Transcription
Hello, my darlings, and welcome back to This Is Maria. Today we're going to talk about the topic of religion versus spirituality. What is the difference? You know, how can we best pull the two apart and understand? Are they really all that different, or are they the same? All of that and more, as well as the answers to the questions from the collective, are further down the road in this video.
Before we dive in, just a quick reminder: if you want to dive deeper with me, I have written a book called *72 Keys to Manifestation, or An Ancient Path of a Modern Day Alchemist*. It is a beautiful companion to anyone who wants to manifest their best life. It has 72 keys, one per day, that would help you tap into your dormant potential; would help you understand how energy informs manifestation and what you should do to attract anything you want into your life. So, um, it's going to be a ride of a lifetime, so I highly encourage you to check out the book. It's available on Amazon and on Audible.
All right, my darlings, religion versus spirituality could be a potentially charged topic. I understand that; I acknowledge that. And you know what? We're going to get through that. If I were to give you one quick definition so that we could pinpoint what is the difference between the two, I would say that religion is looking for Divinity on the outside, and spirituality is looking for Divinity within. That would probably be the quickest way to separate the two.
There is no wrong way of doing things. Looking for Divinity in and of itself, looking for something bigger than yourself, looking for the light, if you will, looking for answers to very existential questions, in and of itself is a beautiful journey. So I'll be the first one to admit that there is no right or wrong. In other words, wherever you find yourself on a journey of, you know, on on that journey towards Divinity, it is okay. Right? It is better to be on a journey to Divinity in whichever way, shape, or form floats your boat, as opposed to not to, right, which is atheism or just, you know, not thinking about that whatsoever—no meditation, no prayer, no believing in God or universe or an instance that's bigger than you. That is really the beginning of the end, right? When the human hearts close down so much that they don't believe, they don't have faith in anything that's bigger than themselves, into some greater Consciousness or a greater plan—that's when we have an issue.
I would say another difference between religion and spirituality is this: religion is faith that the greater Consciousness exists; spirituality is a knowing that greater Consciousness exists. And those are very, very fundamentally different ways of perceiving reality. Anybody who is religious wants to believe there is a God, and your devout, you know, Christians and devout Muslims will tell you that they have so much faith that God is real, and that is beautiful. But faith is still not the same thing as a knowing, because with spirituality you have a knowing that Source Consciousness is real. The further down you go on the spiritual path, the more uh you go through the different cycles of Awakening, you may actually have very specific encounters with the Consciousness that we refer to as Source or God or Goddess; right, certain mystical experiences connected to that Consciousness. You may even develop a one-on-one relationship of guidance between you and Source. So it's a knowing, right? So faith is not required in spirituality because there is nothing to believe; there is everything to experience.
And so, for me, religion is something that is really centered around cultivating the belief in oneself, right, belief or faith or what have you, whereas spirituality is all about exploration. Spirituality invites you to explore, to rise up through the chakras, to keep shifting your energies, right? So it's a journey of exploration, right? You don't need to believe anything in spirituality; in fact, it is completely okay to question everything, because in spirituality you find your own answer. Religion is very different. Religion, depending on which one you subscribe to, is a predetermined path to Greater Consciousness, right? It is almost as if there was a path that was found, or one road, and if you start anywhere but, like, really, if you start anywhere on that road, that road leads to one place and one place only, and it may be a winding road, but it's one—solo, a so like one unique road that leads you to a place, right? That is usually amplified by scripture, the sacred texts, you know, the prophets and all of the other attributes of religion, right? Like, just follow the path and you'll get to where you need to go is what religion tells you.
In spirituality, there is no predetermined path. In fact, every soul is on their unique path. Spiritually, there is literally no wrong answer. You cannot do wrong by God, by Source, because you know why? Every single road you travel leads to Source. Even if you go down the road of Darkness, even if you do that, that would still lead you to Source. Imagine, right? So saying that, of the billion roads you could travel, trillion roads you could travel, six illion roads you can travel, only one is the true path, you know, is a little bit of a limiting belief.
