Faith vs Religion

There is a myth in society that a believing person (person with faith) professes a certain religion and goes to the place where God, Allah, the CREATOR, lives, i.e. to a church, temple, cathedral, mosque, synagogue, etc., and sticks all rites and traditions. I know many such people, they are very religious, but most of them have no faith at all. But I also know those who have never been religious and never visited any temples or cathedrals, mosques, or synagogues, but they have an internal true faith, and no one and nothing can break this faith. I also know those who have traveled a long way searching for answers and have gone through all religions, manifesting their transcendence and revealing the true faith in their hearts, which became the basis of their essence, fundamentally changing them.

Those who benefit from manipulating people and keeping them under their control have always said that faith can only be learned/received through religion and in a certain institution, otherwise, a person cannot be called a believer. It is a very powerful tool of manipulation and control, at least that is what modern religion has turned into, unfortunately. The vast majority of such people have no FAITH, they have a religious belief that they are believers because they perform rituals and follow traditions, but they have no real faith.

For those who at this moment can think that I am an atheist, I will answer that I am not; I have always been very religious, and in recent years I have finally become a true and real believer. Therefore, for me, these are two completely different concepts. Yes, they can exist and coexist together. But one is not equal to the other, so they are not identical. Religiosity does not automatically make you a believer or a faith person.

Questions of faith, religion, and the church have always caused active and chaotic thoughts in my mind. The answers I received in society did not satisfy me, but I continued to do, like everyone else, because it was acceptable to behave in such a way if you were a "believing" person, of course.

As I wrote earlier, I am a girl from an average Ukrainian Christian family, in which Christmas and Easter are celebrated by social norms and rules with all the necessary rituals. On all major holidays, people went to church, lit candles, kissed icons, knelt, and prayed. At a more mature age searching for answers, I discovered confession and communion. Since childhood, I could not understand why we did it and why exactly in this way and not otherwise. Of course, I did not receive answers to my questions, because in a Soviet family such questions are not asked - it can be considered as being a rebellion. We went mainly to the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate (I don't even know why, and the biggest oddity is that no one knows why), but of course, we also went to the Kyiv Patriarchate, but much less. What I couldn't understand was why the people I saw in any church were so sad, serious, and with expressions of suffering on their faces.

"Is this true that people should come to God only like this? Only with suffering? Only without a smile? Does it mean that God does not like joyful and smiling people? And why do the vast majority come to God to ask for something and to atone for sins? Can't you talk to him on other questions? Why not tell God about something good and just thank him with a smile?"

Anyone from the former Soviet Union would understand that it was impossible to ask such questions, and in general, it was not just an oddity, but a deviation from the normal normality in which all normal people lived. So, the millions of questions that swirled in my head remained unanswered year after year. And in my adulthood, all these rules and rituals made me angry. You had to come in certain clothes. If you came to the church of the Moscow Patriarchate in a scarf that was not what they thought a scarf should be, and your skirt was the wrong shape or two centimeters shorter, you faced an angry old woman who, most likely, was still quite young, but anger made her face very old, so she would scold you publicly so that all the parishioners looked at you with a judgment. In addition, I could not understand why it was necessary to put on some old and ragged clothes while going to church not being out of the crowd?!?! Why should you wear something beautiful only on Christmas and Easter?!?!

"Is it true that God accepts people only in rags and preferably without any manifestation of their own identity and uniqueness?!?!?"

Some things infuriated me, like, for example, if you kissed the icon in the wrong way or bent down towards the same icon at the wrong angle, then the same angry woman would come and arrange the second stage of public flogging for you. If you didn't put the candle in the right place, there would be a third stage of flogging. And so on.... Each time feeling like a complete moron and the worst person in the whole world. It's like you just went to the church to meet God, and somebody already poured a bucket of shit on you and immediately brought you to your knees both morally and physically. And you were already putting on this mask of a martyr, a sinner, and a person who carried the suffering of the whole world. WHY?!?!?!? Is this really what God wants?

Confession.... No matter what sins or faults I made and with what I came to confession, afterward I always felt that I had committed all mortal sins and now I have to kneel and beg for forgiveness for the rest of my life, preferably only with tears and without any, any sign of joy or happiness, because you had to suffer, suffer a lot, suffer a lot and show sufferings to everyone so that others could see them and became infected with them too. And maybe then God would forgive you. Complete cognitive dissonance again and lots of thoughts and questions in my head. And then.... And then after confession, I saw the same priest who told me how sinful I was, smoking outside the church... What? How was it possible?!?!?

All this stereotyping caused a rebellion and protest inside me, because I couldn't believe that God wanted all this because it didn't fit in my head how He could only want us to suffer, to be constantly sad and not happy, to be intimidated and blinded, living in fear and not being free, which automatically meant being slaves?!?!?!

