COMMON TRAITS SHARED AMONG RELIGIONS

Monopoly on Truth

All religions claim that every other religion is false (or at the very least, misguided). Each religion claims to have a monopoly on absolute truth, usually via some prophet who purports to have received word directly from god therefore he (more often than she) is the vessel of the final revelation, the last word. There cannot be more prophets after him, and never any greater.

Religions resort to these tactics because admitting that truth is an ever changing phenomenon would jeopardize their hope of a truly loyal following, decreasing the religions' power in direct proportion to their loss of attendance.

How can any one human being lay claim to absolute truth? That's absurd, truth is often one thing in the morning and something completely different in the afternoon.

And if a religion were to be honest and say there have been many revelations, some with a greater degree of light than others? And that there would be more revelations in the future coinciding with the general spiritual growth of the entire human race as a whole?

Some may say "Oh, it's just a passing fad". Others will see the Shards as a stepping stone up along our ever-evolving path.

The Shards does not require you to believe in any human godhead figure. It requires no icons. All you need is a little research and a consequent awareness of your role as a member of the continuum.

Get on with the business of life.

The Desire to be Somehow Immortal

The majority of religions have a belief that the soul is (or can be) immortal. In some religions there is a promise of everlasting 'heaven' or 'hell' (depending on how well you did in the 'test of life').

Reincarnation religions can have one's soul moving up or down the pecking order (depending once again on how well one does in the 'test of this one-of-many-lives').

We are the ones responsible for creating heaven or hell right here on this Earth. The Shards does not allude to any exterior form of eternal bliss or damnation. This is not the test of life - This IS life.

The real test is what kind of world we leave for our siblings who come after us.

As long as a species does not go extinct the collective soul lives on within each and every member.

Belief in the Soul

A ripe receptor and a 'homeless' Shard are attracted to each other.

The Shard and the receptor come together in the same natural way as a bee to a flower.

How does the Shard know where the receptor is? A Shard can be defined as a 'proto-soul' which may also be interpreted as a 'Proto-Consciousness'. A Shard IS conscious, and what is the Shard's immediate desire?

After the Shattering each Shard wants to begin inhabiting a new vessel .

Faith in God

In the Shards religion, God is female - embodying the creative, procreative, primal evolutionary desire within us.

God likes to wind things up and watch 'em go. She enjoys nice surprises.

Your free will determines how it all plays out. As such, God is also evolving right along with us right inside of us.

The Outer-God and the Inner-God are one and the same. All life on Earth is but God's varied manifestations.

Prayer

"I pray to you and thank you God for everything you do:
The Infinite Universe, the Smallest Particle, the Miracle of Life and You.
I'll always try to do my Best in everything I do.

I will endeavor to couple Positive Desire with Positive Action.

I will endeavor to avoid perpetuating Negative Action.

I will endeavor to make this planet, our home, Earth, a better place for all my Sisters and Brothers to live in so that we may together dynamically progress towards truth, knowledge, and wisdom.

Your humble servant I remain."

Prayer or similar sorts of 'positive wishing' take place in virtually every religion. It's egotistical to pray for yourself, as in "Oh, dear god please get me more money at my job", etc. Because most religions have the idea of 'selflessness', i.e. the opposite of selfishness.

Prayer properly used, is praying for the good of all and for loved ones, i.e. positive wishing.

Positive wishing in an internal quiet situation (how prayer is commonly performed) can help accomplish amazing things.

In the first place, it causes you to clarify, to put things into perspective. Secondly, by defining the problem, routes of action can be seen more clearly. No positive wishing is complete without positive action, so that after you've finished praying, you have to go out and actually make what is needed to happen to help fulfil whatever you were praying about.

Internal changes can be effected by either negative thoughts and desires or by positive ones. The goal is a healthy mind in a healthy body. Prayer can also be used to make physical evolutionary changes in the human species.

Prayer is not as useful if there is no positive action to back up those positive desires, though.

A Reason To Be

The individual cannot cope with the possibility that the Universe is a big accident. Via religious motivation, life is given meaning.

Encourage Good Will

Unfortunately most good will only extends to immediate family and to those who share the same religion.

With The Shards this Good Will must, by definition, extend to every man, woman and child on this planet.

All Religions Say Every Other Religion Is False

In other words, "every other religion except 'my' religion is bunk."

The Shards rejects this kind of intolerance. In the Shards religion it is accepted that in every religion there is a certain degree of truth and lessons to be learned.

But, because the source of evil is the scattering of energy, over the course of time and by way of various interpretations, a lot of rubbish has crept in to those religions too.

However, now the Shardal Revelation is here, and Shards need to be taken into account towards better understanding and explaining so many of the things that control or influence human behavior, in exactly the same way as one already takes into account social conditions, genetic patterns, etc.

Up to this point humankind has been ignorant of the fact that Shards exist. Now that we realize that the human race is one big macro-organism, and further, that every system on this planet is also intertwined in essentially the same manner (as we are to it and it is to us), we can finally begin dealing with life on this planet at a much more intelligent level .

Punishing Offenders

If some insist on commiting anti-social acts they may have to be restrained, but revenge is not a form of justice, and never should be considered such.

A punishment can never equal a crime, just as two wrong actions can never result in positive act.

And you cannot erase the evil from someone's heart just by locking them up, or beating them - in fact, these oppressive actions often have quite the opposite effect, with the resolution in the law-breaker's mind: "Next time I won't get caught".

Shards©1984