Religious survey

and thanks

I meant also to say thanks for the warm welcome also to the people who have either posted here or written privately.
 
River said:
People often think of buddha dharma ("Buddhism") as a religion, but I'm not so sure.
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Yea River, I also look on "Buddhism" - especially in it's modern reincarnation - as another example of misinterpretation and manipulation. In fairness I suppose, anything hinting of any spiritual nature came to inherit the "label" of religion.
But I've never understood Buddhist thought as a religion either. More simply of a way of living & understanding life in a way that is beneficial to all and everything.

It's unfortunate in many ways that it grew to acquire a label but that seems to be a human thing. We need to "name" everything. And then that name takes on a life of it's own unless you look under the cover.

GS
 
I'm an agnostic who practices as a Unitarian Universalist. My boyfriend is a member of a liberal Christian denomination called Christ's Disciples. My girlfriend is Roman Catholic.

So I'd have to say no, not all polys are pagans and atheists. However, I heard the same assumption made about bisexuals.
 
whirlingdervish said:
I was raised in an LDS family and was really into it until I turned 15 or so.
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About that same age was when i left xtianity alone for good.

Psychedelics along with studying taoism, buddhism, western occult, gnostic christianity, sufiism, and other random "new age" type stuff got my mind into a different place where the stifling restrictions and inherent flaws in people's interpretations of things seemed arbitrary and I came to see the messages of Christ, Buddha, Krishna and others to be the same. I believe that they were enlightened beings...
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Not sure about Buddha, but from reading by whom and when Paul's epistles and the gospels were written, I've come to the 99.99% sure conclusion Jesus the Nazarene never existed in the flesh.

The Bible, Original and Newer Testament, were written by men (certainly not by god and definitely not by a goddess), a long long time ago. Some of their conclusions about humanity and the divine and psychology and proper social and personal interactions are still relevant today. Much is not.

....

So basically I guess "gnostic" would be the term since my basic belief is in direct experience of divine principle rather than thinking a church heirarchy can bring me any closer to Life.
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This is exactly where I am at. Jesus as a god is an avatar of an agricultural principle brought to a higher plane of human consciousness. Like Dionysus, and like an ear of corn, he is brought to life to be cut down, planted in the ground, brought to fruition, and finally cut down again, to be consumed, to be planted, and so it goes, the circle of life.

I strive to be a Christ, not follow or worship one.

I really didn't like Christianity for a while because it just seemed sooo judgmental and... well, evil, lol. But after contemplating Christ's words further I came to a deep respect for him (or whomevers words are attributed to him) and agree with Gandhi when he said something along the lines of "I would gladly be a christian if I had not met so many of them" :p

Peace,
whirl
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Have you read the neo-gnostic book, The Jesus Mysteries by Freke and Gandy? Love that book.
 
I was raised Catholic......Went into a comfort level with New Age and Metaphysics for a while.......Had a Guru and travelled to India and around the world with him off and on for 5 years.....tried fundamentalist Christianity for a while, but now I like the term "Spiritual Agnostic" which redsirenn used. I am studying about The Evolution of Consciousness and things like Awakening the Impulse to Evolve right now.
 
Magdlyn said:
Not sure about Buddha, but from reading by whom and when Paul's epistles and the gospels were written, I've come to the 99.99% sure conclusion Jesus the Nazarene never existed in the flesh.
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I have been on both sides of that question. I started off believing he was a real person. Then later, my grandmother gave me "Case of Christ." The logic was so bad in that book that I started to doubt it. I read a few articles and thought he was pure legend. Then I listened to some college lectures and thought he was a simple preacher who was killed and buried in a mass grave. But after reading other books about early Christians, I saw that many of then never thought he was physically present. So I would say that I now think he was a real human with about 75% certainity. But who knows what I will find next?
 
Sweetheart said:
Someone recently said to me that he thought all poly people were pagans or athiests.

Is he right?

Personally, I am neither pagan nor atheist. My origins are in Christianity, but I am now more of a Buddhist/New Age/Philosopher. My wife also grew up as a Christian, and flirted with paganism & wicca before settling into a kind of New Age thing.

What about you?
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I'm poly and I'm an atheist.

