Dec 28 2008
Are You God?
Hello fellow dark passengers. Welcome to our first Spiritual Sampling Sunday. I sincerely hope I still have a few readers around for the second one after this. While I intend absolutely no disrespect to anyone, y’all know I might be a tad sarcastic so…
…yeah
Okay, a few ground rules before we get started. I encourage all comments and respect all points of view; however, I will not allow antagonistic or flaming comments on my blog - be it against me or against others. The purpose of this weekly series is to inform everyone as to what other people around the world believe or have believed at one point in history without prejudice or bias.
This is not a forum for evangelism. Disagreeing with the views of others is totally fine; screaming about how their soul is going to be damned into the fiery pits of hell…not so cool. It’s my blog and if I’m not going to use it to go around saving the immortal souls of readers then you can’t either
Sorry to be such a downer…I’ve seen a lot of religious and spiritual discussions go down the tubes because individuals, while well-meaning, showed an utter lack of respect for others.
So here we go…
To give us a framework to work within, I thought I’d start out with something fun: A quiz. Nope, I’m not going to make you take a quiz. I went to BeliefNet and took their 20 question quiz about things I believe and find important. They then rated my top 27 matches. Now (in no particular order) I would like to begin discussing these.
Please note: The views of any faith/religion discussed do not necessarily reflect those of the writer, Your Dark Passenger or Today.com.
On my list is a faith known as Jainism. Despite the fact the name reminds me of my husband’s aunt, Jinas - followers of Jainism - believe that everyone gets to be God. (I am so using my awesome power to create an endless waterfall of chocolate that makes people healthier and helps them lose weight…and it will be the best tasting chocolate ever.)
Jinas accomplish this hefty feat through the process of reincarnation until they finally reach a state of karmic balance - meaning they no longer have any remaining karma, good or bad, to carry forward into their next incarnation. Because the total number of individuals who can achieve this goal is limited only on the human ability to attain balance, the number of possible gods is unlimited.
Does that mean I might have to one day bow down and worship Sydney Cat if she figures it out first?
In Jainism, reincarnation can drop a soul into any of the three planes of existence: earth, heaven, hell. Where a person ends up is solely based on their karmic debt at death. (Something tells me Hitler is the driest blade of grass in hell.) Yep, that’s right…we can be reincarnated into any plane of existence as any number of forms. The basic accepted rules of morality seem to apply to Jinas; however, if you’re too good of a person then you’d end up with a surplus of good karma and would have to start over, possibly on a better plane of existence than you started.
While some things seem pretty rational to me, there are a few…erm…quirks. First, the universe is just as it always was. This means no one created it. Heaven, earth and hell have always just existed. (But was Starbucks already there before always began?)
Another belief in Jainism is that a person must do no harm to any living creature. Vegetarians, you can wipe the smirk off your faces because, unless you hung out in the growing field and waited for those yummy celery stalks to die of natural causes, you just ended up with some bad karma for killing someone’s reincarnated cousin for food. Now, if anyone wants to follow a cow around and wait for it to die of old age, well…you could eat that without remorse. I’m still unclear what Jinas actually do get to eat.
I’m going to assume all my chocolate bars sacrificed themselves so that I might enjoy their delicious-ness.
I think I know how I ended up matching with Jainism. You see, Jains believe that there is evil and suffering in the world because of people. People are selfish. People are self-serving. People as a whole care more about their own happiness and comfort than anything else. Without caring for others, what point is there to curb those baser human impulses? The id (Freud may have been sex-obsessed but I do like that word) comes out to play and the world goes to hell in a hand-basket, symbolically speaking, of course. As I’ve always believed mankind to be capable of great evil, even without supernatural assistance, it makes sense to me that I’d fall into line with that one.
But that’s it. I refuse to suffer without chocolate just to eat up some of my naughty bad karma points. Y’all hear that?
So, for anyone still reading at this point, I’d like to invite you to find out more about Jainism as I’ve not gone into the detail I possibly could have. Also, if any Jinas are reading, please feel free to throw in your 2 cents!
Jen
“Let your dark passenger come out to play…Be your own nemesis!”
I hope this works. This was very interesting.
lets try this
You crack me up, chickie! You have GOT to start checking your e-mail before you go on a posting rampage. All your comments were there, just waiting for me to get them out of the moderation queue.
I think the trouble with the chocolate waterfall is that by the time you had the awesome power to do something like that, you’d no longer want it because you’d be beyond all those things.
But I could be wrong…
I was laughing all the way through the post. I have to agree with you on the part about human beings. It’s not until people start helping other people and walk in love can they balance out the karma.
Funny I went to take the test a got Buddhism…Jainism was number 7.
Laughing? Sydney Cat will not be pleased when she finds out people mock the idea of bowing down to her. Hmm…perhaps we won’t mention this to her.
I thought it was humorous that in my results of the quiz, I had 3 faiths lists that were all at odds with one another…
Are we not already bowing down to Sydney Cat…(hoping this is kitty at home) Feed Sydney, bring Sydney toys, Play with Sydney, give Sydney offerings in the form of treats…sounds like a Gods/Goddess life to me.
Yep, she’s my cat who thinks she’s a person. And yes…we really do have to be at her beck and call already. I mean, it’s BAD if the string stops moving.