Rules and Rituals

Me and Steffen had a quite interesting, also not completely neutral discussion on church, Buddhismus, rituals and rules in our life and I would like to give some my thoughts to you.

We all have “rituals” of most diverse kind in our life. And I agree to Steffen that these rules and rituals have shown us a certain direction particularly when we have been a child. As long as they are a certain noncommittal framework they are also quite meaningful and even necessary in my eyes.

But unfortunately a wide variety of rules are pushed upon you as a child, which are in no way in alignment with what the particular one wishes from the inside. E.g.: very soon it disturbed me to go to the church each Sunday, whether I had the desire or not. Every time this hour was terrible for me and I only waited for it to pass by quickly. So the whole thing didn’t had anything positive for me. Another one, who goes voluntarily to the church each Sunday, experiences more positive out of it naturally.

And I think this is also an important point: As long as rituals and rules, which came from the outside, align with yourself or fit at least very well, is a marvelous thing; because one can draw also very much power from such rituals and rules, because they provide a certain objective.

But particular rules which come from the outside and which do not feel well and aligned with yourself, should be given up in my opinion and replaced by own “rules”.

Certain basic conditions for a society are surely useful, since they all provide a direction and help us unconscious humans to not aimlessly stray. But the more conscious one becomes, the more he knows about the sense and the goals in life. Then one does not need the auxiliary rules of the society any longer, if they appear not further useful to him.

So then one has the free choice. Is this rule of the others helpful for me? If “yes” this is totally okay also if it is not helpful and being replaced by own rules.

Thus I do not mean that each and everyone can just do what he wants, because it is to differentiate here out of which mental condition he acts. If one is a conscious human being then he will never limit any other being in any possible way even though remaining perfectly faithful and truthful to himself. For which reason should he think and act this way?

This becomes problematic only with unconscious humans, that is humans with massive, strong ego. But I am not talking about such human beings here.

Ultimately everyone may select freely during his lifetime here on earth which is correct for him and which is not. As long as he is unconscious he will perceive that which thinks and does the majority as the “correct” way. But rules, religions, rituals etc., which have been created by someone else, can align only partially with us though. This is because of the fact that we are all individual. And a rule which is helpful to one human being to 100%  could be helpful to the other one only up to 30% though, because he has completely different tasks and preferences.

Walking wakefully and fully aware through life, staying open for the new and remain faithful to yourself, this is what I believe is the highest of all arts.