How Close is Your Personal Belief System to the Religion You're In?

[CharmingOwl]

It's the same but there is a lot of variation between what you can believe when you practice it. I founded it so there would be 0 excuse for me not believing in it lol.

 

[stvdv]

Pretty straightforward question. I'll answer for myself.

How Close is Your Personal Belief System to the Religion You're In?

Nice poll by the way; plenty of options

I voted for other, so I explain a bit:

In short: I follow Sathya Sai Baba, my Guru. He and I are One (that answers the title question...how close...). I need nothing else, no religion, just my Guru, my God, my Higher Self

 

[Thea]

I don’t belief most of it but the core of it is important to me and I like the people there.

 

[DharmaCatLamp]

Pretty straightforward question. I'll answer for myself.

Earthseed has three basic beliefs: (1) God is change. (2) Shape God. (3) The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars. My beliefs are essentially the same but more elaborate. I believe that God is what nature is becoming (change), and that every religion, and every person, is doing something to create the divinity of God (shaping God). Earthseed's third belief, to take root among the stars, is aligned to my beliefs about extropy and cosmism. I would go further than that, however, and I would say that it is our duty to create as much life in the Universe as possible, but this is just a more detailed version of belief three and it's probably a given that members of Earthseed also believe this.

So overall I would either say it's almost exactly, or nearly the same. My vernacular is a more verbose and robust than what Earthseed entails, and I add some things that Earthseed doesn't touch on - such as, defining which changes creates the divinity in God, and my personal belief system that I call Exaltism isn't a 1=1 match to Earthseed, but it's very, very close as members of Earthseed tend to be pantheistic and syntheistic, just like me. So I'm going to answer "nearly the same" because Exaltism is a version of Earthseed that has narrower definitions of God and divinity than how Earthseed explains it.

How did you answer the poll and how close is your personal belief system compared to the religion you follow? Let us know how you answered the poll and any differences between your personal beliefs over your religion below.

I put other mostly because it gets kind of complicated. I chant Kali mantra every day, I worship Kali and I take a lot of my spiritual leanings from Advita Vedanta , RamaKrishna and Swami Sarvapiyanada. That being said I also read the Tao te Ching on a regular basis, study christian and sufi mysticism and read the sutras associated with early buddhism. The truth is I think you can connect to God or the Supreme reality through any method if you are sincere and willing to put the effort in. Hinduism is incredibly vast and you can find all sorts of different thoughts within it's structure.

I personally call myself a Hindu cause I worship God in the form of the goddess Kali and it's a lot simpler than going through the whole complicated thing. It's not the only form I think of when I think of God but it is that main one. I think you could worship just about anything and still be worshiping God because God is all existence. Heck if you really wanted to imagine god as a piece of poop or a corpse you could. There is no impure or pure there is only the divine. These Vessels we are currently using might not be able to dwell in all types of environments or imbibe all things but that doesn't mean they are not still holy and part of God. Cobra venom is terrible for a human but it's good for the cobra.

The issue I tend to have is that traditional hinduism tends to include things which I am not big on. The truth is I think you can worship God or not believe in god however you like. I am not concerned with converting other people I am only concerned with being a good cat. The whole polluition thing within Hinduism and the caste system etc are things which I deny. Many other Hindus would maintain the same view but as has been stated elsewhere in this thread Hinduism encompasses a huge variety of thought and people so it's hard to say you agree with 100% of it.

Guru Nanak said it best
"I am afraid you are wrong. You think yourselves as Hindus and Muslims first and last. You forget that you are men first and something else. We are the sons of the one GOD. We are all brothers. So there is no Hindu and no Muslim," said Nanak