Nowhere Man wrote:
I would think people are generally independent in regards to spiritual perspective and/or practice in that the views relayed by clergy and/or teachers, and lay are not always agreed upon for some reason or other, so in many respects, a person is essentially a sole practitioner of their own religion.
Yes this is quite true. Almost all practitioners of 'organized religions' are, in truth, solatariy practitioners of their own views. This is certainly true of Chrsitianity which is one of the most "organized' of all religions, yet the vast majority of people who actually lay claim to the title of "Christian" are actually "Designer Christians" creating thier own personal walk with "God". In fact many of them actually denounce "Churchianity", and/or Catholicism. I personally feel that the most absurd religions are the many conflicting demonations of Protestantism, all of whom had protested against the "Body of Christ" (the Catholic Chruch) and denounced that any man speak for "God" or "Jesus". The basic tenant of Protestantism is that only the "Holy Spirit" can speak for God or Jesus.
Yet the irony is that it's usually the Protestants who do the most evangelizing, proselytizing and claim to have the 'correct' interpretations of the "word of God". So in essence all they have done is reject the formal religion to become Paper Popes of individuality.
I also often question the validity of other spiritualities as "organized religions". I realize that many groups of individual do indeed organize and try to institutionalize their beliefs and practices into 'schools of spiritual thought', but do those truly qualify as 'religion'?
I suppose that's truly just a matter of semantics.
I personally feel that any spiritual that does not claim to hold any 'word of God' is not truly a 'religion' at all, but rather just a recognition of spirital avenues.
For example, I've been studying Buddhism, Taoism, Witchcraft and Shamanism. Many people may veiw this as a hodgepodge of many different ideas, and it is, but for me they are truly all related, even if not through direct interaction, they are related through some fundamental philosophical concepts.
Also, when I study various histories, folklore and mythologies of witchcraft and shamanism, I don't truly think of this as studying 'religion' as much as I see it as studying 'human spirituality'.
I also don't take anything as being carved in stone. It's all valid within the context that it was indeed someone's experience.
I find it somewhat strange that people put so much emphasis on 'historical accuracy" of information. To me that's fairly irrelavent. If a modern person has a meaningful shamanic journeying experience and writes about it in a book that from my point of view that is a historically accurate description because it is indeed the making of hisotry in the now.
The very basis of shamanism is the idea that dreams and vision are indeed spirtually valid.
Well, if that's the belief, then what's the difference whether it's Moses seeing a burning bush talking to him, or whether it's a modern author who has seen faeries in her backyard garden. Both visions are equally valid.
The burning bush that Moses saw wasn't speaking to the modern author, and the faeries that the modern author saw in her garden aren't speaking to Moses.
The idea is to learn what we can from these visions and go off and have our own.
That's how I see it. If there is a spirit that can communicate to Moses (or any other historical figure), then that same spirit can communicate to the rest of us with equal ease. There's never any need for us to put our faith in another human. We should all be able to seek our creator directly.
So from that point of view I suppose we can conclude the following:
Religion = faith in man
Spirituality = faith in spirit
