Religion, advancement of civilization

[J. Stew]

What is the connection between a spiritual journey and religion. That is, isn't a spiritual journey something we are all on whether we choose acknowledge it or not, and if so what are religions but a finger to point the way.

Isn't it just that a lot of 'religious' people get attached to religion as truth instead of just being themselves that makes them a little crazy. Christianity uses faith as a guide, but faith in what. Faith in some God that is outside our mind? What can our minds know excepts everything that comes through it. We can't know any God except who we are behind our 'conditioned over the years by attachments in our minds,' mind.

The 'God'/natural/intrinsic/innate/conscious mind can't be experienced by conceptual thinking which is what religions attempt to do so basically it is ridiculous to believe religions are important for anything more than, 'try this and see if is helps you figure out who you are'.

Back to the point that faith, when it becomes attached to, like any feeling, screws up your head. Faith is for people that don't know they are being lazy. It is easy to just let faith guide life, but that's like 'selling out' on every other feeling that we can experience. Some people still worship idols. Worshipping idols is a practice past generations did to concentrate their mind. They would fix their mind on this one idol, which is the same as one-pointed awareness, which is the mindset that is needed to perceive behind one's thoughts, but they believed that just that was the answer to experiencing God.

Now we know that it's not just about having a concentrative mind, it's about knowing how the mind gets lost in thought, so you develop the wisdom to continually un-attach to the attachments that result from root fears/desires until the root desires/fears dissipate themselves, and pure consciousness is all that is left. My grammar stinks.

If a spiritual journey is the path of this self-realization, then everybody who has fought a religious war does not understand what the religion is ultimately pointing to, at least in terms of the main religions. If they saw the ultimate truth intrinsically inside them already, they would see that arguing about what religion points to ultimate truth is unnecessary, so long as someone sees the truth which is infinite in themselves. They would know that the words in the Bible that create concepts are not the actual understanding that ties the ideas all together in a way that Truth with a big 'T' can. Not big T like big G in God because 'God' is just a concept for the understanding/knowing that underlies thought.

Isn't the realization of, what it means to be on this 'spiritual path', the realization that us, as the beings with the highest capacity for communication on this planet, must have if civilization is going to advance. That is a bold statement but isn't it the truth.