I'm not attacking christianity

People say sometimes "You are attacking Christianity!" Why would they say that? What is this "Christianity" which I'm said to be attacking? According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there are approximately 41,000 Christian denominations and organizations in the world. This is why Gina Cerminara wrote her handbook on religious sanity.** So what exactly is being attacked? That there are 41K+ versions of devolution from an alleged original teaching? Does anyone think that any one of these chosen at random, from some Catholic sect to the Westboro Church is, in fact, the original teaching of Jesus the Christ? Seriously? 

So if someone tells me I'm attacking "Christianity", what I hear is some version of this:

"I have chosen or have been indoctrinated from birth into one of 41,000 versions of someone's teaching we have a few contradictory lines about in a 2000-year-old book. That book also has other parts another 2000 years older yet, which contradicts both itself and the newer part. That whole caboodle wasn't compiled as a piece until some 300 years after the little known, if extant, original dispenser of a tiny fraction of it was gone. So I have, without original records and after 2000 years of alterations and changing interpretations, decided that the story my sect of an overwhelmingly turbulent stream of unverifiable beliefs is, in fact, the one true and only way to an end I postulate based on what these stories passed down and altered for two millennia claim to be "true" in the particular version I claim as mine.

"I do this not having looked into the origins and history of my beliefs, and without examination of the philosophies and mystic traditions my particular extrapolation of beliefs comes from, including, but not limited to, Zoroastrianism, Nondualism, Mithraism, or the Egyptian and Essene Mysteries and the teachings of Indian, Tibetan, and Oriental Masters who may have influenced the person of Jesus, and are traditionally and falsely discounted as relevant material to understanding words, works, and ideas attributed to him."

So for my part, I completely understand what Jiddu Krishnamurti said: "When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."*

So I am not attacking an unspecifiable brand of christianism, for I cannot call any current thing which calls itself "Christianity." I cannot, because it is all derivative and based on feasibly demonstrable misinterpretations. What I am doing is asking for a conscious re-evaluation of beliefs by anyone who has the moral and emotional courage to do so, and come out the other end retaining their faith if they wish, but doing so on a foundation of self-awareness and history. 

~~~~

*Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, chapter 6

** The book is one used by many denominations in their study of comparative religion, and has many interfaith recommendations. It is called "Insights for the Age of Aquarius: a handbook for religious sanity." 

Someone asked me "What is you higher power?"

Sorry, I couldn't adjust some of the spacing here! ~~~~ I personally "have" no higher power, as that usage denotes possession. There is a fundamental Principle. It has me, and you, and all of manifestation as its expression as the Cosmos which It permeates, and is not separate from, and in fact IS. It can be pointed to, but not spoken, as it is Ineffable. It is not a person or Person, yet is the power to and source of either.

Simply stated, one can say:

Consciousness is fundamental

Consciousness is the Light to the awareness of ideas and thoughts.

What one is conscious of, as awareness, constitutes experience.

All are aware, few are consciously aware and thus mistake their thoughts, memories, senses, physicality, "self", etc, for their actual immutable untouched Self, which is equatable with such words as Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, Principle, and Mind. I would add "God", but that has become one of the most abused and wrongly understood terms in any language. There is a simple reason for this and it is the cause of much tragic misunderstanding and wrong teaching.

 One is trained to be aware "of ", as subject/object

experience and mistakes the objects of that awareness for Self, mistaking the self-constructed by parochial indoctrination as real. In fact, that constructed self, wherever and whenever it is may be functional or not. In any case, it is in fact merely programming. This is demonstrable by a number of experiential means, some spontaneous, some induced. In fact, it is possible to go past the extremely and most common state of the human, that being the subject/object state. Going beyond it yields a basis for actual and useful work on self in a way which is inclusive of Universals as distinct from local or parochial constructs of explanation. This is demonstrable and experienceable.

Operationally, all of this means exactly what has been

succinctly stated for ages in many ways. The most familiar to us today are three:

 One is the Golden Rule. Foundational to the Golden Rule is the

experiential and gut understanding that the other IS oneself in essence, despite appearance.

Second is The Great Commandment. Foundational to the Great

Commandment is the experiential and gut understanding that the other IS oneself in essence, despite appearance.

Third is "Women and Children First." Foundational to

"Women and Children First" is the understanding that they are the means of transmittal and expression of the first two if properly educated. Any morality, or civic system, or economic system, not based on Women and Children First is a false, detrimental, morality or system at worst leading to collapse and societal suicide.

From these three flow all of the connective and salubrious

considerations and actions, private, familial, civic, and other, which foster the highest possibility of all individuals and the various aspects of society. It is on these that Civilization and Culture of the highest sort might be built.

An additional note:

Because of both the emergent nature of human awareness as

pointed to in christianism by the sadly misunderstood story of "The Fall", it is the Nature of the human awareness to NEED to know. And to do. And to protect what it thinks is sacred. And all of that is well and good. IF it is done consciously. Usually, it is not, and it is done from personal and parochial ideas. That's natural. And it works very well up to a point. That point is when other explanations understood by their holders as beliefs, usually sacred beliefs, clash in the practical world.

Of course, the Prime Directive of the human being survival, even

beyond the grave, the SYSTEM ONE WAS INDOCTRINATED INTO AT BIRTH AND THROUGH CHILDHOOD IS PERCIEVED AS ABSOLUTE AND FUNDAMENTAL REALITY. And that is the root of the persistence of "faith". But it is not Real. No matter how real it feels and how much sense it makes. It is not. It might have actual elements of Truth in it which keep it afloat, as do the thousands of versions of christianism today, but they lack the leveling factor, the leavening which would bring them to Life and allow them to naturally shed their differences, their parochialisms, and all of that, while retaining the feeling and actuality of Sacredness which is Real. This can happen as naturally as graduating to the next grade up, or as easily as a snake sheds its skin, or a butterfly emerges from a cocoon.