Now I will tell you this: as much as I find religion to be dogmatic, as much as I find religion to be a very strict box of thinking, there is a reason why it exists on planet Earth, and the reason being is having religion is actually a stepping stone to true spirituality. In other words, it's really hard to go from zero to 100, you know, there's so many steps in between. And so let's call them Masters, spiritual Masters, some of you call them ascended masters, right? But let's just agree that there are beings on the other side, non-incarnate beings, that are curating the evolution of planet Earth. Now these beings are extremely wise and they have great pattern recognition. They're also here to experiment, right? And they are hosting various experiments on various planets in the Milky Way and way above and below, like way beyond the Milky Way. So there are a lot of experiments going through, and so like these Master Teachers, call them, have a lot of data points to compare and contrast against. And as they were looking at Planet Earth, trying to understand how to lead this wondrous creature called Homo sapiens into complete Evolution and the rise of spirituality, it was not a trivial problem; it was actually a really complicated equation to solve, because you bring too much guidance and there is dogma; you don't bring enough guidance and the path becomes so winding that most people never make it to the other side, like Ascension just wasn't happening, or rather Evolution, right, wasn't progressing at a pace that was necessary.
Though there were Masters prior to the existence of organized religion as we know it, there were many Masters that came and they wanted to teach Humanity the path within, the path towards their soul, their higher self, the path towards their higher centers being open, the path towards connecting to Source through connecting within. And their success rate was so low. In other words, they had Awakenings, right? And we are talking about, you know, the denser times on the planet Earth, where the energies were not so opportune to the Awakening, but still that was the time when the elders—those call them Elders or ascended masters—decided that something else needs to happen on planet Earth to serve as a stepping stone towards true spirituality, towards people feeling warranted and feeling okay around and about pursuing their own path instead of looking for someone else to emulate or for a predetermined path to walk. That stepping stone was religion. It was decided that religion is going to become this massive experiment that will span thousands of years, and through that experience the souls that were not yet ready to see themselves as the spark of God, Goddess Consciousness, as a spark of Source, is an extension of Source; the souls that were not ready to see and perceive themselves as Oneness; the souls that perhaps were a little bit more set in their ways could still reach the end destination, which is that connectedness to Source, even in a third-dimensional reality, in in a low-density reality.
So this concept of religion came about, and it started with scriptures, right? So really religion was taught through scripture; that was the method to the madness. And so in religion, you usually have—in whichever religion, really—you usually have a few, usually one main, but there are a few key figures, keepy players shall we call them, that are meant to anchor each each of the religious schools or each of the religious thoughts, and so they usually come as a group of people to anchor that particular religion and then propagate it to the masses, right? So it's a mission, and a lot of ascended masters did end up coming as beings that started large religions. And not only that, but if you are one of the founders of a religion, you would usually not just incarnate once to set up, set up the foundations; you would come over and over and over again to make sure that your religion is steering people in the right direction. But make no mistake, religion is a stepping stone, and it's a process of setting an example for the people. So usually one figure is picked as an example, whether that was Moses, whether that is Jesus, whether that is Muhammad to a degree, right? Like all of these were examples, whether it's a famous Prophet, you know, and um a deity is usually defined or deified, right? Um, sometimes it's it's more than one, but either way the whole premise is to make people believe that something greater exists and help them cultivate that faith that would eventually lead to their higher centers becoming open so they can become fully clairaudient, clairsentient, claircognizant, etc., so they can then find the truth by themselves.
