Excerpt #93 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
In his book, Religions of the World, Houston Smith writes on two issues in which most religions agree: Adherence to some version of the Golden Rule and avoidance of self-centeredness.
Generally, we do neither.
Self-centered and shameless, too often we do to others and our environment whatever we can get away with.
We get by with this behavior in the short term.
In time, we find we are victims of our own exploitation.
For the way of life, the architecture of life, reveals an exquisite intimacy among all phenomena.
NATURE REWARDS THOSE WHO RESPECT HER.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. – Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Life broadcasts a riveting truth from which there is no escape.
I call it the reverse side of the Golden Rule.
Whereas the Golden Rule suggests that we do to others as we would have others do to us, the “reverse side” of the Golden Rule warns that what we do to others we do to ourselves.
In an interconnected world, exploitation and oppression inevitably returns to their source.
If we damage and destroy our environment, we damage and destroy ourselves.
In our relationships with other people, if we mistreat and are unkind to others, our actions will return to haunt and torment us in one form or another.
In our relationship with ourselves, if we abuse ourselves — our health — in any one of countless ways, sooner or later, we will suffer the consequences.
When all of this becomes evident and acted upon, our belief system (religion) and our behavior align not with some fantasy or fictional story but with the reality in which we exist.
Our belief system is not just something for one day of the week, or a particular time of the day when we pray or bow to this or that god, or something to be celebrated in special places only.
Our belief system becomes our lifestyle, and our lifestyle becomes aligned with and honors the larger reality in which we exist.
WITH KNOWLEDGE, WE DISCOVER OUR IGNORANCE.