I’m not a particularly religious person. I grew up going to church but like many other young people, when my parents stopped making me go, I stopped going. Quite frankly I never paid much attention to the sermons and I wasn’t interested in the stories in the Bible, they seemed a little ridiculous.
With that background, it’s funny to find myself back at the doorstep of religion. What brought me back wasn’t any particular religion but rather yoga and meditation. The more I cleared my mind through practicing yoga and meditation the more I started seeing eerie commonalities between what different religions believed. From Islam to Buddhism from Christianity to Hinduism, some of the parallels are too hard to ignore.
Religion is the attempt of humans to explain God, the meaning of existence and the path to eternal happiness and bliss. I believe “God”, “the Universe”, “Chi”, “the Tao” all refer to the same thing, that is the energy which flows through all things. Whatever you want to call that entity, it exists and there is something undeniably powerful about it.
It’s important to note that religion is powerful and when mixed into politics it can be twisted and used to control people. It’s a pretty powerful message to have people follow your rules when you tell them if they don’t they’ll spend eternity getting tortured in hell. The good news is that we have an internal compass which can easily spot when religion is being twisted for political or personal gain.
But it’s important to not let the repeated weaponization and abuse of religion take away from the undeniably potent draw to it. Humans throughout history have practiced religion in various forms. It may be something we need more than we realize.
What peaked my interest and prompted me to write this post is the concept that God is within you. Christianity says: the kingdom of God is within you. This is echoed in many other religions from Hinduism to the Upanishads.
If God truly resides within us, and I personally believe it does. Then heaven resides within us too. So why do we not experience heaven all the time? What are we doing that’s getting in the way of experiencing eternal bliss?
All religions offer guidelines for living that are in accordance with God. In following those guidelines you become closer to God and experience less suffering. Many of these guidelines are fundamental to human nature like don’t steal, murder, lie or cheat. These are not things a healthy human being would do.
In Christianity, we are taught that our body is or temple and we should take care of it. Yoga is cool because it outlines physical practices such as yoga asana’s (postures), breathing exercises and meditation to bring us closer to God.
Yoga’s precepts for living are commonly referred to as the eight limbs of yoga. They’ve been around for thousands of years and provide a path to not only live in accordance with universal law, but the path to becoming an enlightened being.
What all these teachings are trying to communicate to us are ways of living so we are in alignment with our nature. But humans have a thing call ego and that’s why we make things so damn complicated. We get lost in societal dogmas and pursue material wealth, status and power. Most people spend their lives’ in pursuit of those things but for the few who reach them often find themselves unfulfilled.
That’s why these teachings are there, but they will only make themselves clear when one is ready to accept them.
My quest for religious truth has been oddly scientific. I never blindly believe anything but rather take concepts and try to experience them in the world. There’s something truly liberating about experiencing a concept that’s been around for thousands of years and seen across many different religions. Each truth you learn and apply to your life will lighten your load and bring you a step closer to your highest being.