I recently heard a wonderfully wise and witty speech by Brene Brown. She talked briefly about religion:

“Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up.”

That superior condescending attitude applies not only to religion, but also to other areas of our modern society. Politics, for example. And even personal relationships.

I grew up in a large Roman Catholic Italian family. Many of them are still Catholic today, or at least Christian. I am neither.

Although I’m close to most of my family, some of them cannot understand or accept my “heathen” ways. As one relative once remarked to another, “What Johnny (the name they call me) is doing goes against the Catholic Church.” She was referring to my work with Spirit.

That black-white, right-wrong attitude is contagious, infecting nearly every part of our modern world. Even some so-called “new age” spiritual circles.

My spirit guides talked about this a while back. Upon rereading his words, they struck me as rather harsh. That certainly is not typical of him. Nonetheless I’ll give you what he said.


“There have been more deaths, more wars, more of all you would consider human tragedy, created by the ‘us versus them’ mentality. You know—‘Our way cannot possibly be wrong because, after all, it is our way! Therefore, their way must be wrong.’

“Look back at your history books. They chronicle accurately the devastating human consequences of such an unenlightened approach to life on your Mother Earth—an approach many individuals, groups, and institutions still buy into unhesitatingly and eagerly.

“And where has it gotten you, individually and as a race? Well, if you look at it from a physical, human perspective, not very far. Are your technological weapons of mass destruction an improvement over Caesar’s horse-driven armies as they invaded ancient Gaul?

“Well, in one way, yes. You can kill a lot more people a lot more quickly than he could. It took him 8 years to defeat the Gauls. It takes you 8 days or 8 hours or 8 minutes to vanquish your enemies.

“Life was not meant to be a struggle. Life was not meant to be a war of ‘right’ versus ‘wrong.’ Life was meant to be an absolute joy—a joy! A joy in the remembering of the reason you came to this life to begin with.

“You have somehow been convinced, somewhere along your physical path, there is not room for all of you on your Mother Earth. And therefore, those who are ‘different’ from you must be obliterated.

“For, after all, ‘We are right and they are wrong.’

“If you stay on that path there will soon be none of you left to argue, fight, and kill over who’s right and who’s wrong.”

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