Fundamentalism is a process of disconnection and dependence: disconnection from compassion which is at the heart of all religious figures, dependence on a slanted teaching and the teachers, and failure to recognize the metaphorical nature of the stories of their faith.

Fear is at the heart of it. Fear and a general sense of inadequacy motivate the believers to seek extreme positions.  Look at how there are Christians who believe the earth is six thousand years old when scientific explanations are obviously valid. Some Muslims believe that a martyr receives virgins as a reward in the afterlife.

These beliefs are erroneous and yet fairly widespread.

I recently talked with a Mormon.  He was telling me all kinds of things he believed to be true.  He told me that Jesus was before the beginning and not God.  I was completely disinterested in his story because he didn’t know what Jesus or God is.  So I spoke with him about Buddhism.  I told him of the happiness of all sentient beings.  He was surprised that a belief system other than his own could have such a an inclusive intention as it’s basis.

Since all beings and all molecules have consciousness, the theist belief systems are revealed as finite within the infinite.  This truth allows the truth of consciousness to shine.  This shows how reality is more than any theory and yet accessible to us all.

Each division has an identity, and each function can be broken into it’s component steps.  Each step is a consciousness. In the way that some folks describe things, some things just want to be done in certain ways.

So things that are universal are sometimes treated as idiosyncratic.  Imagine this when considering how religions seem to evoke certain experiences in the consciousness and lives of it’s followers.  Certainly there are distinctions, yet there must be similarities as well for each faith has fervent believers.

Spiritual states of mind are generated by the different faiths. This universal experience is not attributed to the beliefs about the self and what’s beyond it and the rewards of exploring those beliefs. Religions use those experiences to convince the followers of the legitimacy of their particular savior, prophet, or what have you.

When I encountered this Mormon, I just told him what I knew.  I told him that I’d read the bible.  I told him that consciousness is not the property of the mechanism through which plans for, experiences of, and the results of change are played out.

So the actual experiencer is more than the sum of our parts and unto infinity and is as vast and as detailed as time. Through the many doors compassion is sought.  Allow the believers to know your compassion.

Few will understand even the compassion without conditions.  Many will understand the striving to be awake.  Few will understand the awakening.  For you, don’t make it a mystery. Just open your perceptions and increase your awareness to include spaciousness.  Return and return to that state.  No matter what, return to the awareness, the raw state of experience, and the spaciousness of reality.