What it truly means to be spiritual

Right before the pandemic hit, and technically even afterwards until about May, I was partaking in an English class at my local community college, and in this class, I had a really cool, really lively teacher. About every class day, she always had interesting stories to tell the rest of the class to tie into the main discussion of the lecture, such as the deeper meaning of John Lennon's "Imagine", a time she accidentally started an argument with someone just because she mentioned that she found Communism to be an interesting model of governance because of the community-based nature of the system (even as a libertarian at the time, I myself took no offense to these statements), as well as her interest in medieval Europe, which she stated led her to discover an Old English version of the Bible, well predating the King James Version we're familiar with today. She stated that in that Old English version of the Bible, the forbidden fruit which Adam & Eve ate is actually logos, or human logic. The "fall of humanity" is meant to represent when humankind began basing their life & morality off of their superficial human logic, which is based in bias and emotion, instead of divine wisdom, which are universal principals which cannot be altered and have universal application.

I don't mean to be judgemental, but many Christians seem to have very pagan ideas about the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, as well as of the Lord's Supper. With the former, they say there's one God, but in their minds seem to think three Gods, and with the latter, they seem to think that just the act of eating bread and drinking wine as symbolic of a blood atonement is an act of purification without understanding what it truly represents. This is primarily apparent in the Catholic & mainstream Protestant factions of Christianity. The Orthodox Church, while not perfect either, at least has a better concept of these spiritual notions with their doctrine of connecting the mind with the heart, which I will explain later.

Now, during the Enlightenment Era, many prominent individuals heavily criticized the mainstream notions of the Holy Trinity. Isaac Newton rejected the trinity and claimed it to be heretical. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson rejected the trinity and the divinity of Jesus altogether, even having had rewritten the Holy Bible altogether.

But then there was Emmanuel Swedenborg, who had a deep spiritual awakening in his adult life and used this awakening to write a series of books to explain the Bible to the carnally minded Christians of his time. While there is a Swedenborgan faction of Christianity today, it was never his intention to start a new church as he saw the existence of multiple churches as an issue, but his intention was to reform the existing churches of his time to teach true spiritual wisdom. Now, when cross-referencing Swedenborg's works to what I said earlier in this thread about logos being the forbidden fruit in the Old English Bible, as well as the Orthodox doctrine of connecting the mind with the heart, this is where it all starts to come together;

The Father, Son, & Holy Spirit are correspondences for Divine Love, Divine Wisdom, and Divine Action respectively.

The bread of the Lord's Supper is a correspondence to Divine Love, and the wine of the Lord's Supper is a correspondence to Divine Wisdom. Partaking in the Lord's Supper is a correspondence to Divine Action.
The Orthodox doctrine of connecting the mind with the heart is a correspondence to using Divine Action to connect Divine Wisdom with Divine Love. 

Contrary to popular Christian belief, this verse does NOT mean that only Christians can be saved. What this verse actually means is that no man comes to Divine Love (the father) except by Divine Wisdom (the son).

This is absolutely true, you cannot truly love something without having true spiritual wisdom. If you're without spiritual wisdom, you're just left with counterfeit loves such as lust, narcissism, and admiration.

Love is NOT a feeling. Today's mainstream talks a lot about love, but it doesn't actually like love, it just likes the flittery flirty feeling, it wants the emotion without paying for it.

Love is a force that drives us to act. Love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it is NOT emotive. It is through spiritual wisdom that we receive this force that drives us to act, there is no other way, period.

True spiritual wisdom, to seek God through prayer, to understand that sins are bad because they're destructive tendencies which hurt the soul, the importance of detaching yourself from the materialistic life of seeking pleasure and status instead of purpose and charity, and understanding the importance of caring for others and striving for a cause greater than yourself, among numerous other goods, is how we receive true spiritual love, or that force which drives us to act.

What separates the Bible from other religious documents, or actually what separates the Four Gospels from both the rest of the Bible as well as other religious documents, is that the latter are documentation of humanity seeking God, while the former is documentation of God seeking humanity.

About a week or so ago, I downloaded the Bhagavad Gita onto my Kindle, and through cross referencing, I found many divine truths in the Gita which are identical to divine truths in the Bible. "Yoga" does not refer to the method of physical exercise which is popular in the West, but detachment of the mind from pleasure or status, which is also a detachment from idolatry (addiction, obsession). "Karma" refers to deed or action, the "law of karma" refers to the notion that every action leads to a reasonable result, that we reap what we sow. "Yajna" refers to worship or offering, performing a selfless service pleasing to God. I also found references to One God without a beginning or end, references to sin and evil, and even references to heaven and hell, all in the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita does contain sufficient information which can aide one in obtaining spiritual wisdom to therefore receive true spiritual love, but the problem with the Gita, is once again, it was written by humanity seeking God, by a human seeking the spirit of divine love, wisdom, & action, and not the other way around, and the Gita is not without humanly errors.

