Intentions and Religion

Let’s talk religion… hard-hats on.

My mother instructed her kids to never discuss religion or politics in mixed company. Wise advice, but when it comes to the Transformation Experience these topics cannot be avoided. So many people hold almost intractable beliefs about both topics and also about the topics of money and sex. Together, these four topics are considered the most uncomfortable to discuss, they hold such paralyzing power over so many people that we must discuss them here, in this safe sanctuary.

Occasionally, I get an email from someone curious about how the Transformation Experience applies when, ‘I am a Christian.’ Like Allan Watts, I ask how many other religions and philosophies they have studied before deciding that being a Christian is the way to go. Of course, I never get a response. Most people have not chosen a faith but been indoctrinated into one, often the only one they have ever been exposed to. That attitude is naive to say the least, more lazy and dumb if I am to be blunt about it. Yet, as obvious as it is to say, billions of people hold on to one set of beliefs and resist all others. Free-thinking requires a different attitude and a more open mind. As you have learned, one of the foundations of wizardry is the power of observation. One cannot observe well if one has intractable beliefs.

Does it matter? When a set of beliefs determines the rules by which you live then, yes, it does matter. If it teaches you to treat men and women unequally then I have an issue with intractable stances. If it preaches that the love of money is the root of all evil, I have an issue with it. If it teaches that people of other belief systems are unworthy and must be converted by force, then I have an issue with it. Let’s face it, can you name a religion, philosophy, or political viewpoint that does not manipulate behavior, thought, and deed?

Can you name any belief system that encourages free thinking?

In Britain, debate is part of our culture. It’s normal to have a table-shaking discussion about religion, politics, and sex (definitely not mutually exclusive conversations, especially in Britain where we are as likely to find a Cardinal or Member of Parliament in a sado-masochistic sex dungeon as in their place of work) without those around the table taking offense. When we run out of words, we all have a glass of wine and a laugh. No one takes it personally, although very rarely does anyone change their opinion. It’s the art of conversation and nothing more.

I assumed the world was like that until I moved to America and found, to my cost, that people take alternative viewpoints as a personal insult. Discussing religion, politics, sex, and money causes almost immediate and permanent polarization. Below, is a TED talk that very clearly demonstrates the subject of intractable belief and what can happen when, as a free-thinking wizard, one challenges those beliefs.

According to Miss Manners, a social etiquette guide in the Chicago Tribune, polite people do not bring up politics or religion in social conversations. Of course, if Americans stayed away from all  topics the etiquette columnist deems taboo in polite company – including politics, money, sex, illness, what people are wearing – a lot of dinners would pass by in complete silence.

But, judging by the results of many surveys, the main topics of human life seem to also be the subjects most people avoid. U.S. adults say they seldom (33%) or never (16%) talk about religion with people outside their family. And roughly four-in-ten say they seldom (26%) or never (13%) discuss religion even with members of their immediate family.

The same story told differently.

It may surprise you to know that there are over 4,000 recognized religions in the world. These religions consist of churches, congregations, faith groups, tribes, cultures, and movements. Even though there are so many, three-quarters of the world’s population practice one of the five major religions. Each religion has, at its core, the same story.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, archaeologists were digging in the library of King Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.C.) in the ancient city of Nineveh. They discovered thousands of clay tablets written in a language that came to be known as, Akkadian. (a distant and much older cousin to Hebrew)

Found among the ruins was a Babylonian creation story referred to today as Enuma Elish. Scholars have termed Enuma Elish, the “Babylonian Genesis.” The reason is that both stories are almost identical, the surprise being that the Akkadian version is at least 5000 years old. Additionally, the story of the virgin birth, three sage-like years for the grown man, and the trial and death are also remarkably similar.

There have been many such finds. It is always the same story told differently in the disparate religions.

In 2005 Italian researchers discovered what might be the oldest nativity scene ever found – 5,000-year-old rock art that depicts a star in the east, a newborn between parents and two animals. The scene, painted in reddish-brown ochre, was found on the ceiling of a small cavity in the Egyptian Sahara desert, during an expedition to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau.

“It’s a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years,” geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker.

