Religion as a Virus

RSS feed for Jeffrey Sussman, Inc.:
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USA (SANEPR.com) January 20, 2009 -- Is religion a virus that infects otherwise healthy individuals? That is a question raised by a provocative new book entitled, The God Virus. It is by noted psychologist and student of religion, Dr. Darrel Ray.In a cogent and highly readable analysis, Dr. Ray traces the contagion course of religion as it enters the lives of countless individuals, beginning in childhood and infecting their behavior, professions, sex lives, and virtually every aspect of living. And Dr. Ray knows whereof he speaks, for he is the child of fundamentalist, evangelical parents, who frequently took their young son to Bible thumping religious revival meetings.“At the time that my parents began taking me to hear ministers, I was just old enough to understand the words that they preached at us,” said Dr. Ray. “From those experiences, I learned who was good and who was bad: people of other religions or of no religions were sinners who would wind up in Hell. Such teachings infected my young mind and had a profound effect on my life, at least until I outgrew my impressionable teenage years and was sufficiently determined to think for myself. The degrees that I earned in religion and psychology immeasurably helped me to see through prejudice, myth, and superstition. My situation is not uncommon, but my book is. And I believe that people who want to think intelligently and rationally about religion, whether they are believers or non-believers, will find my book a useful resource.”The God Virus carefully details the practical consequences of fundamentalist religious beliefs, infecting personalities, families, and cultures. It deals with the superstitions of religion propagated by clerics who, for example, told congregants that cancer and other diseases were the results of sinful living. As science became more sophisticated and was able to explain the causes of past diseases, such as the Black Plague, religious figures had to back off their initial pronouncements. Such a paradigm continued as researchers discovered the non-divine causes of yellow fever, polio, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, influenza, etc. Such discoveries, unfortunately, did not prevent religious leaders from condemning evolution, homosexuality, aspects of astronomy, anthropology, psychology, and even economics. Blind belief in the righteousness of one’s beliefs have caused fundamentalist Christian leaders to claim that that the attacks of 9/11 were caused by the sinful behavior of Americans. Such a pronouncement was not different in intent or origin from fundamentalist Muslim clerics who declared that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God as a punishment to America.Dr. Ray, as a resident of Kansas, has seen first hand how fundamentalist religious beliefs have a negative effect on education, for it was in his state that members of the board of education wanted to ban the teaching of evolution and substitute the teaching of creationism, which propounded that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.As Dr. Ray has written, “Religion seems to inject itself into schools, courts, legislatures, presidential politics, and local school boards, detracting from rational conversation about real-world problems, such as science, education, economics, economic development, disaster relief, and war.”Dr. Frank Schaeffer, the celebrated author of Crazy for God, wrote: “I am a religious person, a churchgoer. Nevertheless, this one-of-a-kind book [The God Virus"> is a vital reminder of the fact that we think objectively at what religion does to us.” And Earl Doherty, author of the best-selling book, The Jesus Puzzle, wrote: “Dr. Ray’s approach is non-confrontational. He advocates understanding and tolerance. He gets inside the American fundamentalist movement in ways which show that such entities have a collective life of their own, functioning as large-scale organisms which their individual members may not themselves understand or be aware of.”Whether you are a believer, an atheist, or an agnostic, you will find The God Virus an exciting and challenging experience, especially if you are not frightened or timid about being a being a rational, thoughtful, and compassionate human being. One has nothing to lose but the mental chains of superstition and intolerance that can keep one in a perpetual state of fear. “By writing The God Virus,” stated Dr. Ray, “I have attempted to inoculate my readers against a viral infection that results in terminal ignorance and fear.” Many grateful readers agree.For further information, please visit www.thegodvirus.net

Dr Moe Joins Lightworkers Worldwide

Had a busy weekend since launching this new blog. Did a search on "lightworker" and found a plethora of sites dedicated to supporting the lightworker cause which is to help every individual on this planet connect with their inner light.

The shift is upon us. It is time to get up and announce our presence within this realm. The Starseed Transmissions, the words of Seth, Abraham and Ramtha have been delivered and heard. It is time for the next wave of lightworkers to announce their presence and begin their mission.

I am one of these. I have been hibernating for over 40 years with a limited understanding of my larger purpose. I am now fully involved and committed to the work at hand. I will be bringing my musings, my research and my understanding of the Lightworker Community to this blog. Of course I will be detailing my own mission as it is revealed to me.

In the meantime here is what I have done. Over this past weekend I joined the following groups:

Lightworkers.org

Children of the Law of One

Lightworker.com

Trans4Mind

LightworkerOne

Planet Lightworker

Starseed Lightworker Lightworkers

Network 2012

Jeshua Channelings

The Jeshua Channelings are a great place to start your own search for community with fellow lightworkers. It describes the lightworker mandate, general life purpose and other important identifying information that will help you determine your place in all of this.

