Religious Beliefs

[rozrokz]

The more I get older, the more I feel that although that there are many different religion, but in many ways it still leads to One God. (sorry Atheist in this forum, but i do not want to start any argument about whether there is a God or not. This is my personal opinion base on my own spiritual inclination. Thank you). Every religion preaches about doing good, prayers and the afterlife but in their own way. And the strange thing is that most preach that life is suffering whether Buddhism, Christianity etc. Could this be human interpretation of God's teachings?

[spiritalk]

God is love!  And this is being lost in the church rules.  The problem is religion...not God or spirituality.  Seeking your own spirituality, you will open more to the love aspect and see that the pain and suffering is man's interpretation of his own shortcomings (sins) which they dwell upon as lessons.  

Even our earth lessons are intended to bring happiness.  It is our struggles against God that brings our pain and suffering.

God is spirit!  There is a living, loving vibration ever available when we are ready to embrace it.

[Aviendra]

Good question....

I personally believe that life doesn't have to be one of suffering. I'm of the impression that we are masters of creation but we are also slaves to our thoughts and thoughts of our parents, and their parents before them, and society and so on. We create our life how we think it should be...and unfortunetly, most of us have beliefs and ideas from everyone "except" our own!

There are many ideas...."life is a school, life is a series of lessons, life is meant to be hard because we are born in sin (religous belief there)"...the list is endless. Who gets to say that my life should be one of suffering? No one! I am in control of my life and with that I take full responsibility for whatever occurs in my life.

But I think to really answer that question you have to go deeper....and ask another one...what is the purpose to life? What is the purpose of "my" life?
I believe that we are here to learn...but not in that "life is a lesson' sense.
We are here to evolve and to become all that we have potential to be and that ultimate goal is to remember who we truly are. Just look at our name...human being....we are here to be...and to truly be all that we can, yes, we must go through suffering to understand it. Yes, we must experience everything good and bad...sadness, depression, joy, love, hate, misery, unhappiness, discontentment, betrayel, hope, etc. If we don't experience all this, then how can we truly be enlightened? Or at the least wise and knowing...

But I have to say that the Masters of Buddhism never saw the bad things in their lives as suffering. As teachers and leaders of spiritual truth, they understood that each and every situation in their life has been for a higher good and has happened for a reason. There are NO coincidences in life. They are able to recognise what is before them and then change it, to suit their highest good, adapt and then discard it. It is an esoteric truth. This is why the buddists did not fight back when they were being invaded. They were still able to look there attackers right in the eye and still show them great kindness and compassion. Some agrue that this is foolishness...but that is only because they look at it through their own experiences.

One thing the buddha said was, "If you can learn to look at life as if you were dreaming it, then you are on you way to spirituality". In this regard, then all that happened to you was experienced as if you dreamt it...interesting theory.

Geez, I'm sorry...I've babbled. But yes, this is what I tend to believe. Hope that was an interesting read for you  :smt002