02-12-04 @ 11:11 am EST

I'll hopefully not get TOO longwinded in this one, as it's still a subject I'm very confused about and so I'd prefer not blathering too much at the moment.

I found an article online the other day while browsing around (I think I was looking for online symbolism dictionaries...which took me to a directory of alchemy sites...which took me to a directory of alternative religious paths...which took me to the Native American spirituality directory...etc.), and reading it left me feeling rather conflicted. I won't share my opinions on it at the moment, as I don't want to influence (too much) anyone who might decide to read it. In fact I'm curious about what others think of the author's statements. Here is a link to it.

http://www.native-languages.org/religion.htm

If you should read that, and don't mind sending me a note, would you let me know what you think of the piece and what the author states? Whether you agree with his(?) basic claims, disagree, both, or whatever? And especially why. I'd really appreciate opinions on this, even if you do not read the rest of this entry.

Anyway, while browsing around the links I finally had to stop looking and get back to my first purpose--looking at symbols. I got too overwhelmed with that as well and wandered off. I had been merely curious anyway, after reading about alchemical symbolism in dreams. As I was getting to, after I logged off I thought a bit about what my own spiritual beliefs are. If you've read Skew with any consistency you'll know they're very muddled. To summarize, this is what I believe:

* I believe in God, Who is a Higher Force and created us all.

* I believe in Jesus, quite likely as the Son of God, but other than that, including whether He's the Messiah or not, I have no clue.

* I believe God is everywhere and in everything.

* I believe God is both personal and impersonal, everywhere (see the above) and nowhere, within and without, male and female, yet neither; to put it simply, He is beyond all paradoxes. He could quite easily make a stone so big He cannot lift it, yet He would still be able to do anything, and this would not be a paradox. In short, His power can't be understood, it's so vast.

* And I believe no one can truly know God unless He grants them that ability, and truthfully, I don't think He does that too often. I thus believe that most people's claims of knowing exactly what God's will is are false, and such people tempt fate by claiming knowledge only God can possess.

And now here's what I THINK I believe:

* I tend to believe that the existence of other "gods" (including deities, spirits, spiritual beings, higher beings--that is, gods/beings besides the Judeo-Christian God) is quite possible and even probable, my reasoning being that God would not mislead so many of His people with false deities for so long.

* I tend to believe that these other "gods" could all be facets of the same primary God--He can appear in any form He wishes, to suit the needs of the people He is appearing to. These facets may act with or without the knowledge that they are part of the same God.

* I tend to believe there is no one true path for everyone--rather, there is one true path for every individual person, and these paths are many.

* I do NOT tend to believe that God would punish any of His people for 1. being ignorant of His wishes (for example, I do not think He would damn people who have never heard of Him and thus do not worship any aspect of Him) or 2. being as nature (or God) made them, while harming no one (primary example here being gay people--I believe homosexuality is something which is inborn for the most part, and I cannot see why God would damn people for simply acting on what they are, so long as it does not hurt others (an antisocial person may be born antisocial and act on the way nature/God made them, but they would typically be hurting others, and would be aware that they are doing this, so I assume that goes against God's will; a mentally ill person who hurts others, on the other hand, would NOT typically be aware of what they are doing, so I do not believe God would damn them for their actions)).

* I tend to believe that someone can rightfully change their spiritual path and still be on the right path, but those who repeatedly change their path, seemingly at their own whim or out of pure indecision, just don't know what their path should be, and they should take a longer, harder look at what path would be best for them--to put it shortly, switching paths should not be done often or frivolously. One should settle on no path at all until they are at least mostly positive they have found the right one. (This refers to those people with "flip-flop" faiths, like the Christian/Kemetic/Kemetic Christian/solely Christian again/Christian with some Kemetic beliefs/etc. person I've mentioned before in Skew. One's spiritual path is not a set of clothes that can be changed whenever they grow uncomfortable. IMO.)

And I may tend to believe some other things, but they flee my mind now so I'm not sure what they are. Maybe some other time. :/

Lastly, there are the things that I FEEL. The primary ones of these are

* I feel that God's spirit/lesser spirits/some variation may be present in all or at least many objects around us, including to but not limited to natural objects/formations, and objects/places with much history or emotion to them (old houses, heirlooms, etc.). Some might call these "hauntings," though I'd use that term to refer only to spirits of the departed. Whether these spirits are the actual life force of the objects involved (if the objects are living), or whether they take their energy from the already existing life force of those objects, or whether the two are independent of each other, I have no clue.

