Tag Archive: religion


Is Confession Good for the Soul?

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Healing, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Is Confession Good for the Soul?

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I was raised Catholic and regularly attended church as well as confession while growing up. I am now what you might call a recovering Catholic, as some years ago I began to question the teachings of the Church and to explore my own spiritual path. I’m at peace with this for the most part, but I’ve found that I deeply miss the practice of confession. I feel like my soul has become heavy and polluted without this regular cleansing, and this feeling has me wondering if perhaps the Church was fulfilling a true spiritual need that I won’t be able to meet on my own. Do you have any advice for me?

Bea

Dear Bea:

Confession as a rite of spiritual healing and purification is perhaps universal. Certainly many religious and spiritual traditions incorporate some form of confession as a path to metaphysical renewal.

When we are unable to face ourselves honestly and truly look at the nature of our thoughts, feelings and actions, we distance ourselves from our own higher selves. The more honest we are in our relationship to our true self, the more at peace we feel and the more we can commune with Source. When we face things as they happen, we process them and move on from them. Whatever we can’t face and work through at that time, we carry with us until we find the courage and wisdom to deal with it. This is the power of confession: it guides us in facing and releasing things from the past that we’ve been consciously and unconsciously lugging around with us.

It was once widely believed that if we died with unconfessed sins on our souls, we wouldn’t get into heaven. It’s my understanding that where we go when we leave this life is largely determined by our own beliefs and expectations, so if we feel guilty about things we’ve done that we haven’t made peace with when we die, we could end up in some sort of “purgatory” where we have to work through all the feelings and issues we haven’t consciously faced yet. Most of us are familiar with the idea that when we die, we experience a life review, during which we must relive all the joy and sorrow we caused other people. The more we’ve made peace with the past while still living, the easier this life review should be when we die, so there may be a sound metaphysical basis for religious practices like confession.

Of course, we don’t have to be Catholic or confess to a priest to unburden ourselves of whatever may be weighing on our conscience; there are all sorts of other ways people achieve the same sense of freedom and release. Many people seek emotional peace in conventional psychological counseling. Similarly, my clients often choose me as the person to help them work through feelings of guilt or shame. From pornography addictions to marital infidelity to “evil” thoughts and feelings, I’ve heard it all over the years, and Spirit always has a loving, healing perspective to help people realign with peace and well-being.

So what makes us long for redemption? On some level we are all aware of the karma we are carrying and how it will weigh us down and drag us back into situations where it can be balanced and we can learn whatever we need to learn. We don’t need a priest or counselor to advise us, however; we can meditate upon this ourselves and follow our own hearts in determining how to make things right. In my view, this is truly taking responsibility for our actions and will prove far more powerful than having some appointed official intone words of blessings over our heads. Besides, it’s essential to determine and live by our own moral code. When we try to follow rules set down by some outside authority that don’t resonate with our own inner truth, we just set ourselves up for more angst and neuroses instead of peace and personal growth.

To balance karma, first we must face the truth about our actions. Usually, it is feelings of guilt or shame that lead us to examine our behavior and realize that we’ve acted against our own values. Then we must admit our error to ourselves and whatever higher power we may be calling upon in our quest for personal growth and healing. Sometimes, admitting our error is simply a matter of apologizing to whomever we feel we’ve wronged. Finally, we have to do what we can to make things right. This is how we balance our karma and move toward a higher level of experience.

When we open up and “get things off our chests,” the energy in our auras starts to move and locked up energy starts to dissipate. Basically, when we hold things in, we create tension; when we speak them out loud or open up about them, we get that energy moving again. When the energy is moving, it can be healed, transformed and/or released. Confessing in whatever way feels right and best to us can set us free from karmic backlash because we no longer have the residual energies of that experience acting like a magnet for further related experiences. When we let go of feeling bad for something we did in the past, we rise in vibration and can attract something better in the future.

While all of this can be done internally, there is great power in putting things into words. There is an intense process in yoga called the maha vasana daha tantra or “great purification of the subconscious by fire.” It involves writing down ten pages of memories for each year of one’s life and then burning those pages. It is said that this naturally sets us free from the past and whatever issues may still be active for us on a subconscious level. It’s a bit like hypnotherapy in terms of the instant healing that can happen when we bring things up into our conscious awareness and relive them from a new perspective. Many say that performing this ritual left them feeling profoundly clear, free, joyful, unburdened, and at one with the Universe.

