My life has taught me to be more spiritual than any particular religion. I was raised Catholic. My mom was Catholic but my dad was Baptist. However, he converted to Catholic when I was around seven. The strange thing was that my mom, eventually, converted to Baptist when I was around twenty. Crazy mixed up family but it gave me a broader outlook on religious beliefs.
I was also raised to be respectful. My mom made sure of it. So, as a teen, I was invited to go to services with a neighbor to her Baptist Church. Everything was good until the visiting minister started spouting off that everyone but Baptist were going straight to hell. I was in shock. How disrespectful! I got up and walked out because I knew I was a good person and that was just BS to me. I told my neighbor I wasn't feeling well because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.
All I could think was, how absolutely horrid the Baptist were. After visiting other churches and seeing more hypocrisy, including with the Catholic Church, I decided that "my church" was going to be a direct connection to the Divine.
That Baptist church wasn't the only one I visited when I was younger. I heard some pretty wild things. It made me wonder why all churches weren't more careful in what they preach because they never know who's ears they may fall on ... including God's.
It was my dad that sealed it for me. He said that God was either no religion or all religions, depending on how you look at it. Besides, if God was everywhere, why would anyone need to go to a building to pray to Him? You should be able to pray in your home, or in a field, for Him to hear you. This made sense to me. It truly resonated.
Also, because I have a curious nature, when I was around forty, I decided to study the Bible along with other major religions. I even got a minister's license to help in counseling others. Of course, this was also due to my direct contact with the Divine, by this time, and being asked to understand as much as I could in order not to judge.
Among other things, that I've learned, my spiritual awakening taught me that God's not stuck in the past anymore than we are. To me, that made sense too, because it would make Him seem intolerant. Isn't that what religions, including spirituality, tell us not to be? Also, I was taught that world religions are like God's children; siblings in a big family. Anyone who's seen or been part of a big family will know that not everything runs smoothly and children can misbehave. It's up to this "big family" to keep everyone in line and from getting out of control. In our families, our siblings are different but we don't worship them. Why should we worship our religions?
Lastly, this video (link), that I made back in 2009, talks about a few things that I've mentioned in this blog but goes into a little more detail explaining why all my multiple life's lessons helped in my conclusion of being more spiritual than religious.
I'm Spiritual but not Religious - https://youtu.be/1qOt6MRyUPE
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