This is Dr Moe letting you know that I will be following a number of these sites and delivering regular updates through this blog on current lightworker happenings.

"How do I know if I'm a Lightworker?" This question is answered with a feeling, an intuitive knowing that something is stirring inside, something larger than you, certainly something larger than your current personality can uphold. You are much more than you hoped for and a lot less than what your ego needs. A Lightworker's life purpose begins with humility. That's where I am now. Having shaken off the beast, I can now get down to work.

Welcome to The Spiritual Psychologist

Hi,

My name is Maurice Turmel and I have been a spiritually oriented psychologist for the past 20 years. I started my training, as did everyone else in my profession, taking psychology courses and learning the language. Along the way I garnered 3 degrees including a PhD in Counseling Psychology and was a practicing therapist for nearly 25 years.

As a life long seeker I was drawn to psychology in the hopes of finding answers for issues of self-esteem and self-knowledge that had not been answered by my religion or other educational authority sources.

Psychology gave me a chance to look at myself through a totally different lens which I've applied religiously since that very first course. I say religiously for the same reasons such an attitude is applied to other venues. I was totally consumed with learning this system and anything that related to it became grist for the mill. I did grow out of that rigid stance, but that is how it all started.

Psychology helped answer many questions in ways I hadn't anticipated. It helped me see who I was and why I was faltering and feeling so bad about myself. Like a starving man I soaked it all up. And when it came to dishing religion I was onboard with those ideas as well. I knew formal religion had blocked me up significantly during my childhood and adolescent years. I knew that I had a lot of emotional unblocking to do and psychology gave me a method with which to view, understand and approach these problems.

Spirituality came into the picture along the way. During my studies I had come across books and programs that detailed a spiritual growth point of view emanating from the then New Age movement that was taking hold in the early 80's. I started reading those books alongside of my psychological studies and began to develop a picture that has come into full view today.

I am a Spiritual Psychologist. I understand the nature of emotional blocks, defense mechanisms and similar avoidance strategies that prevent people from uncovering their true nature and expressing their gifts. We are not simply a pscyhological being with no connection to the Almighty anymore than we are simply a spiritual being with no connection to our body and mind. We are both!

To understand ourselves and makes sense of our lives, we have to engage ourselves at a psychological level so we can rid ourselves of our blockages and escape mechanisms to access our Divinity and actualize our full potential. We need spiritual practices to access the Divine, but without a psychological relief plan, we will only be skipping over a very important dimension of our beingness.

With psychology and spirituality put together for the purposes of furthering our growth, success can be assured. We will get there, to all those places within an without, that we wish to reach. We will open ourselves up psychologically and clean out those wounds that have kept us blind to our purpose. We will attach ourselves to related spiritual practices that bring light to our life experience and realize that we cannot exclude any part of these two dimensions.

We will not use psychology to dismiss spirituality and all that it can contribute to our lives. We will not use spirituality to skip over important steps emanating from our psychological dimension. We will engage both in a full court press towards our Connecting with our Divinity which, as we shall see, includes the psychological and spiritual components.

Subsumed under both is our emotional life which has taken a beating from both dimensions when either is applied individually without addressing the other. Some spiritual practices want you to leap over your psychology and just replace negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones. Psychology for its part can easily get you bogged down in the minutest of details in terms of behavioral analysis. In its most rigid configuration, the science of psychology can prevent you from seeing the forest for the trees.

Both psychology and spirituality are clearly involved in descrigin who and what we are, while helping us decide what we wish to become. Our emotional life is front and center on this battlefield if we wish to see it as such. Otherwise, accessing and relieving ourselves of emotional blocks and traumas will make both dimensions available to scrutiny while presenting opportunities for growth.

This is what I've learned in 30 years of study and practice. My emotional life is as important as my psychological life and leads me to my spiritual wealth. Why would I want to avoid such a satisfying result by favoring one dimension over another? Why indeed?

In this blog we will be addressing these issues and bringing forth what we have learned over the past 40 years. Yes, 4 decades. I've been a seeker since age 20. I am now 64. These are my experiences, my trials and tribulations. These are also my conclusions based on the experience garnered on this path and my openness to heartfelt intuitive knowledge.

My Higher Self speaks to me through my heart. I access that inner voice every day. I rely on its guidance. It has my best interests at heart. My ego is only interested in self-aggrandizement. My True Self is interested in Love, for myself and the world around me.

The choice is simple. Choose Your Self!