The Damage of Organized Religion
“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”
― Thomas Merton
Organized religion damaged me. Not because any person in my church was cruel; they were lovely. Everything taught, recited, and believed in my home church was done by people who were kind and community-focused.
Yet in my young mind and with very little clear communication about who God was, I turned God into a Father in the sky, Jesus into the savior of the entire world, and black and white thinking became my safety net.
My intuition kept tapping at my heart to view the world differently, but I did not know how. I spent decades in a comfortableness and familiarity holding steady with religious beliefs that created separation and harm.
My belief system has changed, but not without a lot of work and welcoming ideas that at one time would have felt terrifying.
A challenge some of my clients face is how to get control of their pre-wired nervous system patterns to view religion from an entirely different point of view.
“They want to believe in a loving God, but the people who say they are closest to God and know the answers have caused them great harm.
The purveyors of Jesus’s love they have interacted with distorted the idea of universal love.
Somehow attention was given to the rules to gain access to unconditional love and not on loving itself. ”
In the guided stillness of somatic therapy, your inner voice WAKES up and brings your self-love to the foreground.
Initial reactions to others we feel hurt by start to break down and become less charged — new options for seeing the world begin to open up.
Life is stressful enough without carrying pain from previous experiences.
If this seems impossible or you have spiritual wounds that still cause you to feel anger or shame towards a particular group of people or yourself, give me a call.
Free Somatic therapy consultations always available.
Books to Read:
The Universal Christ- Father Richard Rohr
Living Buddha Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh
Anything by Thomas Merton