{"id":2879,"date":"2009-12-01T01:10:43","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T06:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=2937"},"modified":"2009-11-23T13:39:44","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T18:39:44","slug":"being-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2009\/12\/01\/being-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;\">NOTE:\u00a0  Parts of this article are quoted from or based on Blacksun\u2019s yet-to-be  published book, <em>B e ALL! \u2013 The book of Pagan  Spirituality, <\/em>\u00a9 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Some people have  problems with Paganism because we didn\u2019t have anybody come down from  a mountain with a couple of stone tablets and tell us what being bad  really meant.\u00a0 The charge is leveled that we don\u2019t have any morality  system.\u00a0 Once that statement is made, it\u2019s an easy jump to thinking  we don\u2019t have any morals.\u00a0 But just because we didn\u2019t have  somebody write it on rocks doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t have a morality  system.\u00a0 We are, by and large, a very moral group of people.\u00a0  Of course, the same can be said of most of the people of the world.\u00a0  Pagans usually aren\u2019t any more or less moral than anybody else.\u00a0  But we still don\u2019t have a couple of rocks telling us what\u2019s right  and what\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 What we do have is a few guidelines that can  help us decide if something is right or wrong, good or bad.\u00a0 For  the most part, these guidelines talk about what it means to be good.\u00a0  Very little is centered on being bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Probably the  most powerful of these guidelines is also one of the most subtle.\u00a0  It\u2019s expressed in a variety of ways but it all comes down to a very  simple three-sentence statement:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<ol type=\"1\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Everything we do with intent    is magic.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Everything is connected.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">All magic produces like-consequences    for the magician.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">In Wicca, this  is usually expressed as The Law of Three-Fold Return.\u00a0 According  to that notion, whatever you \u2018put out\u2019 comes back to you three times  more powerfully.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take an accounting degree to figure  out that this can be either a carrot or a stick.\u00a0 The Three-Fold  \u2018Law\u2019 is either somebody telling you that there\u2019s a pot of gold  at the end of the rainbow or that you\u2019ll get a really bad \u2018beating\u2019  when your dad gets home!\u00a0 Other traditions have similar notions  and also express this idea that our magical acts have good or bad consequences  dependant on whether the magic is good or bad.\u00a0 Now we arrive at  the issue central to all morality systems:\u00a0 What is \u2018good\u2019  and what is \u2018bad?\u201d\u00a0 When discussing theological issues, \u2018good  and bad\u2019 usually is phrased \u2018good and evil.\u2019  It doesn\u2019t actually  change the question but it does make it sound more cosmic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">The western idea  of \u2018good-and-evil\u2019\u00a0is that they are polar opposites and that  there is some sort of exacting standard by which we (or some omnipotent  deity) can make a judgment call about them.\u00a0 For anyone who has  lived more than a few seconds can tell you, this ain\u2019t always so.\u00a0  Most of life is way too complicated to know whether some action is all  \u2018good\u2019 or all \u2018evil.\u2019  As mere mortals, we have a hard time  knowing what all the ramifications of an action may be.\u00a0 And, just  to make it harder, a lot of what we do is based upon a hastily formulated  prediction of what <em>might<\/em> happen when we put something into action.\u00a0  They usually call that an accident waiting to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Knowing if something  is good or evil depends a lot on the circumstances surrounding the action  or thought.\u00a0 Is swinging the bat good or evil?\u00a0 It\u2019s good  if you hit the ball over the fence.\u00a0 (Well, it\u2019s good if you\u2019re  not on the opposing team.)\u00a0 But it\u2019s downright evil if you\u2019re  taking a swing at your neighbor!\u00a0 In this example, neither the  bat nor the act of swinging it can be called good or evil.\u00a0 It  is only the <em>intent<\/em> behind the swinging of the bat that can be  judged in this way.