* I feel most comforted in nature itself, particularly around trees when they are full of leaves. In forests with deciduous trees especially.

Going on everything I've posted above, I would take it that my own spiritual path would possibly incorporate the thought of an all-powerful God, with the thought that spirits (facets of God, as we are all part of Him) inhabit everything around us, especially nature (trees). I see nothing wrong with the thought that God could have altered His image to suit the different peoples He's appeared to, and that the majority of the deities and spirits from all the world's religions and mythologies (with the exception of those whose main tenets were to do injury to others--and maybe even they were just corrupted by their followers) are all simply facets of Him.

To use examples which haven't popped up in my writing yet, in my Kemet (ancient Egypt) stories, all of the gods are merely facets of the one God who for the sake of clarity I refer to as "Amon" (in reality Amon was a minor god who only rose to importance due to political reasons--not in the scope of this entry). Most of the gods do not even know this--they assume that Amon is the king of the gods, whereas they are all gods in their own right. This is TRUE, but it's not the ENTIRE truth--they see themselves as entirely separate, when they are not. They're just the different manifestations Amon has sent out to better interact with the less evolved civilization in the stories. Only Thoth and Isis, in my writing, know this truth for certain; other deities suspect, but are unable to understand. Most don't even have a clue, and might even be offended if told this is so.

Another example from closer to home--in my Manitou Island fiction, "Gitchi Manitou" is the name given to the one great being, and all other lesser beings--from the powerful manitous such as Geezhigo-Quae, to the lesser manitous and mythological beings such as Manabozho and Nokomis and Old Mother Manitou, to the minor manitous such as Mitchi Manitou and Mani and all the lake and tribal manitous, and the other beings such as the GeeBees, Windwalkers, Uroona, Ocryxes, Michinimakinong, Pukwudjininees, Nebanaubae, etc.--are simply manifestations of him and his power. (The mythological characters from the other tribes, such as Glooskap and Marten, are manifestations also--although they don't refer to their god (which is the one god) as Gitchi Manitou...even though technically the two great beings are the same. Confused yet?) For the most part they have no idea this is so. I think only Nathalit--the Dreamer, an advanced being who is not even native to the Island--knows of this and accepts it. Even the Islanders themselves, and the Island, and all its formations, are part of Gitchi Manitou--everything good and bad that there is, is part of him. Notice how the Island is so closely connected to everything that happens in the stories, and the characters are so oddly intertwined at times, almost as if the Island itself is a living, intelligent creature? That's why this is so--because everything there IS intertwined. That's a reflection of my personal beliefs, only made a bit more obvious for the sake of the story. This theme isn't as obvious in my Kemet stories, but I assume it's there on some level.

Even in my mainly secular D Is For Damien writing everything is connected and working for the purpose of some greater Whole--I used to have an item online, "The Truth Behind D Is For Damien" or some such, which explained this, but apparently I've deleted it-- :/ --it explained how all the characters are so closely connected, throughout multiple lifetimes. (Cosmas/Lilu is the only one who seems to fully comprehend, and him/her only after numerous incarnations, what's really going on--it's the characters' ignorance which keeps the lifetimes repeating as God waits for them to get it right.)

Out of the three storylines presented here (the theme hasn't really popped up in the Trench Rats storyline, though I think Turquoise is supposed to allude to it in the unwritten "Ultima Thule" plotline), oddly enough it's the most technologically advanced people--the ones in the D4D series--who are most out of touch with this reality--and it's the people in the LEAST technologically advanced society--those on Manitou Island--who are closest to it. I could hypothesize about that but that's not the purpose of this entry. Simply put I'm just describing how I believe everything is interconnected, and everything, even supposedly bad things, are just facets of the same whole. This is one reason why I don't believe Satan can act on or influence us unless we will him to--why I think Satan, if he exists as a separate being, isn't even really evil at all. God created him, and gave us free will (so they say), so whether we obey one or the other is our own choice. Satan is only doing the will of God after all. That's why I roll my eyes when people talk about music or videogames or some such influencing their children against God--if they claim that, then they're granting God's powers to things which are not God, in short granting these things power equal to or greater than God's, which is kind of ridiculous and even contradicts typical Judeo-Christian belief. (Again though, beyond the scope of this entry.)

