religion#4 : why religions can be spiritual hinderances

After having told you 3 emotional criticisms, and my cognitive reasons,
today I will tell you my spiritual issues I have with religions.
Whilst religions claim to offer spiritual guidance and they serve well to kickstart people into searching for a purpose or looking for their higher self, they in fact can lead to the opposite, by standing in the way of an individual’s own evolution:

7.) The forbiddingness to evolve oneself (or one’s Self)

In the spirit of agnosticism, meaning that I don’t know whether a god exists (and less so, whether this one would be a creator), I start to analyse religious premisses by giving them the benefit of the doubt:

If some kind of god pervades everything in life, it also must be within each of my cells, so logically, we all should be able to elevate to divine heights.

But orthodox mindsetters by any means try to dismiss ones own aspiration to grow towards their highest potential, because they want obedient sheep which follow their believe – something people who evolved into the divine would not do anymore.
I often was told (by my Christian monk classmate, hardcore Bible-readers, but also some eso-gurus) that high aspirations would be merely egotistical and therefore I should practice to be humble first.

An interesting aspect is that there is a really fine line between egotism and sincere aspirations.

These days it seems spiritual to spread tranquility, but where for example does one draw the line between serenity and the ability to influence others with sweet words?

On the other hand someone who longs for a higher reality, yet still is a nervous wreck, might not be non-spiritual, but actually a sincere seeker who is merely be suppressed by narrow-minded dogmas.

So smoothness is not at all an indication for spirituality

Here, for example is a tibetan monk telling that it would we imperative to control the natural forces of the five elements (merely in order to overcome physical obstacles when meditating). Conservative believers declare any aspiration for siddhis as an ego-driven need to be special and therewith nip any growing spiritual ambition in the bud. 

“After many years retreat I came to the conclusion, that a human beings physical constitution in particular was a big impediment for serious practitioners.
I came to realise that the only way to remove these impediments was to retain mastery of the 5 elements, so that my practice did not have to be dependent on sustenance and health.
[…]
I strongly aspired to master the 6 yogas of Naropa.as well as the secret prana nadhi and bhindu
At any cost I was determined to do train myself to master Tummo or Chandali.“

8.) rigid conservatism blocks the mind to open up to a more expanded wisdom.

Another negative side-effect to religious bigotry is that it inhibits access to a more symbolic understanding on a higher level. To give you a Christian example:
Look at the Genesis in the bible where god created the world in six days. Orthodox believers take each word of their religious book literal and therefore insist that the earth had to be created within a week – despite all scientific evidence to the contrary.

8.) The lack of 60-90% of Jesus’ life

The biggest hole in the bible, however for me was and still is that Jesus mysteriously was “just away” for 18-30 years.
This smells like either a purpose censorship in order to preserve the story of Jesus as the sun of god;
and/or a lack of knowledge and therewith understanding of the one person’s life around whom much of the Quoran and a third of the bible evolves.

For me, however, it makes much more sense that he meanwhile was learning spiritual disciplines to become a gnostic, so to me personally Jesus was a highly evolved spiritual master, whose words carry profound meanings until this day.

So I don’t take him as part of a personified creator god and it doesn’t make sense to me that he did absolve humankind of all sins, when I see most humans continuing to live wrongly.

To me by conveying that he “is the way” means that he fully recognised his own divinity, offered himself merely as a spiritual guide – not to become a crutch for a huge institution to accumulate financial wealth and power – something he aggressively fought with the pharisees and temple merchants against.

Actually, considering the law of attraction which states that one becomes what is in ones mind;
this could even be the reason why Jesus now is abused to serve as a flagship of the largest sect of humankind: His axis of consciousness was to fight against such powers so ironically he posthumous was turned into one.

Instead of Jesus being “the son of god”, the Church wants us to believe,
to me personally he is “the sun of god” – the ray which connects to the divinity within each of us.

Hence I am inspired by his gnostic path, which is the reason I was so attracted to Sodarshan Chakra Kriya later,
because amongst undoubtedly many other methods, spiritual yoga
{in opposition of the contemporary propagated mere physical one}
is designed to elevate our human presence to its highest levels.

article #5: the intellectual western approach to a personified god >