FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

This comes from a discussion I was having with a dear friend I have known since we were kids in the mid-60s -- 

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY 

 I have a problem with organized religion, and focus much more on spirituality and who we are in Spirit.  

Jesus said, "God is Spirit and will be worshipped in spirit and in truth." He was against the organized religion of His day, too.  I believe He came to demonstrate that who we are in Spirit is more important than the way people institutionalize and proscribe activities, making doctrine and binding and restricting God's interaction with people as individuals. 

It becomes a power struggle between how men want to have control over people and end up subjugating and oppressing them in the name of their idea of God.  

We were born into a time when the spiritual has begun to have ascendancy over institutionalize religion, and especially the radically extremist sects of all the major culturally based religions.  

Whenever people try to forcefully impose their belief systems on others, the results always include suffering.  On a spiritual level if you believe that love is what counts and make all your decisions based on what would be the most loving outcome for your self and whoever else is involved, you will always be on the side of the angels, messengers of Love.

On the other hand, of course, when people think about and act out of a desire for physical power over others based on hatred and instilling fear as a tool of their activity, only suffering, death and darkness ensue.  It is a case of choosing to focus on the physical and material over positive, loving spirituality.

All of this I have come to understand through the spiritual experiences in my life and through my walk with God in Jesus.  But each individual experiences and interprets his or her spiritual life in a unique way that only he or she can understand or explain.  

The saddest thing about the conservative fringe along the spectrum to the radical extremists is that they distort all that in moderation is positive, loving and nurturing.  They take over the authority to judge and condemn others out of their own twisted perspective and self-righteousness.  The quench the Spirit of Love and Joy and Peace and end up with crushing judgmentalism and a spirit-less, joy-less set of rules and regulations binding a closed society that spews forth hatred in the name of a deceitful anti-Christ.

I feel so sorry for them because of their delusions, and sorry for the people they teach to believe that their twisted, limited, destructive way of looking at the Gospel of Love is true Christianity.  Moreover, Jesus did not come to form a religion, but to demonstrate that Love and Light and Life and Truth are all that counts and are completely discoverable and available to everyone. Each person will access all of this in the way that makes the most sense and is accessible to him or her out of the culture, individual experiences and choices that each person makes in the course of his or her life.

How deep each person desires to delve into Spirit is totally up to that individual and some people even go as far as to deny they are spiritual and to reject the fullness of love that includes, but is beyond the physical part of it.

One of my favorite things about being in touch online is that I think it is very close to the way we will always be connected in spirit with the people that we love and care about, from here to eternity. 

❤️❤️❤️