Gene's Blog

How does a religion know it is THE one?

While reading last night, I came across a question, which I’ve seen stated many times, in many ways. Usually by people who are not necessarily believer’s in a Universal Creator of any kind, this book, is Robert Heinlein’s, Stranger in a Strange Land, one my all-time favorites. What this character said was, “…Though, I’ve never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith – it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.”

I’ve always sort of had that same idea myself, giggle. I’ve talked about this on my main site as well as in previous posts, but for me, the idea of an “accidental universe” is just plain silly. There is too much order in the universe, in my judgment, for it all to have just “happened’. Somehow.

From Wikipedia: Pascal’s_Wager

Pascal’s Wager basically states that if the atheist is right, when we die nothing will happen, and nothing is lost. But if the Christian is right, when the nonbelievers die they are going to an eternity of damnation. Based on that notion it’s safer to believe than risk Hell.

To this I say: would someone kindly tell me which religious system I should believe in?

A religion is the organized practice of worshiping a God or Gods. Some have sacred texts and writings; some have traditions passed down through generations. Some have both. Trying to pin down the current number of world religions is very difficult. Most research categorizes religions by numbers of followers. The more members, the more likely the religion is to be counted as a “major world religion.” According to the 2001 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia there are currently 150 world religions with 1 million or more followers and 10,000 distinct world religions. Worse yet, what about all those religions which are no longer practiced?

One version which leaves out many I would consider “major”:

10,000 world religions? Each of whom has the path to salvation? And, from among these, many adherents would have us believe that if we choose wrong we are headed to a less than pleasant experience once we leave this existence? Can I ask the obvious question here? It sort of loops back to Robert Heinlein – what sort of Creator would place so many choices before His children, give them NO no clue as to which to choose or how to do so and then condemn all who choose an incorrect one to eternal banishment at best, punishment at worst? What sort of creature could come up with such an idea? Well, here’s a clue as to my thinking, not a Divine one. THIS notion strikes me as coming from the mouth of a man. A godly creature who does not know Who He Really is. Yes, man, women have never had enough power in our recorded history to have had much voice in creating such silly ideas. I don’t say they aren’t capable of it, giggle, only that they’ve not had much opportunity. :^) Let’s do one more list, I just love ’em, giggle.

They aren’t really links, they just look like it. The actual site is: Religions_By_Adherent
They’ve got a really cool little chart there too.

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million
10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha’i: 7 million
14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

So, now, I’m no math major but this is starting to look to me like a whole LOT of people think they and they alone are going to get a chance to see “home” whilst the rest of us visit some lesser place. Except, of course, for those who think, when we blink out here, we blink out forever. That, I assure you is NOT the case. Why? Check my main site and read, if nothing else, the light stories, and maybe, So What’s Your Point, gene? Those experiences, which arose from within me, which I cannot duplicate, but which produced in me a certainty beyond mere faith that THIS is not all there IS, for me, prove for me that when sentience winks out here, we simply go somewhere else. Just about anyone in any of those lists, categories or religions above will tell you what they think that means. But I know. Not one of them has seen, experienced, what I have. Had they, there would be books, references, Dead flipping Sea scrolls galore extolling what they “knew”. And there is no such reference, not anywhere. I’ve looked, and I mean looked, for the last 12 years, in every nook and cranny of the Internet, for even one such reference as those things which I describe on my main site. I haven’t restricted my search to out of the way places, I have searched the online libraries of universities and colleges, psychological and psychiatric books and journals – I did not refuse to consider that these were simply illusions. Had they been, I thought, then someone else, somewhere else would have had them too, or something similar. But not I’ve not found even one other. Anywhere. LOTS of opinions, yes, not one true. Not one other.

So, my question, within, has always been then, WTF? I mean, literally, giggle. WHY ME? What does a farm boy from the middle of nowhere have to do with any of this? Why show me these things? Why not show them to someone who had an audience, who could tell people the truth of us? Who could help relieve the terrible fear which grips the people on this planet so fiercely that it causes us to blow each other up with car bombs, with explosives strapped to our bodies, with missiles hidden in below ground bunkers, with “smart” (if there is ONE word that should NEVER be used to describe a bomb, it is smart) bombs launched from ships, airplanes and the shoulders of, again, mostly men, who believe their way is so right that they are willing to kill anyone who questions it. Why show the truth of the love that we are to me? Then, allow my son, my 21 year old baby boy, to die so horribly that the act alone drove me completely out of and away from the faith, Lutheran, I was raised in and into an odd little book store, to a section I did not know existed, but to which I was “led” in answer to a prayer, a simple request that if anything existed in that store which could give me peace, that it please, please, be shown me. And there, in this section I had never seen, was Conversations With God, Book 1, turned sideways, the only book which was at my eye level. As I say on the main section, I thought, that was JUST what I needed, a conversation with whatever being created this horrid hellhole of despair.