Of course, it’s important to honor your needs as you have been doing and to find whatever works best for you. If writing isn’t appealing, you might find a spiritual counselor you feel comfortable talking to or come up with something else that feels right. For example, if you’re more tactile than verbal, you could create a meditation altar on which you place symbolic tokens of your burdens to be healed and released.

I read somewhere that confession is a surrender of your past to God to be dissolved in divine love. It’s a way to start over from scratch and realign with the divine perfection of your eternal soul. Through it, you can be instantly freed and healed from the past and open to a bright, fresh future. The method you choose isn’t important; what’s important is to open your heart with complete honesty and commit to becoming a better person.

If you can pour all of your soul into it, this simple ritual may suffice:

Sit quietly and allow anything that has been weighing on your conscience to come to mind. Ask yourself what you have learned from this experience and how you could do better in the future. Then simply pray: Universe, please heal me from the past. Cleanse and renew my spirit so that I may walk forward embodying my higher nature and radiating love, wisdom, compassion, courage and integrity in all I think, say and do. Visualize divine love washing over and through you, cleansing your soul clean of any guilt, remorse and negative karma. When you feel clear, let go of worrying about the past, and focus on integrating what you’ve learned by being a better person from that point forward.

– Soul Arcanum

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Cultivating Peace Despite Religious Differences

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Relationships, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Cultivating Peace Despite Religious Differences

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

Though my husband didn’t practice any religion when I married him, I converted to his family’s faith because he and his family wanted it that way. I started practicing, reading, and also sharing my new knowledge with my husband, and while he was always happy to hear what I had to say, he took no personal interest in religion for a long time. I put so much into this: I observed all the rituals, recited prayers for hours, fasted, etc., and all on my own. This went on for about 6-7 years. Then my sister took her own life, and the people in my new religion were so condemning and hard-hearted about it, while the people from my old religion came forward to support me with comfort and understanding. At that time, I returned to my old beliefs and stopped practicing the new religion. It’s now some 20 years later and my husband has become religious, which I think is good. However, I have been through a lot since we first married, and I have come to my own understanding of God and my own spiritual beliefs. Now my husband is upset and disappointed in me because I’m not following him in his religion. I should mention that my father was Hindu, my mother was Christian, and my husband is Muslim. I feel like a mixture of all these paths. I see it all, I feel it all, I am all-embracing of them for I feel that in essence, they all teach the same thing. What I don’t know is how to handle the impact this is having on key relationships in my life.
– Kiran

Dear Kiran:

I understand that you’re from a different cultural background than I am, and I apologize in advance if some of my advice just isn’t practical for you. Also, I don’t wish to ignite a theological debate. There is nothing more sacred and personal than our relationship to the Divine, so I don’t believe it’s ever wise or fruitful to argue about spiritual matters. As each human being is as sacred and divine as any other, I would never try to tell others what to believe.

It can be very hard to maintain peace and harmony if we allow religious differences to enter into relationships. Since most religions teach that their God is the one and only true God and their way is the only right and true way, instead of promoting peace on Earth, religion tends to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual violence. (When we try to push our spiritual views on other people, we violate their sacred relationship with the Divine.)

Many people aren’t yet capable of exercising the sociological imagination required to realize that if they had been born into a different culture, they would probably believe just as strongly in the particular religious views of that society as they do in their current beliefs. When they finally manage to do this, they naturally begin to doubt that their religion is the only true one, which makes them more open-minded, tolerant and respectful of others’ beliefs. As they spiritually evolve, everyone naturally grows more compassionate, intelligent, and self-referencing, and at some point, sheds the mindless, impersonal dogma of organized religion for a personal spiritual path.

While your goal may be to create harmony in your marriage despite the spiritual differences between you and other family members, it sounds like your husband is still a number of steps behind you, following the rules as laid out for him by forces far removed from his direct personal experience. So while there is common ground you could meet him on, getting your husband to work with you if he’s not yet ready for a higher approach may be very frustrating.

The key lies in your wise statement that all major religions teach the same basic things (including the religion he identifies with), the most basic teaching of all being the Golden Rule.

