I really can't pick one so I chose other. Really should have put an "all of the above" for me because I experience it all.
My parents were strict Pentecostal and I could never grasp the concept of good=heaven and bad=hell.
Looked to different religions but could never understand how they could have differing perceptions in the way of sects and opinions of the same message. I just never fit this or that. This made me extremely curious.
I then started to expand my way of thinking. I started looking deeper into why this religion thinks this way and that religion thinks another way. What I find is that it is a puzzle where certain pieces fit together as if they were meant to be in order to get a whole picture or vision. Started looking at symbolism and figured out that religious symbolism coincides with the astronomical age we are in. I won't go deep into it but rather hint at it; We are nearing the end of the Age of Pisces and shifting into the Age of Aquarius and have been for quite a few years now. The symbolism surrounding Christ, the harbinger and teacher of this age, is filled with fish in one way or another and Pisces is represented by a fish. Look at the back of some cars, the symbol of Christ is a geometrical fish. I do believe our Spititual perceptions change and our world can be and is affected by universal forces that we cannot explain or even comprehend at this time. These shifts can take hundreds of years. What is Aquarius represented by? A person pouring water out of a vessel. What does the liquid represent? I don't know but will take a guess at knowledge. Since mankind came about, our world and technolgy was pretty much limited as far as we could walk or ride a horse. In the last 120 years we have advanced in technology and intellegence (intellegence can be debateable though) more than we have throughout the whole common conception of the existence of mankind.
My Spiritual perceptions are strong and my Faith is strong but at the same time they can change. Before you go to school, yeah you know abcdefg and so on or you might be able to write your name but you can't really write full sentences, complex words, and paragraphs. Then you learn how to percieve those letters and understand how they fit together to make actual words and what once was a just an unintelligable book made from cardboard and paper with seemingly random letters, you can now understand what is written. What I percieve today may be a totally different perception tomorrow according to what I
learn.
A lot of times people expect a booming loud voice or scream from our Creator, by whatever name or gender you choose to percieve or however many because after all, a being that Created everything should be big and loud enough to be heard. Since we were instilled with Freewill, there will be no screams and booming voices but rather gentle whispers if you choose to listen and seek knowledge of the Creator.
What happens when and after we die? There is no concrete proof of anything. We may just cease to exist consciously at all levels. I choose to believe in reincarnation. It has been prevalent in so many religions and hints of it even in the bible of today and early Christianity through the Gnostic texts. It has been studied by Psychologists in the way of past life regressions and then on the same token other Psychologists will turn around and call these false memories, fantasies, genetic memories and so on. Do we just die and experience the common conception of heaven or hell? I don't know but choose to think not. The Creator according to the bible took 6 days (whatever a day is in the scheme of Eternity) to create what we see and experience, why should we think that a human Spirit can be perfected in
one life time or infinate number of lifetimes even. Can both concepts be right or wrong and/or right and wrong? Most certainly. I use the bible a lot since we are in the Age of Picses and it states that with God
all things are possible. Not just anything but all things. It also states that God is Love. And that allows me to see that the God of the old testement is the same God that Christ hinted of and is the same Creator that has been and will be, its just that man's perception of the Creator has shifted and will continue to shift throughout our evolution. We know natural disasters happen all the time, sicknesses and death and so on. Man used to blame a God or Gods for these things but now we know it's nature. As for using God and or Spirituality as a means of control or justifications for horrific actions against fellow humans throughout history. Well that is just a consequence of Freewill and our own doing. I don't believe God has or has ever taken sides. Please, no one take offense when I use the word God because its not meant to offend and when I say it it covers all spectrums, versions, genders and names.
One of the brightest minds of the twentieth century stated that energy can't be destroyed but it can be transformed. These words give me a tremendous feeling of Faith in a reality separate from a physical existence. The physical body without the small electrical impuses running through it is nothing more than matter. This energy allows us to be animate and to think. When the body dies where does that energy go. I know a lot of folks may believe it is dispersed and go back to being plain old heat, light, electromagnetic and a number and another number of forms of energy. This may be true but what about our consciousness on all levels which seem to be a form of energy unto itself?
Who knows, I may be insane and delusional. I don't think so though because I question my sanity all the time and the truly insane are convinced they are totally sane. I might be just a tiny bit delusional though.
But isn't everyone.
