I was born and raised in the Mormon Church, and was very satisfied with it for most of my adult life. Gradually, however, as I learned more from other spiritual and scientific sources, I finally had to face the fact that Mormon beliefs simply did not wash, so I left. It was a big thing. The Church was such a integral part of my life that leaving it was like a sex-change operation.

My story is on the web at: http://robertbushman.info/history.htm

On leaving, I felt tremendously relieved, so I knew I had done the right thing. Since then, I have come to realize that the beliefs of Christianity in general are also fallacious. And, that though there are glimmers of authentic spiritual value here and there, the Bible is so thoroughly corrupted that it is not even worth trying to use as a source of spiritual guidance. But that's another story.

Then too, the kinds of problems I found are not peculiar to Christianity, but are inherent in virtually all institutionalized religion.

But for me, the constructive alternative to religion is not atheism. Ironically, I now feel more in touch with authentic spirituality than ever before, but that kind spirituality is totally personal and does not have a name or an organization. My spiritual beliefs are still at an immature stage of development, but so far my sense of it all is that consciousness is the ground of being, that our perceived universe is the creation of our collective imagination, and that we are fundamentally one mind. I am not ready to define "God," though I sense there is an ultimate and perhaps indefinable consciousness, which is our "source."

I have tremendous respect for the historical Jesus, as hard as it may be to know just who that was. He seems to have been a singularity. The essence of what he offered us is analagous to Einstein's huge paradigm-shifting realization of the relativity of space and time, though what Jesus offers is of importance to us personally.

I have no respect for how Jesus is understood and represented by the "Christian" institutions that followed him. As far as I'm concerned, they all missed the point by so far that they're more harm than good. If Jesus were to teach in person today, he would most certainly be cruicified, in a sense, by Christians, for blasphemy.

That still leaves the problem of how to get along in a "Christian" culture. So far, my approach is to lie low and give wide allowance. It does no good to be confrontative, and after all, my personal happiness is not dependent on what others may think. Oh, and it's not helpful to be smug, either. Gotta keep in mind that we are one mind, and that what I perceive in others is an aspect of myself.

Namaste.

Details