Why would God create badness and evil and hurt and everything else? Because there cannot be good without bad. I can't pretend to understand why He would allow such horrible things as rape and murder and abuse and heartbreak and loneliness and such to exist, but I've never wanted to explain God's will anyway. I don't think anyone can. Truthfully, it frustrates me as much as I'm sure it does many others--I can't count how many times I've blamed God or gotten mad at Him for even trivial things. I sure hope He's forgiving. o_o

Anyway...I guess I got off track, and went much deeper than I intended to. Just hope that all clarifies my basic beliefs and sorta beliefs and feelings about my own spiritual path. I believe in God the greater Power, and in facets of Him, which are all around us; and for me personally, I feel closest to Him and them through nature, in particular trees and forests. I don't know why this is, but it's what I feel. So I do believe that my own spiritual path should somehow involve nature. I just don't know HOW. I BELIEVE in God, and I WANT to believe He has numerous incarnations all around us, and that no path is wrong if it is the one which brings us the most spiritual comfort (that is NOT to say it's the easiest path--far from it), and I WANT to believe that God accepts us when we find our right path, even if it is at odds with the one path established by typical Judeo-Christian religion...but I just can't be sure of those latter things. I know what I want in a spiritual path, what would likely bring me the most comfort, but for some reason I'm stuck on the typical Christian path which IMO is so restrictive and discriminatory and even hateful at times that I can take no comfort from it, and I can't even understand it. I can FULLY understand a God Who lets bad things happen to good people, even if it makes me angry and feels unfair. But I can't understand a God Who would create people in His own image and then damn them for the qualities which He Himself gave them, if those qualities are hurting no one. That makes no sense to me, therefore it has no real place in my own path...but as I said, I'm stuck on my own fears of being wrong, and being damned myself, so I don't really know how to move on from here.

The only real times I've ever, EVER, felt close at all to God, or to Something higher, have been when I've been in nature...in forests, or on the island, in particular. For some reason those places bring me comfort...and thinking that there might be spirits ("manitous"?) all around me, in every tree, in every rock, in every lake, fills me with peace too. I like to think that somewhere, Thoth is writing on his scrolls, and he cares about me even if I can't/don't worship him in particular...and I like to think that somewhere, Manabozho is walking down a trail, or turning into a rabbit, or doing typical Manabozho things, and while my fiction at least says HE might be miffed at not being respected, I like to think that he's still there, and maybe even he is watching over me too. They aren't MY gods, but they're part of God, and simply knowing that God could be around me in some manifestation I can relate to better, I find comforting. I feel far closer to God by talking to my little pine tree outside than by setting foot in a huge impersonal church with a bunch of people I don't even know, who give me false smiles as if they will care about me once they get home, hearing some priest or minister talk about why God will damn the very people He created simply because He created them that way. God just feels closer to me, and more like God, in the first setting.

The only problem is I can only dwell on the fear that I might be wrong, and that holds me back from finding spiritual comfort. I don't know how to get over that hurdle. Why let the faith of people I've never even interacted with hold me back so much? It doesn't bring me comfort, so I feel it's not my path. But I'm so afraid of being wrong. I can't even claim that my parents are to blame for me feeling like this, as for all intents and purposes--Dad's "It's immoral" comment on gays, and Ma's paranoia about Satanism, aside--I have no reason to believe they even believe one word of the Bible. At least, they've never mentioned it to ME. I have no real clue WHAT they believe--and I'm certainly not going to ask!

(Truthfully? Talking about religion usually depresses me like nothing else, and that's why I discuss it so little. Religion is a big anxiety trigger of mine for this very reason. So I hope you enjoy this entry, because it's going to be one of VERY few on this subject. Maybe even the last! >_< )

I realize nobody can help me out of this rut but myself--in fact, many typical Christians (NOT all!) would probably make me feel even worse. *shrug* Just thought I'd lay it all out there anyway. Not that anyone but a few will read it or even comment on it...but like I said way up there, I'm still interested in comments on that article. And if you read both that AND all my drivel, then don't let my thoughts influence your own. I shouldn't have blithered so much if I wanted honest opinions on that piece, should I. :P Well, at least I still have not given my OWN opinion on it...I'll save that for later. Maybe.

Have to go now...tar...