Christianity teaches: As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:31)
For Hindus, it’s worded: This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)
In Islam, this is the teaching: None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. (Muhammad, Hadith 13 of al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith)

Clearly, unless your husband is also willing to adopt your personal spiritual beliefs and practices, he isn’t loving for you what he loves for himself: the freedom to worship as he believes is right and best for him. If you can get him to practice the Golden Rule with you, you should be able to create a loving, respectful, happy marriage despite the religious differences between you.

Even if he can’t see the obvious here, there are things you can do to cultivate harmony in this relationship, for you’re operating from a higher vibration and have a great deal of power to influence your own life and the people around you.

First, remember that you are the creator of your own reality and can manifest what you want. Whatever you focus upon and expect will expand in your experience, so worrying about others being displeased with you will just manifest problems.

Don’t debate religious issues with anyone you want to get along with, for then you’ll get caught up in endless arguments over semantics, which will just promote conflict and waste your time and energy. Instead of debating ideas, I recommend working with the law of attraction and radiating love.

There are infinite processes and exercises available for consciously creating what you want in your life. In essence, you’ll want to visualize this relationship feeling just the way you want it to feel and send your husband the accepting, respectful, tolerant vibes you want to receive from him via your heart and mind. Imagine the two of you interacting in wonderful new ways, and how good that will feel.

To rise above all the surface differences and connect on a soul level with anyone, all you have to do is radiate love with faith in its healing power. Regardless of their religious beliefs, all people crave and revere love as divine in nature, for love has the power to conquer all, heal all and endure all.

Just flow love to your husband from your heart. If you can radiate love and divine light even when he is coming from a place of fear or judgment because of your religious differences, you’ll be able to work healing miracles in this situation.

Whenever you allow yourself to get caught up in worrying about what other people think about your religious beliefs and practices, your vibration will sink and you’ll manifest more conflict, which will remind you to pay attention to where you’re investing your mental and emotional energy. When you love yourself just the way you are and love others similarly, you’ll sail above all those abstract debates and manifest whatever you want and need to be happy. The details won’t matter anymore because you’ll be in sync with love and harmony, so that is what you’ll create and experience.

To begin to shift this situation toward harmony, develop the habit of stopping whenever things don’t feel good and praying within for Spirit’s guidance. If you remember to focus on what you want to create and radiate love from your heart, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can transform heavy conflicts into bright new blessings.

– Soul Arcanum

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Baptism: Is it Important?

Filed Under: Death and Dying by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Baptism: Is it Important?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I had a strict Catholic upbringing, and unfortunately, this really put me off on the Catholic Church. I am very spiritual, however – more so than most of the people I attended church with when I was growing up. Here’s my dilemma: I’m now pregnant with my first child, and my parents expect me to have my baby baptized. When I hesitated, my mother freaked out and said that my baby will never get into heaven if he’s not baptized. I feel sort of silly for admitting this, but I’m starting to doubt myself. I sure wouldn’t want my child to suffer because his mother was deluded! Do you think that being baptized is important in any way? Thank you!
– Laura

Dear Laura:

I understand your dilemma. On one hand, studying the origins of baptism is really eye-opening. On the other, I see great power and value in spiritual rituals in general, and as a mother myself, I know how intensely protective you must feel.

For those who aren’t familiar, baptism is a Christian ritual of spiritual cleansing that is symbolic of “rebirth.” According to the Catholic Church, baptism is the most important sacrament because it is what initiates us into a spiritual life.

Here’s what most Catholics don’t know: like so many Christian traditions, baptism has its origins in ancient pagan initiation rites. The use of water for cleansing one’s body and soul can be traced back to the beginning of recorded history. In fact, early Christians never baptized infants, for the act of baptism was supposed to reflect a conscious, willing dedication to Christ. Baptizing infants was part of pagan initiation into mystery school traditions, and was only incorporated into Christian practices relatively recently.

Like your mom, many Catholics believe that to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must be “born again of water and the Holy Ghost.” While being “born again” may simply be symbolic of turning over a new spiritual leaf, when we examine this idea in relationship to the tradition of baptism, one begins to wonder if perhaps baptism was originally designed to induce the profound spiritual awakening of a near death experience.

It seems that initially, baptism involved much more than the sprinkling of water on a person’s head. One was fully immersed in a body of water by the officiant; in fact, early writings about baptism include many references to drowning! The original practice may have involved holding someone under water until they surrendered with “faith” in God – in other words, nearly drowned.

