I've been going around the spectrum of religion and spirituality fully again for like the third time.
And I'm just more and more clear on the truth of the nature of reality, religion, spirituality, and what's actually important to know and understand… and then more importantly, what you should also un-know.
That's what this email and future emails this week are going to be about.
I have some friends that are very heavily invested in the Christian worldview.
Others in Jewish system.
I've recently been speaking to a lot of Muslim people on Twitter, understanding their worldview even more deeply.
I was also recently listening to some Sam Harris, who's a well-known atheist arguer—but he's really more in the Buddhist camp, although you wouldn't label it anything.
And that's the thing here.
With anyone who truly understands the practice of Buddhism… even the Buddha himself wasn't Buddhist.
And guess what else… Jesus wasn't a Christian.
I know. Shocking!
These guys just understood the divine nature of the reality of the moment and embodied it fully.
They didn't walk around with bumper stickers.
This is the exact thing that all religions are pointing to.
The point at which I now aim to live from every single day.
And if you don’t understand experientially what the Buddha and Christ were living like, even a little, you will totally miss the boat of what I’m about to write.
I've also been reviewing my notes from Eckhart Tolle's 4-day retreat I attended in 2024. And rereading The Power of Now and A New Earth.
We're so lucky to have Eckhart Tolle. So blessed.
And yet Eckhart Tolle just goes right through people sucked into religious dogma.
It's like offering water to someone dying of thirst and they say, "No thanks, my book says I need to find a well."
You are the well.
The truth is that there is a rising level of spiritual light within humanity.
But at the same time, there's a larger concentration into form, dogma, and beliefs that just further solidify the ego.
I've been seeing a lot of that.
I really have a lot of love for the young guys trying to spread their faith through their religion online.
However… respectfully, what I am seeing is that these guys are far into what I would call delusion of the ego.
They are, and I say this with love, delusional religious nut jobs.
When someone becomes that engrossed in religious doctrine, they just totally miss the point.
It's like memorizing the menu at a restaurant, arguing about the font, and then never ordering any food.
They hammer themselves further and further downward, cementing their feet into the total delusion of egoic constriction.
The more you experience the nameless truth as a state of existence that Eckhart speaks of very clearly, and the Jesus spoke of very symbolically, and the more you learn open-heartedly from various religious traditions in what they attempt to teach…
The more you really see that maybe 95% of people are just totally, utterly lost.
They've lost the plot.
They've lost the point of what these religions are pointing them to in the first place.
To make another analogy - it’s like someone is pointing at the moon, and instead of admiring the moon, they’re stuck staring at the finger… obsessing over how long the finger is, what color it is, the angle at which it’s pointing, how long it’s been there for…
They’re missing what the finger is pointing at completely, which is literally the whole point.
It's quite sad, honestly.
But I aim to awaken people as much as I can. And I hope these emails do a bit of justice there.
And I mean that without the slightest bit of ego. I'm not here to defend any identity or belief system - but rather the absence of concepts.
I’m not here to describe the finger, but to just remove the finger and tell you to look at the moon directly.
Pointing you into direct experience.
If this makes you curious, read on.
So if you're dogmatically religious in any way… if you believe that your religion is the one true religion… I have a couple things I'd recommend to explore what I'm offering you.
1. If you're Christian, read Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.
It's short. It'll challenge you heavily. You might throw it across the room. That's fine. If you’re so certain Christianity is true, read it.
2. Then read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Or A New Earth. But The Power of Now is probably the better starting point.
3. Use ChatGPT or whatever to educate yourself on Sufism - Islamic mysticism, and other religious traditions. Buddhism. Hinduism from a mystic perspective like the view of Yogananda, or Ramana Maharshi.
Look into Christian mysticism as well. Eckhart Tolle is basically a Christian mystic. He talks a lot about the true teachings of Christ.
Mysticism points you to inwardly experience the Truth the religions point to.
Here's the key:
When you look into these things, you can't look at them with your mind.
You have to look at them with your consciousness.
You have to hold them in space.
You have to look at your thoughts as objects in consciousness, then look at your consciousness itself - void of labeling it as anything at all.
Then you have to look at the words of the other religious traditions and compare them to your own.
This tweet I wrote summarizes virtually what I'm offering to you. Basically a bunch of very potent pointer fingers from various religions or mystics:
You have to have a visceral experience of this moment and of what the teachings are pointing to… rather than trying to grasp some concept in your brain and hold onto it to strengthen the identity of yourself.
That's the trap.
And that's what most religious people fall into.
They use religion to strengthen the ego rather than dissolve it.
Which is, if you think about it, the exact opposite of what every founder of every religion was trying to do.
Somewhere, Jesus and Buddha are facepalming in unison.
These are all my notes for today.
More soon.
-Arlin