Like the Gita, the Old Testament of the Bible is also documentation of humanity seeking God, and not the other way around, and like the Gita, the Old Testament is also not without humanly errors. Jesus even alludes to this in the Gospel of Matthew;
Matthew 19:7 - They said unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
Matthew 19:8 - He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

The writers of the Old Testament of the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, and numerous other religious documents, plus even the New Testament apart from the Four Gospels, received divine love through divine wisdom, and used this divine love (which is again, an action, not an emotion) to write these documents to help the rest of humanity receive divine love through divine wisdom, but once again, they were still written by humanity seeking God.

Granted, technically the Four Gospels weren't written by God either, but they are documentation of the incarnate of God on Earth in the man we know as Jesus Christ. Again, unlike Sage Vyasa, Laozi, Buddha, or Muhammad who were humans seeking the spirit of divine love, wisdom, & action, Jesus Christ was, and still is, the spirit of divine love, wisdom, & action coming down to Earth to seek humanity. The Four Gospels are beyond a shadow of a doubt the best documentation of divine love, wisdom, & action available to humanity because of this. All the spiritual wisdom necessary to receive divine love are all located within these Four Gospels, they're all in Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John, you just need to read it prayerfully and understand what these verses are corresponding to, and don't read them with a literalist mindset.

I know some of you may want nothing to do with religion or spirituality as it may have been tainted for you by abusive fundagelical preachers. The following in this paragraph is advice, not a command, take it or leave it as you wish;

First of all, please forgive (meaning let go of the grudge) these preachers, for they do believe they're acting in good intentions, but stay away from these preachers from now on. (know the saying, Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me)

Next, please recognize that legalism, or partaking in religious practice and giving up certain things out of obligation or fear of punishment, is not at all compatible with spiritual life. You cannot be coerced into living a spiritual life, you must turn to spiritual love & wisdom liberally, on your own terms, because you want to. This is also why separation of church & state is important, because it allows humanity to seek God freely, free from coercion from manmade law. 

After letting go of the baggage of abusive preachers and seeking spiritual wisdom and thereby spiritual love freely because you want to, and on top of that if you're able to find a church (spiritual community of worship & support) that isn't abusive, you should certainly feel much better, or at least, it has worked for me. Granted, I'm still equivalent to a crawling toddler in my walk in spiritual love and wisdom, but in this earthly life, we'll never be truly perfect, we just need to seek to be preferential.

Also, before I close, I want to discuss the Bible's supposed "condemnation" of homosexuality, since I know that's an issue for many others as well.

It is worth noting that the word "homosexuality" only appears in modern English variants of the Bible. The King James Version doesn't even mention the word "homosexuality" even once, and there didn't exist a word which translates to "homosexuality" when the Bible was first written. None of the Four Gospels, which like I said before are the only documentation of God seeking humanity, use any terms which can in any way conceivably refer to homosexuality. As for this following verse;

This specifically refers to the act of penetrating a man, as one would penetrate a woman. It's important to understand that in this historical context, the act of homosexual penetration was performed as a dominance ritual, for the dominant partner to assert themselves as an "alpha male", basically, by stripping the submissive partner of their status and dignity. This commandment was put in place to protect men from being humiliated in this faction. As for Paul's condemnation of men abusing or defiling themselves with mankind in the letters, same thing. It's about condemning sodomy, or the "don't drop the soap" kind of homosexuality, more than anything.

Granted, the Bible does heavily commend marriage between one man and one woman, as this marriage is correspondent of the union of love & wisdom. Masculinity is correspondent of wisdom deriving from love, and femininity is correspondent of love deriving from wisdom. This is why in typical families, the father tends to be sage & wise, while the mother tends to be nurturing & doting.

However, nowhere in the Bible is there any specific commendation nor condemnation of homosexual marriage, and there is a scientific explanation as to why homosexual tendencies exist, such as a male fetus being washed in estrogen while in their mother's womb, among other scientific explanations. As to whether homosexuality is sinful or not, as a straight man with no firsthand understanding on what it's like to be gay, I have no voice in the conversation as it doesn't apply to me, if I myself ever were to voluntarily be partaking in homosexual relations, then in my case it most definitely would be sinful because as a straight man I have no good reason to be partaking in such an act. The verdict on whether homosexuality is sinful or not is purely between God and the gay person, for the gay person to use the spiritual wisdom given from God to determine whether their actions are in accordance to divine love or can be in accordance to divine love, or if they're only in accordance to humanly lust. Again, as a straight man, that's not my call to make, I have no say in this matter.

Also, keep in mind, this is all just a recommendation. I respect everyone on this forum regardless of spiritual beliefs, and like I said, whether or not to accept a spiritual life is up to you, and not up to me.