Going Back To My First Blog Pt.4

Saturday, April 07, 2007

So if religion is not to be an institution for the sake of this day and age then how can a movement that is dynamic, challenging, and iconoclastic be a true religion? In this entry I would like to explore the idea that since religion seems like a passe word for this current age then any religion that is manifest in the form of an institution cannot be of benefit to the human race at this point in time. A Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist, and yes even a Christian cannot look onto their respective religions for hope, restoration, and healing. The simple reason is that these religions are all entrenched institutions that are unable to become a true and genuine religion unless they become a movement. Many religion devotees would probably object because each of their religions demonstrate certain movements- mostly fanatical if not at the fringes... many radical if not wildly popular and chic! Could this not demonstrate that even religion in its insitutional state can be a movement? My answer would be NO! Movements are radical in the sense that it is not bound by any institutional framework. Movements are not fanatical or dogmatic. Most purported movements in religion settings are a combination of an extreme and intensive fanaticism and a cold and unbending dogmatism. Genuine and real movements may look fanatic and even dogmatic on appearance. But in its core it is like a wildfire... unbounded, unpredictable, and completely creative and destructive at the same time! How can these qualities be definitive of a movement? The answer believe it or not lies in the very nature of religion itself if it is truly genuine and real. The core of religion is a set of what I call "root" experiences. I use root because when it comes down to it religion is really a vivid description of a basic and primal experience! When these experiences are rationalized in a set, they become the root experiences that religion springs from. These root experiences are dynamic, life-shaking, and earth-moving. They are in the truest sense of the word- supernatural! They tell us deep down in our human psyche that there is a metaphysical reality that holds this physical universe in its sway. These root experiences are at the same time very human. They break into our soul and our identity... our constructed world. The tragedy is that as these root experiences are rationalized and systematized into a coherent system and structure they become insititutionalized. This cooling and codifying process is what we have traditionally habitualized as religion. At some point the process saturates itself where it becomes completely cold and unfeeling to the human need for healing and restoration. At some point the system seeks to unsaturate itself by attempting a recreation and-or a recapture of the fire to battle the spiritual ice age the system has become. The attempt is to recapture and recreate the root experiences. This is to relieve the critical sense of psychic disconnection from the root experiences. These attempts will only succeed if recreation and recapture fails! When they succeed a quasi-movement is created... fanaticism and its other wing dogmatism. A true movement is NOT a recreating or a recapturing of the root experiences. It is precisely the experience of new root experiences... and therefore uninstitutionalized and completely fluid and burning.... religion as it was meant to be... cathartic, restorative, and transforming in the moment! This is living beyond normal... welcome to the flow.