Stone Two: Open

I partake of spiritual wisdom and knowledge from a variety of sources and open myself to different insights.

Once we have established that we are responsible for our own spiritual journey, the next step could be to investigate what other religions teach. This doesn’t have to be a detailed study but more of a trial and error approach that plays out during the normal interactions of life.

After my break from my birth religion, I attended a variety of religious organizations simply because I was curious. One particular religion appealed to me because it blended what was familiar to me, Christianity, with other world religions. I saw similarities between religions that gave me added confidence in some of the things I’d learned, but it also opened my mind to religious beliefs that gave a different slant to truths I thought I had already learned. I was helped to see the forest and not just the individual trees.

I found myself drawn to the life of the first Buddha. I wasn’t drawn so much to the religion that formed after his death, but to his life experiences and the things he had to say. In a way, I later discovered that much of what I was drawn to in Christianity was not the religion that formed after Jesus was gone, but to the life of Jesus—his teachings and his beliefs concerning love and forgiveness.

As time passed, I found myself drawn to other religious texts and leaders. The point of Stone Two is that we allow ourselves to glean wisdom from a variety of sources and open our minds to different religious faiths. That doesn’t mean we agree with everything, only that we are open to consider what might give us a better understanding of Divine Truth.