The ‘Great Flood’ is present in nearly all cultures around the globe. Mesopotamian flood stories, Deucalion in Greek mythology, the Genesis flood narrative, the Hindu texts from India, Bergelmir in Norse Mythology, and in the lore of the K’iche’ and Maya peoples in Mesoamerica, the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa tribe of Native Americans in North America, the Muisca, and Cañari Confederation, in South America.

But what people are unaware of is the fact that the oldest and most ancient story of the Great Deluge originated in ancient Sumeria. According to ancient inscriptions, it was ‘Eridu,’ –modern day Abu Shahrein, Iraq– where the gods created the first city on the planet. Eridu was home to the ancient Sumerian God Enki, who erected the city in 5400 BC. The ancient Sumerian Nippur tablet describes the oldest account of the Great Flood and the creation of both humans and animals on our planet and records the names of Antediluvian cities on earth and their respective rulers.

The same stories that have guided people’s lives for the last 5-10000 years and probably even longer get edited and regurgitated and then relaunched as the one true religion.

There is no such thing.

Such discoveries lead us to at least question whether there was once a vast, technologically superior, thriving planet. Something happened… no one really knows what… and it ended. Some humans survived and it started again under the guidance of a traveling sage who taught the survivors rules and appreciation of art and culture. Yes, a messiah type character is also in all the ancient texts. There are a thousand stories and a thousand theories. None of them are relevant to this journey. What is relevant is that you cannot allow a fragmented, mistranslated collection of texts (original meaning of a bible) to determine how you live today.

I would like to quote from The Book of Secret Wisdom: The Prophetic Record of Human Destiny and Evolution. I have no way of knowing if this information has any merit, but I like the challenge the idea presents. The challenge is that we have all been misdirected even before the first sanskrit writings.

“Here reigns the sacred language of Senzar (pre-sanskrit), from which have originated the tongues of all peoples through the ages. Thus, the roots of many current eastern languages come from Sanskrit, which is based on Senzar. Many words of this most ancient language underlie not only Sanskrit but also Egyptian, Hebrew, Latin, and all other languages of various known and yet to be discovered sacred texts.The language of Senzar is distinct from others in that, because of its flexible nature, it has no dead or long-entrenched forms of expression. Just like any other language, Senzar has both spoken and written forms of speech, which are substantially different from our traditional understanding.

Conversation among Initiated Adepts, for the most part, takes place on the subconscious level, using thought-forms. And here, by means of two or three “phrases,” one can express that which even several volumes of text cannot, for human words, so often comprising many contradictory shades and nuances, have only limited capabilities of meaning. The concision of the Senzar language enables it to express most completely and compactly any thought, including infinitely extensive phenomena. Symbolism underlies speech. Hence, one small symbol, sent in the form of a particular vibration to a companion, unfolds a whole network of images, and fiery signs through the living breath and geometric expression of a combination of rays bring out a whole range of light in sequence, where a particular color dominates, as though emphasizing the key tone of the message. In this way we note the presence of light, color and sound, contained in a thought form, thereby completely excluding the necessity of direct verbal contact. The voice of the Great Silence is heard everywhere in Shambhala, but its sounds are always arranged in the diapason of high-frequency energy vibrations. And they, refracted through a sensitive heart, develop into a specific word.

The writing system of Senzar is even more complicated, combining in itself seemingly incompatible elements. These include signs, syllables, and letters based on symbolism. A single symbol is capable of developing into an entire treatise, being easily understandable by an initiated disciple of any ethnic background. Of course, the reader’s level of consciousness is also important. Color, light, number, and sound play a significant role in a secret alphabet from which words and sentences are composed.”

What this tells us is that it is highly unlikely that any modern day scholar, assuming modern day is the last few thousand years, would be able to accurately interpret any such symbols. Most religions are based on an inept understanding of the original meaning and can portray only a fraction of the depth of message.

What about the power of prayer?

So, if religious texts are limited in usefulness to the wizard, what can we say about the power of prayer, which is encouraged in all religions?

From Three Simple Steps:

“It seems counter intuitive to the way we have been brought up. Parents have such high aspirations for their children, and many marriages break down because partners fail to match each other’s expectations. You can, however, only have Intentions for you. We struggle to understand the needs of our own soul, so what right do we have to assume we understand what is best for someone else?

