Since each person is very unique I think we should and probably do eventually, develop our own unique belief system.

I think this is as it should be since we each encounter our personal truth from a unique perspective.

This thread is for people who realize that they are unique in their beliefs and are fine with that.

I have never been much of a joiner, or a follower nor do I desire to be a leader. I just like to walk my own path.

What path are you walking?

that's my philosophy exactly

I couldn't agree more! There's no name for my path since it encompasses different teachings from different spiritualities. I am "eclectic".

In my opinion, religion is the means by which we connect with the Divine. So, whatever religion does that for you is the right religion or Path for you.

I, too, am a so called free spirit.
I try to learn as much as I can, and adapt the things that seem good to me to my own needs.

I have long believed that it is simply not possible for any two people to share the same religion. Though I practice Kaigen, how I interpret Kaigen is going to be worlds different from anyone else that follows the same path, simply because they are not me. It might be very similar, but still not the same.

It's the same with Wiccans. Put 13 Wiccan in a room and ask each of them to describe their religion and you will get 14 different answers.

Zen Buddhism, which is half of Kaigen, has a saying: "Should you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him." The reason for this is Zen knows that the Buddha is not the way. He can't be, because the only way is your own. And part of that way is to learn that everything you experience is illusion. It is simply perceptions warped by the three layers of physical being: physical sensation, the thinking mind, and separation (or looking through the lens of I).

Because of the filters on perception we all have, no two beliefs can be alike. Should all of us here have [insert deity of choice] arrive and we all experience its presence, each of us will come away from the experience with something different, perhaps to the point that we all looked upon the same force but saw something completely different from each other's perception.

But then again, that's the nature of religions rooted in mysticism. The questions are far more important than the answers.

I agree with most everything you said and have always been interested in zen Buddhism. I have never heard of kaigen. I will have to google it.

Yeah, I'm walking my path. It is what it is.

Kaigen is a Shinto syncretic mysticism that draws heavily from Zen Buddhism. It translates to "opening of the eye" and gets its name from a Buddhist ceremony performed on Buddhist statues. It is often considered a subset of Shingon, specifically Shingi Shingon. I guess whether you consider it a subset of Shinto or of Zen depends on where your emphasis lies. To be honest, though, it doesn't really matter. Shinto and Zen have become so intertwined that there's no separating them. Zen incorporates kami, and Shinto incorporates bodhisattvas.

This is the way it already is Jeannie.

Even with mainstream religions that claim to worship a single God, they are just kidding themselves.

Every Christian creates their own Jesus, for example.

They think they are united because they are all using the same name to name their individual gods. But they aren't really united at all. They vehemently disgree with each other on the details. It's crystal clear in their myriad of denominations and the mere fact that the vast bulk of them protested against the church a long time ago. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of Christians are protestants.

First they protested against the single religion of Catholicism, then they continued to protest against each other until they fell into a myriad of protestant denominations.

They all want to be precisely where you are Jeannie. They are trying very hard to individualize Jesus.

They have torn him into a billion bloody pieces like hungry little piranha, each one wanting to claim ownship of him as their own personal messiah.

The only thing these people truly share in common is their greed to claim ownership of god.

It's truly sad.

Yeah, I agree with yu, I make my own path and leave a trail behind me so someone else can find me, giggles, nah but really, yeah, I'm just me, an open-minded person, spiritual, just not tied down to one set of beliefs. Rock ON!

They will have ownership of God when they realize that God is within them, and they are part of that which is ultimately God.

James, JB, those are very interesting thoughts. You are both right. It's like what katsuninken said above, "If you see Buddha in the street, kill him."

We all perceive God differently because we are all different and God is within us.

I had a conversation with a catholic friend of mine, and we agreed(him being catholic, me being...spiritualist). That there is one thing right...Thy will be done. For if there was in "over-being" we agreed that it was/is long gone/dead. And the power therein was given to all beings, so essentially, the will is being done, through all of our actions, we ARE the will.

Wow, I so totally agree with this.

People are always talking about "God's will" and they don't realize that "God's will" was transferred to us. Our will is God's will. Most people hate that because they want to believe that God is all loving and would never do any evil, and yet humans do evil all the time.

