Graphic: The 4 Pillars of a Complete Religious Tradition

This is a concept I've been working on in my head for quite some time. I finally got around to make basic infographic for the purpose of illustrating the basic concept.



Blue box - This is the Abstract and Theoretical part of a religion. It's the core ideas that hold the whole thing together. The greatest of traditions have very elaborate philosophies, cosmologies, and myths. Religions of a more dysfunctional or unbalanced nature tend to have core ideas based on nonsensical dogmas and incoherent philosophical ideas. Some new religious movements, particular the various underwhelming favors of "Neo-paganism" and New Age, are rather weak in this area. Many groups of the former type are outright hostile to the concept of philosophy itself as they tend to be focused almost entirely on aesthetics and alternative lifestyles.

Red box - This is the communal part of religion. It's the rites and festiveness that bring a community together and make the religion-in-question a truly living (and lived!) tradition. One could argue that a religion or spiritual system without much in the way of this component is in fact not a religion at all. A religion with no communal aspect will have a lot of difficulty gaining support and patronage from the broader community it exists within.

Green box - All of the great traditions come from a specific people/culture inhabiting a specific place or geographical region. Many of the aesthetic part of a religion come from the land where the religion first emerged from. The so-called "pagan" religions are the strongest in this area by far. And the many missionary/prophetic religions tend to be the weakest in this respect, as these religions are heavily weighted toward abstract ideas and aspirations (Blue box). We could say that a religion totally cut off from the land is an unbalanced religion.

Orange box - This is what merges spirituality into religion. The greatest religions have systems of personal/individual practice which adherent/practitioners can utilize to do things like cultivate virtue/merit, purify their soul, raise their consciousness level, ect. Very dogmatic religions tend to be quite weak in this area, as the authorities who run those religions tend to view personal spiritual practice with a lot of suspicion, seeing as individuals who cultivate various attainments tend to become a lot more qualified experts on religion and spirituality than the authorities. At the same time, a lot new religious movements tend to be too heavily weighted in this area, as the movement focuses a lot on personal development and very little on developing philosophical ideas, caring much about any specific local place, or interacting with the broader community.

No, we are NOT "All one"

....well, at least down here in the meat-space, or even in the various psychic/astral planes of phenomenal reality.

The "But, we're all ONE" mantra is perhaps one (sorry for the pun) of the most used and abused and unphilosophical utterances of the New Age-inflected pseudo-spiritual end of contemporary pop culture.

Let's get the first part out of the way; yes, we are indeed "all one" from the standpoint of any Monist type of metaphysical theory. In other words, if we're to assume any validity to Monism, then we are ULTIMATELY all one. But the oneness stops the moment we "sink down" into phenomenal manifestation. Applying metaphysics, we arrive at various schema explaining the various subdivisions of Spirit/Soul. The lower in manifestation we go, the more cluttered, confused, and disorienting components we encounter which keeps Soul/Mind fettered to various transient and ephemeral manifestations of phenomenal interplay.

We could say that the average "human soul" (however one may theoretically slice and dice it) is a confused mess of sense impressions, emotions, impulses, unfulfilled desires, karmic influences which have accumulated over a very long stretch of incarnations, erroneous viewpoints, unskillfull attachments, ect. And in each individual, this manic interplay of phenomena is going to have a slightly different flavor. Each individual is quite different in this respect. And each individual will find that different methods, techniques and approaches for becoming free from their fetters will be more suitable for their own particular condition.

So it seems that Henosis (i.e. merging with "the One," or attaining Moksha, Nirvana, or whatever) is the final end goal for any mystic or devotional spiritual practitioner. But this is indeed a very long mountain climb (to put it lightly) and requires monumental amount of personal effort, discipline, and cultivated merit. In other words, the "great work" sure ain't no walk in the park. Our spoiled-rotten generations of recent history want instant gratification in practically every area, including spirituality. As if muttering the aforementioned catch-phrase over and over again will somehow magically evaporate all of a person's phenomenal impurities, cruddy karma, and delusions....yeah.

So yeah, before every being in existence attains the Ultimate (in how ever many of quadrillions of eons that might be), there's going to be endless repeating cycles of wars, stupid arguments, idiotic opinions, people behaving totally off their rocker, ugly people, big fish chomping on little fish, mounds of fecal matter, and whatever other unflattering affairs and objects one can think of right off the top of their Lower Nous. Right now down here on grubby little Earth, perhaps the sane thing to do is try and mitigate the less-than-stellar aspects of our everyday habits and the circumstances we all have to deal with in one way or another. And yes, that might require naming and recognizing those things.