiences with the divine realm, which is thankfully accessible to us through the use of psychedelics.

Journey on my friend. The truth really does set you free.

Anybody who's truly honest, will be hard pressed to be a happy Christian, knowing that the church has protected paedophile priests, and been responsible for the deaths of people who didn't want to follow the beliefs, etc.

When i think of happy christians i always think of that famous "jesus he knows me" video from genesis.