>>You seem to think of God as a separate BIG being of some kind that intervenes in human affairs. I Don't. I think of God as a natural, intelligent, coherent process that is involved with everything at all times, right down to the molecular level. Not just with people, with everything, animate and inanimate.<<

I don't believe in god at all--anthropomorphic or otherwise and it is this very difference of interpretation that I find so problematic.

>>I understand your meaning, but I don't agree. I would have agreed when I was 25. Not any more. The reason I don't agree is because I have been studying meditation and Eastern disciplines, which are all about calming the mind, quieting the mind. It is an overly busy mind, constantly cluttered with thoughts, that leads to every form of mental illness and distress. It leads me to wasting hours on this forum! ;-) I kid you not.<<

First of all, very few people can completely still their minds and that's assuming there is anyone who can do it at all. You'd have to let go of your self-awareness and I question whether that would even be beneficial. I have read case histories of cultists who suffered psychological problems due to mind control achieved through intense meditation techniques. Emptying your mind is, I think, a very dangerous thing to do. Anything could just walk in.

>>The tragedy of modern people is that their minds are absolutely cluttered all the time with an avalanche of disordered thoughts. This eventually leads to breakdown in some cases. Ever seen a person on the street talking furiously to no one at all, as angry or anxious thoughts spill from their lips. A lot of people are like that, but they don't express the thoughts vocally, they just think them. Their minds are never calm.<<

That comes from watching TV while zoning out reality. The thoughts pile up but aren't being put anywhere until the last second when they're haphazardly thrown wherever they'll hopefully fit. I organize my thoughts through writing. I write and write and write. And I read and read and read so that I have more things to write and write and write about. I have these stored on my computer so that I can peruse them at my leisure. It's interesting to go back and read things I wrote years ago to see how far I've come since then. Oftimes, I'm embarrassed, thinking I knew a thing or two and didn't know shit. Sometimes I write something that strikes me years later as having a particularly good thought and I wonder why I had not followed up on that and how I let it get away from me.

>>Ascetic individuals like Buddha, Jesus, Zoroaster, Gandhi, Ramakrishna, those are the people who brought forth most spiritual teachings. They were usually people who lived a very simple life, materially speaking, spent a lot of time alone in nature, spent time among the poor people, and avoided the sort of high profile roles taken on in life by monarchs. Buddha, for example, walked away from life in the palace and became a penniless beggar for years. He never returned to worldly power. It was the inspired followers of such people who "invented" religion....simply because they hung around and listened to whatever their teachers said, noted it all down, memorized it, then got together in groups and discussed it, then formed those groups into religious organizations and kept things going. Some of those organizations got much larger and became mainstream religions...it was THEN that the kings latched onto them and used them for all they could get.<<

Most of these figures were personages--mythical. Buddha never was. Zoroaster (with a life story very similar to Jesus) never was. All of them variations of Horus. As for Ghandi, his family became a ruling dynasty and none too friendly either. It's all about power. Ghandi may have had good intentions but power is what it always comes down to and it corrupts. Religion justifies it all and allows it to continue. God save the king!

>>Jesus is reputed to have said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He wasn't after material things at all. He wasn't after worldly power. His earliest followers don't appear to have been after anything much like that either...but that all changed when big churches were founded and became rich. THEN it became mostly about money, land, and power. It takes some time for the social system to corrupt a great religious teaching...but usually not too long. Maybe a generation. Maybe less than that.<<

Jesus was an invention. He never existed. Royals made him up out of bit and pieces of stuff they learned from their own superior educations and foisted him off on a dull, uneducated, illiterate populace. Bear your suffering and be like Jesus. Live in poverty like Jesus. Pay your exorbitant taxes--remember, render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's. Give your money to him because god doesn't need it.