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When Spirituality Becomes Dogma



     Growing up in a Fundamentalist Christian home, and living most of my life as an orthodox, Fundamental Baptist, I grew up believing that church history happened a certain way. I clung dogmatically to my belief, which was well researched, and well thought-out. I believed strongly that the Bible was the literal truth and that all events in the Bible happened literally. You can even purchase a chronological Bible that arranges all of the books of the Bible in a chronological fashion to help feed the belief that all of it is true, happening within a certain timeline. Moreover, I believed that after the death of the apostles, the truth they taught continued on as the Bible spread throughout the known world. Even after the Roman Catholic Church began to change the truth of the Bible (so I believed), there were still people who dissented and taught the Gospel down through the ages until the Reformation brought the Gospel truth back into focus on the world stage. Therefore, the Gospel truth has been taught through all the ages, guided by a God who is separate from humanity, working all human affairs together in a way that ensures that His message will never be lost.



    Believing in this way blinded me to the fact that I was doing the same thing I accused the Catholics of doing: Following a rigid form of dogma and refusing to deviate from that tradition. The person who continues in accordance with a set of doctrines within an infallible book (the Protestant) or with a set of traditions set forth by an infallible church (the Catholic) must absolutely close their eyes to anything that causes discord with their point of view. When I underwent a spiritual awakening, I began to wonder at all I had closed my eyes to.


    This is what necessarily happens when dogma replaces spirituality. I would wager that most, if not all religions carry within them some kernel of truth. Christianity within both the Catholic and Protestant traditions certainly does. If we could peel back the layers of time and look at the original teachings of Jesus Christ, I think that we could see a purer message, unstifled by all of the dogma now overlapping them. This can be done somewhat by reading some of the esoteric gospels, such as the gospel of Thomas. However, the world will never know exactly what Jesus Christ said or taught.


    I do believe that the disciples of Jesus Christ must have missed the point somehow about what He was saying. He believed He was God in the same way that we are all god. Not in the Christian sense of the word, but in the truly awakened sense. It was the realization that we are all part of the same divine substance. When this is realized powerfully, a man is able to teach great things, and even do miracles. The danger in this is the enlightened person then becomes the focus, instead of his teachings. It seems that Christ was aware of this even when He was alive. This may be why He his many of His teachings in the form of a parable and revelaed them only to His closest followers.


    There is the danger that the same thing may happen today concerning spirituality. The wonderful thing about spirituality, and Taoism in particular, is that it does not contain any real rules. It is free form. Taoism has scriptures, but it is not known for certain if Lao Tzu really wrote the Tao te Ching, or if Lao Tzu even existed. To argue about that is to miss the point. the scriptures are not venerated to the point of religious worship of them. They are simply philosophical writings that greatly help the initiate on his way to enlightenment. They help rulers, and they help the common man. I suppose the same could be said of Buddhist scriptures, although I know little about them personally.


    Taoism accepts that everyone's experience of Tao is going to be different, and therefore it is a very individualistic belief system. Also, people advance spiritually only as they are ready to understand more of the way of Tao. No one can follow one set of doctrines in order to get to enlightenment since everyone's path is different. This also means that there are only a select group of people who can awaken, understand, and become enlightened. It is a knowledge hidden in plain sight.


    It becomes tempting to make this knowledge plain to the common man so that everyone can follow the path. The only way to do this, however, is to create a set of rules for everyone to follow. Once done, a knew religion is the result. Now the mystic way is made plain, but there is something much greater that is lost. You now have a cookie-cutter religious process that people blindly follow with deep faith. It may have a kernel of truth, but it has moved far from Tao. I believe that everyone should beware lest they find themselves establishing spiritual rules that they expect all to follow. This is especially true in the world of social media.

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