Why Open Religion is Global

January 1, 2023 Open Religion No Comments

OK ― Not yet global in its present reach. The global aspect lies in its openness to everyone: believers and non-believers, anywhere in the world.

How can non-believers adhere to Open Religion?

You don’t have to believe in any conceptual construct ― no god, saint, angel, heaven, or hell.

It’s enough to believe in yourself and what directly flows from you. This way, you can stay within your convictions, which you can try to deepen and make even more rational if possible.

At the top of Open Religion, as at the top of the AURELIS project, is Compassion, basically. In a combination of rationality and depth, you can see if this accords with you. If so, you’re on the way.

How can believers adhere to Open Religion?

You don’t need to abandon what you have in order to enter this seemingly new house of Open Religion. Actually, it’s better if you don’t.

Your religious experiences are worthwhile, and it’s natural that you don’t want to lose them. Open Religion aims not to draw you out of them but, on the contrary, to support you to go deeper into them ― to feel more, and with more certainty, the religion inside you. If you do that, you’re on the way.

“God = Compassion”

If you take any religious symbol, at stake is what is symbolized ― not the object or painting, for instance, but what it deeply means to you.

Real human depth has the property to go deeper and deeper. Likewise, a true religious symbol has the property to go deeper and deeper toward a final destination that is, by itself, unmentionable. Say, you want to reach it anyway. After a while (a short time, years, or a lifetime), you will notice that the journey itself is a continual arrival.

Then you notice that what it means to you is the experience of Compassion. It becomes less important even to be able to define what may give you this experience. At that point – and only then! – you don’t need to find anything outside of your experience itself.

One can find Compassion at the core of almost any great religion.

For instance, Christianity – which is just the one I know best.

If you are an adherent to any religion or denomination, you can take the test and see whether it fits. If it does, then you’re on the way toward seeing that all religions have this same core. with this at hand (and at heart), you can adhere to Open Religion at the same time as to Christianity or anything else.

The following is still of utmost significance.

The symbolic level

Open Religion is about the understanding that this is the vital level, together with the understanding that this is, indeed, by itself an immensely important level.

Nothing in a religious sense is ‘just’ symbolic. On the contrary, its being symbolic makes it crucial to you, to humanity, and the universe.

There is a lot of misconception concerning this. Many see symbolism as something relative.

It’s not.

This is also why Open Religion does not relativize away anything from the truly religious sphere.

On the contrary.