Interestingly enough, when you look at all of these figureheads in religion—Jesus, Buddha, even Muhammad—they were all of the figures that did not look without to find Divinity; they looked within, right? So you have these—call them, I I don't even know what would be like one word to call all of them—let's call them spiritual leaders, right, or religious leaders. Really, all of these religious leaders were spiritual people, right? So what ended up happening is they went within for their own inner guidance, passed through their own trials and tribulations, passed the tests, spoke to Spirit, right, by developing their higher centers, because if you think Muhammad just randomly channeled the Quran, you are wrong; you have to have a lot of special abilities for that, right? Any prophet of any major religion is an incredibly tapped-in spiritual person. Then these people are venerated; they're written into a scripture, and they become a part of a religious movement, but their own path was a path within; their own path was a path to find the answers instead of to read the answers in the book. And these are the people that started emanating enough light, and they were able to anchor enough energy in their body that they become this pillar, this Cornerstone of a new religion, because make no mistake, it takes a lot of energy to create a new religion; it is not a walk in the park; it's hard work, and it requires at least one big figurehead and then multiple people around that one figurehead that is going to support the teaching and keep the teaching alive when that figurehead is dead. Religions are built on people being able to maintain religions; it's usually a core group of people, right, the Apostles of Jesus.
So essentially what we have is um an entire path that says, hey, believe in something outside of yourself, that is built or built upon the path of the figureheads that looked for Divinity within. Again, I'm not saying that this is wrong; this was actually a very plausible way of leading Humanity towards spirituality, towards opening the higher centers, towards the transition that we're seeing right now. However, I'll be the first one to admit, and it may hurt some feelings big time, but we are seeing the decline of religion, and it is no coincidence; it was always meant to be this way, because one thing always leaves in order to make room for another. And make no mistake, we are living in the times of the biggest spiritual Revolution that the Earth has seen in millennia, because this is going to be the shift from the organized religion and looking without into spirituality and the looking within. And there's a lot more tolerance, right? There's actually no dogma in spirituality; is what it is, because there there are no wrong ways, technically; there are not even sin, technically; there's not even Hell or Heaven, technically, right, outside of the sins that we believe in and the Heaven and Hell that we make for ourselves, right? All of this is dogma now.
Religion is an interesting, it's an interesting concept within Humanity, because the further away you get from the figurehead—you know, Jesus, Buddha—like the further away in time you get from that person, the fainter their teachings become; like the whiff of their teachings diminishes over time. In other words, every religion is an egregor. Egregor is an energy structure that a lot of people are donating their thought forms and energy to, right? So it's it's it's—I I energetically it looks like a ball of energy or a sphere. Every egregor is initially fed by the figurehead and their Inner Circle, right? So the egregor of Christianity was built upon Jesus, you know, his mother and the twelve Apostles. Now, initially, the way Jesus had it in his head and in his mind, he was building a movement that wasn't just going to be around masculinity or like him as the figurehead; it was actually supposed to be Mary Magdalene playing just as important of a role, and she also had twelve female disciples. So it was supposed to be, you know, twelve plus twelve, and then them, they them two leading this um this movement, but it didn't happen that in this way, and and there are many reasons why, right? The patriarchy was very much alive; call it certain tests weren't passed, and the purity of the egregor was lost for Christianity at one point. Now, because Jesus and Mother Mary are extremely pure souls, and because so many other—call them Martyrs or Saints—were aggregated by the church to feed into the egregor, Christianity as a religion has a lot of light; that's why you come to the temples and it feels good; it feels calm, right? The singing is Angelic; it does have its transportive benefits, right? The regalia also helps; the symbology also helps; it's a transportive experience to go to church; it's a beautiful experience; it does raise people's vibration. I'll be the first one to admit, I'd rather you went to church every Sunday than didn't, right? So this is not a war against religion; quite on the contrary, religion has served its purpose, and what a lot of people are Awakening to is that these days there are a lot of problematic instances that keep coming up with religion. Look at the Catholic priests and the whole molestation crisis and everything else that they do that they don't preach, right? It's considered a sin, but yet the priests are doing that. Why do you see that? It is because it's the time of the decline of the Catholic church and a lot of other major religions. In a hundred years, the world is going