In comments and essays (for example https://medium.com/illumination/spirituality-redefined-ff45cb53eaf2 ), I often include this quote from Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations with God: "Religion cannot stand Spirituality. It cannot abide it. For Spirituality may bring you to a different conclusion than a particular religion — and this no known religion can tolerate. Religion encourages you to explore the thoughts of others and accept them as your own. Spirituality invites you to toss away the thoughts of others and come up with your own."
I also cite therein one of the very first articles I read on Medium--this gem by Leah Castellon, https://medium.com/@leahcastellon/which-religion-is-right-f0bd30e714a2,
in which she writes of her spiritual journey:
"If there is one clear message that I feel I have learned on my path it is this: God is love and more expansive than I can wrap my brain around; His love is so much greater than I can comprehend. With the diversity of the people on this earth, doesn’t it stand to reason that infinite love would provide a multitude of channels to access that source? I think so. For that reason, I will not adhere to any particular religion, but I will honor my personal journey and the paths of fellow earnest seekers."
In one of my early Medium essays, https://medium.com/illumination/why-is-it-so-easy-for-people-to-believe-the-most-obvious-lies-yet-require-proof-of-god-339a2a07cc4f, subtitled Conversely, Why Does this Walking BS Detector not Believe 90% of Peoples’ Claims Yet Firmly Believe in Eternal Souls and God(s)?, I wrote:
"Every religion is flawed. Religions are designed by humans. Humans are flawed. Thus religious views of God are flawed....Religions have been designed to be believed and thus construct God as a deliverer of human wants if we do as we are told, which God is not. So people either blindly believe in God because the lie of what God is is believable, or reject God because the God defined by religions cannot co-exist with the reality that most people do not get what they want, or are not actually happy, and a world full of seemingly senseless tragedy and really bad things happening to good people....God does not exist because a religion teaches that she/he/they exist. The Great All exists because Source is — everything is connected to God despite religions, which humans invented to separate and conquer and subjugate."
You might enjoy the poem I published last night and the works of mine and others that I cite therein. https://thetaoist.online/poem-on-humanitys-relationship-with-planet-earth-1558348529f0, subtitled And our place and purpose in the universe told through tanka and dodoitsu. Here are two of the eleven stanzas:
Reject our nature
Perceive themselves as supreme
In image of God
True but blind to its meaning
Creators not destroyers
Yet so many religions
Take Creator's name in vain
God is love not fear
Pearly gates open to all
Hell’s where too many live now
