Religious Ecstasy

I found today’s lecture on religious ecstasy and the practises that certain individuals engage in to find God very interesting. It’s not something I have thought about in detail in the past, but I can definitely see the link between obtaining a feeling of sacredness, and encountering religious experiences. I think that when we reach a feeling of sacredness we are in a different state of consciousness to usual, and I feel that it is a this point we let our mind create images and beliefs that are different to normal. Personally I only think that religious examples and sightings come out at a time of sacredness if it is something a certain individual is looking for and truly believes in during day to day life. For example, I think that many individuals hold such a strong desire to connect with religion/God that their brains are able to create these wishes into a feeling of reality when at a time of ecstasy and when they are in a different mental consciousness to normal. I think that when this point is reached, it is easy for a heightened spirituality to occur, and in many cases I think individuals lose the physical relationship with their surroundings which allows them to feel something magical has happened.

I know in class Dr. Lane mentioned the idea of Shamanism and said that if we look at all the early religions we can see that they all had their own different methods of finding this feeling of ecstasy. I wasn’t exactly sure what Shamanism itself represented so I decided to research it further and came across the following website.

http://www.kundalinilotus.com/html/sharmanism.asp
This website gave the basic idea of what the life of a shaman entails, and it says that these days it has really become the wording that we use to describe the “human beings ability to tap into ancient universal energy’s that have existed since the dawn of time, for healing and empowerment.” I think that today it still used in terms of relating to spiritual practices such as Yoga or Kabballah, and I think that is often how the modern day practices honor and resemble ancient traditions. Shamanism was the basic principle used to enter different worlds, and it occurred for many when they were in varied state of consciousness. The website says that this is the method many individuals used as a way to become empowered, and in the past it gave individuals belief that the ideas they were practicing, were real and true.
The religion itself is based around the fact that spirits and forces play a role in the world, and they are seen often only in times of sacredness. It is seen that these spirits protect the followers of the religion, and they provide the path to follow in order to live a successful life. The religion is practiced individually, and I think this enables individuals to create their own spirits, images and protections in times of ecstasy.

Overall I think Shamanism is a good example which highlights the notion that if you believe in something strongly enough, you can play games with your mind so that circumstances are created which enables you to prove that it is true. Continually in religion we are so determined to prove our beliefs that I think we will take any situation, whether luck or coincidence and use as a way to confirm and strengthen our ideologies. I think the practises of shamanism therefore also show how and where the belief in religious images developed from, and it provided the building blocks for the religious ecstasy that we see prevalent today