Is "Taoism" a Religion?
PART 1Is “Taoism” a religion?
Well, first things first,
What’s “religion”?
Really, all people search for Truth; we seek a peaceful way, a natural way, a way to motivate our civilization toward the ultimate.
“Human beings, knowing that they are not perfect, desire perfection and search for a better life.
Historically, people have always made mistakes in this search because they have misunderstood the nature and potential of human life.
Each generation has interpreted this potential differently; some have made religious assumptions while others have ignored or even denied the value of human life.
As various social and organizational hierarchies develop and evolve into traditions, fundamental mistakes continue to be made. These accumulate and are often themselves perpetuated as tradition.
If we naively follow our own tradition, we may someday find out that we have made yet another mistake — the mistake of not questioning our traditions.“ Explains Grandmaster Liao.
Even though our modern technology has brought us into the space age, the motivation of human life remains mysterious.
Human achievements seem very small in the light of the historical progress of civilization. Yet even our theories of evolution are still in doubt.
In spite of all our technology, we still look up at the immense sky and wonder how it all started.
“I often wonder why those ancient prophets in every religion we know of, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc, had so much more spiritual wisdom and power than we do today. Has our spiritual power as humankind grown even weaker with time?
We think we are smarter today than people were in those ancient times. We are pitifully mistaken.
Without technology, without artificial “smarts,” ancient people had to rely on their true feeling to learn. They used their imagination.
They remained naïve, genuine, and down to earth, relying on faith.
Because of that, they were much closer to God’s frequency.
They were actually quite advanced in their ability to reconnect with God. Through that closeness, they figured many things out in ways that seem impossible to us.
How many ancient cultures, like the Mayan, Egyptian and ancient Chinese, left records of their sophisticated understanding of mathematics and astronomy, even though they had no telescopes or calculators?
But today we think we are so smart, even though we have almost killed our entire planet.
We have computers and spacecraft and thousands of channels on our cable television set, but we still can’t get along with each other, or answer the fundamental questions of life and death.
So even though religions may have made many mistakes, don’t throw away the old wisdom from the ancient prophets. They may have understood more than we do about the truth of our being.
However, realize that as an artificial human system, religion is also prone to being taken over by wrong interpretations and wrong thinking as it is passed down through many human hands.
Its wisdom can point you in the right direction, but it cannot substitute for your own
direct connection to God.” Continues explaining Grandmaster Liao.
They were pointing at the same thing…
Religious misunderstandings
Religious mis- understandings
It’s a widespread human tendency to ignore all other aspects and focus solely on one side of an issue.
This is what brought many civilizations into religious worship.
Some religions stabilized civilization and the social order for thousands of years, but they also gave rise to a series of tragic and bloody wars between differing religious factions.
Formal religions were often guilty of extreme and dogmatic attitudes. They sought to dominate by force rather than to promote harmony. They wielded influence so strong that humans could not easily shake it off, thus causing a wave of thought pollution whose effects persist today.
“Religions can make a big mistake when they treat God like a strict father figure or cruel judge who sets down rules and morals for this and for that.
The real issue is your energetic ‘frequency’. Does it match up with God’s frequency or not?
If your behaviour is harmful, negative, artificial and evil, your energy will sink lower and you will fail to connect with God.
If you are pure, natural, compassionate, humble and merciful, your energy will be lighter and more closely match God’s frequency, making it more likely
that you will be able to make that connection.
All of those religious teachings initially tried to guide people in the way back to God.
They tried to help people raise their energy to establish a higher frequency that would give them a better chance to connect.
They tried to show people how to distinguish between the good & bad messages inside themselves.
But over time we turned those teachings of beautiful wisdom into human level laws and “morals.”
When you realize how God works, you realize: “I have to change myself and my energy deep inside in order to feel and to understand the real God, in order to truly ‘pray’ and connect.”
– Explains Grandmaster Liao.
That’s a totally different approach than today’s interpretation of spiritual wisdom.
The cruelty of religion, like any other man-made system, is that it can be taken over by wrong interpretations.
That’s why many religions end up telling you just to follow their rules and rituals, go to church once a week, say your prayers, give them money, and then you’ll be right with God.
Religious institutions count on you to look to them for the answer. But we want to do more than that on our spiritual journey. We want to have the ability to connect directly with God for our answers.
You can continue to be Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, etc, but know that you can do better than simple rituals and mental beliefs. You can work toward a real connection with God in whatever religion or way of life you choose.
Likewise, there is no reason for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or Christians to point fingers at each other in anger.
That happens out of our polluted way of thinking. It is very easy to push the idea of hating different cultures to people rather than push the idea of our connection to each other/connecting with each other.
By our sinful, disconnected nature, we are easily annoyed by anything different. We fear and despise people who are different than us, mainly because we are very insecure.
Human beings have sin, meaning separation from their connection with God, so naturally they don’t respect each other. They cannot comprehend or feel the power of the origin or Tao, for if they did, then they would naturally love each other.
If the God we are talking about is only the God of one population or people, then it’s not really God.
If I know God, I would never insult Mormons, Buddhists, Sikhs, or anyone. But some religions kill each other. What’s the cause of the turmoil?
If I think my God is better than your God, then it only proves that I’m worshipping the wrong God.
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