Leaving Religion
First off - Leaving Religion is not about " not believing" - It is the very opposite. It's about leaving mainstream religion for a true spiritual connection. We dig deep and deal with Religious trauma and we strive towards a real religious coexistence
My name is Richard Ravenbrook. Some call me The Pagan Preacher. I am a man, a clairvoyan life coach, and a spiritual guide. Throughout my quest for truth, the spirit has guided me along various paths. My roles have included church ministry, street ministry, and publishing, among others. I have shared this journey with Christian companions as well as pagan allies. I have received ordination in Christian ministry and I have also embraced initiation into the magical arts.
The leaving Religion podcast encapsulates the wisdom and insights accumulated from these varied theologies, traditions, and philosophies. Leaving religion is about seeking true divinity and truth rather than simply following the crowd.
Leaving Religion
Returning to Community Roots: Balancing Ancestral Wisdom with Modern Technology
Can we truly return to the "old ways" of community and neighborliness in our fast-paced, tech-driven world? Join us on this heartfelt episode of Pagan Preacher as we explore the critical balance between maintaining our roots and embracing modern advancements. We discuss the collective effort needed to address pressing environmental issues, emphasizing unity across different religions and cultures. By drawing lessons from history and acknowledging our shared connection to all living beings, we foster a spirit of cooperation that transcends individualism and isolation.
Throughout this episode, we delve into the tension between old traditions and modern technology, advocating for a balanced lifestyle that respects the environment. You'll hear insights on how to harness technology responsibly, reconnect with ancestral wisdom, and address overpopulation concerns. We also highlight the power of small acts in building community, cherishing simple pleasures, and engaging in meaningful conversations about environmental responsibility. Our overarching message champions unity, thoughtful stewardship of our resources, and supporting leaders who genuinely care about these critical issues. Tune in for a hopeful, inspiring conversation that calls for a collective return to compassionate, mindful living.
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Welcome everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Pagan Preacher and this spiritual journey. Anybody ever miss the old ways. By the old ways I mean being neighborly, helping your neighbor, neighbors and communities working together. You know, in this high-stress time we have right now election time coming up and you know people just stressed, frustrated and at loss at where we're going, not only as a country or a world, but all the way down to what we're going to do in our families and our homes. In the old ways we can look back even at the days of depression, how people came together and found ways to make things work. And today, what I want to tell you is no matter how bad it looks, know that there is hope that together we can get through anything. We need to lay down the biases and the bigotry, the racism, the divisions and the hate, the unnatural, the taught hate, because we're not born hateful, we're taught it. We're taught it by our family or something that we witness. But community working together. Ultimately, that's what we need again.
Speaker 1:The old ways, because when we lose grip of how it was in the old ways and we begin moving forward into the future with advancements in technology, advancements in almost every degree of life we have, from robotics to different cars, to everything in our homes, to computer systems and robotics running everything we lose a bit of the benefits of the old ways, we lose enlightenment, we lose ourselves, because I think within all of us, as human beings, as creatures of this earth, we need this earth. As creatures of this earth, we need this earth. We need To be connected To the planet, to the things around us, to the life around us, even to the animals around us. And you know, I have all kinds of friends. I have Buddhist friends and Hindu friends, I have Christian friends and I have Wiccan friends. I have all kinds of friends of different religions and faiths and we all know we can work together because religion doesn't separate us. Ego does. Ego and pride are what separates us from understanding the way it was in the old ways For some Christians.
Speaker 1:You say, well, I'm told to forsake the earth and to lay everything else aside and just focus. And to you I want to just point to Job 12, 7. And it says but ask the animals and they will teach you. Or the birds in the sky and they will teach you. Or the birds in the sky and they will tell you, or speak to the earth and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you what job was trying to say there was. Just like all religions, native Native Americans have said it for centuries Hindu and Buddhist, they've all said the same thing that we are connected to every living creature on this planet, every living life form on this planet we are connected to. On this planet we are connected to and we are destroying ourselves by destroying our planet.
