Religion is a mask that distorts our perception. The deceptive veils of faith and belief are illusions. Unraveling religious allegories and unmasking faith and belief in myth is the only path to save humanity from imploding.
The larger our mask, and the longer we wear it, the less we can see and the harder it is to take off. Faith and beliefs are the foundation of religion. This disguise is nothing but a set of blinders that limit our ability to think and perceive.
The Illusion Behind Religious Masks
When we confront our illusions, it helps us see why we wear the mask of religious illusions. We must learn that we can, and we should take off the mask. It is the key to freedom of thought. Why do you need to believe in an imaginary friend called God? Why do we observe religious rituals like prayer?
We have become used to wearing this mask because it is an accepted part of our culture. If you have conversations with an imaginary friend, this is considered a sign of a serious mental illness. You could be admitted to a mental health institution. But, if you qualify this by telling them your imaginary friend is God, then everything is okay.
Western Organized Religion
The Abrahamic systems give religion a bad name, and not all religions are harmful. Some, like Taoism and paganism, encourage freethinking, collaboration, and community. Similarly, religious traditions in the East protect and preserve the most effective methods for exploring consciousness. Many of these systems encourage the development of your path.
Western organized religion has the most aggressive and destructive beliefs. Its sectarian ideologies dictate values and thought. They have an adverse effect on your ability to use logic and reason. So, they restrict our ability to move beyond the boundaries they set.
“Much of what is called Christianity has more to do with disguising the ego behind the screen of religion and culture than any real movement toward a God beyond the small self, and a new self in God.” — Richard Rohr
My Religion is Not Myth
However, believers of these paradigms don’t view their religion as mythology. They admit it contains many myths but believe in its divine inspiration. The illusion behind religious masks cannot be dispelled with facts.
You can point out errors in fact and logic until midnight. They will remain staunch believers unless they can admit to at least one of these problems. It is a testament to the power of groupthink manipulation. These tactics can override our instincts and free will. Their masks are firmly in place.
Unraveling Religious Allegories and Unmasking Faith
What is the difference between the two imaginary friends? One is named Susan, and one is named God. The one named Susan is considered a sign of mental illness. The one named God is a socially acceptable delusion.
“A delusion held by one person is a mental illness, held by a few is a cult, held by many is a religion.” — Robert Todd Carroll
Religion becomes the invisible mask that operates via belief and faith. Belief and faith are tools religion uses to overcome rational thinking because when you don’t have facts or valid evidence, you can substitute faith and belief. Ask them to believe and have faith in your premise, even though it lacks supporting evidence.
Legends, Myths, and Stories
A religious allegory is a story that uses religious myths, superstitions, and symbols to convey a message. These stories contain fictional characters, events, and settings, which make them easier to remember. It’s a way a religion establishes its main principles. For example, the story of Good Samaritan in the Bible teaches the importance of compassion and kindness toward others.
Unraveling religious allegories goes beyond the story itself to the origins of the narrative and the principles it communicates. For example, the story of the Good Samaritan comes from a tribe of people, the Samaritans which predate Christianity.
When Assyria conquered Israel in 722, they intermarried with the Jewish people. This new group of people became the Samaritans. They didn’t adhere to strict Jewish laws but were still a part of the Jewish community. So, the parable in the Bible is about someone outside the religion that helps someone, not out of religious obligation, but out of the goodness of their heart. Here, unmasking faith reveals a greater understanding.
The Deceptive Veils of Faith and Belief
Western religion adopted everything in its bag of tricks from the ancient mystery religions. Intertwined with the doctrines are the mind control tactics that we call groupthink manipulation today. These tactics are used to control and brainwash groups of people and are a well-studied phenomenon in social science.
“The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear.” — Deepak Chopra
The ego isn’t our enemy; it is the home of our personality and instincts, which are necessary components of the mind. However, our culture turns this mechanism against us. It uses brainwashing and propaganda to keep us in fear. We learn to trust and believe insanity. Our beliefs conceal the truth of how we allow them to control us.
“Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation. We must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations — projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves. We must acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.” — Parker J. Palmer
Unmasking Deception in Religious Practices
The barriers of faith and belief create a self-made prison that hinders our ability to use common sense and critical thinking skills. Breaking through these barriers and taking off this mask is intense inner work. Spiritual work is a destructive process. When you break down these walls, they come crashing down. The mask of religious illusions hides our true potential. Wouldn’t a reasonable person want to have this knowledge?
“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” — Adyashanti
Proud to Assert Faith Over Facts
Unfortunately, many people are proud to live by faith and exclude facts contradicting the tenets of their myths and superstitions. They enjoy exposure to self-hypnosis, which is how belief takes precedence over facts and logic. People learn not to trust the facts or what they see. Here, the deceptive veils of faith are used to keep people paying customers.
“For we live by faith, not by sight.” — 2 Corinthians 5:7 New International Version
What are the most common deceptions of religion?
