After two weeks of existential delirium, I finally caught it physically and am nursing a low-grade cold and hating it as the weather turns nice. I don't hate it, actually. Whenever I get sick I get the urge to tax myself by going for a ride or something. Which can't be good for it.

Actually it's when I'm recovering, and it feels good because it feels like recovering, like I got all this energy stored up while being sick and need to let it out. But then I try, and end up bonking and making a beeline for home. I think I'll be wise and not go.

Suffering comes and goes, but if you attach to your suffering, that's worse because it never goes. Maybe it's better to not look at the suffering, but look at the attachment. What am I, talking to myself here? Go look!

*achoo!* bleah.

I'm trying to read through the Qur'an again. This is what I do for fun. Is that at all interesting to anyone?!! Geez.

It blows my mind that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God (or concept of God, rather). The spiritual texts and the teachings aren't the problem. The problem is the people; the human characteristics make people do what they want in their own interest and use spiritual texts and teachings as means of yielding power, expressing pride and arrogance, and judging and oppressing other people. As such, it's probably better if these texts were never created in the first place.

I don't think it matters either way, power acts as power does, whether it's the Crusades, jihad, imperialism, or colonialism, it's just unfortunate. I have trouble believing that religion was ever the sole reason for committing crimes and atrocities against humanity.

Religion, or spirituality, is only about one person. Oneself. By nature of the self, no one has a relationship with god or the spiritual that is the same as anyone else's. When one person reads a spiritual text that resonates, the automatic response, I believe, is not to go next door and make your neighbor believe the same thing.

It's when people start banding together, thinking their shared beliefs are the basis of something more concrete, that heirarchy, power, and judgment emerge. It's a human characteristic, not a religious one that threatens other people or feels threatened by others and reacts accordingly. It all snowballs into an agenda and people start doing things "in the name of God", when really it's power, psychology, fear, ideology, whatever.

Religion is not only nothing that anyone should kill for, but it is nothing anyone should harm any other living person for in any way. It is also nothing that anyone should die for either.

I do want to get around to reading more of the Bible, but Pauline Christianity is so different, I believe with the minority in academia, from what Jesus taught. And that the New Testament was compiled by the Roman Empire makes it prima facie suspect as a spiritual authority by my definition. Imagine what the Bible would look like if the Bush Administration got a crack at compiling it. Or any political authority. And why.