"Don't focus on HOW you're doing something, just pay attention to WHAT you're doing and do it."
This statement, as true as the truest truism from trueville, found itself into a sermon. A sermon about old farmers, parables, and an absolute "truth" you must accept. This last requirement of absolute"truth" acceptance has so offended you that you now reject all of religion, including those gems of wisdom that you miss when you miss the sermon or the class. Why did you miss the sermon? "Well," you say "I really don't believe in all that hoo hah." So you have abandonded religion because you found in it contradiction and vice. Nothing pure there, just collective psychosis. But you never stopped to think that maybe there was a functional element to the whole edifice, totally separate from what its ultimate truths are purported to be. They usually center around an everyman that is touched by god and given certain powers or insights. Thus giving the metaphor to their preachers (as more"everymen" touched by the divine). It matters not what the ultimate truth is stated to be. (Scientologists say we are the creation of space aliens -- and the function is served.) The function you ask? To meet the needs of community, certainty, and yes immortality. The infinite mind cannot bear to live in finiteness. It will conjure eternity over and over, it will not be stopped. So the religion creates a sort of stairway under the mind to compensate for this need and compulsion. It lends its metaphors to this quest for infinite order and health, in the face of the descending rungs of disorder and sickness that reality seems to promise. Let's face it, if the aging process were suddenly sped up to about triple, it would be quite hellish to go through, and we would want it stopped -- even if the only way to stop it would be to become immortal. So in the face of unlikely physical immortality most religions speak of another realm. (While many have a parental type God overseeing everything, this does not seem to be a necessary part.)
So if you reject all religions, you must create your own stairway. You must construct YOUR OWN eternity . . . . The most scientific and plausible eternity belief under current conditions would be the belief in the possibility of physical immortality and true peace on the physical earth. A close second would be the idea that some essence of a person escapes into a parallel gloriousness, "a higher plain" as it is often described. And I say yes, but there is actually a higher plain than that one. I call it the dual citizenship plain. On that plain -- achieved in meditative states -- you can GO BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE PARALLEL GLORIOUSNESS YOU THINK YOU NEED TO DIE TO GET INTO!! It is clearly higher than the plain they say you get to after death, since it allows you to return to the physical world. Why take a mere one-way trip? Aren't two worlds better than one? Isn't it better to live in LA and New York, than just in LA? Isn't it better to have dual citizenship for your soul?
So let your faith be this: You can become an immortal, and perhaps a God. Also, you can visit the parallel gloriousness where the dead go, WITHOUT DYING, thus allowing you to come back. Here are the steps.
1) Achieve total calm. Never lose it. Ever. In any way. Why freak-out outwardly? Hold it in. It is really unnecessary. Breathe continual breaths. REREAD THIS.
2) Achieve total confidence. Never judge. Never judge. Never judge. Actually THE truest, often ignored, teaching of most religions. They forget to tell you that ONLY by never judging, do you achieve total confidence. If you ever catch yourself doing it, give yourself a little slap. I'm serious. Just tell yourself it's me, because if I were there, I would smack you for judging anyone -- and hard! But then again, I'd be judging you!
3) Achieve total morality. Big task. What is it in a nutshell? Keep from harming the honest interests of another, try to further those interests whenever you can without infringing on your own. Remember, most everybody's interests are married to everyone else's. What you do to help either yourself or another directly immortalizes your physical body and also pushes you up to that higher plain where you can actually visit -- indeed, vacation with -- the DEAD!