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I noticed that on your column description you mentioned something about spirituality. I'm just curious what you meant by that? Are you a Christian, or Hindu, or something else?
You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I'm just curious.
It seems I am a whole lot less shy when it comes to asking people i don't know questions online...
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Want to answer more questions in the Miscellaneous category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Spirituality?
I don't mind answering your question what the 'spirituality' is of the person behind Dragonflymagic.
I use spiritual rather than religious to describe myself for a reason. I'll start with mentioning I was part of organized religion from my teenage years (by my choice-parents stopped attending) until about 12 yrs ago and I'm in mid fifties now. I started with Lutheran and was invited to an Assemblies of God church by a friend. Last church was a Four Square church like a combo of Baptist and Assemblies if God. My spiritual growth began in Christian churches, despite what most people in church were like and what was taught. Eventually I left Christianity tho I still believe in and am close to God, Jesus and Holy Spirit which I also call the Goddess now. So I will share first the process of what caused me to move out beyond the Church.
Many things didn't make sense to me. Lots I found contradictory in the beliefs taught and Pastors could not explain away or answer my questions but asked me to use faith. In other words, its like you having a scrape or cut that became infected with pus and you were told to only put a bandage on it...no mention of cleaning it, antiseptic or going to see a doctor. The 'bandage' I was told to apply to everything is to trust in God to heal it . God gave us brains to use, He also gave people free will and those 2 things mean that blindly choosing to trust God in everything means that we end up stuck spiritually actually or stuck in life and our soul not moving on to things we are meant to learn and grow in. A few examples are:
1. we need to bring the gospel to everyone because if we don't and they died, they would go to Hell. This belief had me living with guilt If I wasn't preaching Jesus to strangers or pestering them to come to church with me. Our best example is Jesus himself. That is not how He worked with me in my spiritual growth. He talked the language and gave me goals for where I was at level/belief wise, and didn't give me too much that would freak me out and make me run the other way if I wasnt ready to hear such a truth. How could the God I knew as loving as my earthly parents be capable of sending me to Hell simply cus I never had a chance to hear the Gospel. If my earthly parents wouldn't treat me so, why would God. The more I thought about it, the more that having only this one life to get it right didnt make sense but Church teaches there is no such thing as reincarnation. God told me one day, “Would you believe me if I told you Reincarnation is real?” However there were many years of God talking to me, asking me to pray for people or give them a message from him or just giving me instructions I felt that would make me look like a fool but I did them and in the end, everything turned out to be right on the mark and so I learned to trust that voice of God personally inside me more than I trusted church doctrine or the beliefs of other people Christian, spiritual or not.
2. Jesus died to save us from our sins. I truly believed this until the moment God told me reincarnation was for real. With this new belief however, it would mean there was no reason to get everything right in one lifetime or end up in Hell. This raises questions as to why he died that way, what his purpose on earth was and what His will was. He did come to teach the Kingdom of God, wanting us to know His Father and know we are part of that family already simply by who created our souls. But like children who runaway or turn their backs on their family, mankind has that choice also.
3. It is Gods will for someone to be ill and suffer or die early. I had trouble with this too. If a person died of cancer or heart attack, it was more likely due to their eating habits or stress levels in life. The human body can only take so much stress as I am a good example of staying with my 1st husband 30 years. He was verbally abusive. The stress cant stay bottled up. It has to move and will affect us either emotionally or physically. I was affected physically from migraines to ulcers to full body rashes. I was still hanging on to one misunderstanding and wrong belief, “Trust God to heal your marriage”. One day God said, “Didn't I give all man a free will? Even your husband? So if you are waiting for me to wave a magic wand that forces him to change when he still believes there's nothing wrong with him, that's not going to happen. If you do not leave this marriage by 4 years from now, then you will die.” I chose to believe God. We had argued about divorce for a year and the ex was unwilling to cooperate at the time, so I just left him and went to live with friends out of state. I've since read books that in family or a marriage, if one person is advanced spiritually and their staying does not benefit the others spiritual growth or rather enables them to remain stuck, then He will take out the good guy earlier...that would have been me. That then leaves the other to hopefully have some chance of growing spiritually.
I eventually chose to stop attending church and had met a pagan friend who invited me to go to a pagan gathering that celebrates Lughnassad, or loaf mass, the earliest of harvests, the grains of late summer. I was very surprised to find Christian symbolism in everything they did. I wont go into all of that right now but it spurred me to do the first of my reading of other beliefs. Come to find that Christianity was modeled after pagan beliefs way back when for the purpose of getting the 'un-churched' which is the definition of 'pagan' to be more open to joining a church. So much of what pagans had been practicing for eons before Christianity is part of the rituals of pagan ways. I learned from books that in the early days of deciding what stayed in the Bible or was left out, that the Holy Spirit used to be called a She instead of He. I had always felt the Holy Spirit had the maternal/nurturing feminine aspects after which I believe God modeled women. The 2nd husband was not a Christian as the first husband but more open and accepting and on his own spiritual path. He introduced me to a book called the Urantia book. Urantia is the name in the heavenly realms for the planet earth. All earths history from the 1st humanoid beings that evolved, including the introduction of Adam and Eve, Jesus time on earth, and explanation of the Heavenly realms and all its beings answered any remaining questions I had.
I have studied a little of Buddism and Hinduism and mostly the religion of Ananda from Hindu originally, but this version accepts Jesus as one of the leaders as well as a certain line of Yogi's who brought this belief to the U.S. I have a daughter involved in this church so I am most familiar with this as well as the pagan beliefs.
I have nothing really against Christianity. It, like any other religion or belief system, is simply a scaffolding, a support structure in which a beginner to spiritual life can find It easy to progress. I simply progressed far beyond the limitations of the church.
I will also say that every belief on earth has a part of the truth. Likewise, they all have much of mistruth, misunderstandings and totally wrong interpretations or beliefs or doctrines. Not one is perfect. The objective of Jesus was that we each learn to have a personal relationship with His father and our creator and to realize that all souls, especially those we come across in life inhabiting human bodies, are all our sisters and brothers since we all come from the same Creator and we need to learn to love them as family which is harder a job to do than one may think. In pagan beliefs, some are part of Wicca or Druidism or you find most call themselves sole practitioners, meaning that the spiritual path they walk is one made just for themselves, especially for where their ability to understand spiritual matters and beliefs is at any given point in time. So that means, whatever you might hear straight from God meant just for you, may indeed seem to contradict what I believe. Looking back to what I used to believe, what I know now as truth contradicts what I used to believe. So you don't need to believe any of what I said, simply follow whatever path has you growing spiritually. Sorry, for a long explanation but short answers leave too many unspoken questions in my own mind and I figure it must be the same for most people.
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