Step Eleven

Seek through prayer, meditation, and contemplation to improve our relationship with the Divine, praying for clarity of mind, an open heart, and further ways to heal ourselves and our world from the abuses of religion.
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Sometimes religious abuse serves a purpose that we might not have achieved without it. When we are born into a religious belief system, their set of beliefs, rules and guidelines become the only path we know to reach The Divine, and we can become dogmatic with our beliefs thinking that our path is the only right path.

When we leave our birth religion either by choice or by force, we are free to open our lives to other ways of connecting with The Divine. This is not a responsibility to take lightly but with sincere effort, a lot of soul searching, and open-minded examination.
The place to begin is with spiritual healing. But spiritual healing might not come until after a time of abandonment in which we throw out the good with the bad. The spiritual pendulum of our lives swings to the other side and we rebel against religious structures and often social laws.

In time, the pendulum swings back toward spirituality, and if we are lucky, during our time of carefree living we have given thought to the larger issues of life so that when we return to the spiritual we are better able to separate true religion from false. This is accomplished by separating the spiritual from the religious and only accepting religious beliefs and practices that align with our new light.