Losing Your Religion

Losing your religion to some is a negative thing. The concept of losing your religion may mean losing your values ,losing your direction in life and accepting indulgent behavior, without rules or regulations, as your basic outlook on life. If that is the result of losing your religion, then you're better off keeping your religion. To some though, their religion is a big obstacle to awakening to their true identity. Their religion or spiritual belief system ,masquerading for the truth, has them in prison and bound to dogma, ritual and an egoic sense of superiority towards other people of other religions. We should honor all the religious traditions in the past and understand their historic significance and benefit to humanity, however all the religions of the past have fallen short of the ultimate purpose of religion or spirituality, which is to awaken humanity to the pure state of consciousness that is free from illusion and ego. If your religion is a barrier to that awakening, you're much better off losing it. And awakened person no longer needs a religion or a belief system. The purpose of the Buddhist is to become a Buddha or actually not really to become a Buddha but to realize the Buddha that is already within them, therefore eliminating the need to be a Buddhist. The Christian purpose is to awaken and realize the Christ within themselves and therefore eliminate the need to be a Christian. The same is true for the Muslim. The ultimate purpose of any religion is to eliminate the need for religion. So just drop religion. Get rid of the organizations, and allow the individual be free to awaken and realize their own true nature. Then if we want to come together in community and share with each other the beautiful nectar of awakening, that will happen organically without any structure, or coercion, or sense of guilt ,or hierarchy. For as much good as religion has done in the past, there is an equal or greater amount of bad, or wrongdoing as well. When any religion or faith holds itself up as the truth proclaiming that it is the way and the only way to God, you should run away as quickly as possible from that ego system. It is nothing more than the collective ego looking to find itself or strengthen its sense of security from its own lack or sense of reality. That attitude is based on deep seated insecurity. Since when can the small minds of humanity, from the egoic perspective, limit and possess the way that the divine will manifest itself throughout humanity and creation. It is a false sense of certainty or knowing God absolutely, that strengthens the ego and prevents divine love and energy from being shared with all of humanity. It is the power of not knowing and the ability to keep an open mind and heart, with great humility, that puts us in the position to experience the profound dimension of the divine within ourselves. In the Tao Te Ching it says those who know, don't speak, and those who speak all the time don't know. It also says, if you can speak about it ,that's not it. The truth cannot be contained or expressed totally by words. Words are just an approximation or pointer to the truth. You are the truth. Your life existence at the essential level, beyond time, beyond concept or belief,, beyond words, that is it. That is why Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life, no man can come to the father but by me. He wasn't speaking in an egoic sense of superiority or exclusiveness. He simply means that we need to find our own salvation in the depths of our own soul, by realizing who we are as pure divine consciousness, which transcends the illusory egoic mind. Buddha expressed it in a different way. He said there is no self. The conceptualized, thought based, mind made little me ,that we have a dialogue within in our own minds, in reality, has no reality. That means there is no self. With the Buddhist perspective of no self or no ego, what is left when we realize what we are not ,is who we are as pure divine consciousness, just like Jesus taught. The Jesus and the Buddha were totally united as brothers, expressing in their own eloquent way the same essential truth. . Which leaves the final question. Do we have ears to hear, or can we realize truly who we are?