Don't Be Ridiculous

Thursday, March 10 & Friday, March 11, 2022

The title of today's post focuses on a ridiculous little "new age/spiritual" meme/illustration I saw yesterday.  The title of this ridiculous meme/illustration was "Religious Beliefs To Unlearn".  The image was an illustrated person with seven thought bubbles coming from their head, with seven little anecdotes about things that the author of this illustration believes are negative lessons that religions teach.

First, and foremost, in the ridiculous world that we live in, anyone can create a meme/illustration/cartoon, etc. and pair it with a statement (like, "Religious Beliefs To Unlearn"), and then spit it out onto the internet.  That statement (no matter how subjective) now seems like something wise, grand, and objective, when it's really nothing more than one person's subjective thought.  

It's tricky to stay vigilant against this (as these commanding phrases are everywhere in advertisement/entertainment-industry), but a more truthful and accurate title of this ridiculous meme/image today's post is about would be, "Religious Beliefs To Unlearn....According To The One Human Being Who Created This Meme Who Probably Lives In An Overly Woke West Coast State Where People Have Lost Touch With Reality And Are Moving Out Of In Droves".......that's a more accurate title, but it doesn't quite roll of the tongue, of course.

So amused was I by this little illustration, that I feel the need to write out my subjective perspective on it.  The exact verbiage to three of the little "Religious Beliefs To Unlearn" are below, along with my counterpoints:

• "My desires are sinful"...This seems to be a common thing that people misunderstand today but, for some reason, thousands of years worth of human beings understood it completely in the past.  Desire is a cause for suffering.  I believe this is actually one of Buddha's truths; the cause of suffering is desire.  Desire only comes from your physical being.  Your physical being only desires food, sleep, and sex.  Your desire will lead to suffering.  Look up the history of holy men and women who have been venerated by religions; you'll see that they led lives of self-control and viewed desires (even the necessary desires of food), as something that will lead to decay, and death.  Buddha ate "one grain of rice a day" to prevent himself from becoming attached to food.  Desires come from your imperfect, evolved-chimp-body and not controlling your desires will mean that they control you.  Desires are no more "sinful" than anything else, but desire is an earthly thing and is, therefore, something that should be controlled, minimized, and turned away from. 

• "I am nothing without God"...Another ridiculous notion that, in the entire recorded history of the planet, has been understood but, with the "wisdom" of the 21 century, this notion becomes warped and skewed.  Every pursuit of man (whether it be an art, a craft, a trade, a career, etc.), was always focused on glorifying the divine.  I don't know a single religion that says, "you're nothing without God", but I do know religions that correctly advise that you're living a half-life without developing your connection to the divine. 

• "Your spiritual self ifs all that matters"... More ridiculousness.  I don't know a single religion that has ever said your spiritual life is all that matters.  On the contrary, every religious message I know of on this topic advises to take care of your physical and mental health as you're encased inside your physical body, and must take care of it.  The real message religions give here is that the non-spiritual world that we live in is ridiculous (and it is, and always will be and, more than likely, will become even more ridiculous as time progresses), and focus on the non-spiritual world is going to leave you miserable.  Read last Thursday's post about My Cake Isn't Very Nice; the non-spiritual world will make a ruin of your head, heart, soul, and body. 

The above three bullet points were just a few of the anecdotes on the meme; there were four others, that I won't go into them here.

Before I begin my practice, I'll say that, more and more, there's opportunity to be turned into something ridiculous by advertisements and the entertainment-industry.  Turn away from it as best you can as it's a path that leads to misery.