Religion is fear based and fantasy. Bold statement, I know, but if one begins the process of spiritual PRACTICE, not just rote ritualistic behavior, true spiritual awareness begins to develop, and we begin to see the bible as metaphor and teaching at best, and parts of it as deliberate misinformation.
I have been in ministry training, was raised Catholic and now channel Jesus~Holy Spirit, the latter of which offers very definite teachings which I have transcribed as a book and dvd. Am I an expert? no, but I AM living a life of spiritual PRACTICE. It takes WORK to ascend. a LOT of it, which is why people mostly want to fall back on what's already been done, and then argue about it. The only way to enlightenment is doing the hard work of it OURSELVES.
That being said, the cornerstone of spiritual awakening is SELF RESPONSIBILITY-becoming totally responsible that we are the creators of ALL of our experience. The next step is being willing to ask the Holy Spirit, our higher self, GOD, etc, to HELP us FORGIVE OURSELVES for making up beliefs of unworthiness that are manifesting the stuff we dont' like. Its that simple. The Jesus I know says that this is all we need to know to spiritually awaken, and create HEAVEN HERE, not in some "fantasy" place with some "father" GOD. WE ARE GOD. Here are the two steps:
1. total, ruthless responsibility for being the creator of ALL of our experience
2. being willing to forgive ourselves for making up beliefs of unworthiness
Easy? Not on your life-especially the "taking responsibility" part, in case you haven't noticed.
In fact, if one reads the bible from this level of truth, it says that Jesus could NOT heal EVERYONE because of their UNBELIEF!! What weren't they believing? that they were WORTHY of being healed.
so....consider taking on a path of mastery. It will be a DOING path of SURRENDER and SERVICE. Then you are LIVING the WORD, not just arguing about it....