Can I break some assumptions for you?

[RainInanna]

Spirituality can be 24 hours a day.

Or not.

It can be one day a week.

Or one moment when you're rushing your child to the emergency room and praying to god.

God can be Yahweh. Or Buddha. Or Gaia. Or Sekhmet. Or Satan.

Or Lord, Lady, Goddess, Adam, or pretty much any other name you can think up. Or a god with no name. Or grass, sky, wind, stars, trees, and smiling baby faces. Or homeless people with words of wisdom. Or broken people who feel hopeless, and who teach you to be compassionate by needing you just a little.

New Age is not buying the right crystals, the right book, or buying anything at all per se, unless buying those things makes you happy. In which case, New Age is heady perfume, beautiful mugs of warm hot chocolate, an afghan on your couch that you can curl up in, a friend you can call when you're down, a magazine you flip through to pass the time, and the pretty picture in it you rip out to post on your bulletin board.

New Age isn't things. It isn't rules. It isn't crystals or tarot or meditation or runes. It isn't Chopra or Jung or Oprah or McGraw, or Carnegie, or any author, or any book, or The Secret, or A New Earth. Unless, of course, you like those things, and they make you smile.

It isn't ignoring war or famine or thinking of happy purple fairy unicorns. Unless you like unicorns, or fairies, or not thinking about famine just for today.

It isn't any THING. It is the inspiration and love behind those things.

Oh wait, I knew you'd raise your eyebrow. Love. Love like when mother nature destroys a forest so new shoots can grow. Love like the mother bird who builds her nest on a volcano's side. Love is natural. Inherent. Divine. Throughout the universe. It persists, even when people hate and kill.

Love nor New Age isn't ignoring the bad parts, or buying enough to make yourself happy, or doing the right workshop, or reading Oprah's latest pick. It's the drive behind doing those things. It's the moment when those things feel good. When you realize you are dancing God's tune, even as your heart is destroyed and you sink into depression. When you find the hope to pick yourself up again after that. When someone gives up, gives in, dies, and someone else remembers them.

That's why New Age is divine love. Hope, faith, trust, courage to go into the battlefield again to protect your family.

[vnvrymdreglage]

Beautiful :)

[Infinite Grey]

The sounds more Bohemian than New Age for the most part.

[Cunae]

Whose assumptions are you breaking? Why did you feel a need to clarify all of these things? Just curious.

[BearDancing]

that was a Great post RainInanna..obviously from your heart...and Mystic Christian I am curious as to why you asked the questions you did...:hairred:

[RainInanna]

[COLOR=sienna]Whose assumptions are you breaking?

Anyone's. Anyone who had their assumptions broken when they read it. Were you one of them?


Why did you feel a need to clarify all of these things?

I like to think of it as channeling. A lot of people channel energy unintentionally. Others do it intentionally. Some channel negative energy, some positive. Some talk, and don't know they're channeling. All it means is sometimes the Divine has things I say here, and often I say them just to learn them myself. Sometimes I say them on MW and see if others want to read them as well.

To me the New Age forum is just for us New Agers to discuss our beliefs, so I'm doing it here :) Those who find it useful do, and those who don't are ok too. I don't say it because anyone has to get it, but because I need to say it. Make sense?

[firefairy86]

Thankyou for posting that. It is beautiful.

[No More Apologies]

Thankyou for posting that. It is beautiful.

Yeah!

Man I love coming to this forum, the stories some people write here are better than any book I can buy.

[*oonagh*]

you didn't break any assumptions for me. what you did was make a beautiful statement. thank you.

[BearDancing]

I think this is more re enforcing some of our beleifs....going wow... I do fit somewhere.... and it is not about fitting for me... it is about sharing and sharing and sharing....and no one arguing or trying to make us "prove it":boing::boing::boing:

[Terra Mater]

Spirituality can be 24 hours a day.

Or not.

It can be one day a week.

Or one moment when you're rushing your child to the emergency room and praying to god.


If spirituality is your relationship with the divine, what kind of relationship do you have if you are only calling when you need something?

[Owd Scrat]

The sounds more Bohemian than New Age for the most part.


I've always detested that term....."new age".

[No More Apologies]

If spirituality is your relationship with the divine, what kind of relationship do you have if you are only calling when you need something?

Speaking for MHO? The kind where the Divine finds you when it needs to, and when you find it when YOU need to. In essence, you make the phone calls when you need to, otherwise you wait for the phone calls to come on their own time. It really is rather effortless. After all, you're not just calling when your life is in danger here.

[Karri Morgan]

If spirituality is your relationship with the divine, what kind of relationship do you have if you are only calling when you need something?

This whole thing is a class above me, I know, but I just felt like "channeling" something myself, from what I felt of this;


She didn`t really say that the person would only call when she/he needed something, but what I got from it, was that spirituality, the relationship with a divinity, can hit you, or surface, in a moment of great need, even if you weren`t even aware that it was inside of you.

To say it differently, sometimes we don`t consider ourselves neither religious or spiritual, and yet there is something inside that offers a pathway to something else, one which isn`t explored until we have to.. That`s not personal experience, I am well aware of my need for something else.


Say an atheist, who has never wanted to have religion in his life, suddenly experiences something traumatic. It would be very hard not to reach out to something. Personally I believe, and it sure seems to "fit", that human beings have a tendency for needing something bigger, some sort of ultimate conciousness, a superious divine being, or simply rules/laws that makes sense. Something that can explain, comfort, etc. Something that is either socially based or individual, but still connects them with something ultimately better.

We don`t suddenly decide; right now it would be a good time to get religious, because then perhaps my kid will by a miracle be healed.

See all those religions, paths and spiritual movements are out there. Why are there so many? Because we need them? Or because they are all true?

I don`t know, but I thought this was a great thread and a good channeling of the meaning of spirituality. It really made me think, and I do believe that spirituality has many forms, and can hit us in many ways, even when we are not looking.