Meridith Berson - September 12, 2010 (in lieu of the assigned reading "The Self and Divinity, pg 30 in "Original Visions.")
I was raised in a Christian environment where praising God was not so much an act of gratitude but a requirement for salvation. Whether or not that was what the leaders intended to teach or not is unclear, but it was the message that was relayed. The way that praise was done was mostly through singing, such as the Native North American Shaman. The singing was a sacred ritual that would allow them to tap into the divine, immaterial, world that as humans we cannot seem to fully grasp. The book makes a point to show that even when there was no healing to be done the Shamans still sang, needing a constant touch with something divine.
This leads me to a more open view of religion. Not one that demands something of the person, but like the Shaman's song, it is something with an addictive counterpart. The more you participate in forms of worship the more intoxicated with it you become. Questions arise and are answered or settled on, and the part of the mind that cannot be silenced with math and science strives on what little evidence and what great faith others have in a type of divine being, or a basic divinity of any type. My question is this: is the song that the shaman's sang to reach the divine a beginning to the worship we have now, something that has been passed down? Or is it a basic instinct to sing when words limit us to our simple vocabulary?
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