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

[Leonardo17]

Have you ever felt like you are like a complete alien in this planet?

No.

That’s because we are complete aliens on this planet.

False, and...frankly...silly.  We're certainly natives.

And therefore there is this need in us (at least in some of us) that needs to be fulfilled. And that’s the new approach I am talking about.

You know what happens when you base a "therefore" on something false and silly, right?

   Thanks for correcting me. I think it is more accurate to say that I feel like a complete alien in this world sometimes and my reading in spiritual subjects are telling me that I am truly an alien in this planet. This means that the Inner Self is something that resides in Eternity and (for instance) our quest for “more” stuff in this world is actually a masquerade for this inner alien that is simply not satisfied with anything the world has to offer. This is one of the main themes we can discuss later if you want. 



   I want to bounce back to things that are not genuinely spiritual. You guys know now the pages long thread I’m writing on all these “spiritual” issues. So let me show you something that has nothing to do with spiritual issues:
 

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https://irp.fas.org/cia/guerilla.htm
 
(Go to the Combatant-Propagandist Guerrilla section)
 
   This is the Bin-Laden stuff. You know that he was also a CIA trained agent at some point. I recently saw a very shocking movie about the organization structures of Sectarian Muslims or Political Islamists right here in our country in the 1990’s during which we were a secular democracy that was closely monitored by the secular armed forces (a bit like Today’s Egypt).
 
   So the methods they are using. How they hide from secular authorities. How they subvert influential people to their cause. How they brainwash young people through the use of a travestied form of Islamic practices…. You could go to the document I am sharing above and replaces words like “Sandinista” / “Communist” with “Secular” / “Democratic” and the words like “Democracy” / “Freedom” with “Islam” and “Sharia” and there you got your Sharia Cookbook or “Psychological Operations in Urban Sharia Warfare”.
 
   I am someone who sees and recognizes these things because I had made it a habit in the early internet days to download “cool stuff” and even read them when I had time after printing them from my black-white ink printer.
 
So how does a practice that is normally defined as urban guerilla propaganda subversion techniques end up becoming “The true way of Islam” and so many people end up actually saying “Yeah, these are the ways of Islam indeed, I agree with that”
 
I don’t know if you are getting what I am telling you here. I could say the same for “Christian” teenage LGBT reeducation centers in America for instance. I could ask when did a medieval blend of typical fascism that does nothing except freely torturing young people because of their sexual tendencies end up being known as “Christianity”?
 
Note: The text above is short and really cool. I was subjected to different types of propaganda while I was growing up. Thanks to these sources I grey-rocked most of them. Another source I read back on these days was the book of William Powell. Back in the 90’s that book had also a section on propaganda and urban guerilla tactics. There was even a section on hacking (Early 90’s hacking of course).
 
Anyway: What I want to say is that this is (or should be) the field of law enforcement (I am talking about the actions of groups like “The Muslim Brotherhood”). It is not, and will never be the field of religion and spirituality. I don’t spread my ideas and/or convictions like that. I don’t brainwash people into it. I don’t make plans to undermine the secular / democratic structure of the society (or world) I am living in. I have convictions but I am not convinced in the way a member of IRA is convinced about his/her ideology or a strong Leninist is determined to do whatever is necessary in order to promote what he/she is believing is “The best way of action for the good of us all”
 

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So I think the difference between a “typical” Muslim and someone who falsely assumes he/she is a Muslim should be crystal clear by now.