Such an experience would alter one’s consciousness and perhaps induce mystical experiences. As NDE’s tend to spiritually awaken people like nothing else, we could say that being baptized was a “rebirth” both because one emerged from the experience a new person, and because one literally came back from death.

Throughout history, religious mystery schools have put seekers through extremely challenging physical initiations. If one survived these ordeals, they were assumed to be profoundly changed afterward. Perhaps our modern tradition of baptism is just a shadow of what was once a much more intense and mystical experience. If early on, a number of people drowned through baptism, it makes sense that as Christianity spread, the process would have grown less daunting and more acceptable. Thus we end up with a symbolic “rebirth” as opposed to a literal return to life.

Further, baptism is often referred to as being “reborn into the light,” which I think lends more credence to this theory, for a classic element of the near death experience is a vision of divine “light” that is beyond description in power and beauty.

I also think it’s fascinating that early baptisms were conducted in rivers, for researchers into the astral dimension like Robert Bruce have determined that a most effective means of cleansing one’s aura of negative astral entities is to cross running water. Perhaps baptism was designed to help people shed all the negativity they had picked up in their auras in order to make a fresh spiritual start. It would make sense to do this only when they were prepared to walk a conscious spiritual path from then on, otherwise, it’d be like taking a bath and then going right back out to play in the dirt.

On the other hand, water itself isn’t considered essential to the baptism process:

For John indeed baptized with water: but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost… (Acts, 1:5)

Like other spiritual rituals, baptism is a symbolic act signifying spiritual awakening and devotion to a spiritual path. Given natural spiritual laws like karma, living what we might call a “spiritual life” will indeed bring us great freedom and blessings in the future, including the afterlife. Even if the ritual of baptism isn’t essential to our future well-being, consciously choosing to live a “good” (spiritual) life is incredibly powerful.

Further, I do believe we can make quantum leaps in clearing karma by devoting ourselves to right action with all our hearts and souls. Thus being “born again,” baptized, having a spiritual awakening or choosing to devote ourselves to a spiritual path may indeed make a huge difference in terms of our destiny.

I also believe that being part of a religious community can bring many blessings, both in ways we can directly experience and in subtler ways as well. It doesn’t much matter which religion we embrace, so long as its basic aims are divine love, peace, and sincere good will toward others. When we are initiated into a religious or spiritual community, we gain the exponential power of unity. This blankets us with an astral cloak of positive belief and kinship with other seekers. Like teenagers who are surrounded with “good influences,” we gain support for staying out of spiritual trouble and embodying our highest values.

Also, during a baptism ceremony, the gathered family and friends pray for that individual to be protected by God, and prayer is powerful! Those who are especially devoted to the individual being baptized (such as the godmother or godfather) also promise to help them along their spiritual path through life. Though as a Spiritualist minister I am far from being Catholic, I was happy to become my nephew’s godmother a few years ago, for I’m certainly in harmony with helping people find their spiritual way through life.

Though fundamentalists would disagree with me on this (amongst many other things!), I don’t feel the act of baptism itself is what matters; what matters is the energy, intention and meaning behind it. When people pray together with sincere hearts for another’s good, a rich feeling lifts our spirits. If we undertake ceremonies like baptism with sincerity, they can hold great meaning and value.

Having your child baptized in church will certainly not HURT him, and it would show respect and honor for your parents. If you can get past the details you find offensive and sincerely pray for your child to enjoy a spiritual path of divine love and understanding, I think it could be a wonderful way to bless him and welcome him to the world.

– Soul Arcanum

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Who Are We to Question the Bible?

Filed Under: Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Who Are We to Question the Bible?

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

It seems to me that spirituality has taken a turn for the worse and become very ego-centered. Who are we to question the Bible and what is true or not true in religion?
– R.

Dear R.:

Thanks for your brave and honest question. First, I would like you to take a moment and ask yourself who wrote the Bible, and when was it written. Many “Bible thumpers” have no idea. They seem to think it manifested from heaven fully formed while everyone was asleep one night long ago. Those who don’t bother to find out, or who are afraid to find out, tend to be the loudest proclaimers that everything in it is true. I personally believe in having good reasons for believing (and especially proclaiming) what I believe, which does involve some thought and study.