to be very, very different. Very, very different what people believe in and how developed their higher centers are is going to be very different. When people's higher centers open, what opens in front of them are all of these other possibilities; they start seeing a million roads around them, a trillion roads, and so it's really hard to then go back to the scripture and feel like there's only one path, because that feels like a falsehood now. Is that one path false? No, but here's what I want you to feel: the end game of Christianity as a religion, the way Jesus intended it, the way Mary Magdalene intended it, the way Mother Mary intended it, is the Awakening to the fact that you are God, Goddess Consciousness within, that you are Source, and the Divinity is already in you; you are connected to Life Force because you are Life Force. So at the end of the road for Christianity, there is a Cornerstone, a pillar that's called spirituality. So once you actually kind of like—M—great, and that may take you lifetimes, right? That may take people lifetimes, you know, um, but the end of that road that Christianity shows you towards is actually a realization: the dogma doesn't matter, and there are all these other ways. Essentially, in some ways, you start thinking like Jesus; you start truly emulating how he lived, how he thought, how he perceived the world; same goes for the two Marys. So you really approach their state of consciousness the further down you go as far as the religious path, and there's no right or wrong way of moving, right? Religion offers a very plausible path; so does meditation; it is also a very plausible path; it's one of the paths; it's not the only path, right? And it's up to you to choose. And perhaps the biggest issue I have with organized religion and where it has been taken lately is all of this dogma and all of these rules, all of these things that have been decided behind closed doors by people that just wanted to control Humanity; that was not the teaching of the Masters; that was what human greed and fear and need for control did to the teaching and how they twisted the word and how they made the word, like, curved it and bent it to make sure that it serves somebody else's agenda. Unfortunately, there's not much light left in the egregor of major religions today, because every major religion at its core has division and separation. There's one thing I'll tell you about division and separation: the only place it can lead to is death. Eventually, all division and separation leads to death; all unity and connection leads to life. So anytime an egregor preaches division—like quick example, angels versus demons, the believer versus the non-believer, the follower of Christ versus the non-follower of Christ—all of these are aspects of division. If that is so much in the fabric, in the DNA of a creation or a phenomenon such just a religious movement, it can only end one way: in its death. That is the only option, because all things that preach separation, one way or another, intentionally, are intentionally eventually die out, because that is not the ultimate truth; that is not the ultimate end game.
And yet I want to give the credit where it's due. I think we should acknowledge the very important, the critical role that religion played over the past—wow—6,000 years, call it that, really led Humanity to this point in time where Awakening on mass is even possible, where it is possible for people to have a variety of mystical experiences, and where it is possible for people to feel God and to feel this Bliss and to feel this light in their bodies and outside of them without necessarily having all of their higher chakras open. So I want to give credit where it's due, and religion has served its purpose, and now is a great transition time. Please remember, there are many ways for you to walk, many paths for you to choose, including religion, right? Just know that at the very end of that, there's a whole new path that unfolds, and that is the path that you pick for yourself.
I wanted to see if the collective had any questions around this debate—topic of debate between religion and spirituality—and whatever sources of collective I'm here to receive a question. The question is: Are you saying that Jesus was spiritual and not religious? Yes, in no uncertain terms, I am saying that Jesus was an initiate of—well, first he was a Essene, right, which is a kind of like a secret—well, not not so secret anymore—it is a Jewish community that has practiced spirituality, and they've been incredibly tapped into everything from astrology and numerology to the sacred rights and rituals of Egyptian gods. And the Essenes within their Community held this collective memory of the true history and of of what actually happened on Earth. So he was extremely tapped in, and yes, all of his higher centers were extremely open; he had full-on telepathy; like his telepathic channel was open; he had like a very, very strong channel connecting him to Source Consciousness. Yes, but of course, how else do you think he did these sermons? He didn't write them down; he was channeling, and that came through him to the people in a way that they could understand. He was, in some ways, a channel and in trance and a translator of God's wisdom. No, he did not follow a predetermined path; in fact, he made his path, right? He made his choices; everything from, you know, what he studied, with whom, who his mentors were, who he considered his teachers—all of that was up to Jesus to decide.
