Religion

I was talking with a new friend and religion came up. He asked me what my religion was, and I told him that I was more spiritual than religous. When I first truly came to my spirituality I was eager to share my realizations and new philosophies.  As I matured in my beliefs I came to be more reserved because I realized how passionate people were about their religions and how it was a lot of the times futile to get into discussions about it.  Since I became reserved about it I haven't really thought about it outside of practice, until today.

Basically, I was brought up Baptist and I was a strong believer to until my mom stopped taking us to church. I started critically thinking about certain things and I became confused. A lot of the things that I read did not make sense and the explanations to explain the things that didn't make sense didn't make much sense either. So, I was kind of at a stand still.  Now that I look back, in that time of my life I was sad and angry.  Then I began reading about other religions, trying to figure out if maybe I was in the wrong religion ~laugh out loud~. I don't know when it happened. I don't know if it was a gradual realization or an immediate one, but I do know that it was defiinetly a light at the end of a very dark and confusing tunnel.

I realized that essentially all religions were the same. I mean the look, the name, and the rituals, and the ideals about after-life changed. However the important things stay the same.  The way you live your life. Respect your elders, don't steal, treat others how you would like to be treated all pretty much stayed the same. I realized the things that separated religions were things that no one could prove and no one could change and were therefore in my mind trivial. So I came to philosophy of adopting all religions. Do the universal right things. While in worship I still call my god "God" but it has no real reference to Christianity, I just call him (him is in no reference to a male higher being ) that because that is how I was raised, and I believe if I grew up as a Buddhist I would call him Buddha. ~Laugh Out Loud~  After my great epiphany, I was internally happy and felt closer to "God" than I had ever felt because my mind could concentrate on the good and not on the things that didn't make sense. 

Love, Riah