Guerrilla Nature

An image from today: This rose bush with its beautiful pink blooms lives in the front garden belonging to the neighbours next door to a friend’s house. Like the rose bush, we don’t always look our spectacular, blooming best. Those who catch us at the optimal time might remember us as radiant, gorgeous and joyful; those who somehow find us at times when we would prefer not to be found might remember us as as lacking substance, scant and spiky.

Sunday 22^nd March 2020

The single definitive common denominator among all the religions is faith. If one has no faith in a religious belief, then one is not truly religious. Would you agree? It seems difficult to reasonably oppose this assertion.

The proliferation and dominance of religious belief systems throughout recent human history suggests to some that there is an inherent requirement for humans to have faith in something. Similarly, those who are “spiritual” but not religious, a standpoint that is becoming increasingly commonplace in today’s society, have faith. Many of them do not need to ascribe to any named faith group, but if a survey were conducted the results would show their faith is often inextricably linked with their sense of calm, level of happiness and the ease with which they appear to experience life.

Religion provides questions that can never be answered definitively during this lifetime, which often leads to dilution or dissection among groups of devotees. It is undeniable that this has contributed amply to conflicts and division. Disunity comes from separation. Here, we again see how the cyclical nature of things and the letting go process relates to the ever-present polarity spectra observable throughout existence.

For some readers, the last two sentences might seem baffling, or like utter drivel. Alternatively, it might seem that the obvious is being stated in a way that is more complicated than is helpful. If the reader finds that the latter resonates more with them, they are probably already on their own journey of self-discovery, one way or another. As such, it is hoped that reading these words might be an enjoyable, entertaining, or even laughable offering of one perspective among so many.

Either way, we can see that religion has historically been useful as a way for humans to explain existence. We can also see that it provides more questions in words than are definitively answerable in words, so isn’t a very helpful explanation of things when investigated from an objective, logical perspective. Groups of people keep recycling the same stories, reinterpreting or even changing details and appropriating parts of other belief systems so that the version they have chosen fits with whichever society they’re trying to convert. This reflects the cycles we create for ourselves, with the tendency for seeming to mimic cycles we observe nature. The cyclical nature of existence permeates all.

The collective following of belief systems, with people staying in a cycle of feeding their beliefs with their prejudices, which came from their beliefs, ad nauseum, is a loop that can be viewed as having been created through responding to a feeling of lack by choosing something with which to fill the space where the lack is felt. We want to have faith in something. We want to belong. We want to feel reassured.

So, we reassure ourselves both collectively and individually, by creating ideas about a power higher than our material selves. What we want to have faith in, it seems, is that this life isn’t everything.

This day’s featured creator: Hodge

Above: Sunny This Position entry 2020-03-22

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