In our society where organized religion is such a force, this can challenge the power of prayer to some extent, especially its ability to influence remotely. An internationally recognized spokesperson on the science of spirituality, Lynne McTaggart takes the ideas popularized in What the Bleep do we Know? to explain that thought generates its own palpable energy, one that you can use to improve your own life.

In her book, The Intention Experiment, she summarizes the hundreds of prayer studies that show no positive correlation. In some cases even a negative influence on the recipient of prayer was demonstrated. In a few studies, those prayed for had more post-operative complications than those not prayed for.

Formally studying the effect of prayer is fraught with complications in the first place, but she also shows that remote healing has been well studied with a seventy five percent positive correlation.”

I am afraid the studies don’t make good reading for those who live life believing in the power of praying:

Harvard professor Herbert Benson performed a “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP)” in 2006. The STEP, commonly called the Templeton Foundation prayer study” or “Great Prayer Experiment”, used 1,802 coronary artery bypass surgery patients at six hospitals. Using double-blind protocols, patients were randomized into three groups, individual prayer receptiveness was not measured. The members of the experimental and control Groups 1 and 2 were informed they might or might not receive prayers, and only Group 1 received prayers. Group 3, which served as a test for possible psychosomatic effects was informed they would receive prayers and subsequently did. Unlike some other studies, STEP attempted to standardize the prayer method. Only first names and last initial for patients were provided and no photographs were supplied. The congregations of three Christian churches who prayed for the patients “were allowed to pray in their own manner, but they were instructed to include the following phrase in their prayers: “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications”. Some participants complained that this mechanical way they were told to pray as part of the experiment was unusual for them. Complications of surgery occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer (Group 1), 51 percent of those who did not receive it (Group 2), and 59 percent of patients who knew they would receive prayers (Group 3). There were no statistically significant differences in major complications or thirty-day mortality. In The God Delusions, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote, “It seems more probable that those patients who knew they were being prayed for suffered additional stress in consequence: ‘performance anxiety’ as the experimenters put it. Dr Charles Bethea, one of the researchers, said, “It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?”

A meta analysis of several studies related to distant intercessory healing was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2000. The authors analyzed 23 trials of 2,774 patients. Five of the trials were for prayer as the distant healing method, 11 were with non-contact touch, and 7 were other forms. Of these trials, 13 showed statistically significant beneficial treatment results, 9 showed no effect, and 1 showed a negative result. The authors concluded that it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding distant healing and suggested further studies.

So what to do? Because everything is energy, it is highly unlikely that people can do very much good by sending their prayers like bullets at the energy of others. When energy collides it forms interference. Only if the two energies are exactly in the same phase can that interference be constructive. Our brains are so complicated and so different that it is impossible to find exact phase construction in thoughts. Of course, one can do other things.

One can send free and useful energy without it being attached to selfish thoughts. Several practitioners teach the sending of a peaceful, healing blue light. It is imagined and sent like a floating ball to another person and without expectations from the sender. Whether the recipient accepts the light or uses the energy is then their prerogative.

Money and religion

Money is also a surprisingly difficult thing for most people to talk about. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Ally bank, 70% of Americans think that it’s rude to talk about money. People don’t like to talk about how much they pay in rent, or the amount of their monthly mortgage payment. Others find it crass to discuss it even though it is the thing that makes the modern world function.

University College, London, found that people were seven times more likely to talk to a stranger about sex, affairs, and sexually transmitted diseases than discussing their salary. Wells Fargo found that 44% of Americans see personal finance as the most challenging topic to discuss with others, more so than subjects like death, politics, and religion. And despite the fact that money is a leading cause of stress in relationships (and commonly cited as the primary reason couples divorce), Time Magazine reports that 40% of couples don’t discuss how they would manage their money before getting married.

The bigger challenge for many people is that their absorbed beliefs can influence behavior and restrict changes whereas the Transformation Experience requires changing behavior and being open to new habits.

For instance, belief in the evil nature of wealth can crush just about any Intention. In order to have successful Intention setting tools, one needs to be comfortable talking about money, what it is, how it flows, and one needs a healthy relationship with money.

Money is energy.

How much you have determines how you live.