\u00a0 Any similarity between this example and the  old argument that, \u2018guns don\u2019t kill people; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">people<\/span> kill people,\u2019  is purely coincidental.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">But for us to  judge anything \u2018good\u2019\u00a0or \u2018evil,\u2019\u00a0we need to have some  kind of yardstick.\u00a0 We need to be able to identify what those two  words mean and how we might be able to establish whether some act, thing,  or thought is or is not good or evil.\u00a0 This has been the work of  philosophers, theologians, and lawyers since around the time of writing  on rocks.\u00a0 It is also what we mere mortals try to figure out every  minute of every day.\u00a0 Everything we do is somehow connected to  our judgment about good and evil.\u00a0 And if that isn\u2019t reason enough  for studying the subject a little more closely, I don\u2019t know what  is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a name=\"0.1_graphic04\"><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mail.google.com\/mail\/?name=d33be9805ff33117.jpg&amp;attid=0.1&amp;disp=vahi&amp;view=att&amp;th=125173dde8ca4823\" alt=\"Your browser may not support display of this image.\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> I\u2019m going to give you my thoughts about this subject but I don\u2019t  expect you to adopt them for yourself.\u00a0 I\u2019m sharing my way of  judging good and evil in the hope that it will spur you into thinking  about your own way of judging these matters.\u00a0 As I mentioned above,  this subject has been worked over by all sorts of people for a long  time.\u00a0 Obviously, nobody has come up with a foolproof way of deciding  the whole thing (that\u2019s because fools are so clever!) and this is  quite probably another one of those so-called \u2018mysteries\u2019 that are  entirely a personal matter.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I\u2019ll attempt to explain  my method so you will have some starting point for discovering your  own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">I should first  tell you this system is built upon my concept of what Spirit is and  how it works.\u00a0 To me, Spirit (with a capital S) is the ultimate  template for all existence\u2026 including its own existence.\u00a0 I make  a distinction between spirit (all lower case) and Spirit (capitalized).\u00a0  The all lower case \u2018spirit\u2019 is a template for some specific thing\u2019s  existence and the capitalized \u2018Spirit\u2019 is reserved for what amounts  to Deity, the \u2018master template\u2019 that serves as the source for all  the rest of the spirits of discreet things.\u00a0 It\u2019s easiest to  think of spirit as a kind of information packet that determines all  of the characteristics of that thing.\u00a0 This information packet  gets new information by interacting with other spirits (everything is  connected).\u00a0 It also shares some of itself during these interactions.\u00a0  Thus, the \u2018spirit of the party\u2019 can have an influence on the spirit  of a person.\u00a0 This way of defining spirit allows us to use the  word in all the ways we do without changing its core meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Everything has  a spirit in this system (even stone tablets) and all spirits are part  of, and originate from one Great Spirit, denoted by capitalizing the  word (\u2018Spirit\u2019).\u00a0 Although it might be an oversimplification  (the matter is much more complicated than it looks), \u2018good\u2019 is defined  as any \u2018movement\u2019 by a spirit that puts it closer to this so-called  Great Spirit and \u2018evil\u2019 is any movement away from it.\u00a0 In other  words, to do good one must become closer to this source of spirit, this  Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Of course, knowing  what constitutes movement in the right direction is the key element  in this system.\u00a0 How can we know what spiritual influences will  put us and our actions \u2018closer\u2019 to this divine Spirit?\u00a0 This  question bothered me for several years and prevented me from completing  my book on the subject of the fifth Element (Spirit).\u00a0 The answer  that finally satisfied all of the arguments that I had with previous  solutions was so simple, I wondered if I wasn\u2019t fooling myself.\u00a0  But it has withstood the test of lots of discussions with other theologians  and I now find its simplicity a sign of its strength.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">\u2018Beauty is  in the eye of the beholder\u2019 is a saying I\u2019ve heard all my life.\u00a0  A quick explanation of it would be to say that what might appear beautiful  to one person may not seem beautiful to another.