Speaker 1:And don't let a few people turn you away from believing that our earth is in jeopardy for many different reasons, not just man-made reasons, but reasons of natural cycles and all kinds of various reasons why the earth is in jeopardy. But the fact remains, period, the earth is in jeopardy and with that comes us, because not only do we need our planet to survive, but we need our planet and the things around us to be happy, to be comfortable in our lives. You know we don't think about it in our everyday lives. Sometimes we don't realize that. You know the need for things like pets and Going for a walk or going for Because we need that connection, watching wildlife movies on TV or having pictures, even on the wall, of a pretty, of a pretty scene. Our minds, our spirits, our flesh need to be connected to these things.
Speaker 1:And all over right now, we are destroying our planet. We are using up all of our natural resources Because we're afraid. We're afraid of the change that must come, and it does. It must come For ourselves, for our planet, all the way down to the smallest insect, because this planet doesn't belong to one person, one species. It belongs to all of us, all of us together. It doesn't matter what race we are, what culture we come from, what religion we believe in. It's the religions that always want to divide, always want to separate. They always want to either convert or destroy. We've got to come to the point, in our enlightenment and on this planet and as a species, that we understand that that simply can't be.
Speaker 1:Thousands of years we have lived upon this earth, on this generation of humanity, and yet we still argue religions written by other men and other men's stories from centuries ago, rather than writing new ones now. We use history as a lesson, we use them to learn from, but today we look around and the only thing we're focused on is well, I got to do my job, I got to make some money, I got to pay my bills, I gotta I gotta get me this car and, yeah, I know I gotta try to do what I can to save the planet, but you know, I can only do so much. It's together and it's one day at a time, one avenue at a time. But first it's coming to the realization and the awakening for all of us that we're all not just talking trash when we say we've got to do something and we got to do something now. We've got to continue to move forward in technology, but we need to move backwards towards the old ways when it comes to our spirituality community. You know the way we work together as a whole.
Speaker 1:The problem with our country right now is it's it's everyone for themselves, every individual or every family for themselves. And I understand it, don't get me wrong. I do understand because you and yours is what's important and you're trying to protect what is yours and that is honorable. But we have to find the place and the way to come together. We have religious bodies that bring in millions and yet we have homelessness and poverty and people starving in the streets. We have people that don't have the money to fix their homes, fix their cars, these little things that community used to do.
Speaker 1:Have you ever been in an Amish town? When they need something built, or even certain religions? I had some Jehovah Witness friends and man. When I tell you, when they want something done, when they want something built, they get together and boom, it's done. The Amish are the same way. Some people have forgotten those ways. I'm not endorsing these religions or anything of that nature. I'm just using them as an example of community and remembering the old ways, native Americans. We all lived, or they all lived, in tribes together. They didn't use all kinds of space, they used what they needed.
Speaker 1:Today we have people living in five, six bedroom houses, driving six cars, living on 500 acres, and I understand it and I don't want to make anybody angry, but we have to understand that it's not when one person has this or does this, but when millions do, or even thousands do. We consume the land. Right now, I live in the state of Indiana and I'm watching our farmland disappear by the day. I'm watching the homes of our wildlife disappear and go extinct. So we can build more infrastructure, so we can house more human beings, build more cities, build more stores, all while destroying everything around us, not realizing that when it's all destroyed, when the trees are gone and the wildlife is gone, we will perish as well. No matter the technology that we get, no matter what we believe, as human beings, that we need, the balance of life has already been put here. It's already been placed here, and we have been destroying that balance from the day one. It seems like so many people, and it's not just the rich corporate, it's everything down to the man who changes his oil in the car and then dumps his oil in the backyard, not thinking about what could happen, what does happen, and then realize that it wasn't just the one man that did it, but that day, several thousands of men did that same thing. All kinds of small scenarios, building day upon day upon day, things soaking down into the water table, destroying our water, destroying the foundations of our earth, removing all of our fields, our wildlife. It's almost like a cry of Mother Earth. You know, crying, screaming. Please save me so I can save you, because when the balance is completely broken, we perish.