I trained as a scientist (although that's not my current profession) and tend to approach the world through evidence/experience rather than faith/belief/magic. I do choose to believe that humans have the capacity to be basically decent to one another and the world, which may be a bit of a stretch given the evidence... :shrugs:

Also am Tauist/Zen/Discordian. No, really! ;)
Tauist philosophy not the religion... So I'm talking about the spiritual in the sense of human spiritual feeling in response to the actuality of the universe... or god in the einsteinian sense if you like... You can choose to believe that everything is sacred, or that nothing is sacred...

I've got a lot of time for the Dalai Llama's ideas on human happines. Also for some of the words of Juddha Krishnamurti - who is as far as I know the only religious leader to dissolve the 20,000 strong sect founded to follow him - with the instruction that "truth is a pathless land" and that people should go and explore it themselves rather than look to religious leaders for answers...

If I feel like anthropomorphising the universe once in a while - then I find the old pagan goddess "fits" best - i.e. (the) god(dess) is a crazy lady... Danu/Eris/Gaia/Kali. Wild, beautiful, gentle, dangerous, ugly, angry, powerful, indifferent, unpredictable. She of many aspects. Maybe she likes you sometimes, other times very much not. :D
 
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GroundedSpirit said:
It's unfortunate in many ways that it grew to acquire a label but that seems to be a human thing. We need to "name" everything. And then that name takes on a life of it's own unless you look under the cover.

GS
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There's a reason why naming is so important in magic/ceremony. Naming does have immense power. In the way it effects/manipulates/hijacks humans' thoughts and feelings.
 
I am a cradle Catholic who is entering the Episcopal Church. My wife is a second-generation Unitarian Universalist. My husband is another cradle Catholic who now practices Buddhism. We are raising the kids in an inclusive home. :)
 
I was raised in a very conservative Christian church, Church of Christ. I still love God and believe in the Holy Trinity, but I don't buy into the interpretations of the Bible fed to me by a mere man. I don't think we can every truly understand God and what He stands for. I do know this, according to the Bible, God is love. If God is love, then how can He be against love of any kind? If I choose to have more than one relationship that is full of love, then I believe it glorifies God just the same.

I still read my Bible and talk about God with other Christians, so I think that would put me in the "actively practicing" group and I don't believe being poly is a sin.
 
I'm an atheist and logical empiricist. Objective, consensual reality is what we can all measure in some way, and what all competent observers agree on. It's the real world outside our minds.

I accept that things like beauty, good and evil, and love do exist; it's just that they are subjective, interior constructs and not objective realities. I'm responsible for maintaining my subjective reality in good order -- ie, understanding how to do good and oppose evil, how to create and appreciate beauty, etc -- and no one else has the right to impose their subjective reality on mine.
 
Poly and Spirituality

I believe that poly people are as diverse as monogamous people when it comes to spirituality. Over time, I sense, there will be less and less emphasis upon "groups" of beliefs and more upon individual beliefs as we are all so diverse and bring different experiences to the moment :)

Peace,
Chris
 
I'm a spiritual mutt. I don't fit into a category or label. There really aren't any words for it. To me everything is spiritual, I *am* Source. So is everyone else.

Ari
 
We are both pagan (the hubby and I). I am a shaman/medicine woman, and he says he is just plain pagan.
 
Religious Survey

Interesting reading. I had to go back to the original question before answering: "Someone recently said to me that he thought all poly people were pagans or athiests."

Most of the pagans I've met are monogamous. I have only started meeting anyone referring to themselves as poly, & that's from frequenting specific sites. My spiritual beliefs play a part in my choice of how I want to live right now but being true to myself & a need for self awareness, innate needs, are what leads me to explore polyamory. Not religion.

I was raised Catholic & felt, at an early age, that there were too many contradictions in what I was being taught. That shame & fear of eternal damnation was a way to control people. As a teen, I labelled myself as agnostic rather than atheist because I knew there was something more. At 27, I met Wiccans, Druids, New Agers, Buddhists, & learned about Aboriginal cultures & Taoism. I'm not one to join groups so I became a solitaire & labelled myself as Pagan with an interest in Taoism, sometimes referring to myself as a Paganistic Taoist.

I'm exploring living as a non-monogamous individual & I find that I'm able to spread my ability to love, & be loyal & fair as comfortably as when I was monogamous. It isn't religion doing that. It's my innate nature that is being drawn out by those I am attracting into my life. I am fulfilling a need right now.
 
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