1. The need to believe in an imaginary friend.
2. Reliance on divinely inspired texts to justify everything from discrimination to genocide.
3. Indoctrination makes people the best liars because they believe what they are told is true.
4. Use of sleight-of-hand and deception to appear to perform miracles.
5. The use of emotionally charged services in order to use groupthink manipulation tactics.
Western religion relies on deception in religious practices in order to maintain cash flow and control. If it told the truth of its origins and purposes, no one would support them.
The Truth of The Observer
The “real you” is the person you talk to inside your head. It’s the aspect of consciousness that ancient traditions called spirit, soul, or the Observer. This intrinsic expression of our awareness should not be confused with our personality and instincts, which are simply elements of our ego. Our ego is a necessary tool of awareness that connects our bodies to the Observer.
The Observer is our truth, our essence. It is the person you talk to inside your head. The real us is what some call spirit, soul, or Source. Source is the underlying consciousness in everything. You’ve probably heard the statement; We are one; we are all connected.
Many religions and philosophies contain theories about what we are and why we’re here. These theories and legends are found in stories enshrined in holy texts, and these stories follow the same pattern Joseph Campbell (1) calls the Hero’s Journey. This typology is found in cultures around the world and is based on the basic human desire to investigate things.
“You are the observer who watches your emotions as they push, pull, and stretch you.” — Bryant McGill
If we direct this need to investigate, we are following this pattern. The tools we use to do this are what we call spiritual technologies.
We can understand oneness intellectually, but it is another thing to experience it firsthand. When we are fully present and experiencing the beauty of oneness, the Observer is in the driver’s seat instead of the ego. It puts us in contact with the Source of pure consciousness. Presence allows the Observer to come out of the background.
Confront the Mask of Religious Illusions
Inner work methods help us see and understand the subconscious mind and the ego and allow the Observer to be present. They help us see the thought scripts and values that run beyond conscious thought.
It doesn’t matter what you believe; engaging your opinions about reality is good. The ability to see beyond or through our worldview sets us free.
Strangely, many people do not want to be set free. They like their mask so much that they fight to keep them on. Confronting the mask of religious illusions is a way of unmasking faith and belief in a corrupt system.
“Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
People Resist Change
This critique of religion isn’t new. Xenophanes was an ancient Greek philosopher who criticized traditional anthropomorphic representations of gods and argued that gods were human inventions. Plato’s attitude toward religious myth is interesting. He recognized myths were unverifiable and lacked argumentative character. However, he saw the value of myths in passing on essential knowledge shared by a community.
Confronting the mask of religious illusions is something they don’t want you to do. Fairy tales and legends become the basis for controlling the mind. If you can get people to believe in talking snakes and living in the belly of a whale, you can get them to accept anything. Faith and belief conceal the truth about the motives of religion. It does not want us to investigate its origins and how it became our sacred ground.
We must also investigate our sacred ground because religion accompanies our values with mythologies and superstitions. Myths are the most destructive when religion mistakes them for truth. It’s an attempt to make faith perform as knowledge. So, religion becomes yet another mask.
“The late proceedings of those daring invaders to establish a national religion have opened the eyes of all lovers of liberty and religion… I have been told they have thrown off the mask. They are preaching to the people to elect none but godly men to represent them in the General and State Legislature; … what they mean by godly people is people of their own stamp.” — Anne Royall
The path of truth is a lifelong journey. As we learn to discern the facts from fiction, that mask comes off a little more. Even revealing part of our true self makes a life-changing shift possible. The modification allows us to see other possibilities. Now, we can perceive the deceptions of our worldview. Once we can see them, we can begin confronting our illusions.
Seers and Shaman teach us that other levels of reality exist. These are processes that expand awareness. Most people are born with access to three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, and sleeping. However, the dominant Western cultural narrative does not want you to seek these possibilities. They want to keep paying customers. It’s all about control.
Only by confronting our illusions can we move beyond their boundaries. This kind of confrontation isn’t easy because it means facing our fears. Some excellent tools can help us remove the mask of religion, mythology, and superstition. They allow us to engage the Observer rather than running on autopilot. These are what we call spiritual technologies.
Spiritual Technologies
Many ancient cultures were focused on investigating the mind and the unknown. These pioneers found and cataloged the most efficient ways to unlock the doors of consciousness.
We divide these tools into four major categories:
— Analytical Tools to Enhance Critical Thinking
— Seated and Moving Forms of Meditation
— Tools to Increase Awareness
— Natural Methods of Healing
Final Thoughts
Unraveling religious allegories can be an emotional roller-coaster. It is freeing, but it can be scary. The longer you have been a prisoner to the mask of religious illusions, the more intense the process of recovery.
Deception in religious practices begins with indoctrination. Once you accept the belief in an imaginary friend, they have you. This delusional thinking is the basis of the control used by organized religion. Moving beyond the barriers of myth is the goal of a true spiritual warrior.
Unmasking faith and removing the deceptive veils of faith can be dangerous in some societies. When religion gains control of a culture, it doesn’t want to let go of the power and control. Yet, this is the only path to freedom.
We know not everyone will agree with the points of this discussion, but we hope it inspires your research. The hideous mask of religion justifies everything from discrimination to genocide. We can no longer afford to allow delusional thinking to control the world.
References
(1) Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Wikipedia
(2) Abrahamic Religions, Wikipedia