The question I get from the collective is: So what went wrong with Christianity? Oh gosh, you guys are opening up a whole can of worms. What didn't go wrong with Christianity? Um, let's just say that it fell apart pretty much very soon after Jesus's death. And if we're being completely honest and completely fair, it was pretty obvious, even to Jesus himself, that uh the church that he was building and the vision that he had was not going to be fulfilled. It was clear to him about three years prior to his crucifixion, and the reason being was because as a great teacher, it was his intention to get his students, the twelve Apostles, to his own level in terms of understanding, in terms of—call it—the open chakras and energy centers, in terms of receptivity, in terms of their channeling ability, in terms of their astral travel ability, all of the above, right? And he worked really hard, like over time, to try to make that happen, but the energies of the planet were still quite dense, and it was very, very hard for him. Although every single relationship and every single Apostle had a sacred contract to carry uh the word of Jesus, but it was apparently obvious that they were not able to achieve the level of Consciousness that he wanted. Peter got close, and even him, even him, even he didn't get fully there. Paul did not get close; there was a lot of ego there too, but either way it was painfully obvious to Jesus that because they—the apostles weren't at the level of Consciousness that he hoped they would be—it was painfully obvious to him that the church was going to be vulnerable, and yet he decided to go through with this plan anyway, not only because it was a predetermined path, but he has decided that it is better to build the church with these twelve beings, with these twelve people, regardless and irrespective of the level of awareness and Awakening that they got, than not build the church at all. And what was not up to him was he could not have stayed much longer, right? In other words, the martyrdom and that death, they were very much pre-planned. When Christianity was being planned as an egregor, it was very much like, okay, it's going to be built on martyrdom; it's the age of Pisces; this makes a lot of sense: you come, you show the way; this is how you show the way. And um, in other words, he felt that if he had additional time—I don't know, another twenty, thirty years—he would have gotten Peter and a couple of others to very close to his level of Consciousness, but he ran out of time, and you know, other things had to to um start happening as well. And so unfortunately, he had to work with what he had to work with, and so I would say that what went wrong with Christianity, what went wrong with Christianity was the fact that the apostles weren't able—on our again on our timeline, right?—they were not able to reach the level of Consciousness that uh was originally planned, right? And from there it was actually very easy for the forces of control to sink their teeth into the into the Christian egregor. And that being said, all of that being said, Christianity managed to hold on to a lot of light for 2,000 years, and and it did serve as a torch, and it did serve as a catalyst for Humanity's Evolution, even through the Christ Wars, right, the sacred Wars where a lot of people were killed in the Name of Christ. Why, right? Because when you light, or you share the light, shed the light on shadow aspects of someone, that they would want to kill in the name of God, right? It's a distortion in somebody that you would want to murder in the name of God, because Jesus certainly didn't preach murder, let me tell you; did not; that did not leave his lips. But the fact that all of these things were done in his name is not random, but actually a process of cleansing that he himself launched on this plan; a process that…
Enabled people to work through their shadows and finally come into integrity. And yes, sometimes it came through very um, violent circumstances, but it was a purge, and it was a cleanse, and it was necessary.
As faulty as all of these religious egregors are, as faulty as all of these religions are—like, there's a lot that's coming up to the surface right now. It's becoming very obvious; they're grappling at straws here to try to maintain their facade of of Holiness.
Despite all of that, religion serves an incredibly, incredibly important role. In fact, the Masters that originally came up with this plan are considering the entire—like, if we take all of the religions of the world and the before and after impact on Humanity—it's a successful experiment. So it's a beautiful, successful experiment, and and it's an experiment that's about to start winding down big time, so that spirituality can rise.
I wanted to see if there is another question from the collective; anything about religion versus spirituality? The question is, so how do you define spirituality? Like, is it meditation? Is it like all your chakras open? Oh, that's a thing, isn't it?
Searching for Divinity within requires no definition, because every path is unique. I will tell you that true spirituality, as a process—whether you look at it through multiple incarnations, like follow a trace of somebody through many incarnations, or you just follow that one person through one Incarnation—spirituality usually has a very interesting byproduct of correlation: the more you go within, the more your vibrations rise.
So essentially, spirituality is a process of Ascension, gradual, very gradual, right? Because your vibration, your frequency, rises, Rises, until one day you're not a vibrational match to Planet Gaia, and you move on to bigger and better things, right? You become an ascended master. So you see, like, spirituality is not something you do, and it's not even a state; I would say it's a path, and the path is unique.
