Daily religion – Where would we be without it?
Most people would religiously start the day with a coffee, some would even go to the coffee shop to get their ‘just right’ drink perfectly made the way they want it, every single day. The ritual of making coffee behind the machine for many a barista is sacred and not to be messed with. Some baristas I have known are more particular about the way a coffee is made, how the machine is maintained and cleaned than how clean they keep their own shoes. Hundreds of thousands of places serve coffee and millions and millions of people enter these shops daily to worship at the altar of coffee.
A coffee a day was never enough for me — it was always five or six — sometimes nine or ten. I didn’t like the taste really — I added sugar to take away and mask the bitterness — and yet my relationship with this drink was unwavering. I would awake and have coffee. Get to work and have coffee. Feel a drop in my energy and go for coffee. Recover from a hangover with coffee. It was there for me in every moment and seemingly supported me to get through my every day. It wasn’t something I loved, so much as could not do without.
This exposes completely the fact that this daily ritual was not confirming or connecting me to who I am.
Is it possible that we choose something that takes us away from our inner-most and in fact makes us forget that we are first and foremost grand, divine and universal?
Observe closely.
I wake up — tired.
I need support.
I don’t provide myself the true support I need in my everyday, in every waking moment with my choices, so I grab at the easiest — my go-to choice: my coffee.
‘It will help me — wake me up — confirm that it is morning and the start of my day’, these were the type of thoughts I was having.
Where would I be without it? It continues…
I travel to work — I arrive.
The tiredness hasn’t gone, it has just been jumbled around a little to resemble something different through the application of caffeine, sugar and the creamy comfort of the milk.
I
need to keep sustaining myself — I walk to the coffee machine and I set about with the tools of my trade to fashion a coffee that is perfect — that is just for me.
‘God, if only I could have a second cup just like this — wow’.
Exalted experience number two — and it’s not even 10am.
Do you get it?
My relationship with coffee was very religious in the false version of the word. It was my addiction.
I have hung my life on a drink — wantonly letting myself be dragged through life by a quick up and a big down, not wanting to feel what has been happening in how I am living by disguising it all with — expertly and individually crafted — coffee. And yet, it was hiding so much of the true me; the grand and divine man I am, because it was supporting me to not recognise that:
· I was exhausted
· I had little energy to do my work in the hospitality industry
· I could barely connect with people in a ‘people focussed business’ and
· I was using coffee to stimulate me when my focus dropped throughout the day.
And yet this is only one thing that kept me from my connection with me. What about alcohol — food — drugs — music — work — sleep — exercise — etc.?
There are lots of other behaviours and choices that many of us use to keep disconnected from how we truly feel.
The point here is not to say drinking coffee is bad — but recognising that for me I was choosing it to literally prop myself up — I was walking through life in a way that I needed to have the prop. I was hiding behind it along with other things.
Hence, it was part of my false religion.
What changed?
The relationship I had with coffee was anything but true. There was no loving quality in that relationship. It was not one of truth, support, or deep care — no, it was to get me through and past life as quickly as possible.
The truth about Religion is that it is about re-connecting to that which we naturally are. From our inner-heart we know what is true and what is not. Hence, when we describe our religious activities like coffee — it sounds crazy, but we choose this over the magnificence that we naturally are.
And to claim that we are not religious is in fact absurd, for we are religious all of the time — we just have to be honest about what we are religious about. Do we choose to stay aligned to a way of being that does not confirm in any way our grand divinity or do we choose to be in true religion; that is, in re-connection to our inner-most, with God and the Universe?
Based on the works of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.