\u00a0 Even though we  might not agree on <em>what<\/em> is beautiful, we all have this sense  of some things being beautiful and others not.\u00a0 Trying to describe <em> why<\/em> we say this-or-that is beautiful always comes down to the fact  that <em>we<\/em> find it so; we\u2019re attracted to it but repulsed by other  things, some of which are considered beautiful by others.\u00a0 We are  influenced by our culture or our friends and family to find certain  things beautiful.\u00a0 Our sense of beauty is influenced by everything  around us.\u00a0 But even those who have grown up in the same family  and lived in the same culture have different ideas about what is beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">We say our \u2018taste\u2019\u00a0 of beauty is different from another person\u2019s, which goes back to the  beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder aphorism.\u00a0 But the choice of  the term, \u2018taste,\u2019\u00a0is telling in this case.\u00a0 We know that  certain foods will taste better to us one time than they do another  (except chocolate, of course\u2026 that tastes good <em>all<\/em> the time!).\u00a0  And it\u2019s been proven that the reason for that phenomenon is that our  bodies need the nutrients in those foods more at one time than another.\u00a0  We will even say, \u201cI have a <em>taste<\/em> for (something).\u201d  Our  taste for beauty is much like our taste for foods.\u00a0 But instead  of our bodies needing something, our taste for beauty is a hunger of  our soul, our spirit.\u00a0 In other words, <em>what we find beautiful  nourishes our spirit.<\/em> We say we are \u2018attracted\u2019 to beauty.\u00a0  That means we will be likely to move closer to it.\u00a0 Are you beginning  to see what this means?<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<ol type=\"1\">\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">\u2018Good\u2019 is <em>movement<\/em> closer to Spirit (note the capitalization).<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Beauty nourishes our spirit.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">We are likely to <em>move<\/em> closer to that which we find beautiful.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">For the moment,  consider beauty to be like a radiation sent off by the spirit of a thing.\u00a0  We might consider this like light or other forms of radiation in that  it will be radiated in waves.\u00a0 All waves have frequency and amplitude.\u00a0  Some of us are sensitive to certain wavelengths of beauty and some aren\u2019t.\u00a0  What we find beautiful depends on our sensitivity to the wavelengths  sent out by the spirits of the things in our world.\u00a0 Since our  spirit is the defining force of us and is constantly changing (spirits  influence spirits), our sensitivity to particular wavelengths will probably  change over time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Of course, this  is all metaphorical.\u00a0 I\u2019m not proposing that we attempt to build  a beauty meter to measure the spirits of things.\u00a0 But in a way,  it could be said that is what religion tries to do.\u00a0 The teachings  of any religion try to influence us to move in the general direction  of Spirit.\u00a0 For the most part, religion (ANY religion!) helps us  to be \u2018good.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Paganism teaches us to be good through  its <em>mysteries<\/em>.\u00a0 Many other religions teach morality in the  same way (in fact, the largest faith group in the world, Buddhism, is  a mystery religion).\u00a0 For us, these mysteries center on the observable <em> nature<\/em> of the world around us.\u00a0 For that reason, we are often  called a \u2018nature religion\u2019 or sometimes an \u2018Earth religion.\u2019   Our holy days are set up to put us in tune with (translate: to be influenced  by) the cycles of our physical environment.\u00a0 This influence is  to make us more sensitive to the beauty of Nature and (hopefully) cause  us to move closer to the spiritual nourishment available by becoming  more harmonious (here we go with the wavelength language <em>again<\/em>)  with our environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">So how come some  people use religion to justify doings bad\/evil things?\u00a0 Simply  because they are looking for justification for their ways and find it  possible to blame it on a religion.\u00a0 Religion is not to blame for  anyone\u2019s actions.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s possible to use its teachings  to promote or justify evil deeds, religion does not initiate action;  people do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Knowing good  from bad isn\u2019t always easy.\u00a0 But we each have a sense of what  is beautiful to us and we should follow the attraction of the beautiful  things in our world to keep us morally healthy.