human beings love to take the best things and ruin them by trying to buy and sell them. our desire to own or control things, which is entirely illusory in itself, has caused more pain than reward. absolutely fucking botched it all from the very beginning. the fact we were given a bodies on a beautiful earth that produced incredible food and water naturally and this is where we’re at. if god is music, religion is the music industry. if god is art, religion is a photo of a canvas of an AI-generated beach landscape sitting in the backroom of a corporate big box store. when the image gets confused for a reflection. when the point gets covered up by the marketing. when the love gets lost to the fear of needing to survive. and most importantly, when evil people weaponize the holy for their own gain.
I went to catholic school until 4th grade. With the nuns and the rulers and the fear of god and the uniforms. It lead me to writing a 5 page essay at a very young age titled “Proof That God Does Not Exist”. I was wrong, but way closer to correct than the way it was all portrayed to me back then. Should’ve called it “Proof That Fear-mongering White Bearded Guy In The Sky Does Not Exist”. By middle school I was giving my stepmom wrong directions to CCD class so I could skip it and eventually the family let go of the posturing that we were gonna be religious people. High school onward I was an adamant atheist but always felt as if there was something way more to all of this.
The mere purpose of life, some of the highest experience human beings can have, have been ruined, watered down, made cringe by point-missing idiots. This leads half-intelligent people of taste no choice but to shun anything associated with them. God itself ruined as a concept because it is guilty by association with weird fucking rock and roll evangelist megachurches or politicians who know nothing about god but just happen to have money and the loudest voice. Even writing this, one person thinking, “whoa Ron is all religious now and writing stuff about GOD” makes me uneasy. Not a chance in hell. If anything I think organized religion is one of humanities largest travesties. If anything I’m all of them and none of them at the same time. When someone says they are a “christian, much like when someone has an American flag on their lawn, my first thought is “we probably won’t agree on much.” And it’s not necessarily because of them but because how the meaning of those things has not only been lost but completely distorted, drowned, chopped up and processed into poison.
Fast forward thru a life of near-nihilism to the events that crack a person open. A darkness then a crack where light comes through and you walk toward it. It’s in those moments we cling to something to hold on to. Heart open, eyes open. Have gotten a way from it in recent times but many years ago I got into meditation or as christians call it “prayer” or as muslims call it “Salah”, etc. These are all paths to the same thing. Quiet communication with the source. Even meditation has been ruined by valley girls in yoga pants and a Stanley cup speaking with a synthetic calm voice on instagram reels who think it’s a way to decompress from the 9-5, become insufferable but relaxed. This does not change that it is an ancient and powerful practice of experiencing reality as it is.
Within all of us there is an indescribable part, an energy force, an awareness, a pure consciousness. It is not of the body but maybe more the life force that powers the body, makes everything work. You can’t point to it but you can sense it. If you close your eyes, you may see it as an infinite black space that is always awake and observing with complete and total indifference. You could call it love. You can call it a soul. You can call it consciousness. You can call it god. This is it. It’s in you, it’s in me, it’s the only thing that is in everything you can see. It is everything. It’s both entirely mysterious and incredibly simple. We contain it but are also contained in it. That’s the thing. It’s not profound. It’s the most simple thing there is. We just have overcomplicated it and given it a thousand different names and tired so hard to understand it we buried it a thousand times over and built a McDonald’s on top.
In death, people shed the body (which is the vehicle for this consciousness to experience itself) and become just the pure consciousness again.
In enlightenment, living people come to know this consciousness while still being alive. They realize themselves as the same thing as everything else. And that information alone is enough to live a life of unconditional love and compassion for all things.
Sound familiar? Jesus Christ, Muhammad, The Buddha, Guru Nanak, all the monks, saints and gurus, and probably hundred of thousands or millions of other random people throughout time. These were enlightened human beings. They were not inherently special. They were mere examples of what is possible for all people. What realization about reality and life and existence all people are capable of. The embodiments of the potential of love just by “knowing thyself”.
Through self-realization they realized they are the same as everything at the core. Therefore all the things that we allow to divide us in the material world of duality that is necessary for us to be able to exist genuinely do not matter. They are temporary clothes on a piece of the eternal.
Ever take an airplane? Ever see earth from above? Looks like one thing to me. No individuals in sight.
All religions fundamentally are talking about the same thing using icons, symbols and figures of their culture to be able to communicate the ideas. Because it’s really difficult to convey these things without forms we can comprehend.
THE PROBLEM…
When terrible people see how these things can be commodified or weaponized and there is a surplus of people that are desperate for salvation you have one of the biggest problems in the world.