No Effect:

“Making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:13)

Plainly speaking, religious traditions make the word of God useless. You know, I spent 25+ years in the mainstream church; and one thing I noticed, was that the churchgoers’ (myself included) lives were no better than anyone else; and in some cases, dare I say the majority, they were even worse than the non-churchgoers, or “heathen” as we liked to call them.

Now, I’m not talking about superficial comparisons here, but what I’m saying is, the things we were being taught did not seem to be changing anyone’s life for the better. There were no real tangible results from obeying these religious traditions year after year. It gave you a sense of entitlement for sure, it made you pretentious towards outsiders, and at the end of the day, it simply padded the ego.

Traditions are products of left brain thinking. I’m not saying all traditions are bad, but they can have negative side effects as mentioned in the above scripture. The ego loves traditions, and if left up to its own devices, it will build a framework out of them, and we can easily spend the rest of our lives inside this without even realizing it.

Think of it like this: Left brain = traditions, right brain = new adventures.

The Pineal gland, or “third eye” in our brain is responsible for all of our mystical experiences of God, and it becomes active when we engage in right brain activities. The problem is, most of us spend our entire lives living from our left brain, leading traditional lives, doing traditional things. This is the ego’s domain, and as a result, our Pineal gland goes dormant and becomes calcified like a small stone because it’s not being stimulated.

So how do we stimulate it? The easiest way is to immediately start doing non-traditional things. If you normally brush your teeth with your right hand, brush them with your left. If you normally turn left to go to work, turn right and take the scenic route. Breaking traditions stimulates your right brain, but I must warn you, the ego hates this. Do it anyway.

The story of David and Goliath is a parable about dissolving the ego. David represent our true self, Goliath represents our monstrous, giant ego. David takes a small stone and slings it at the giant and it hits him right between the eyes and kills him. This is symbolic. The stone (Pineal gland) was activated and hit right between the eyes in the center of the forehead (third eye) and when it did, the ego died.

Let’s slay a few giants today!

In love and light,

-J