[milk and honey]

Just to clarify my own POV...

I agree with you CK that no-one need identify themselves as being anything... christian, buddhist, jew or mason etc. We each are a human being who in essence is a spiritual being. I can say that with certainty. But we can find reflections of that basic truth in the cultural-religious teachings of all societies throughout history because people who've made that self discovery have shared it with others and their lives and teachings have been passed on. The problems arose when the state colluded with the priest classes to control the people with distortions of those basic spiritual truths.

Religion, even when it's symbology is properly understood, is just a conceptual framework that describes the individual and his/her place in the universe. I am so non-attached to religianity that i am just as happy to use or not use religious symbols when discussing the subjects we cover here. Problems only arise for people who are carrying the baggage associated with these religious terms and symbols due to previous misrepresentations and distortions made by christian fundamentalists. Anyone willing to look past that can find eternal truths in scripture. These truths are not the sole property of religion or science. They are just plain truths that are increasingly being re-discovered and re-presented in various disciplines including science and metaphysics.

No-one has to 'believe' anything, just uncover truth wherever it can be found without fear or loathing of the form in which it appears. If christianity for example does not represent the true teachings of Jesus (and older books) then it deserves to be clarified for posterity imo. So i personally don't feel the need to run a mile from the biblical symbols just because church and state have colluded to dumb down the masses with a deliberate distortion of them. And i'm comfortable with Jesus and Guatama and with referring to them occasionally to make a point.

Case in point CK,,, you were negatively triggered by my use of the term "battle of armageddon" like it absolutely has to be associated with everything that peevs you about the fundamentalist christian version of it. Yet after dissing the term "battle of armaggedon" you went on to describe exactly what i was saying about it. A battle ("of armageddon" if you will allow) has raged between people for ages. Like you, i reject the narrow fundamentalist interpretation of a "few years war" right about now and i simply pointed out what you yourself are saying about conflict. Although in that "battle" i also included the interior conflict that each soul must win in order to be spiritually whole. A fractured soul is a magnet for conflict and is easilly manipulated.

Most references to Atlantis and Lemuria are relatively new (aprox the last 140 years or so) but those civilisations existed for tens of thousands of years (and more) and only relatively recently disappeared around 12 thousand years ago with the sinking of Poseid. But before they sunk they reached a high level of civilisation including very high tech accomplishments, some of which we have only recently attained again. These were based primarily on free energy and anti-gravity technologies.

The evolution of souls which we're all a part of, is going through continual cycles of high spiritual and material attainments (not necessarilly always simultaneously together) followed by cycles of darkness in the human psyche with it's attendant savagery in relations with each other. This cycle keeps repeating but the individual can transcend it as some people have already done. While this is not really an "escape" per se, the ultimate self-transcendence does place the soul (vibrationally) beyond the vulnerabilities associated with the purely materialistic expression of the mass consciousness.

The "escape" i alluded to relates to the fantastic expectations of people who rely on an external savior figure (either UFO occupants or Jesus depending on one's preferred illusion) and not to my own perceptions of it. That is why i re-inforced the true teaching of Jesus (not a physical "rapture" scenario) that relates to self-transcendence as the only means of attaining "the kingdom of heaven" or "salvation" (self-elevation) because it is a spiritual state of consciousness discoverable within oneself (according to Jesus).

On the subject of religion as it relates to humanity's many problems, you might know that true spirituality has been very rare throughout history and that war has been the normal state of affairs on planet earth for hundreds of thousands of years. The leaders were most often corrupt yet they often represented the passions of the people they ruled. Your historical ideal of communities living in harmony with themselves and each other has been very rare indeed. Those communities had their priests and shamans (by any other name) yet very few of them attained spiritual self-mastery. And for the lack of enlightened guidance and true examples of selfless service, very few community members attained the resolution of inner (and therefore outer) conflict. Not saying there were no good examples among the people but for the most part humanity has failed so far to live the golden rule. But i believe we can and i hope we can build societies based on fairness and respect.