What religion do you follow most closely to?

Discussion in 'Animism' started by Thekarthika, May 5, 2011.

  1. Thekarthika

    Thekarthika Member

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    Oh I'm glad this thread was brought back from the dead. :p I've definitely formulated my beliefs a lot more and now I don't say I have a religion because I am spiritual, not religious, with a mixture of Native American spirituality, Buddhism (mostly the philosophical sides), Paganism, and Hinduism.

    Thanks for all of the awesome answers! :) Feel free to discuss more.
     
  2. scratcho

    scratcho Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

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    "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". That's it---the rest is superflous bull hockey.
     
  3. ungovern

    ungovern Banned

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    Does it matter? I am who I am regardless.
     
  4. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    there is no name for what i believe, unless i make one up myself.

    although there may be others who believe much the same.

    it isn't that non-physical things can't be or aren't non-imaginary.

    it is what people and beliefs claim to know about them, that is made up by other people or themselves, for completely human reasons that have nothing to do with anything other then completely human reasons.

    i'm not saying they're all bad reasons either. they just don't have anything to do, with whatever non-imaginary non-physical things actually exist.

    i believe the species spirit of a couple of kinds of life forms, quite ordinary and tangible creatures, said hi to me, for whatever reason they chose to feel like doing so.

    that is one of my experiences, that is not like what any belief with a name for it claims to know about it.

    but every experience i have had with unseen things, has also been completely unlike anything any belief claims to know about it as well.

    other then to say there was a sense of love and caring and openness there.

    something that seems to be either completely lost and forgotten by fanaticism of every flavor, or on the one hand claimed, while at the same time being denied and lied about on the other.
     
  5. Mountain Valley Wolf

    Mountain Valley Wolf Senior Member

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    Hmmmm---how existential of you Themnax...

    I actually agree with you---I think there is truth in all religion, but it is a human truth limited to existential experience (i.e. human experience). All universals (such as good and evil---values that religions take to be universally true) are true only so far as human understanding understands them---for example, for most of us, death is the worst thing that can happen to a human being, it is the final curtain. But to a higher being that understands this existence to be only 1 of possibly many levels of existence, death is only a stepping stone, and may very well not have any negative connotation at all.

    But very interesting that you speak of the "species spirit of a couple of kinds of life forms..." Are these in the animistic sense of spirits that we refer to as totemic spirits/animals, or spirit animals, or spirit guides (terms which are limiting in their own right). I get the impression that such terms are categorized by anthropologists trying to make sense of what they consider as primitive belief systems, and then of course New Agers pick up on this and mix and mash different traditions together.

    My own experience with such things caused me to re-evaluate my beliefs about reality and being. But I have found that such encounters are very subjective to the individual meaning different things to different people, or having a different purpose with different people, or even in different encounters. Lakota have shared a similar sentiment with me.
     
  6. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

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    i wasn't fasting, i wasn't doing any of the usual or traditional things to look for spirit guides. i was actually somewhat young at the time.

    i don't wish to be disrespectful toward them, these spirit friends themselves, nor to anyone's traditions, nor the diversity of such traditions, about meeting them.

    i was just walking along, i'd lagged behind a bit, my dad was ahead of me, walking down this road, down toward one of the rivers on both sides of the ridge the town we lived in was located on.

    so this animal/creature/being walks up beside me and we walk along togather. now this is a species that had supposedly been bounty hunted out of existence in that place many decades previous. my dad looks back from way up ahead, all worried like and motions me i should get away and not be near thes person/creature/animal.

    i feel nothing but good friendship and happiness however. so to avoid drawing his further notice, to be out of sight, we walk off to the side of the road, through the trees and underbush, screened by them from the road itself. we walk along together like this for a ways. then we each go back to our own ways and worlds so to speak.

    i walk rappidly along the road now, running ahead of my dad. the breeze is blowing toward the direction from with we came. i get to where the river is flowing between the rocks that are silica mine tailings form when gold had been hydraulically dredged along that river. there is a drop off of four feet or so, enough to provide visual concealment, and there, taking a drink out of the river, is another creature, of another species, not noted for being particularly social, a beautiful yellow beige fur. calmly enough this on looks up and makes eye contact, as if to say hi, then, almost causually, turns and sprints for cover, moving so fast as to be little more then a blur.

    so i meet this two, the same day, on the same walk, in almost the same place.

    many years later, i have a dream. i am living in a place far from my parents, well the details would get long, anyway in this dream is there are these same spirits i recognize as being the same, even though in this dream, they're just this old native guy and woman. well things happen in that dream that give my my "medicine" so to speak.

    it also reminds me, i'm not longer young, but not really quite old yet, but my parents are getting old, and if i want to see them again, i will need to fairly soon, go back down to where they live and where i have lived most of my life.

    the other thing to note, where i walked off of the road beside it, i've been back there, and i know vegitation changes so maybe it was just that, but it would have been physically impossible for me to have walked in that place if it were like when i did, that it was when i went back to it.

    there is more to my odd and not any tradition medicine dream, because i wasn't raised in any of them, just grew up going for a lot of long walks alone to special places to meditate when i was growing up and in high school.

    some people would call these spirit guides, totems, what have you. well those are traditions of various cultures of course. i have no claim to those cultures. just a willingness to see what i see, without filtering through the interpretations of dominant belief systems.
     
  7. CasualViewer

    CasualViewer Member

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    You aren't the first person to speak about being a Luciferian. I have only known Lucifer to be a demon not a bringer of light can you enlighten me more on the subject. How do you know it pre dates Christianity?
     
  8. Michael Starless

    Michael Starless Member

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    Exactly my religious beliefs have changed like 4 times in the last year
     
  9. Maelstrom

    Maelstrom Banned

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    Everyone knows what I believe. I make it rather clear every time I post in the philosophy and religion section.
     

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