Deeds not Creeds

A great being appeared some two millennia ago, looked at our religious institutions with their hierarchies of power, professional classes, policy makers, lawyers, and armies, and observed that we should "know them by their fruits."

That is, we should ask: What are the actual, tangible results of these lofty religious institutions that we have known throughout history?

If we examine them by the fruits they produce, rather than by the creeds, slogans, concepts and public relations that sustain them, we would see that spiritual transcendence and religion have little in common.  In fact, if we look closely, we can see that these two have been the fundamental antagonists in our history, splitting our mind into warring camps.

Neither our violence nor our transcendence is a moral or ethical matter of religion, but rather an issue of biology.  We actually contain a built-in ability to rise above restriction, incapacity or limitation and, as a result of this ability, possess a vital adaptive spirit that we have not yet fully accessed.

While this ability can lead us to transcendence, paradoxically it can lead also to violence; our longing for transcendence arises from our intuitive sensing of this adaptive potential and our violence arises from our failure to develop it.

Source: "The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit" by Joseph Chilton Pearce (Park Street Press, 2002)

John G. Agno, Certified Executive & Business Coach, www.CoachedtoSuccess.com