\u00a0 We might not always  be righteously good but we will at least be headed in the right direction.\u00a0  If we purposely go out each morning with the intent of finding beauty,  we will not only nourish our own soul but quite possibly influence others  to find their own beauty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">And that\u2019s  a <em>good<\/em> thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a name=\"0.1_graphic05\"><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mail.google.com\/mail\/?name=d33be9805ff33117.jpg&amp;attid=0.1&amp;disp=vahi&amp;view=att&amp;th=125173dde8ca4823\" alt=\"Your browser may not support display of this image.\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Great  Mother, Great Father, hear my prayer of Love:\u00a0 Open my heart and  my inner vision to the Beauty of your works.\u00a0 Teach me the wonders  and lessons of your Spirit and give me the strength and courage to face  you each day with gratitude for the struggles that are presented to  me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Guide  me in your ways.\u00a0 I know not where my Path may lead, but I could  not bear it if it were to take me away from you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Help  me keep my spirit whole and growing so that it may light the way others  may take.\u00a0 Keep me from the folly of false pride and vainglory.\u00a0  Remind my heart of the peace and wonder of being myself\u2026 without a  mask to impress others.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: small;\">Take  my Spirit quest as my gift to you.\u00a0 I only wish it to be in harmony  with your truths.\u00a0 Remind me daily of Spirit.\u00a0 Let me never  forget my quest or stray too far from its Path.\u00a0 For I am sworn  to your Priesthood and my hands and heart are dedicated to Perfect Love  and Perfect Truth, which are your gifts and promise.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NOTE:\u00a0 Parts of this article are quoted from or based on Blacksun\u2019s yet-to-be published book, B e ALL! \u2013 The book of Pagan Spirituality, \u00a9 2007. Some people have problems with Paganism because we didn\u2019t have anybody come down from a mountain with a couple of stone tablets and tell us what being bad really meant.\u00a0 The charge is leveled that we don\u2019t have any morality system.\u00a0 Once that statement is made, it\u2019s an easy jump to thinking we don\u2019t have any morals.\u00a0 But just because we didn\u2019t have somebody write it on rocks doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t have a morality system.\u00a0 We are, by and large, a very moral group of people.\u00a0 Of course, the same can be said of most of the people of the world.\u00a0 Pagans usually aren\u2019t any more or less moral than anybody else.\u00a0 But we still don\u2019t have a couple of rocks telling us what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 What we do have is a few guidelines that can help us decide if something is right or wrong, good or bad.\u00a0 For the most part, these guidelines talk about what it means to be good.\u00a0 Very little is centered on being bad. Probably the most powerful of these guidelines is also one of the most subtle.\u00a0 It\u2019s expressed in a variety of ways but it all comes down to a very simple three-sentence statement: Everything we do with intent is magic. Everything is connected. All magic produces like-consequences for the magician. In Wicca, this is usually expressed as The Law of Three-Fold Return.\u00a0 According to that notion, whatever you \u2018put out\u2019 comes back to you three times more powerfully.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take an accounting degree to figure out that this can be either a carrot or a stick.\u00a0 The Three-Fold \u2018Law\u2019 is either somebody telling you that there\u2019s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or that you\u2019ll get a really bad \u2018beating\u2019 when your dad gets home!\u00a0 Other traditions have similar notions and also express this idea that our magical acts have good or bad consequences dependant on whether the magic is good or bad.\u00a0 Now we arrive at the issue central to all morality systems:\u00a0 What is \u2018good\u2019 and what is \u2018bad?\u201d\u00a0 When discussing theological issues, \u2018good and bad\u2019 usually is phrased \u2018good and evil.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t actually change the question but it does make it sound more cosmic. The western idea of \u2018good-and-evil\u2019\u00a0is that they are polar opposites and that there is some sort of exacting standard by which we (or some omnipotent deity) can make a judgment call about them.