Speaker 1:Mother Earth has many times healed herself. The problem is when Mother Earth has many times healed herself. The problem is when Mother Earth decides that it's time to heal herself and that she must recycle, remake and restart over. It also comes with devastation. It comes with great pain and anguish and torment. It comes with death because even your scripture says that God is no respecter of persons, which means that when it's time, when things must happen for the benefit of the whole, it's not about who you are, how much money you have or anything of that nature. When it's time, if you're in the way, that's it. But we can halt these things. We can with our technology, our knowledge and our wisdom. We can help Mother Earth in these cycles so that these cycles are not completely and utterly devastating to all life on Earth. We have the ability.
Speaker 1:The problem is we have stubborn individuals that don't want to believe and then we have stubborn greedy corporate that don't want to lose profit. They don't want to change different things. You know, I understand this. I understand that. You know people in the oil fields. You know that in the just things of this nature, we understand that this goes back years upon years, upon years and families and families and families, and massive change can devastate and alter the entire power system of our planet, for the people that are in power now wouldn't necessarily be in power then. Someone else would step up with new technology, different technology.
Speaker 1:People are afraid of different technology, people are afraid of losing, people are afraid of handing over that power to save us, but yet, at the same time, they don't want to make any kind of sacrifice. It's like, well, if we could just get through this, I'll be okay. It's not going to happen until I'm passed on. But what about your children? How about their children? Or, heck, how about even their children?
Speaker 1:If we know these things are coming and scientists have already said that this is guaranteed, scientists have already said that this is guaranteed If we don't make change and get back to the old ways, it's all going to be over. We'll be lucky if anybody survives. These cycles have happened before and other people, very small amounts of people, survive. We have the knowledge. We have the knowledge, we have the technology. And when I say we need to get back to the old ways, I know I've talked a little bit and kind of rambled a little bit on the need. But it's that community feeling, that connection, is how we get back and we break the fear of change. We break the fear of talking about it. When someone says something about climate change and someone else says, oh, that's just bull, that's just politicians trying to, you know.
Speaker 1:But what we have to understand when it comes to science, when it comes to things of this nature, pinpointing the exact day and time is absolutely difficult, because even your Bible says that no one knows a day or time and some of us work day in and day out saving this planet. So what scientists said would take 50 years has now lasted 150 years Because of the people that work behind the scenes. Work behind the scenes and pulling trash out of the oceans by the tons, cleaning the waters as they can and conservatory measures of animal life and land. People working every day, just trying to, just a little bit at a time, to save Mother Earth and this balance of life.
Speaker 1:The old ways, you say, well, there's no way we can have the old ways and have the new ways at the same time. But we can. We can have technology when we understand technology. We can have technology when we understand technology and that we understand technology in a viewpoint that we don't want technology that destroys. We don't want to build things that do nothing but destroy, but we want to build things that create, enable, empower and strengthen. You know, we all the time, our militaries and our greatest minds in this planet work and build bigger and bigger weapons to destroy each other and destroy things around us Biological warfare and bombs and planes. And my God, what if we just came together as a whole? Think of what we could do.
Speaker 1:Why do we hate each other? Why do we fight each other? Why can't we just share the resources, taking only what we need, applying what we know from the old ways and advancing from the future into the future? I mean, we can remember what our forefathers taught us, what our ancestors taught us, and we can move forward, even using the technologies that are far advanced from what we know now, because there are already advances out there that would astonish most people on this planet. But most of us on this planet right now are nowhere near ready. We're like children with dangerous toys, because we've learned or we have the knowledge and the intellect to build things, but we don't have the wisdom to understand how to apply them and when never to apply them.
