The white path
Every major religion claims to aspire to peace and goodwill among human beings. It is a lie of course, there has been more murder, mayhem, and environmental destruction wreaked in the name of some God or other then for any other reason.
Voltaire once said that if God did not exist, man would have to invent him; that is probably true as men seem to always want to draw God into the mix when they are doing unspeakably evil things. No culture seems immune from this, every day we hear of atrocities perpetrated by the devotees of various Gods.
Since 9-11 we have become more familiar with the depravities of Radical Islam then we ever wished to be. Radical Islam does not have a monopoly on depravity of course, but lately they do seem to have taken it to a wholesale level.
Islam may be the latest wholesale purveyor of terrorism, but it is certainly not the only one. History is heavy with the atrocities perpetrated by Christian organizations from the Church of Rome to the People’s Temple, and it is not just the monotheistic faiths. Hindu mobs routinely slaughter the devotees of other religions with the tacit support of India’s ruling party, and there are countless others spanning the globe. It seems that the more absolutist the theology, the more dangerous are its followers. At the top of this cesspool of depravity, in temples made of bones, and mortgaged with innocent blood, sit the guilty ones.
The Priests, the Imams, the Gurus, the Reverends, and others who cater to the vice and prejudice and ignorance of their followers to perpetuate their own power and profits.
Many centuries ago, the Cherokee also suffered under a regime of corrupt Priests, who kept the people agitated and fearful by claiming they alone had access to God. The ancient stories tell us that the Ani Kutani, as they were known, ruled with an iron fist and kept the community in a state of ignorance and oppression. As is often the case with absolute power, the Ani Kutani began engaging in acts of more egregious depravity until the people revolted and removed these corrupt priests from their position and from the community. This revolution in both theology and governance led to an era of both greater freedom and greater tolerance among the Principal People.
The removal of the corrupt priests and the theology that supported them led to a period of serious soul searching among the Cherokee, it required the people to get to know their Creator on a more personal level, without the interference of self-serving prophets. The wise men and beloved women spent much time and prayer in search of a better way for their communities and the people they served. Out of this period of prayer and soul searching came a new approach to spiritual life, this new approach came to be known as “The White Path.”
The most basic tenet of the White Path philosophy is that one demonstrates their love for God by how one interacts the rest of God’s creation. Another way to put this is that one’s actions speak much louder than one’s words. I see a lot of hypocrisy going around these days. Fanatics of sundry stripes are going around seeking to abridge the liberty of their neighbors in the service of one warped theology or another, when they and the rest of the world, would be far better off if they spent the same time and effort on a long look in the metaphorical mirror. To put it another way, I do not care what God you claim to believe in, I care whether your faith makes you a better person instead of a worse one.
There is much hatred and antipathy going around right now, much of it in the name of religion, we need a little peace. There are many ways to sum up the White Path philosophy but the best one I know of is by Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 7, verse 1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”