\u00a0 For anyone who has lived more than a few seconds can tell you, this ain\u2019t always so.\u00a0 Most of life is way too complicated to know whether some action is all \u2018good\u2019 or all \u2018evil.\u2019 As mere mortals, we have a hard time knowing what all the ramifications of an action may be.\u00a0 And, just to make it harder, a lot of what we do is based upon a hastily formulated prediction of what might happen when we put something into action.\u00a0 They usually call that an accident waiting to happen. Knowing if something is good or evil depends a lot on the circumstances surrounding the action or thought.\u00a0 Is swinging the bat good or evil?\u00a0 It\u2019s good if you hit the ball over the fence.\u00a0 (Well, it\u2019s good if you\u2019re not on the opposing team.)\u00a0 But it\u2019s downright evil if you\u2019re taking a swing at your neighbor!\u00a0 In this example, neither the bat nor the act of swinging it can be called good or evil.\u00a0 It is only the intent behind the swinging of the bat that can be judged in this way.\u00a0 Any similarity between this example and the old argument that, \u2018guns don\u2019t kill people; people kill people,\u2019 is purely coincidental. But for us to judge anything \u2018good\u2019\u00a0or \u2018evil,\u2019\u00a0we need to have some kind of yardstick.\u00a0 We need to be able to identify what those two words mean and how we might be able to establish whether some act, thing, or thought is or is not good or evil.\u00a0 This has been the work of philosophers, theologians, and lawyers since around the time of writing on rocks.\u00a0 It is also what we mere mortals try to figure out every minute of every day.\u00a0 Everything we do is somehow connected to our judgment about good and evil.\u00a0 And if that isn\u2019t reason enough for studying the subject a little more closely, I don\u2019t know what is. I\u2019m going to give you my thoughts about this subject but I don\u2019t expect you to adopt them for yourself.\u00a0 I\u2019m sharing my way of judging good and evil in the hope that it will spur you into thinking about your own way of judging these matters.\u00a0 As I mentioned above, this subject has been worked over by all sorts of people for a long time.\u00a0 Obviously, nobody has come up with a foolproof way of deciding the whole thing (that\u2019s because fools are so clever!) and this is quite probably another one of those so-called \u2018mysteries\u2019 that are entirely a personal matter.\u00a0 Nevertheless, I\u2019ll attempt to explain my method so you will have some starting point for discovering your own. I should first tell you this system is built upon my concept of what Spirit is and how it works.\u00a0 To me, Spirit (with a capital S) is the ultimate template for all existence\u2026 including its own existence.\u00a0 I make a distinction between spirit (all lower case) and Spirit (capitalized).\u00a0 The all lower case \u2018spirit\u2019 is a template for some specific thing\u2019s existence and the capitalized \u2018Spirit\u2019 is reserved for what amounts to Deity, the \u2018master template\u2019 that serves as the source for all the rest of the spirits of discreet things.\u00a0 It\u2019s easiest to think of spirit as a kind of information packet that determines all of the characteristics of that thing.\u00a0 This information packet gets new information by interacting with other spirits (everything is connected).\u00a0 It also shares some of itself during these interactions.\u00a0 Thus, the \u2018spirit of the party\u2019 can have an influence on the spirit of a person.\u00a0 This way of defining spirit allows us to use the word in all the ways we do without changing its core meaning. Everything has a spirit in this system (even stone tablets) and all spirits are part of, and originate from one Great Spirit, denoted by capitalizing the word (\u2018Spirit\u2019).\u00a0 Although it might be an oversimplification (the matter is much more complicated than it looks), \u2018good\u2019 is defined as any \u2018movement\u2019 by a spirit that puts it closer to this so-called Great Spirit and \u2018evil\u2019 is any movement away from it.\u00a0 In other words, to do good one must become closer to this source of spirit, this Spirit. Of course, knowing what constitutes movement in the right direction is the key element in this system.\u00a0 How can we know what spiritual influences will put us and our actions \u2018closer\u2019 to this divine Spirit?\u00a0 This question bothered me for several years and prevented me from completing my book on the subject of the fifth Element (Spirit).\u00a0 The answer that finally satisfied all of the arguments that I had with previous solutions was so simple, I wondered if I wasn\u2019t fooling myself.