THESE ARE JUST NOTES!!!

my story: – growing up catholic chrch and schooling, rebelling and rejecting force beliefs. remembering grade 10 world religon as my faviourt class, something that made sense to me that there was more out there. more choice and different ways of looking at things, this put myself to ease.

Religions, gods and deities are cultural ways of making the unseen visible. They help us understand the laws and philosophies of this intelligence and give us language to relate to it. They link back to the intrinsic truths of the universe.

We are not an anomaly of intelligence. We are a representation of what is already there. A mirror of this intelligence. A mirror of what some call God.

new age Spirituality is that choice to explore, contiplate, experience, rather than just an assignd and forced belief at birth.

Spirituality is tasting our true good nature and seeing it in everyone around us. I often pictures everyones pure nature like a small clear gem that sits behind everones eyes, in the center of their heads. In buddism, it is called eveyones true buddah nature, we all have it. In mystic practices, it can be called source.

It is understanding the cycles of life, and surrendering to them, and to what we cannot control. It is choosing not to suffer unnecessarily. It is recognizing that much of our suffering comes from our own thoughts and identities that we mistake for truth. And that when we surrender and dont force, we enter into states of allowing, and from here our paths come to us more easily and connected/aligned.

Spirituality is stepping outside ourselves and connecting with something beyond the small self…God, nature, another person, the world, the field around us. That connection brings relief.

We see glimpses of the divine in the clouds, in water, in each other, in plants, in scriptures, in visions, in dreams, in the Buddha, in the deities.
To see even one glimpse feels like a warm light awakening. A simple, cosmic, mystical moment. (link this to Awakening section.)

Concepts like shame, karma and hell can be understood as representations of consequence. Because everything is connected, our actions ripple through energy, space, time, our bodies, our communities and our environments. These ideas help describe those ripple effects.

At the same time, randomness is part of the design. Evolution, adaptation, learning and intelligence live alongside pure unpredictability.

The larger miracles are symbols. They say, “You are made of this too.” They point back to the idea that human beings are not spectators in a universe of power but carriers of the same source.

christianity notes:

• Jesus and GOD is framed as a father figure because culturally that was the only available form at the time.
• Embodying the Jesus figure vs attaching to the literal story.

Religions struggle to coexist because they often insist on the factual accuracy of their stories. They require choosing one creation explanation over another, rejecting alternatives even though contradictions exist within their own teachings.

The images we form of God are something to grasp. And have different meanings and origins depending on the culture. They help us relate to the unknown, the nothingness that is the foundation of the universe. Some call this love. Some call it the self beyond identity. When we stop grasping, we take on the attitude of faith.

Whenever something pulls us out of the small self and into the real, we use the spiritual and the godly as our language for it.

Problems appear when we become rigid or closed to other perspectives. When spirituality becomes a must or a threat. If we cling too tightly, we miss far more of what the universe offers. Use it as a tool, but do not hold it as the only thing.

Consciousness is not separate from the universe. It functions like the background field of everything, the way space and stars are not empty wastelands but expressions of a deeper organizing intelligence.
(Consciousness intelligence as the background of all things)

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Additional ideas

• the link between Spirituality and healing
• Different gods and what they show us
  • A list or overview could explore how deities across cultures represent aspects of consciousness. creation, destruction, compassion, warriorship, intuition, cycles, nature. some religions and cultures more flexibile in their spirtual beleifs and practices
• What spiritual connection brings to life
  • A sense of meaning, coherence, belonging, direction and inner stability. A felt relationship with something larger than the self.
• What it means to be a spiritual warrior
  • To have an unbreakable Spirit. Someone who meets life with awareness, honesty, courage, compassion and alignment. Someone who trains their inner world as intentionally as their outer world. how can a spirit break when it is connected to a million difference Pieces
• Spirituality as compassionate awareness
  • Seeing life as sacred changes how we relate to our surroundings. Annoyance and anger soften into attention and care. This shift is the beginning of an unbreakable spirit.
• spirtuallities connection to practices and disciplins and spaces
  • prayer, mediation, art, reading, temples, etc.

1. seeing that the universe is not made of “things” but of relationships

2. dissolving the illusion of the separate self

3. remembering that opposites create each other

4. understanding that God is not a person but a process

5. Spirituality as play rather than obligation

6. easing into not knowing and mystery!!

7. a shift in perception, not a system of rules

8. recognizing that meaning is created through participation

• Traditional structures of meaning are collapsing, so people look elsewhere for orientation.
• Science explains mechanics but not the lived experience of being alive.
• Modern life and western healing, not helping with root causes, more and more anxiety and depression longterm and younger
• People want direct experience rather than inherited belief. Meditation, psychedelics, dreams, intuition.
• Spirituality does not require rejecting science, it fills the gaps science is not built to address.
• Institutions lost trust, pushing people toward personal exploration.
• Individualism creating isolation that spirituality helps soften.
• The world feels unstable, and uncertainty naturally makes people ask deeper questions. Finding comfort in the uncertainty as natural cycles
• Spirituality offers connection to something larger than the personal story.
• Mystery is returning to culture, and people want ways to understand it.