Hi I am Taomon.

I am new and I will do my best to keep it clean, post facts or state that something is my opinion.

I have always been very spiritual and in touch with my ethics. Until I did a very bad thing a number of years back everyone who knew me would come to me with moral dilemmas for guidance.

It took a few years to atone for my sin and I think I have paid it forward tenfold.

I was raised in the Baptist Christian traditions. I spent time in the Advent churches too. Around 12 I got fed up with what I saw as inconsistencies. I read extensively on the occult and psychic experiences through most of my teens until things got a little too dark for me and I walked away from those interests.

Negative energy attracts negative energy.

I began reading up on alternate religious beliefs, focusing on Asian studies. I ended up liking Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and mythology. I realized that all religions are a path to God.

They are like a finger pointing a way to the stars. But as Bruce Lee stated in Enter the Dragon "Don't focus on the finger or you'll miss all the heavenly glory."

And that is the flaw inherent in all organized religions. Each has their stories, their myths if you will, which help explain very abstract ideas for people who cannot think conceptually. And people have a tendency to focus too much on the stories and they miss the truths that lie beneath. Many religious leaders/priests/pastors/clerics/rabbis/etc get a tatse of power and influence and become enmeshed in their nectar...further distorting the message.

So I have been married and divorced by the time I was 22. I traveled (I grew up in a military family and spent some years traveling and the wanderlust hit me after my divorce) around. I ended up in Upstate NY where I met my current wife.

We moved back to MA where I hail from and we have three older kids who do not live with us and two teen daughters in our home. I recently took in my mother-in law and her 11 year old daughter as well. I work for a biotech in Boston and go to school nights.

I lean to the left as far as politics and ethics in so much that I think a little socialism should be mixed in with the capitalism if we are to survive as a democracy. When we all work for the glory of the investors and constantly deny each other respect, basic needs and knowledge we become slaves to a system designed as such.

Right on! Welcome to the forum! Your beliefs and how you came to them sound very similar to my story.

Nice introduction. Thank you for the candid biog.
I'm Karen, the resident Brit (a board's not complete without one) and am also a very spiritual person... I've coined the term 'godist' to describe my beliefs.
Nice to meet you Toamon!

Cool. I look forward to chatting and debating with you. I have met a few people on-line now who say that they came to their beliefs in similar ways as well.

Seems to be a trend, which is a positive one anyhow.

Nice to meet you Karen. I have some British in my bloodline, according to my father. His family is Irish & British and my mom's family is German & Blackfoot Sioux. This makes me a mutt.

I used to watch Monty Python as a kid and had to explain stuff to my firends who usually only laughed at the sight gags.

Where do you live now? Across the pond or here in the states?

I hope you don't mind me splitting your post into a whole new thread, but it was a really good introduction and i thought it deserved it's own post, for fear of getting buried in the other topic.

It's all good. So long you are not altering my words to make people hate me. Come to think of it, that would have been funny.

Nice. I studied the eastern philosophies some years back. Pretty much when i needed to fill out my course schedule but that is neither here nor there. You should feel right at home here.

Mom! I'm home!

Howdy Tao!

Yeah, I recognize that path of personal exploration. Nothing but good can come from such an examination.
I look forward to your continued participation here on the forum.

Welcome Taomon!

Not true. He could have come out...born again

Yes, it's good.
Perhaps that "coming out" would be an important part of his continuing path of self discovery?
How can one have complete empathy without having first hand experience?

Hi Taemon,

You sound like a very interesting person. I have a superficial knowledge of Eastern religion and I wish I knew more. It seems significant that Mahatma Gandhi studied all the major religions in depth, including Christianity, and concluded that Hinduism (I think that was the one) was the most profound. Well the proof is in the pudding (or "By their fruits Ye shall know them.") Rev. M.L. King Jr. himself learned creative non-violence from Gandhi, and he became a spiritual giant in his own right (See Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which he wrote on pieces of toilet paper). I believe Gandhi's influence extended even to some of the East European dissidents like Vaclav Havel and others who relied on "truth power," (Santyaghara?). If you or anyone else can enlighten me about any of this, I would be grateful...maybe in the religion forum.

Welcome, Taemon. What are you majoring in?

Sitting Bull

Bonjour, Taomon !

I'm the local frog...actually, a wandering World Citizen currently living in France.
Welcome to the POAC.

Salutations Taomon.

Still in the UK Taomon... IN Liverpool and of Irish/Welsh decent.
Look forward to reading you on the boards.

Computer Science. Thanks for the welcome.

I will be posting some of my essays and my posts usually drift between profound and silly - but that is my nature.

And I to you as well.

I want to take a moment to thank you all for the warm welcomes. I did not reply to all of you individually, but I took the time to read your nice messages.

I look forward to discussions here. You seem like a good bunch of people and I really want some outside looking in perspective regarding American society.

hey mon,

you might want to check out my latest post in the religion subforum...

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/bb/index...showtopic=18031

also, you may want to check into hermeticism, alchemy, theosophical traditions, and gnosticism, as they have a western slant on eastern thought, but the same golden thread running throughout.

Gnosticism I have read up on. I had a great book called the Encyclopedia of Spiritual and Paranormal Experiences. One of my favorite reads for years.

I'll check out your post later amigo.

better source on gnosticism is the Nag Hamadi libray - a set of codecies discovered in a cliffside in egypt. carl Jung was instrumental in the push to get them translated, the the first codex was named for him.

If you want a good idea of what christianity was before constantine, this is the best resource.

Although Gnosticism can also be viewed as an attempt to incorporate Christianity into an already-existing Hellenistic cult...

true, true...

but what religion isn't an incorperation of one into the another?

answer that for me, and we may just find the answers...

What's wrong with the faith of your fathers? Not good enough for you?

Nope

I bow to the divine in you!

Don't all religions, because of the similarities among human beings, all pretty much branch off from the same pre-historical tree?

I mean, isn't it no accident that all religious mythology have pretty much the same stories?

Shocking. I can't imagine Kill Eagle or Grass would approve.