But God's will is that we be totally free, hence to totally control our wills as if we were robots would go against god's will.

My Athiest friend and me have agreed on, "Damned if you do and damned if you don't."

Something most of us can agree on.

I went to Mass last night. I had been needing to go for some time. It's a strange path I follow, but I follow as it calls. Maybe it's psychological for me, but going to Mass is like getting a big hug from God and Goddess for me. I look at the statues of the BVM and Jesus and just feel warmth. I see them as the God and Goddess. I also understand the need for sacrifice in order to grow and Catholicism understands sacrifice better than any other form of Christianity.

I think Buddhism also teaches of the need to detach from everything in this world. I am going to start learning more about Buddhism.

But who is doing all the damning?

I say it this way:

You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

(Those that you don't please are doing the damning.)

For me there is a common thread in all religious beliefs.

It mainly comes down to the will of the ego versus the will of the higher self.

The will of the higher self is the will of "god". The will of the ego is what causes pain and misery.

Learning what YOU really want out of life, versus what your ego wants out of life is the key.

Also learning how to actually get what you want out of life is key too.

I think things like witchcraft, prayer, the law of attraction, etc. Can all be affective for even those of us who are lost in our egos.

In other words, a person who is lost in their ego can actually use the power of the universe to get what they want. But is what they are getting truly what they want? Or is it what their ego wants?

I think it can be quite difficult in differentiating between what your ego wants, and what you truly want.

At least it can be for people like me who are in the spiritual stage of the 'seeker'.

I've long since recognized that I'm no longer interested in the ego. However, lost of interest in the ego doesn't automatically place one a total state of higher self.

I think there is a state of limbo where there is loss of interest in the ego, yet not full awareness of the power of the higher self.

I think this stage is called the 'seeker' stage for good reason. The soul has lost interest in the ego and is now seeking its true self.

How is that achieved? It's achieved by becoming a 'seer' (a psychic). But not merely psychic. There are probably many people who are psychic and still lost in the ego. Being psychic alone is not enough. But it is a required tool none the less.

The seeker is seeking a communiqué with the spirit. But that can only be accomplished via the psyche. So whilst a psychic ability is required just being psychic alone is not sufficient.

It kind of like owning a telephone. Owning a telephone (being psychic) doesn't do anything for you necessarily. What true matters is WHO you call.

The seeker is seeking direction from his or her own higher self. So the seeker has a specific phone number in mind to call.

A natural psychic may very well be able to tap into phone lines of random conversations, but may not know how to dial a particular number (i.e. to contact their own higher self).

Unless of course, they too are in the 'seeker' stage of spiritual development. In that case then they already have the phone lines, all they need to do is dial the right number.

So as a seeker I'm seeking to become a psychic. But only for the very explicit purpose of contacting my higher self and making that connection become like a continuous DSL line.

So from my point of view, there is a difference between the "will of God", and the "will of the ego".

They aren't the same thing. The ego wants different things than the higher self wants. And the ego may even bulk at what the higher self wants.

The higher self wants a great body to live in during this incarnation. The ego says, "Bull crap! Let's live on soda pop and ice cream and sit around all day doing nothing!".

What the higher self wants often requires WORK that the ego may not be interested in doing.

That WORK may come in the way of 'sacrifices' as Ruth suggests.

Giving up chocolate in favor of eating wheat germ, for example.

I'm definitely guilty of SLOTH.

And it's all my ego's fault!

Well, I can’t say I’m actually walking the path ‘cause I spend very little time actually on the path. Most of my time is spent playing in the woods. But every once in a while I get back on the path and take a few more steps along it before being distracted by a butterfly or a pretty flower or a wood nymph and wandering off into the woods again. But the path I’m trying to walk is, I guess, a very self-centric one. I believe that my own free will, combined with the free will of all the other path walkers and forest dwellers, is the highest thing there is. I don’t believe that there is any “higher force” than that. I believe that the purpose of following the path is to get out of the forest. But I also believe that the forest itself has a definite purpose – butterflies and pretty flowers and wood nymphs. I believe that any apparent lack of free will (i.e. inabilities) is really just the result of a decision to follow a path at all.