Apotheism: The Religion of Self-Empowerment

From the dawn of mankind we have searched for the meaning of life. Our earliest ancestors, shortly after gaining conscious awareness, began creating. From that ability to create, we sought out a creator and named it God. We used God as a way to rationalize the amazingly complex world around us, to explain the patterns of weather, to chase the darkness of night away with the warmth of the sun, and to hope for something more than a short mortal life on this planet.

Fast forward, oh about 200,000 years, we began perfecting the art of creating religion that allowed us to explain at the time almost everything that happened to us. We talked to volcanoes and heard the voice of God. We ate plants and saw God him/herself. We chanted and prayed and worshiped the various incarnations of powerful beings who we birthed into this world to keep us in check.

At the time, this was enough for us, but soon we began to kill each other on account of different beliefs. Holy war ravaged lands and civilization in the name of faith. All too easily, kings, emperors, and Caesars found a way to use religion to control their kingdoms, and become like gods themselves. The very roots of the earliest religions were trimmed and tapered to fit a more digestible size that could be fed to the masses. This allowed some smaller religions to become overwhelmingly powerful and shape the world for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Through the careful study of history, we can see how the modern world we live in now was built on a very bloody, and almost entirely archaic foundation. One that has already begun to crack and shake as old ways and beliefs that have long kept people under dogmatic control are no longer able to support a more progressive and scientific society. Each year and decade that passes, the strain felt in our civilization to be liberated from ancient ideology becomes more and more turbulent. This in turn, radicalized the two groups who pull for dear life at each end of the preverbal tug-of-war rope. It is now almost impossible to avoid the battle between theists, atheists, and agnostics alike. The misuse, corruption, and hypocrisy of what was a fairly beautiful system of belief has now reached its climax.

So who are we in all this and why do we need Apotheism? As we have previously established, archaic beliefs have become corrupted to mass control nations. Because of this, humanity has gone through several bloody wars, mass executions, and plenty of dark ages where science and progress were completely halted. Now, we live in a day where civil liberties are in constant threat of being taken away. Extremely dogmatic religions are causing family members who don't keep the faith to commit suicide or suffer severe mental health trauma. Though there may be many beautiful things religion can teach us and show us, the power to turn it against people and oppress those who cannot stand up against it is all too much. Apotheism seeks to free the civilized world from the chains of this oppression.

But how do we do this? There are many paths to take to create massive and lasting positive change in the world. All it takes is for enough people to demand change and take several small steps to turn back the wheel of time. It is no doubt a heavy burden to bear, especially if you see how bad the climate change issue has become. It may feel like a lost cause, but this is why we need such a radical transformation to our fundamental ideology to change the way we see the world and our place in it. By allowing others to dictate our "salvation," we are willfully letting them push us to the edge of the cliff of extinction.

The reason many fundamentalist politicians deny things like freedom of religion, civil rights to all people, body autonomy, and climate change is because they either do not reflect their misguided beliefs or are a direct threat to their ability to control thought. The worse the world gets, the more it "proves" the prophecy of the apocalypse. Therefore correcting climate change would go against the will of God. And though many prophecies are actually entirely incorrect or do NOT mean what the modern narrative believes it means, that will not detour the power that system of belief has amassed. Therefore, if it is the authority of God that we strip minorities and women of civil rights and bodily autonomy, then not doing so would go directly against God, and would therefore threaten the house of cards.

Apotheism removes the main vice of religion that keeps its hold on believers: the need for salvation. It instead teaches you that you are already free and you are not in need of a savior. The infinite universe and universal consciousness that was born from it gave us the ability to manifest our own destinies and create this world. There is no original sin, and most importantly, there is no eternal damnation, therefore there is no reason to strive for salvation. We teach what the ancient texts really say and the true origin of religion so that we can read them with a new understanding of ideas long lost in translation. Through the practice of scholarly effort, we can free our minds of the oppression of dogma, seeing these books for what they truly are and taking from them only the things that give us spiritual insight. It is our greatest goal to awaken those who have long slept in the matrix of false ideology and show them not only the error of blind faith but also that there is a new way to live that doesn't threaten our planet and each other as one species.

Our greatest teachings seek to help the initiate learn first that they alone hold the key to performing miracles in their life and in the lives of others. But we cannot perform at the highest level possible if we hold on desperately to false beliefs and misguided ideas. We also must strip ourselves of the shame and religious trauma that has left holes in our lives that promote filling those holes with unhealthy coping mechanisms and dangerous additions. People who have been the recipients of toxic religion have been shamed because of their lifestyle or perhaps their unwillingness to conform to every rule their religion imposes upon them. The poor and downtrodden are ridiculed and every measure is taken to try and take away services that help them. The LGBT community is constantly fighting for equality and freedoms allotted to others. Women still work to attain equality and bodily autonomy in western nations. Minorities are seen as dangerous and their neighborhoods are purposefully disregarded by politicians leaving their citizens to fend for themselves.

The spiritual journey that comes from Apotheism will bring an end to these oppressive structures that take the name of God in vain and will bring a new age of enlightenment to the world. We will correct the mistakes of our ancestors and will no longer perpetuate raising future generations with the same toxicity that we have been raised in. Tradition no longer has any meaning if it allows these terrible tools of the oppressors to continue to carve our future. Our future is ours to carve, without dogma, without shame, without trauma, and without hiding who we are and the power that we have. Casting off our shackles, attaining enlightenment through apotheosis, and unleashing the full power of what we as a perfect human and a unified society are capable of will end the reign of oppression and heal our people and our planet.

It is my hope to leave this world so much greater and more abundant than I found it, and to give my children, your children, and our children's children a loving and thriving world free of the fear of world wars, economical collapse, global warming, and terror. Unification through spiritual enlightenment and unbiased education are the first steps to bringing heaven to Earth. The more we awaken the power in others, the more force for good we assemble. The greater our numbers, the greater the impact we can make on our planet. The more advocacy for change, the more our voices will be heard. It is through the unrelenting push to see a better world that we slowly turn back the gears that have forced us so close to the edge. The divine spark in you given to each creature is a sliver of the infinite consciousness of our universe, and connects us all together. So let us use it to achieve Apotheosis and begin to perform a new age of miracles.

Namaste.

- Rishi