This week I’ve been flicking through books in the Religion and Mind Body Spirit section of the library, and attending a course at the Brahma Kumari centre. I’ve been reading stuff about meditation, the path to God, God’s status as perfect and super awesome, and religeousness being about aesceticisim and choosing a path of nothing and suffering as a path to enlightenment.
I’ve been thinking, Wicca and Friends (paganisim, goddess spirituality, witchcraft, and whatever the bum I am) really, really are not compatible with most religeons, as in Wicca and Friends God is present in the world, which makes the world and everything in it divine, making God touchable and knowable, and making God embrace and be all things, perfect and imperfect.
I read about meditation being a path to God as it trancends us from this imperfect world we are living in and takes us away from real life and closer to wherever it is that God lives that deffo is not here.
I read about denying the self of wants and lusts.
I read about the belief that this world is totally imperfect and not special, therefore not sacred and worth of love and care.
In Wicca and Friends (as described by Spokesperson Faeriedaughter) meditation gets us in touch with the undercurrent within our world now – the closest, realest now, if that’s through closed-eyes-sitting-down meditiation or through hanging out with trees and chilling. It’s paying attention to what is around us and in us.
I’m thinking about how suffering and renouncing all things tends to be a cool way to get ahead in normal religions, but not in ours – we are all about enjoyment of the world we are in. About how abstaining from romantic relationships is pretty important in normal religions, yet “all acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals” in Wicca and Friends. I don’t think I have ever come across anything promoting being loverless as a route to God in anything wiccarish.
So as there is this huge thealogical gap between Us (assuming you, reader, are on my team) and All Them Others, and since our spirituality is so crazy radically different in so many ways, how much can we actually learn for inform our own practice from other normal religions? What percentage of what we learn will have to be disregarded as it doesn’t fit with our key beliefs? Is there any point?
(I know it’s not always meant to be about suffering – like when Buddha got enlightened and was feeding himself properly and all these other seekers who starved themselves and treated their body like crap were all “Yo Buddha, you sell out, you are totally not spiritual with your dinners” and Buddha was all “It’s not about enforced suffering y’all – how are you meant to concentrate on meditating when your body is screaming at you? It’s all about no harm, guys” and the seeker chaps were like “Humph. I think not.”. But often it ends up that way , which begs the question – it it the religions that are messed up, or is it just that people are really dim?)
I did once meet a girl who was thinking of taking a vow of chastity to become closer to the maiden aspect of the Goddess. That’s the only time I’ve ever heard of something like that being connected with Wicca.
Anyway, I’ve always thought it was all about the person- almost all religions have a different interpretation depending on the people.
This was an interesting post- really made me think 🙂
Of course it is not all that simple. For one thing, there is the Christian movement of Pantheism, seeing God in all things, communicating with nature and such (19th century, I think?). And on the other hand most Pagan religions, if you look closely, are not about, “Go out, be decadent and have fun”. If everything is sacred and should be treated as such, that does, of course, also go for ourselves, and we should not treat ourselves as anything less than divine. Which also means that, for example, we should not “offer” cheap junk and harmful substances to ourselves (or at least not frequently) – if you would not feed it to the goddess, you should not feed it to yourself. It is tough to know the difference between, “I do this because it is good for me right now” and, “I do this to numb something I do not want to feel.” Goes for sex etc. as well.
(Although you are right in saying that most Pagan religions are way more life-, love- and fun-embracing than the oldfashioned “book religions” and such.)