Finding Peace Between Religion and Spirituality

In seeking a subject for my weekly columns, I always ask and expect my intuition to guide me. This time I was inspired by a dear friend’s question. She asked, “How do I reconcile my almost lifelong Christian beliefs with what I know and believe now? At the time, she was experiencing a health situation that naturally brought up thoughts about her own mortality. I think she was concerned about what effect the new beliefs would have at the time of her death.

I realized that the answer to her question could be a source of inner peace for my friend and countless others, including myself.

When I was young, like many others, I sought spiritual solace from conventional religious sources. After decades of seeking, I found, also like many others, a place of comfort between the closed religious views of the past and an open spirituality that resonated within my mind and heart, and was grounded in the depths of my being.

During my seeking, I realized that conventional religious systems hold that the life force-energy-love-power [God] is placed outside the individual. Followers are required to subscribe to a closed belief system, are considered much lower in status than this energy and basically flawed. The belief system doesn’t have to be logical or scientifically plausible.

In contrast to this, unconventional systems believe that there is only this life force-energy-love-power and it is not outside of us, it is within you, me and everything in the universe. In essence this means there is only one God, but with many variations and interpretations. This energy is either manifested as form, or waiting to be manifested, as its nature is to expand and become more. Since we live, move and have our being in this energy, we share its attributes and characteristics – much like a wave in the ocean is part of the whole – but is not the whole.

In 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12 verse 13, Paul says: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

It was an incredibly wonderful feeling to realize that I am not a disconnected, isolated entity. I am an individualized unit, a cell, in the colossal body of this cosmic life force-energy-love.

It is my responsibility to become aware of the incredible life force that is inherent in me, to learn to manage this energy, cooperate with it and to use it for the highest and best good of all. By entering into communion with this energy, I discovered the sanctuary of love, wisdom, acceptance and guidance that is our birthright and the heart desire of every human being. This is where love lives—inside us.

These ideas have been around in one form or another for a long time. The spiritual teachers, masters and mystics who spoke and wrote about them through the centuries were simply bringing this natural evolutionary progression to our attention, again, in case we were open to it. The fact is that the energy-love-force is eternal and changeless, but as humanity evolves our understanding of it expands.

My friend is wise to seek reconciliation between her past beliefs and what she knows and believes now, as this brings inner peace. The following answers the question for me, and hopefully will help my friend and many others.

I know we live in a spiritual, loving universe that is a universe of law and order. The Law of Attraction means that like attracts like. When we die we will draw to us whatever high or low energy we are and what we hold in our hearts. It could not be otherwise. Whether my friend seeks to be embraced by the Old Testament God, Jesus of the New Testament, Allah, Mohammed, Buddha, Mother Mary, a host of angels or all the above, [which I lovingly accept for her], she will be met with her heart’s desire. It could not be otherwise.
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Copyright 2007 by Fern Stewart Welch

The author’s book THE HEART KNOWS THE WAY—How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit Within is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.