There are endless books about the
spiritual path. There are wonderful guidelines about what it means to be spiritual. There are great teachers
who demonstrate spirituality by their life mission.
And then there is religion, which is
supposed to epitomize the building concepts of control and power. It would
appear that the trappings of religion equate to a very profound structure. The
pillars of that structure are dogma and ritual.
When the Great Ones walked the Earth, none of them built a church. When the
Great Ones sought to show us the way, none
of them specifically wrote anything down and demanded that it be followed other
than the Koran and the Ten Commandments, which were literally written in stone
so they could not ever be edited. None of them demanded dogma or ritual to show their power.
It was the followers of the Great Ones
who built the structures, created the dogma and invented the rituals that would
define a particular religion based on what the current, second or third
generation leader at that time felt was appropriate. Some of the rituals were
appropriate for that time and place in history but no one was ever allowed to
question them, so they could not ever be revised to accommodate ever-changing
times.
Ritual is a specific way of doing
something at a specific time with unique tools following unyielding guidelines.
Ritual is rigid, uncompromising and unforgiving. Ritual carries with it the
energy of power and associated fear. If you don’t perform the ritual in the
exact manner, then somehow you have done a terrible thing and ‘God’ will not
forgive you. No one is ever allowed to question whether or not the ritual
actually ever does anything
particularly spiritual for anyone.
There are very profound rituals that create
a certain frequency and that have often been corrupted from their original
intention. The original ‘Mystery Schools’ back in the mists of time, taught the
physics of how these rituals worked and why they worked. They had a very
specific purpose and a very deliberate outcome if performed properly. This is
where the concept of the hand gestures called mudras came from, the use of
essential oils, incense and prayers. However, along the way, many rituals
became completely corrupted.
The original Mystery schools also taught
the basic tenants of spirituality. These were eventually corrupted into guilt
producing, stomach wrenching dogma. Being spiritual was originally believed to
be able to take place anywhere, whether it was in a field of flowers, by the bedside
of the sick or at your dinner table. Prayer was always appropriate and never
limited to a specific grandiose building of wood and stone.
The concept of forgiveness was corrupted
into the power to forgive and that power was invested in certain people who
lorded it over, literally, the followers of that religion. Believe what we
believe or you are not ‘one of us.’ We will require you to confess your sins,
and only we can absolve you. Power was and still is the key here. The ritual of
confessing sins to another person was a corrupted form of an individual
speaking directly to God. The priesthood of all believers was the original
tenet, not give your spiritual power to another to judge.
The other problem with this concept, of
often dogmatic ritual, especially when it comes to confessing one’s sins to
another is the concept that one mortal can transmute the karma of another. Six
Our Fathers and Five Hail Mary’s will not transmute anyone’s karma. Lovely
prayers each one, but they do not have the power to absolve someone of a
terrible karmic act. No mere mortal, no matter how elegantly they are dressed,
can absolve the karma of another.
Each individual uniquely defines being
spiritual; no one has a monopoly on that definition. Perhaps each of us might
wish to look long and hard at the ritual and dogma that often confines us in
our belief system. Doing something routinely because you are supposed to
without remembering why you are doing it
is not being spiritual.
Just for a month, let go of ritual and
dogma. Experiment with spiritual freedom. Perhaps then each of us can feel what
it must have been like to walk with the Great Ones and know the freedom in the
delight in the divine because we could feel that the connection to the Divine
genuinely lived within us!