For those who don’t know, the Bible was written by men who never met Jesus. They had heard legends about his miracles and teachings, which had been passed around and passed down orally. Written records were not common at the time of Jesus, much less books. The Bible was written over many centuries by different men, many of whom disagreed with each other on just about everything. This is why the Bible contradicts itself right and left. You can argue for or against anything based on passages of the Bible. How do you know what is right if you don’t question?

I am NOT saying that the Bible is a bunch of baloney, but rather that we are fools if we accept everything in it without knowing who wrote it and what their motivations were. We can safely assume that a spiritual teacher named Jesus lived a couple millenia ago, and that his teachings and his life changed the world and is still deeply influencing humankind many centuries later. I am in total harmony with the true teachings of Jesus. Sadly, few people who call themselves “Christians” have bothered to try to sort those true teachings from the various, conflicted views of modern Christianity.

Would you accept anyone’s ideas about what Jesus or any other spiritual teacher was trying to teach us? What if you went to church, and the minister told you that Jesus said that clothing was evil, and anyone who didn’t go nude would go to hell. Would you do it? What if you visited another church and was told that nudity was a sin? Then what would you do?

If you would not blindly follow what these ministers said, then why would you blindly accept the writings of men you’ve never met who lived hundreds of years ago, and who never met Jesus themselves? Perhaps they were human and fallible just like us, and they were wrong on some points. Perhaps their words, which were written in either ancient Aramaic or Greek, have been mistranslated. Perhaps those words were purposefully edited/revised/deleted to create a version of the Bible designed to serve the political aims of someone in power. This DID happen. I encourage you to do some research on the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea. Just plug some of those terms along with “Bible” into a search engine, and you’ll learn that a man with entirely political aims was given the power to decide what would go into the Bible and what would be kept out. If this is news to you, it’s because writing about or even possessing any written record or account of what happened at Nicea was an offense punishable by DEATH.

Unless we want a greedy, power-hungry politician or some other person with a personal agenda to decide our spiritual beliefs for us, we’re going to have to question EVERY view we encounter in life. We do that with the divine tools we’ve all been given and are meant to use: our minds and our hearts.

This whole issue is a matter of ancient controversy: was Jesus a Gnostic or not? The early Jesus movement was divided into groups of followers. One such group was the Gnostics. Their teachings/writings didn’t make it into the Bible, for the most part. They were discovered in this century, buried in a cave in Egypt (research the “Nag Hammadi Library” for information on this). Nevertheless, I believe it’s clear from all that was included in the Bible that Jesus Himself was Gnostic. Gnostic comes from the word gnosis, which means inner knowing. Jesus looked for the truth in His own heart. He was also a social and religious critic who was constantly questioning everything and weighing it against that truth in His heart and then standing up for what He felt was true. According to the Bible, he said, “The kingdom of God will come not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

We have to question and look within for answers to tap into divine truth and understanding. This is what Jesus Himself did. How can we go wrong if we are following in His footsteps?

You say that spirituality has taken a turn for the worse. To me, it’s gotten better and better. Spiritual is personal; a spiritual path is an individual, personal relationship with the Divine. Religion, by comparison, is not personal, it’s communal. If we can only truly know God within our own hearts, then we are far more likely to discover truth and Divine light on a personal spiritual path than a religious one. A personal spiritual path involves seeking truth and answers and understanding, which means questioning. It is in fact all about questioning what is right and wrong, what is important, what is highest and best and most true. It is about following in Jesus’ footsteps by connecting with our own “inner knowing,” by recognizing that it is within our own hearts that we can best connect with “God.”

This is not an intellectual pursuit, but a spiritual one. It’s the ancient path of the mystic. It transends dogma and rules and all that is written by other humans. It tunnels beneath the common teachings of religion for direct experience of the truth. Thus, spirituality is subversive by its very nature.

A true and devoted seeker is willing to do more work than the average person; she is willing to journey longer and harder and farther than those who simply ask for the rules and for others to absolve them when they fail to follow them. She is also willing to fully accept the consequences of her choices. To me, that is not selfish, but rather bold, courageous and ultimately more respectful of “God” than blindly following the rules as others interpret them to be.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of God is only found through self-awareness. “The kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.” He went on to say, “[The kingdom of God] will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is.’ Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it.” To see it, we must find a new way of looking for it, which involves questioning the old or commonly accepted way.

– Soul Arcanum

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