I love Temples here in Thailand! Colorful, silent and sometimes very original! Yesterday I found one that had aliens as guardians at the gate! All these temples visiting got me thinking a lot about religions (yes, as if I did not have enough things to think about).
I was grown up as an atheist. My mother comes from a very Catholic family and was traumatized by the constrictions and taboos that way of living brought to her life, my father comes from a poor family from the South of Italy, which was a mix of Catholicism and mystic powers of witches and superstitions (and his mother converted to Genova’s Witnesses when my grandfather died).
I grew up without knowing anything about religions, and I am not really proud of it. Religions have lots of influence on culture and are a big part of social life pretty much everywhere in the world.
It was when I started traveling (and especially when I moved to Istanbul that I realized how important (and powerful) religion can be!
Religions around the world
From the chaotic, passionate and loud Induist Temples, to the melodic Sik prayers, to the shiny Buddhas, to the quiet Mosques where the eye is free from iconography. Until the Baha’i, with their empty temples and ever-embracing religion. I had time and occasion to be in all of them and find myself at home in a way in each one of these places in these last 7 months of traveling.
It got me thinking about the religion that forms are cultural background in Europe, named after a martyr and which main symbol is a crucifix, with all the pain and sacrifice attached to it. And all the past history linked to Christianity. With no offense to anyone whatsoever, I kind of get it why I was never attracted to religion in Europe. Christianism is often dark – churches are dark usually, with some amazing exceptions of course – and with a great deal of the guilt concept deeply rooted in.
Make love, not wars!
But again please don’t get me wrong. it is my experience of Christianism. I like all religions after all – even if they were exploited by governments and powers to make humans feel weak and women specifically, but it is a human error, god has nothing to do with it after all. And I think it is such a blessing to be able to learn so much about different ways of relating to God, to the meaning of life, to the infinite and absoluteness of our consciousness or whatever it is that religions are about.
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And for the first time in my life, I got an idea of what it means to believe in something. And that “something” is for me very blurry still, very multilayered, and so so vast. And it is in everything: in Krishna, in God, in Buddha, in Allah, in myself and in all of us. We are one after all. ?Atman ?
And you? What’s your take in religions? What is your relationship with God? What do you believe in? Let me know in the comments below!