All we need is love, love, love

 Tonight I’m delving into my beliefs and loves. I’m not religious, I really don’t like any religion at all. I find them dangerous, divisive and untrustworthy. If I could have one wish for humanity it would be that religion was never invented. If people want to be religious, that’s up to them of course, I just don’t understand it. Of course, many good and kind souls are religious, but I like to think they’d have been that anyway!

I am however spiritual, in an abstract sense. I dabbled with paganism for a while, but in all honesty I think I’m just too lazy to be religious. Can’t be doing with it. I don’t believe any hierarchical afterlife with a god, angels under him, right down to the lowest of the low. It’s too much how humans think! I much prefer a different concept. Imagine if we were all souls, and groups of these souls, maybe twenty or so in each group were all helping each other to explore, to grow, to experience and to become better. In order to do that souls will assign themselves different roles, making sure the roles will all cross when on earth. Each soul decides what they want to learn (a bit like the intention at the retreat) and the other souls will help that happen. Or at least, that’s the plan. It still leaves the concept of free will open, because the soul could change its mind while on earth. 

So, you come to earth to learn something, and your friends all play different roles, to help you achieve your goal. And in this life and the next you do the same for others. In one incarnation I might be a passing acquaintance, in another your sister, and so on. But the nice thing is, this group of souls stay together, each helping the other. Equally however, we all have to experience everything. All of it, both the good, bad and unimaginable. Until we can see, experience and understand everything we can’t move on. That does lead to some difficult thoughts. We all have to be a Holocaust victim, and we also have to be the Nazi guards. Until we can learn the extremes, both good and evil, we can’t understand the concepts fully enough. We are also the downtrodden, the owner of a mansion, the superstar and the cleaner. I think it makes it easier to be able to forgive someone for a perceived wrong, because the soul version of you wanted and needed to have that experience. Equally, the soul also needs to understand a lifelong hatred. 

It’s honestly the only thing which makes sense to me. Also, I love it. I love that in this life I was Jill’s husband, in another life I might be the girl and her soul the father and so on. The idea of a group of souls all travelling together leaving no-one behind, all wanting to just be better and more complete is so lovely to me. And it’s optimistic. I’ll get to see Jill again, and we can plan on other lives and relationships. Someone I was distant to in this life, maybe we are best friends in another. And despite what happened between two people, they still love each other because the wrong that was inflicted was meant to happen, in order to learn from it. I also love the idea of guest appearances - you think you’ve met all the important people in your life but then all of a sudden someone new pops up and knocks you off your feet. Perhaps a lover from a previous life? Of course, you’re not just in one group of 20 people, you intersect other groups as well, but always gravitate back. 

It’s a simple, neat and optimistic way to think. I think it encourages acceptance, everything we did, or saw, experienced or did is what we needed to learn. And if you didn’t learn it enough, you can try again next time around. I think it also encourages empathy, because the person being beaten up by someone else - both souls needed to learn both experiences. We have to do, be, experience everything, sometimes multiple times, and when you’ve learned the lesson you can try something else.

What happens next? I have no idea. We “move on”, but I’ve no idea where to, but I know we will go together, as a group. Spoiler alert for the tv series Lost, I was surprised how close their ending was to my belief system. They all traveled together, and some died before, others after, but they all waited for each other until they could go forwards together.  

It’s a simple spirituality I’ll grant. There’s also a huge number of what abouts and what ifs. Don’t care. You show me a religion that hasn’t got more holes than a sieve! It works for me, and that’s all that matters. And I do get, a bit I think, how people who believe in a god clutch the idea of unconditional love so tightly. I’ve had unconditional love, and I’m so grateful for that. And I’m not trying to make it into a religion. It’s just how I think, and it’s the only way that I can make any kind of sense of the world right now. You’re entirely welcome to believe something different, because maybe you need to learn it. And maybe I’ve already learned it, or it’s yet to come. Of course, this doesn’t excuse any awful act, just because it was a learning point. In this life, here and now, it’s an awful act, and we are rightly appalled by it. We have to, because we have to set our our morality for us to then abide by it or break it. (Don’t worry, it makes sense to me!) 

As for my loves; as I’ve said before, I’ve been fortunate enough to love 4 women (three of whom know of all four, which is a sad thought because Jill would have got on so well with all of them). All incredibly strong, powerful, resilient women. But Jill, ah my Jill, she was my queen among all women. 

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