Religions are manmade. Every apostle left the earth alone and people around him organized themselves around his teachings and it became a religion. For example, Buddha only said, “become a Buddha”. But his followers started a religion. The good thing was that there was an attempt to follow the teachings because not one of them ever preached anything separatist or conflict driven. They spoke about how to lead a spiritual life and connect with Creation and the soul.
What happened was that man, in his frailty,
started to imagine his religion to be the only right one. And the rest is
history. There has never been peace because there has never been either
tolerance or acceptance between human beings.
It is worth thinking about why we feel we
have to reject people who are different. People who are not like us, people who
don’t think, walk, talk or look like us. It has to be an aberration. That we
can go to the extent of even exterminating these people. How badly threatened
we must feel, right?
Actually, we are so unable to extend our
vision to encompass and appreciate the uniqueness of others. We feel small,
irrelevant. And we don’t like that feeling. And we lack courage to become
better. So, we feel it is easier to remove / destroy what makes us
uncomfortable.
Always worth remembering that it is a lack within us that presents an illusion of a lack within others it is the resonance that makes this real. If you elevate yourself from that space, you are through.
So, keep your religion and all other
identities within yourself and only for you. And allow others to do the same.
Why is it so difficult?
Surekha Kothari
surekhakothari.wordpress.com