\u00a0 But it has withstood the test of lots of discussions with other theologians and I now find its simplicity a sign of its strength. \u2018Beauty is in the eye of the beholder\u2019 is a saying I\u2019ve heard all my life.\u00a0 A quick explanation of it would be to say that what might appear beautiful to one person may not seem beautiful to another.\u00a0 Even though we might not agree on what is beautiful, we all have this sense of some things being beautiful and others not.\u00a0 Trying to describe why we say this-or-that is beautiful always comes down to the fact that we find it so; we\u2019re attracted to it but repulsed by other things, some of which are considered beautiful by others.\u00a0 We are influenced by our culture or our friends and family to find certain things beautiful.\u00a0 Our sense of beauty is influenced by everything around us.\u00a0 But even those who have grown up in the same family and lived in the same culture have different ideas about what is beautiful. We say our \u2018taste\u2019\u00a0 of beauty is different from another person\u2019s, which goes back to the beauty-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder aphorism.\u00a0 But the choice of the term, \u2018taste,\u2019\u00a0is telling in this case.\u00a0 We know that certain foods will taste better to us one time than they do another (except chocolate, of course\u2026 that tastes good all the time!).\u00a0 And it\u2019s been proven that the reason for that phenomenon is that our bodies need the nutrients in those foods more at one time than another.\u00a0 We will even say, \u201cI have a taste for (something).\u201d Our taste for beauty is much like our taste for foods.\u00a0 But instead of our bodies needing something, our taste for beauty is a hunger of our soul, our spirit.\u00a0 In other words, what we find beautiful nourishes our spirit. We say we are \u2018attracted\u2019 to beauty.\u00a0 That means we will be likely to move closer to it.\u00a0 Are you beginning to see what this means? \u2018Good\u2019 is movement closer to Spirit (note the capitalization). Beauty nourishes our spirit. We are likely to move closer to that which we find beautiful. For the moment, consider beauty to be like a radiation sent off by the spirit of a thing.\u00a0 We might consider this like light or other forms of radiation in that it will be radiated in waves.\u00a0 All waves have frequency and amplitude.\u00a0 Some of us are sensitive to certain wavelengths of beauty and some aren\u2019t.\u00a0 What we find beautiful depends on our sensitivity to the wavelengths sent out by the spirits of the things in our world.\u00a0 Since our spirit is the defining force of us and is constantly changing (spirits influence spirits), our sensitivity to particular wavelengths will probably change over time. Of course, this is all metaphorical.\u00a0 I\u2019m not proposing that we attempt to build a beauty meter to measure the spirits of things.\u00a0 But in a way, it could be said that is what religion tries to do.\u00a0 The teachings of any religion try to influence us to move in the general direction of Spirit.\u00a0 For the most part, religion (ANY religion!) helps us to be \u2018good.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Paganism teaches us to be good through its mysteries.\u00a0 Many other religions teach morality in the same way (in fact, the largest faith group in the world, Buddhism, is a mystery religion).\u00a0 For us, these mysteries center on the observable nature of the world around us.\u00a0 For that reason, we are often called a \u2018nature religion\u2019 or sometimes an \u2018Earth religion.\u2019 Our holy days are set up to put us in tune with (translate: to be influenced by) the cycles of our physical environment.\u00a0 This influence is to make us more sensitive to the beauty of Nature and (hopefully) cause us to move closer to the spiritual nourishment available by becoming more harmonious (here we go with the wavelength language again) with our environment. So how come some people use religion to justify doings bad\/evil things?\u00a0 Simply because they are looking for justification for their ways and find it possible to blame it on a religion.\u00a0 Religion is not to blame for anyone\u2019s actions.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s possible to use its teachings to promote or justify evil deeds, religion does not initiate action; people do. Knowing good from bad isn\u2019t always easy.\u00a0 But we each have a sense of what is beautiful to us and we should follow the attraction of the beautiful things in our world to keep us morally healthy.\u00a0 We might not always be righteously good but we will at least be headed in the right direction.\u00a0 If we purposely go out each morning with the intent of finding beauty, we will not only nourish our own soul&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}