Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Religion - I'm just confused

I'm reading up on Buddhism.

Random, I know, but I've been really attracted to the Eastern religious practices because Christianity is so common place to me right now that there seems to be nothing I haven't tried and nothing I haven't considered. I know I'm not being "fair" to Christianity, but I trust that "God" will lead me to the right place through my studies. One of the best things I've read in this book The Lotus Still Blooms is "there is a point where all teachings converge and the common thread of truth can be seen." I see all the time where Buddhism and Christianity correlate. I'm sure I'll continue to see those points.

All of this started a little more than a year ago when I started reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's about how Liz spends one year traveling and searching and finding herself and other things. She spends four months in Italy pursuing pleasure (which in her case is food, not sex), four months in India at an Ashram practicing the spiritual version of yoga and meditating and pursuing devotion, and then four months in Indonesia with the Balinese pursuing balance and learning how to have pleasure without abandoning devotion. That book shook my world up. While pursuing devotion, Liz does a lot of meditating and studying. She talks about yoga as a means to the end of connection with the Divine, whichever Deity you choose - even Jesus. In The Lotus Still Blooms, Joan Gattuso also correlates Buddhism with Christianity.

I don't really know what I'm looking for in my religious studies. Maybe just connection to God in whatever way I can find Him/Her/It. Maybe a way to live my life that I don't always have to be in conflict with.

We'll see where I end up.

1 comment:

  1. Hello, I understand your fascination with religion, I went through that too...I still do it from time to time, but in my heart I think I know that life is governed by a set of Universal Laws, the most potent of them being the "Law of Attraction". I love the "Eat, Love and Pray" book, it made me wish I were free and moneyed enough to do what the author did! :)

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