Religion: the Framework for Spirituality

From another discussion list post:

In my unimportant view, not meant to trample anyone's beliefs, there is the Divine, whether a being or a state or something I am not (capable of?) thinking of right now. Then there is religion, which I think of as Man's attempt to pack a big concept into a small enough box that it can be shared with language. As with describing color to a blind man, language can approximate the reality but not replace the experience of it.

Certain traditions of spirituality have striven to experience the Divine more closely, in their highest levels transcending language and ritual for direct sensation. The key concept is seeing the color personally rather than accepting a secondhand description as a permanent substitute.

Staying with Freud for consistency, the ego is the mediator between id and superego and it is our conscious experience. I wonder if this is the main impediment to sensing my relationship with the universe directly. What if that sensation were a function of the id or superego and not available to the ego? My natural human bent may to be to relate to the world via the ego, so I find it easier to focus neatly packaged concepts shared via language.

I am disturbed by what is lost in the translation from direct sensation to conceptual structures like religion. I see the personal experience as shared by wise and holy teachers from many traditions in an effort to lead their fellows to similar enlightenment. In passing from mouth to ear, however, the word is degraded, interpreted and reinterpreted, until finally it is put on paper, formalized into rituals and fed to congregations that each accept their customized version as a convenient substitute for the more difficult process of knowing the Divine directly.

Man is fallible. Priests exploit, fanatics distort, worshipers rationalize. For me, the religion can provide either a framework or a maze, depending upon the intent and capabilities of the adherent. I suspect many people juggle non-spiritual goals with religious directives and that, during conflicts, the latter become open to interpretation because that's a major side effect of language. Without condemning the use of personal judgment, I would assert that a more direct pursuit of one's spirituality would provide a superior guide to any external set of rules.

D