How to Participate in a Faith Tradition as a Conscious Person
Daily Spiritual Insight from Eckhart Tolle's Stillness Speaks
Do you belong to a faith tradition? Many readers do, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and so on.
If you do participate in a faith tradition, how do you handle any aspects of the tradition that perhaps don't fit with your emerging consciousness? How do you understand the tradition in the light of the divine Presence in everything and as the heart of your own being?
Eckhart Tolle says in Stillness Speaks:
Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of "I know."
When we come from a place of consciousness, we don't become attached to dogmas. We can take part in a particular tradition's ceremonies and creeds to whatever degree we choose precisely because we aren't enslaved by a dogmatic viewpoint.
The reason we aren't emotionally attached to and identified with a dogma as so many in our world are is that because we have awakened and are grounded in the Presence that pervades the whole of reality, we don't feel at all insecure.
We are quite content with not knowing on many issues because thought and ideas are no longer what fascinate us so much as simply being aware.
When we are conscious, paradoxically we may even be able to participate in some traditions that have strong dogmas far more fruitfully than when we too once held to these dogmas. That's because we are now free to reinterpret the language and practices in a manner consistent with our essential being.
In the Christian tradition, for instance, when we hear a statement such as "sin that dwells in my members" we immediately think: the pain-body.
A term like incarnation, which we will hear a great deal in some societies as Christmas approaches, for a person who is awakening to their true nature represents the incarnation of the formless in form.
Once we recognize the wonder conveyed by imagery, symbol, mythology, and ritual, we can enter into the joy of a tradition without any need to become entrenched in dogmas.
Do you belong to a faith tradition? Many readers do, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and so on.
If you do participate in a faith tradition, how do you handle any aspects of the tradition that perhaps don't fit with your emerging consciousness? How do you understand the tradition in the light of the divine Presence in everything and as the heart of your own being?
Eckhart Tolle says in Stillness Speaks:
Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of "I know."
When we come from a place of consciousness, we don't become attached to dogmas. We can take part in a particular tradition's ceremonies and creeds to whatever degree we choose precisely because we aren't enslaved by a dogmatic viewpoint.
The reason we aren't emotionally attached to and identified with a dogma as so many in our world are is that because we have awakened and are grounded in the Presence that pervades the whole of reality, we don't feel at all insecure.
We are quite content with not knowing on many issues because thought and ideas are no longer what fascinate us so much as simply being aware.
When we are conscious, paradoxically we may even be able to participate in some traditions that have strong dogmas far more fruitfully than when we too once held to these dogmas. That's because we are now free to reinterpret the language and practices in a manner consistent with our essential being.
In the Christian tradition, for instance, when we hear a statement such as "sin that dwells in my members" we immediately think: the pain-body.
A term like incarnation, which we will hear a great deal in some societies as Christmas approaches, for a person who is awakening to their true nature represents the incarnation of the formless in form.
Once we recognize the wonder conveyed by imagery, symbol, mythology, and ritual, we can enter into the joy of a tradition without any need to become entrenched in dogmas.
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