3/12/17

"Appreciate one's own intellectual tradition" (Nasr)

What is my intellectual tradition, the ingredients of the soup in which I swam in early life? And those who led me further?

Richard Maurice Bucke

Evelyn Underhill

Abraham Maslow

George MacDonald

Henry Corbin

Toshihiko Izutsu

Jacob Needleman

Huston Smith

Ewert Cousins

Panikkar

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Each person has a religion. Each person is a religion. A religion is a path to which you swear obedience over and over. A religion is a consciousness realm you inhabit. Thus it is both a linear path and a point of awareness. This linear path circles on itself as you age, producing a spiral of continuity. At the core of the spiral is the ongoing point of awareness. The consciousness realm that you ARE is your religion.

All externality is your external church. All internality is your internal church. A church is a place of awareness of a greater reality. Of animality. Of letting go of old ways and opening to the new. Of weeping tears and singing songs.

Your everyday life is your church.You are crucified on the cross of space and time. You are resurrected every moment. You are called to prayer, to remembrance, several times a day. Prayer is a returning to the core of your consciousness realm and allowing both deepening and opening. 

You already live in the eternal, this eternal Now. This is your heaven. This is your purgatory in which you continually purge yourself. This is your hell. Your religious life is a fluctuation of all three. These are the frictions both producing and existing as the eternal transformational spiraling of your soul, of the consciousness realm you both are and are becoming.

The religion you are is both similar to and unlike any other religion existing.