Of course, you know, there’s a downside to religion, and you only have to sit with people like I have for years and years as I try to get to the root of the root of the root of the root of suffering. And it is time to know that a lot of it has to do with religion.
This has been a problem since the beginning of time. We are raised in a system of good and bad, right and wrong, heaven and hell, sin and punishment, guilt and shame. Even if you have left the church or left the temple or have gone in a spiritual direction into Buddhism or any kind of light, the invisible gas has gotten into your soul, into your belief system.
The behavior is so ingrained, as if you have to be obligated or else; you have to do good or else; you have to follow the laws or else. And then the question has to become: why do you have guilt and shame? Sit back and answer that question. It has to come from somewhere. Like you learn a language, you learned it because it has been in our culture, our society, our history since the beginning of time.
And so the harm that it’s done is that there is a betrayal of self, a loss of self. “Well, I can’t be that good, so f*** it. I might as well use, I might as well whatever, because I’m never going to make it through the narrow gate into heaven.” Religion, especially Christianity and Catholicism, has also stolen death. They have taken it over. They’ve made it about the gates of heaven and the gates of hell.
All we need to do now is question our beliefs, because there is another system. It’s like nature. Just go outside. Look at the sun and the moon. Everyone can believe in the sun and the moon. Everyone can believe in the natural laws. Everyone gets the concept that there is only one God, and we don’t need to fight over it.
But boy, when you sit and work with people on addiction and trauma and what’s really going on, there is at the root this religious belief system that you can never get it right, you’re not good enough. And that is the problem that now needs to be healed, because there is a lie going on.
The mask of appearing that you’re following, you’re going to church or temple and doing everything “good”, but there’s another side to you that’s hidden. And that hidden side will kill you. That dilemma inside of you, “Am I good enough for God?”—will also kill you.
It is time to investigate the truth about the light, about spirituality, and to find the peace in the one, the center point, the alignment that is not a dilemma of good and bad, right and wrong, heaven and hell.
There are some people who think teaching natural laws is the devil, and that it’s like a cult to even try to say no. But the goal is to be free, to be critically minded, and to attach the phone line to your heart—the divinity in me, in my heart, that is my soul. Pay attention to what you want. To thine own self be true, because that truly is God’s voice in one’s soul, in one’s ear, in one’s heart.
And so we must really investigate the harm that religion has done to every one of us, especially women being treated as second best, with “Father God” and the idea that it’s all our fault, like even in the Garden.
So ask yourself the question: Do you believe in sin and punishment? And where the hell did it come from?