And anytime you're trying to understand from me—like, if you if you're asking me to paint another dogmatic picture for you of how to do spirituality, right—you're looking in the wrong place. Because any true spiritual leader is going to tell you that your path is your own, because your heart is your own, and your soul is your own. And the only way you can figure out what your own spiritual path is is to connect to your soul, to your higher self, because your higher self has all the answers. Connect to a spirit team; they are already going to start guiding you; they're on the other side waiting with baited breath till the day you start reaching out.
Does meditation help? Absolutely. You know why? Because human minds are so busy; it's like a busy trafficked area, it's like a highway that messages from the top cannot even reach most people, even if you have the receptors to receive them. And meditation creates that empty space, slows down the traffic, removes some of the cars, so the insights can start pouring in. So yes, I believe meditation is beautiful, and it's very much a part of the spiritual path for a lot of people.
Is that the only way? Absolutely not. You can do yoga, you can do Retreats, whatever that you know, whatever floats your boat, you could do journaling and automatic writing; that works too. There's no wrong way of doing it, is the point. You can do energy exercises; it doesn't always feel like meditation; that could be a path. There are many, and that's the entire point, and it's important for you to find your own. And your own path is already like—it's it's within your grasp, right? It's within everybody's grasp; it's not some amorphous ephemeral thing that you cannot, you know, touch or feel.
But really, spirituality is a very experiential Journey; it's a journey of experiencing as many things as you can and forming your own opinions, because your way of perceiving the world is unlike anything else anywhere else. You're that unique, and your perspective is extremely valuable to Source Consciousness, and so it wants you to go on the journey and ask all the uncomfortable questions, so you can then find the answers and come bring all of that knowledge back when you're no longer incarnating on planet Earth.
I wanted to see if there's one more question before we break. Religion, spirituality, anything you wanted to ask? So Buddha—uh, would you say Buddhism then—CU—like it's not really truly a religion; it's more of a philosophy? Is that a religion? Yes. Buddhism, in my book, is a religion. It's perhaps less dogmatic than some other religions, but it's very much a predetermined path: do this, don't do that, you know, life is suffering, you know, the middle way—all of that that is still Dogma.
Which is not to say that Buddha was not a great teacher; he was, in his own right, but he was looking for the answers within, not for the answers without. And so, in some ways, when humanity is ready to graduate to the next level, the best thing to emulate Buddha is to not follow Buddhism down to a tee; it is to follow the Buddha's way of going within and releasing the constraints. Buddha had to do a lot of releasing; remember, he was born into a royal family; he had a lot of shedding to do—shedding of societal expectations, of his parents, of his family, around what he shouldn't shouldn't be. And and once he escaped from that cage, he felt liberated to truly start looking within and finding his own answers, and he did find the answers, and that is encapsulated in his teaching, which I consider to be religious. But yes, it's very much a religion for me; doesn't make it bad, but makes it a stepping stone, makes it a stepping stone, and it's beautiful.
And so, in some ways, if you're really looking for True spirituality, studying the scriptures is perhaps not the best way; connecting to Buddha etherically, connecting to Jesus etherically is the way; connecting to Krishna etherically is the way, because that way they can become your own teacher, your own guide, and they never impose. Or connecting to any of the Masters, to be honest; they have a lot of wisdom to share, but once you start connecting to those types of beings, you will notice that they are anything but dogmatic; they want you to find your own answers, because they understand how unique your path is.
And so, I guess if there's one thing that I want to leave you with is this: have compassion for anyone, including yourself, regardless of where they are or where you are on your journey. If religion is what resonates with you right now, it is wholesome and perfect and in your greater good. If you're ready for spirituality, if you're ready to start asking all the uncomfortable questions and getting answers Beyond—well, because we said so, or because that is just so, and you shouldn't be asking—then spirituality is your jam; there's so much waiting for you on the other side.
I hope this resonated. Let me know in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube and how this is landing for you; I would love to hear your take on religion versus spirituality, what you found to be true. I'm giving you a big virtual hug, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye loves.