So, I bought it. Couldn’t make myself read much of it to start with, you can read that story on the main site, but the answer to the question I asked earlier, about why me? Well, once I got past my blindness, that blindness created by the veil of my upbringing, and actually read the book, I could not stop reading it, the words could have been my own. I had always “known” those things, I just did not know I knew that. I’ve said that to several people in recent weeks, in different ways, that they have answers they do not know they have to questions they have not yet been asked, including the wonderful woman who created ANSIR – on my blogroll. As well as to others to whom Jenna has asked to make that statement to. I’m not prescient. I don’t know what that statement means for those to whom I’ve made it, I only know its true. I quoted a piece from page 58 in book 1 the other day, now I’m going to quote another. Because it is the answer to my original question, why me? And I am NOT the only answer. You are too. I’ll tell you what I mean in a moment.

“From the highest mountain it has been shouted, in the lowest place its whisper has been heard. Through the corridors of all human experience has this Truth been echoed: Love is the answer. Yet you have not listened.

Now come you to this book, asking God again what God has told you countless times in countless ways. Yet I will tell you again – here in the context of this book. Will you listen now? Will you truly hear?

What do you think has brought you to this material? How does it come to pass that you are holding it in your hands? Do you not think I know what I am doing?”

Yes. I do think He knows what He is doing. I think my light experiences are all the evidence I need of that. I think my inner guide, Jenna, is all the proof I need of the existence of something, some place, completely outside the realm of what I, you, can normally see and hear here. Of course, YOU, are not holding this book in your hands, are you? But here I am telling you about it. Is there really a difference? I am not going to replicate the entire thing here, giggle. Neale deserves his reward for having undertaken to answer God’s call and put this wonderful material into the books he has written. I am still going to recommend personally only books 1 and 2, I am not saying his other works are not worth reading, indeed, I will really say no more about them at all, those are his. These first two are God’s, for me and in my opinion. I am sure Neale’s inspiration did not change, nor did his source. I am saying that all the world needs to know to pull itself back from the brink of religious annihilation, religious war, political war and the destruction of our global habitat is contained in books 1 and 2. They’re available everywhere, all the time, even in public libraries, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders and small independent bookstores everywhere. I urge you to find them, read them, think about them, join groups to talk about them. Write me and I will talk to you about them. Go to Neale’s site, talk to him about them. Talk to your friends and neighbors about them. Do not be afraid, the truth IS within you. And when you come to page 58 and God asks YOU what brought you to this material, don’t answer “gene”, think about your answer, because it isn’t me, but the voice within you that will tell you whether my words here, and what you have read in the first 58 pages, meet the test we’ve talked about earlier here and God mentions early on in Book 1 – are these words, these recommendations, words of love, truth and joy? If, within you, you hear a small voice say yes, keep reading. And if it takes years for you to feel that urge to find them; then heed it then.

So again, why me? Well, Jenna has told me a fantastic story about that, if it ever comes to pass, I’ll start telling it to you too. She says, I’ll know when. Until then, I’m just going to keep doing this. Telling my little story, wondering why me, and sharing the truth I feel within. God says often throughout the books, if you do not go within, you go with out. And, that too, is truth. If you continue to let others, even well-meaning others, tell you what the truth is for you, you will never find it, I promise you. You will find what THEY want you to believe is truth. Our truth, the truth of us, is encoded in our dna. The Kundalini, what Jenna told me is the Awakening, is not some mysterious Eastern voodoo, it is the hard coded presence of God within us. There is not an atom in the relative universe that is not part of the body of God. We are made up of those atoms. Each of those atoms has the potential to come to sentient life in a being like us and there lying within us, waiting for our call, is our Creator and our individual guides, ready and willing to awaken us to the truth of Who We Really Are. We are children of a loving entity come to a place where we might learn how magnificent He is, We are, how magnificent our “home” is by having here the experience of not knowing who we are, forgetting temporarily the love from which we were born and from which we enter relativity. We come with veils intact, all of us, and we contrive all manner of superstitions and rituals to explain the reality of our existence, in response to our dim memory of home.

The path to spiritual evolution lies not in the words of men written in antiquity, nor in the words of enlightened, and not so enlightened people today – spiritual guru’s, psychobabble experts, or how-to-manuals of any kind, no, the truth of us lies in the place most of us never think to look, never DREAM it could be, within. If we do not go within, we go with out. That’s why me. It took me years to realize those lights, that wonderful peace, that overwhelming love, what some would call nirvana, some would call heaven, that I call home, did not originate somewhere outside me. They came from where they always were, within me. And the truth of us all is, dear ones, that same experience is, those same lights, that same love, is in you too. That is why me. It may be, and Jenna says will be, that a day may come when I find, remember, a way to call that experience out of me again, and then perhaps to show it to you, that you too might remember, might experience the truth, the overwhelming truth of who we really are. I can’t think of a better day personally. It isn’t a matter of being worthy, worth has nothing to do with it, what is, IS, whether what she tells me comes, does, is something I need wait to see. But your own experience needn’t wait for me. It waits for you now and will come to you if you call it. Ask within, “are you there?”. And go with that answer. Find the books, read them. Think about them. Try if you can, to live the truth within them, the rest will follow. And when someone asks you what the answer is? Tell them love. Because that is the only answer that has ever really mattered. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way,
Choose to be a Bringer of the Light. :^) gene