Money is just energy in another form, a means of exchange.

Exchange it.

In the west the reluctance to talk money also sometimes comes from what we were taught as children in school and Sunday School.

In her e-book Going Broke with Jesus, Kalinda Stevenson, Ph.D., Master of Divinity studies, fluent in Hebrew and Aramaic (written and spoken) and committed to liberating people from ‘Bad Bible,’ so they can live rich, abundant, joyful, and healthy lives, demonstrates how taking an ancient text out of its societal and historical context leads to interpretation errors that are then often used to suppress people’s ambitions. Texts intended to free people’s creativity become twisted to mean the opposite.

For instance, the classic biblical quote (The word ‘Bible’ just means ‘books’ in Greek) about a rich man who is unable to enter the kingdom of heaven is one of the most misunderstood verses about money. Misuse by those in power to make those without power less discontent has caused millions of people over time to fear money for loss of their salvation.

If a character called Jesus existed (see Caesar’s Messiah ), he spoke Aramaic and lived in an Agrarian society in which the King controlled all land. A rich man was someone who benefited from the King’s benevolence because in that society at that time the King was God’s representative on earth. To be bestowed land by the King was seen as a blessing from God. The rich were viewed with awe because they were ‘blessed,’ much as some people might be in awe of a TV icon today. Those who were not so blessed accepted their role in life to be in service to those who were blessed.

Clearly this led to the potential for corruption and oppression. “Jesus,” says Dr. Stevenson, “is not talking about being rich, but about the overthrow of the existing order of things in which those who are rich and at the top of the social system will lose their advantage unless they share that wealth for the benefit of society.” In this story, the rich man refuses the call to discipleship or revolution forces. The story is not about the rich but about adhering to a call to arms for everyone to join the rebellion. It was a recruitment campaign to a revolutionary cause no different than the ‘Your Country Needs You’ propaganda campaigns in the first world war.

“What is profoundly disturbing to me,” Says Dr. Stevenson, “is that the real intention of the money stories seldom get taught at Sunday Schools and Churches. Instead these stories of the outlaw hero’s attempt to set people free from economic and religious abuse get turned into biblical urban legends warning people about the evils of money… there is no power in ignorance of money. Yet church leaders speak so often about money being something ungodly.’

As another example, in Timothy 6:10: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evils,’ is often misquoted as ‘Money is the root of all evils.’ Taken back to its origins the word ‘money’ is never used because it had little relevance in an Agrarian culture. The original text translates to ‘avarice (greediness).’

‘Avarice is the root of all evils,’ changes the meaning completely. We all get that. Now it makes sense. Of course, greed is something we don’t want or need in life and will be the root of many problems. One can, however, be poor and greedy or rich and greedy. One can also be poor and generous or rich and generous.

“Every time you hear someone say, ‘The Bible says…’ about a particular topic, it probably doesn’t — at least not the way it’s claimed. Few things cause more hurt and confusion than religion doled out in Bible verses. Too often isolated Bible verses become rules. The rules then become weapons to be used against people, such as:

•Women may not lead.

•Husbands must rule.

•Slaves must submit obediently to their masters.

•Gays have no place in the church

You can find Bible verses that seem to proclaim these rules. But when these verses are put into their own contexts, the strident clarity of the Bible verses turns into something else. The verses become pieces of a larger whole. And very frequently, the Bible verse that is so confidently proclaimed as the very “word of God” turns out to be a distortion of the original intention behind the Bible verse.”

-Kalinda Stevenson

Were the misquotes accidental or deliberate? No one can say for sure, but it is clear that biblical translations have been in the hands of the powerful through time and used to suppress the poor when it suited a political agenda (read God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson). Add to that the fact that the original texts were also likely misunderstood or even unappreciated because those who discovered them were incapable of understanding the complexity of unconscious interpretation. (Senzar)

-Kalinda Stevenson

Were the misquotes accidental or deliberate? No one can say for sure, but it is clear that biblical translations have been in the hands of the powerful through time and used to suppress the poor when it suited a political agenda (read God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson). Add to that the fact that the original texts were also likely misunderstood or even unappreciated because those who discovered them were incapable of understanding the complexity of unconscious interpretation. (Senzar)

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