Oh Gee, You Think I'm Special?

More RS coming up, because I have a test on Friday.

So, following on from the stuff on Special revelation, I need to talk about prayer, worship, visions, dreams, enlightenment and then I need to discuss whether God is a reality or an illusion.

Lets crack on then.

Prayer is a big part of a lot of religions. Millions of people use it to contact God and as a symbol of their commitment. The way people pray is effected by the religion they belong to and personal preference too.

Some people pray in silence because they believe words get in the way of worship. They believe that prayer is about being still in the presence of God and being totally open to what he has to offer. Other people enjoy to meditate, particularly Buddhists. This can either be done in silence or by saying 'Om' in time with breathing. Meditation has a lot in common with silent prayer as it's about being open to God and (especially for Buddhism) enlightenment. Some people focus on religious books or God, others try to clear the mind to achieve enlightenment. The purpose of meditation is to become one with God.

Another popular type of prayer is communal prayer. This takes place in religious buildings or at formal ceremonies. A group of believers (of one religion) all come together to share a prayer, perhaps to help one person feel more integrated into the religion and accepted by God. Communal prayer is often done in a set format, which is known as Liturgical prayer. The people repeat standard prayers or words, usually in a formal setting, led by a priest (or other holy-person).

Some religions are a little more over the top and use their whole bodies to pray, such as Muslims who go through a series of bows...etc whilst chanting or praying.

Prayer is really interlinked with worship. Technically, prayer is a form of worship and worship goes wayyyyy beyond just prayer. So other types of worship can include going to a holy building, reading sacred texts or taking part in religious days. The point of all this is to show off to God and be like 'Hey, you up there! I love you, God!'. But yeah, anyway. Some religions require you to live by the rules of God at all times, but some people can't help but wonder at the validity of worship. It's not as if worshipping God is going to help him much. Added to the fact that God might not even exist, the whole idea of worship does make you consider the sanity of these worshippers. But hey, they say it gives them a better understanding of God, so I'll just leave them to it.

So, last post I talked about how God might reveal himself to humans through nature or whatever and I had to use that complicated Van Gogh anology. This method of revelation is much simpler - maybe God could just pop up and be like "Hey, I exist, spread the word!" And voila, job done. That's what I discussed the post before last with the whole Isaiah thing. But the thing is, who would really believe Isaiah if he came along and started going on about Serpahs and whatever else. Coz I sure wouldn't; I'd have him down as a whack job. Fact is, it's always gonna be hard to prove visions and dreams are real because they're hard to communicate to other people, and they'd be pretty hard to believe. Visions and dreams are almost always unique and personal, so really only the person in question can believe in it.

There's one final revelation that I have to talk about, and surprisingly, I'm not that pessimistic about it as the other ones. Enlightenment was first achieved by the Buddha on like 400BCE. He fasted and nearly died and tried all sorts of things to achieve enlightenment, but eventually he just meditated for 49 days and finally made it. Now the whole of Buddhism is dedicated to the Buddha and achieving enlightenment.

Finally, the difference between reality and illusion has already been revised on my poster. So, for the topic of Revelation and Enlightenment, I'm DONEEEEE XD