Does our Born into Faith or Baptisms Stay with us ?

[Lynn]

Hello

I have been thinking back to the day that I was baptized into the Anglican Church as an infant. Its not something at that tender age we have a say on, its just something our family does for us and with us. I turned from that place at the age of 13 and I have never looked back. I am not sure where in life I fit in, but I do know I fit in, if that makes sense. I do not worship or pray to God, but I to do not say as I can not prove of disprove in a God that there is not one that might well exist. I have come to believe that all things are "one" that there is a higher divine power at play in the Universe.

So I wonder if those blessings and those faiths put upon us have any lasting effects on our life path when we turn from them ? I was blessed in a House of God, but I do not feel I walk with God.

Thoughts ???

Lynn

[Lorelyen]

The single lasting effect a fairly liberal Christian upbringing had was the realisation that material science can only answer questions about the material world, or might be able to answer some questions outstanding in the future. It cannot answer questions about the quality of our experiences and an infinity of other metaphysical things. So I've always been aware that there must be some kind of supreme being: Bondye as a vodouisant would say, and interior spiritual existence(s)/world(s).

One question that religion failed to answer was if "God made man (and woman) in his image" how come I don't contain some of God (Whom, in those days, was explained as being out there but all around me, looking in)? Which of course, as a convert to Gnosticism - and enlightened by "as above so below", I found the answer I needed!

I was later surprised, studying a little Christian history, to find that Jesus taught some of his disciples along these lines. Their reports, the Apocryphal gospels, were proscribed by the Bishops of Rome when they decided what should go in the Bible and not, which I began to see as a deliberate distortion of the scriptures to fit a different, power-based agenda that sought to control, not to serve. (I'm taking care to kick my soap box further under the desk here!!)

So, some of the wisdoms taught by Jesus linger with me but a little way in to my spiritual development I realised I had rejected orthodox theology.

Pax et lux tecum,
Lorelyen.

[Mr Interesting]

I started using what might be defined as a little trick a while back which was because a friend is a born again but I share some of her ideas and quite enjoyed finding the boundaries in our conversations where her beliefs ended and my ideas began.

I say ideas, on my behalf, as I've never really gotten to the point of having ideas become beliefs... the ideas just keep expanding or diminishing depending on what ideas come to me and what I experience.

Anyways I said to her, this way the idea, that I both believed in God and didn't believe in God pretty much at the same time. And I think that is the case as I can then juggle the ideas of belief about while at the same time applying the kind of certitude which might be called believing... which allows me to then stand off and kinda see how the beliefs work in a way of resonating back to me.

It may very well be silly but it has allowed me to see beliefs in a new way and that they are more malleable than we might be led to believe and that we can actually believe and not believe, at the same time, and stand aside and watch them, play with them, all the while becoming more aware of the subtle nature that stands just beside such actions of an intellectual heart communicative idea.

In regards to your original question... it can't hurt... unless it does, then it's a matter of possibly taking the time to see what part hurts.

[silent whisper]

Hello

I have been thinking back to the day that I was baptized into the Anglican Church as an infant. Its not something at that tender age we have a say on, its just something our family does for us and with us. I turned from that place at the age of 13 and I have never looked back. I am not sure where in life I fit in, but I do know I fit in, if that makes sense. I do not worship or pray to God, but I to do not say as I can not prove of disprove in a God that there is not one that might well exist. I have come to believe that all things are "one" that there is a higher divine power at play in the Universe.

So I wonder if those blessings and those faiths put upon us have any lasting effects on our life path when we turn from them ? I was blessed in a House of God, but I do not feel I walk with God.

Thoughts ???

Lynn

In my own awareness, everything connected to our life comes back to us for recreation in new light of being. The past, present and future are creating us into being in each moment, whatever we choose to be. My own faith and belief through my catholic upbringing was in fact the gift of opening my deepest levels of fear connected to my parents and generations past. The faith and belief in a god, helped me during the time I was walking through my spiritual dark night of the soul to believe in something *outside of me* to carry me through. In the connections and recreation of myself, the faith and belief eventually came back to myself. So all eventually becomes an important gift to the nature of the real gift, which is life and ourselves as one. What I have now in me is a connected view of all in me as one, but with the awareness leading me through what was, is and can be. My god and faith and fears and religion have opened a deep level of trust now, to just be me, connected to it all in some way, integrated in me.