Speaker 1:This earth belongs to us all and it seems like for centuries that's all we've done is fight and fight and fight, killing each other. People will say well, we need it for population control too. That's what, and that's the silliest thing, that because we don't need population control, but people are understanding their place in this world, that we can't be like insects or like roaches that just breed and just consume everything around us until it's gone. We're supposed to be intelligent life, that if we want a family, that's great, but we can't, for the sake of the purpose of this earth, just breed like it's of no circumstance, because it is. Because this earth has a balance and, like all animal life, human life is the same. For every life that is born, one must pass. There must be a balance.
Speaker 1:And when we constantly, without regard, just continue to have babies without even considering it and you've got people out there that are forcing people to have babies, and I'm not even going to get into that, but going back to the old ways community, caring for each other, remembering that connection to the things around us, don't forsake just going to the park and sitting and relaxing, watching the squirrels, maybe even feeding the squirrels, hurting a bird feeder in front of your living room window or someplace where you sit and watch the birds feed the birds be a part of that balance. To wash the birds feed the birds. Be a part of that balance. Do those little things that contribute. Make sure that when you do things at home, you do them the correct way, the safe way, everything from just conserving water to, you know, just your trash.
Speaker 1:We can make differences, but we make the differences when we find our way back to who we were, because we're lost, ladies and gentlemen. We are lost. We're lost in a rat race of who's got more in the Joneses. I've got more than the neighbors, for the neighbors got more than for. Their grass is tall and our grass is not. They got a better lawnmower than we do, got a faster car. We need to get to the point where you know what we don't care.
Speaker 1:What we care about is do they have love? Do they have community? Do they have a support? Are we all working together or are we just working to destroy each other, consuming what we need? Are we consuming like gluttonous? How are we living on this earth? No matter what religion you are, or whether you're no religion at all, you have to agree with this that we all have responsibility to the life on this planet and to this planet itself. That we were given dominion over this earth to nurture it, to care for it, to tend to it, not to use it up, destroy it and kill everything on it but us, and then eventually kill ourself off Because it seems like that's all we do anyway.
Speaker 1:You know it's sad and it grieves the spirit and it should grieve you right now. Listening, our ancestors would roll over in the grave if they saw where we are right now. Do you honor your traditions? Do you even remember your traditions? Do you know who you are in your roots, where you come from? How many of us have forsaken who we are or don't even know who we are, because all we know is where we were born. We were born in this town, in this state or this area. But where do you come from? Are you European? Are you African? Are you? You know what are you? These things are roots.
Speaker 1:When we get down deep, have we traded our own culture of our ancestors for religions that aren't even our own? And then we try to. We don't understand why we're sad, why we're depressed, why we? Because the spirits around us, the ancestors, are trying to speak and they speak through the wind and the trees and the birds, but most of us have lost that ability to listen. Our ancestors are trying to tell us, if we don't find the way back to the old way, that we are all doomed that it doesn't matter who gets elected for who or for what. It requires us. It requires us working together as one. And, yes, it does require beginning to elect people that actually care themselves, not care about corporate profit or care about you know, the things that might seem important, but we need to focus on what truly is important.
Speaker 1:This earth is dying, we are dying. We're dying emotionally, spiritually, not only physically, and I urge you right now, just wherever you are, just stop for a minute and just look around. Where are you? Are you happy? Is the location you are? Does it make you happy? Does it frustrate you? Does it make you feel anxious with anxiety? Or does it make you feel anxious with anxiety? Or does it make you sad? And then imagine within your mind's eye what makes you happy and brings you peace Simple cookout in the backyard with family and the dog, the family dog, little things. That's connection, that's connecting with life and the earth and everything around you.
Speaker 1:Take some time and do those things. They're not small things. They're not little things. Take the time to go sit on the porch, like you want to and read that book, maybe have a hot cup of coffee or a cold glass of iced tea and just wave at a neighbor that walks by, be friendly, start building that community back up. When you see somebody hungry, offer something needs help, offer that. Help. Talk to people about things and don't be afraid of what they're gonna say. Oh, you're one of them, tree huggers. No, but you know, without, without the trees, we all die. Thank you everybody for taking the time to listen. Be blessed and blessed. Be Thank you.
