Can there be New Ways of Understanding and Practicing Ancient Religious Teachings?

[Leonardo17]

Leonardo17:

If I was to sum this up to one thing only I would ask the question:

- Is the person being present in the “here and now” and achieving some degree of connection with what we like to call “Inner Realities” or “Higher Realities”.

Realities.

"I'm not sure that word means what you think it means" (Inigo Montoya in Princess Bride)

- Nothing that can be directly observed or measured by the naked eye or any instrument that we know of or even mathematically calculated either (as I said before)
 
   These are more like subtle forces that (we believe) are having very real effects on our lives here and now. Like denial of reason, practical intelligence, logical approaches in the name of our self-hatred that is pretending to be our self-love or instinct of self-preservation. In other words our fear based self or Ego.
 
   On the level of politics, fascist rulers or modern populist movements have learned to harness the power of this “ego-self” or “small self” to recruit simple minded people into their movement (that end up destroying nations rather than helping them).
 
   Here is on example:
 https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2...istan.html
 
 
This is (another) Church of Istanbul (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) that has been recently opened for Muslim prayer. I’ve been to this place several times. No one lacks mosques in that area (or in any area in the whole country). The reason because it was made into a museum in 1940 is that it contains beautiful Byzantine frescoes and people want to go in and see them. It was a logical decision to do so because Muslims are not allowed in places with so many human representations anyway:
 
Chora Monastery in Istanbul



 
 
But that’s how the small self-works. And it’s a universal theme. Mr. Modi is doing the same in India, building Temples to Hindu deities on sites that are considered Holy by Muslims. Technically: Modi could build a temple there a few 100 meters next to it, instead of completely demolishing the ruins of the mosque that stood there. But that’s the creature within every one of us that basically works like the little Smeagol in LOTR.
 
So if you want it scientific, you can check the works of Carl Jung and its Archetypes and collective subconscious. So these are the themes spiritual people are working on.
 
One reserve the right to say: “If it cannot be directly observed, or measured in some other way, then what is the difference between that and something that does not exist?”
 
- Well maybe it’s the result of these phenomena in the world in which we are living. That’s how I would try to explain it.