The Religious Feeling – What Religion Has Always Been About
The religious feeling lives deeply inside and everywhere. It is ubiquitous and invisible. It can be supported and downplayed without anyone’s knowing. It is very much Open.
What I dare say
One can have full-blown religious feeling without believing anything conceptual. There is no need to lose anything of this feeling by ‘not believing.’
The question is about conceptuality.
One can keep one’s religion of birth. There is no need to relinquish it. There is no need to stay with it for the religious feeling to flourish.
Anxiety has no place.
What I dare even say
Conceptual belief can stand in the way of full-blown religious feeling. What one can deem of the highest importance in religion can sometimes better be served by not believing anything conceptual.
Of course, this is mysticism.
The thing is:
One can lose one’s conceptual belief and not lose anything worthwhile. Many people can do so. Humanity can do so.
One can read some Holy Book, get deeply immersed in it, see it as purely symbolic, and not lose anything worthwhile.
The reason why people don’t
The reason why people don’t is the general basic illusion of living an X-dimensional life whereas reality is (X+1)-dimensional at least. In the +1 additional dimension, one can make contact towards inside. This is the way towards God in any case, no matter how one experiences religion. I mean: anything that is anyhow a path toward anything.
Not being merely 2-dimensional characters on paper.
COVID
The same illusion makes people blind to a profoundly physical influence from inside, even if it throws them in a societal whirlpool of unnecessary disease and death.
Including huge economic havoc.
Also, the same anxiety has no place, even though it’s everywhere.
It may not be the most popular thing to say, but the whole world is suffering right now through a lack of religious feeling. This, while the world is still inundated with a flood of contradictory religions of many makings, ages, places, concepts, and whatever. This alone should ring a bell
of a uniquely different church.
We can do better
Religion could help in the sense of ‘true religious feeling.’ This could guide people like a path being traveled upon, as well as constructed while traveling. Responsibly religious people could take the lead. It would be nice for them to cultivate, themselves, the religious feeling.
Yes, even the Pope.
Or is it asked too much that someone who dedicates his life to religion grows in the same?
Is such growing ever finished, even while taking the risk of finding oneself – sometimes suddenly – in a distinct space of religious feeling?
Related Posts
Rites and Vain Repetitions
In religious or other contexts, rites can be tokens of something special happening. On the other hand, they can be effective without meaning — as vain repetitions. See also: Rituals. Like stones around a campfire These stones denote the fire’s borders — a clear delineation of the campfire. This is useful and even helps the Read the full article…
The Temporal Eye
In memory of a personal experience. Sitting at a bench looking over a field of grass and a pond. Trees in the distance. Sunshine. Late afternoon. Very relaxed. Becoming the trees. You may see this as a mystical experience. I do, if ever there is one. Being the trees. No difference between them there and Read the full article…
The Good Ritual
What constitutes the concrete appearance of a ‘good ritual’? According to me, the answer lies more in the deeper ‘why’ and in the deeper ‘how’ of the ‘what’ than in the ‘what’ itself. [please first read: ‘Rituals’] In religion(s), rituals mostly grow quite organically. What if one would want to ‘make’ a new ritual to Read the full article…