I never found the answers, but more and more questions, internal protests, and struggles arose. I visited almost all the churches of the Moscow and Kyiv patriarchates in Kyiv, talked with priests, listened to their sermons, speeches, and instructions, confessed, learned many prayers, read the Bible several times, tamed my pride and learned to follow ALL the rules and instructions of angry women in churches. I diligently did all this for several years and became a bit zombified, but new questions appeared again, there were a lot of them. But what I read in the Bible, how I understood and perceived it, and how the priests conveyed the understanding of the Holy Scriptures to the parishioners did not match, thereby causing internal dissonance in my head again. I re-read the Bible again and again.... I found new answers, which in turn caused even more new questions and thoughts....

Once I went to the Pochaiv Lavra not as a tourist, but for a few days for atonement of my sins and purification. After this "journey", my religious foundation collapsed. I didn't want to offend religious people, but what I saw somehow did not fit into my understanding of what church should be and how priests should behave. There was a feeling of double standards in everything. I will not go into details, those who understand will understand, and those who do not, then not. By the end of my stay there, I could not stand it anymore and ran away before my "trip" finished. After that "purification trip", I had to bring my mental health back to normal.

A little later came the Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity, I helped a lot in the Greek Catholic church: I cooked food for whole days, washed dishes, set tables, cleaned up dirt, and washed refrigerators. Tamed my pride and closed the mouth of my ego. I began to hear a strange voice of silence, which I had hardly heard before. I saw that in this church people laughed, hugged, were very polite, and helped each other. It pissed me off, so after the Revolution I came to this church and asked what I should do to change Orthodoxy to Catholicism. A priest explained everything to me and there were no problems since Greek Catholics have much fewer rules and requirements than Roman Catholics. I started coming to this church with a smile and could sit on a pew to pray instead of kneeling the whole time. No one scolded or humiliated me. I came to church without a purpose or need. I could sit and cry. I could sit and be happy. I could just look at every nook and cranny. I started reading the Bible again and again and saw something new for myself. But in the meantime, as always, new questions appeared.

The darkest and most terrible period of my life came - I got sick, very sick. It was September 2019, and I "traveled" to almost all hospitals in Kyiv, I was getting worse and had to look for some other ways to pull myself out of the physical and mental pit. I returned to spirituality, not to religion, but to spirituality, which I did many years ago. My spiritual teacher, who had known me for twenty years at that time, said something like this: "Finally you've stopped. Now I hope you'll start to hear." We had billions of conversations, very unpleasant and painful conversations, I was offended, I cried, said that it was not true, I was indignant, angry... but still I found the strength to pick up the phone and call her, to hear the truth.... Once she told me: "Yuliia, you have no faith in your heart. You don't believe in anything at all!". Then I got very angry and offended again, well, how could it be true?!?! I read so many prayers, I went to church so many times, and I did so many things, like a real religious person....

To survive, I started meditating and practicing yoga. I began to study Buddhism, which was gradually supplemented by Hinduism. I recited mantras in Sanskrit and chanted with Sadhguru. I have listened to all the guided meditations by Dipara Chopra millions of times. I chanted OM (or rather AUM) probably billions of times with Buddhist monks. I read ancient texts and translations of scriptures, and listened to awakened masters and gurus, looking for answers and a resource to heal myself. I visited various spiritual schools and worked with them on many spiritual practices and breathing techniques. I started reading very high-vibrational literature that my brain couldn't absorb and digest, but I didn't stop and kept searching.

Everything that I believed in so sacredly and for which I fought all my life turned out to be a complete illusion and deception. My foundation had fallen. There was no balance because the support pillars fell along with the foundation. All my life I was leaning on something that was a soap bubble; something that was always outside and never inside. It didn't just cause panic, I was in complete frustration and confusion "Who am I?" and "What should I do now?". Everything that I had built for so many years, all the people who surrounded me, all the goals and values that guided me - turned out to be someone else's.... The complete emptiness and lack of understanding scared and horrified me. Life had stopped.... The feeling of falsity, detachment, pain, lies, artificiality in everything.... This stage was followed by the stage of self-flagellation, which must be passed and which, unfortunately, cannot be avoided. After the peak of self-flagellation, there was another no less important stage - the stage of questioning everything I see, hear, listen, read, etc. But after doubts, something completely new and unknown began to build and rebuild, something that cannot be felt, but which lives deep inside and shapes me. This is something called faith...

My faith today is much stronger than it was before. I may follow the rites, but I may not. I no longer depend on them. I can go to church or temple, but not be there for a long. In every temple or church, I feel the energy of this place and the history of these walls - and there are places in which I am not comfortable being, they have very heavy egenretics, but there are places where I can sit for hours, and talk to God, or just enjoy the architecture, listen to organ music.... I can go to a church in any country and listen to a sermon in any language, because the language here has no meaning at all and you don't need to understand the language, you just need to feel it....

But the most important thing is that I don't need to go anymore to special places to speak with God, this place is inside me and it was there all the time. In this place inside me, I can speak with Him whenever I want on all topics I want without judgment, rituals, and rules.

This journey through the formation of inner faith is called returning to oneself and this journey, this path, is long and difficult, frank and painful, but it is worth it.

May 28, 2023.