Today while watching my favorite television series of all time, the original “Star Trek” in celebrating its 50th anniversary, I was quickly reminded of how common it is for our culture to define “love” in the most pretentious of terms…Kind of like the ignorance and irresponsibility of many who promote using recreational drugs or alcohol, because they equate doing so with providing “happiness”. Obviously, those who think that way define happiness in the most pretentious and ignorant of terms, thinking that happiness is the result of doing whatever “makes one feel good”.
In the episode of Star Trek that I was watching, the primitive society Captain Kirk and his landing party encounter are not familiar with the term “love”. When asked to define its meaning, Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek’s writers missed a HUGE opportunity to define it correctly. Their shallow reply was that love is physical affection, specifically defining it as just the touching and physical attraction between two people.
Such a pretentious, shallow and ignorant definition of love is at the root of why we have not yet created peace and love between our cultures here on this planet after thousands of years of war and violence, much of which was and continues to be done “in the name of God or Allah”.
Such a pretentious, shallow and ignorant definition of love is also at the root cause of why organized religion has had such historical success in perpetuating its fraudulent teachings, falsely defining God as condemning of all ‘heathens’ of ‘other beliefs’. Nothing could be more dishonest than that…Nothing could be further from the truth of what love is than such a hateful, man-made teaching based completely on fear and vengeance.
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF OUR TIME. This is what you were brought here to this life experience to learn. But as much as I write about this important fact, it is amazing to me how many people don’t want to learn.
It is more comfortable for them to embrace the unloving, condemning lies of their beliefs often shared by their families and friends around them…They would rather believe in the solution being OUTSIDE of themselves…some imagined “savior” that will arrive from the sky riding down on a cloud and who will reign down “HIS” judgement and vengeance (funny how it is always a male God, isn’t it? But I digress)…This “savior” will destroy all those who simply don’t share their specific beliefs, and who are “unsaved”, all in the name of “love”.
They don’t want to learn the truth about love and the true nature of real spirituality, which is UNCONDITIONAL LOVE that can have NO CONDEMNATION whatsoever. The simple reason for that is that in all the diversity of life in this dimension, we are all a connected PART of what “God” is. So, to condemn others is to condemn ourselves.
Follow me here, because this is key…Organized religion teaches an elitist, ‘conditional love’…it is conditional on believing one way. As in the case of Christianity, love is defined as accepting ‘Jesus’ as being that ‘savior’ and only then is one ‘saved’ from God’s condemnation…Only under that ‘condition’ is one able to be ‘forgiven’.
It’s easier to remain in such a bigoted, tribal mindset, than to learn the opposing truth that real love is UNCONDITIONAL…It cannot conceive of damning others or sending them to Hell because they have diverse beliefs that are unique to their culture in their mutual, common effort to understand “God”.
Do you want to understand “God”? Do you REALLY want to understand God?? Then look around. Look at the diversity of creation. Listen to the diversity of thought and imagination of your fellow travelers here, passing through this experience just like you.
You are a part, just like they are, of creating all of it. The most important thing we are here to learn is that love means respecting, valuing and caring about all others with the SAME mutual respect, value and care that you would want from them.
If your religious and/or political beliefs teach otherwise, that is how you can know they are harmful and fraudulent. And to remain a part of sustaining that fraud is to remain a part of perpetuating division and hate, masquerading as “God’s teaching”. Nothing could be more sick and hypocritical than how this definition of “conditional love” is perpetuated by books like the Bible and the Koran.
They teach children as early as they can to see themselves as innately evil and bad…defining them as “sinners” by nature. When you are taught and conditioned by those you trust to see yourself as innately evil, it makes it all the more difficult for you to wake up to realize that this is a lie…that you are in fact innately loving and good as a part of what God is.
This fraudulent conditioning to think you are ‘sinful’ by nature is critical in helping organized religion control the masses with fear of being condemned, instead of helping them to learn the real definition of love, which is what their true nature actually is! You ARE love. We ARE the love of God! “We” meaning all diversity of all cultures across our shared home that we call Earth. You ARE the healing, loving hands of God, and that has nothing to do with your respective religious dogma or belief. It is the nature of all mankind that we are overdue in waking up to.
It is a huge, inexcusable cop-out to avoid learning this, and to say that the solution comes from some imagined ‘savior’ outside of you, who will someday ride down from the sky on a white horse with angels blowing trumpets, and solve all the problems by wiping out all the “sinful” unbelievers who are to blame for all the problems in the world that you face.
Spiritual truth is the OPPOSITE! WE CREATE HEAVEN or HELL…So far, thanks to the lies of organized religion, can their be any denying that we have been creating HELL with our divisive religions and politics?
The solution is to realize that your purpose for being here is to finally learn this truth and begin recognizing the PART OF GOD that you are…Your purpose here is to learn to love others with no element of any thought that you are “preferred” above others by God because of your differing beliefs…
And your purpose is to teach your children such unconditional love…each of us accepting and helping one another without ANY prerequisite or condition…by learning not to accuse others or yourself as innately bad, evil or sinful…By recognizing all others as just like you, here to learn from their mistakes, and not defining their mistakes as being because they are innately evil, ‘unsaved’, ‘unforgiven’, etc.
When you learn this, you no longer have the luxury of sitting back, thinking you don’t have to worry because “Jesus” or “Allah” will take care of all the problems in the world by wiping out and condemning all those ‘others’ who aren’t of your belief.
When you finally learn this, it is far from any kind of ‘ego-trip’…On the contrary… You are humbled with the realization that as a HOLY PART of what God is, you are connected to everyone else who is also a HOLY PART of God, and as such you have an innate responsibility to LOVE THEM as you need to be loved by them, not see them as evil.
When you learn this, you are humbled by the awareness that you have a responsibility to behave as a loving part of what God is with your universal brothers and sisters.
Love is not the physical touching or attraction to others. That is simply “sex”. Love is what I have for you, the reader, in repeated efforts like this writing, in seeking to help you find your purpose for being here that you and all of us are desperate to find.
Love is what you, and what we all need from others, having NOTHING to do with their sexual, physical touching of you. And love is not ‘what makes a Subaru’, despite how much they use that word to market their cars in their commercials.
Love is what will bring peace and healing ‘community’ to our planet, and that has ZERO to do with physical attraction, and everything to do with valuing one another as our spiritual brother and sister, BEYOND organized religion’s “conditional love” that has only created war and division for eons. We are overdue for this to stop.
Understand this…There is no more important issue of our time than this truth.The lies of organized religion that contradict this truth are not just confined to one of those religions that we are witnessing radical violence from at present.
Connie Bryan
(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento…Check out all her material on her website and blog at www.conniebryan.com)
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