Do you believe in, or are you seeking:
God, the Ground of Being, Goddess, the Divine, the Transcendent, the Universe, Allah, Buddha Nature, Christ Consciousness, the All, Nirvana, or any of the vitually countless names for the goal of the spiritual path? Do you find your answer not only in "worship", but also in places like Nature, Metaphysics, Astrology, Reiki and all of the healing arts, within your psychic abilities, in the New Age movement, or in some combination of the above? Are you a former Christian who struggled to find God inside institutional religion but have no problem finding God elsewhere? Most of all, do you find your answer in the still, small voice within that is most often accessed through silence, meditation, contemplation, and mantra practice? If so, then UAC MILWAUKEE is a place for you to meet other seekers of the Divine to share our stories and travel the path to union with the Ground of our Being together. There is no judgment here, only love. Our hope is to learn from one another as companions on the Way.
SHOCKED?
For many people who read the paragraph above, the first thought they have is, "How can you say that? This isn't what I have been taught!" We agree that most people have been taught that there is only one way to God and that all those who follow another way are doomed at best to failure and at worst to eternal damnation. A study of what the founders of the world's major religions actually said reveals that they never said anything about what happens to people who don't follow their teachings - quite possibly because none of them intended to start a new religion! It was only later, after the new religions were organized and founded and looking to flourish that such ideas came into use. In other words, the notion that we must follow one particular spiritual path has never been claimed by any spiritual master.
The wave of the future is pluralism, which can be defined as the truth that there are many different paths to God and that all responsible spiritualities lead to God (or whichever of the above names you use to describe the goal of your path). When we seek to denegrate others because their spiritual perspective is different than ours, we are operating from a tribal perspective that is in error. That isn't to say that every path will work for everyone, but rather than every path will work for some people. No realized person ever would denegrate the path of another.
What about Jesus saying that "no one comes to the Father but through me?" That was the Christ Consciousness speaking, the Logos of God, which has been present with God from the beginning - what Bishop Craig calls the Christ Event which occurs every time Divinity and matter come together, just as they did at the creation and on the day when you were conceived!
WHY DOES ALL THIS MATTER?
Quite honestly, it matters for several reasons. The first is that truth matters, and the truth is stated quite clearly above - that all of the threats of damnation for those who don't follow a particular spiritual path are later additions to the traditions by human beings who were seeking to "sell" their beliefs. This is the heart of the toxicity of religion. In a world where most of the wars being fought have and are being fought between people of differing religious perspectives with both sides consigning the other to eternal damnation and doing their best to ensure that process begins as soon as possible, we can no longer continue with this distorted, tribal perspective that religion affords.
The second is that for those of us with heritage in the Judeo-Christian tradition the time has long come for us to acknowledge that hell is not a concept present in the original languages of either the Hebrew Scriptures or the Greek New Testament. Our English translators translated the idea into our English Bibles. The place called Gehenna or Hades was the garbage dump outside the old city of Jerusalem. Today that area is a fertile valley. It seems that the fire that never dies, has.
The third is that the systematic oppression of the marginalized that has gone on at the hands of religion (as opposed to spirituality) throughout all of history simply must stop. Whether it was Joshua commiting genocide against the Canaanites, the Hebrews at the time of Jesus excluding the Samaritans for being ethnicly impure, the Christian attempt at genocide against Muslims during the Crusades, Hitler's religiously motivated attempt to commit genocide against the Jewish people, or the less dramatic but no less damaging exclusion of the left handed, the handicapped, women, people of color (of whom Jesus was one!), women who have had an abortion, or homosexual people all of it is unacceptable and contrary to any responsible understanding of God - and all of it happened because of misinterpretation of the scriptural record by religion.
Here at UAC Milwaukee we offer a pluralistic understanding of spirituality and offer a number of different ways to practice your spirituality. Consistent with that charism, we also offer meditation instruction, spiritual guidance, reiki, and a number of other modalities to grow your spirituality into a rich, healthy, holistic approach to life. Of course, if you prefer tribal religion, we have no problem with that preference. There are plenty of traditional churches hungry for members, and there is nothing wrong with being in that setting. God knows, they have plenty of empty seats. If you are looking for something more, if you are part of the more than seventy-five percent of America that has rejected traditional religion, we are here to serve you.
Check us out! We think you will appreciate the difference.
