Man does not live of bread alone, but of the spirit. Not of objects, but of the spirit behind them. There has been a huge loss of faith in religious leadership lately, all across the world and in many faiths. Why is this?
Money and power, politics, dogma. What’s missing? Reverence for their founding principles. If one has reverence, then to stop at just “I am not meant to understand” would not be acceptable.
Control. Control is why they do not revere? True. Control and reverence are mutually exclusive. Democracy as it stands has lost its reverence for the people, and instead is revering mammon.
Look at the founders of the US, they had something they fought for. It’s not democracy. The founding fathers had reverence, and they had come from a place that had lost it. This is what motivated them.
I hope it is a phase. That it returns to a constitutional democracy. I hope so too. Reverence can allow integrity of nations and integrity of the world as a whole. What contradiction is there in respecting the spirit in the world over say, patriotism? Does a nationalist have true reverence? Do they have values that reflect real life?
It is usually blind worship. Yes. Reverence is hard to express in words, but easy to express in actions. We have reverence before we ever learn words for anything. A baby doesn’t know or care that it’s American, or German, or Canadian, but they have reverence for the mother.
I have a book written by a scientist on the Biology of Faith. Sacred, reverence, all that part of the package of who we are. Yes, and how much do forms matter? Can you have slavish adherence to forms and reverence at the same time? I say you can have forms, forms are fine. Whatever lets you express your connection to the sacred. We have a need to articulate our feelings, and explore our understanding in words and practices. This is not wrong, so how do people become blind in the face of all this?
The problem is when you set your forms above the others. Exactly. It could be called true idolatry when the forms become objects separate from our spirits. It’s been observed that idolatry leads to bad ends. But the Catholic icon, the Jewish Star of David, these symbols are not evil. They can help.
So when we speak of idolatry it is in the sense of an object completely disconnected from spirit? Not of an object symbolic of spirit? Exactly. Object separate from spirit. If you have spiritual awareness and the practice or reverence, no thing/object can be separate from spirit.
If I set my forms as absolute, I have a problem what to do with the others around. I need to convert transgressors or delete them. True.
Mother Teresa was once asked if she missed the scenery of a chapel, missed seeing images of Jesus. She answered saying she saw Jesus every day in the streets of Calcutta and her works were caring for him. She cared little for forms and everything for spirit.
She just did what Jesus commanded. And acted in the spirit of the commands, not in the letter which can be, and often is, twisted.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~