Does anyone else notice that most of the wars of this and the past century have been caused by followers of the big three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Interestingly enough, all three of them are based upon a very shallow understanding of the psyche and consciousness.

For these religions, there is only the lonely and sinful individual ego, isolated from everyone and everything. There is also their God, isolated Himself, off somewhere in Heaven. There is no in between. There is no depth. No wonder the proponents of these religions are always at war. They don’t even know what is happening in the depths of their consciousness, in what Freud and Jung and others have called the unconscious. They are incomplete humans struggling in a world that requires wholeness of being.

Members of these religions can be told how one should act, and they will try to live up to these religious expectations. However, by being ignorant of all that lies beneath the surface of their limited egos, they usually fail to do this. They usually fail because, for most of their time, they are acting from unconscious motives – without even being aware that there are such things and that they are doing so.
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Buddhists and Taoists, on the other hand, backed by extensive and well thought out systems of psychology and consciousness, have managed to stay out of most of the wars. They have correctly seen that wars are just unconscious outbursts of collective anger or greed. They certainly have never believed that violence is justified.

All of the major spiritual teachers of the big three religions were conscious and high folks. If their followers could be like them, there would probably be world peace and plenty. But most people don’t won’t to go through what those ancient Jewish holy men or Jesus and his crew or Mohamed and his went through. Most people don’t want to do what it takes to become conscious and connected to Spirit. They don’t want to find out who they are. They don’t want to be themselves. They just want to be told what to do. So they are given rituals and lectures and beads and sent out into reality.
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The Buddhists and the Taoists, however, offer us practical and easily doable ways of finding our own ways to ourselves and to Spirit. These ways are based upon a very sophisticated and deep understanding of the human psyche and consciousness.

From this deep understanding, they suggest meditation and various other physical disciplines. They tell us that when we have learned to turn off our heads, to silence our inner dialogue, we will begin to connect to the deeper and more holy reaches of our psyches. By this, they help us to find the God who is within each one of us.

By all this and more, they help us to become conscious of who we are and our role in this life.