From a post I made in a class about religion:

An interesting thought that caught my attention was that the focus on afterlife seems to serve as a motivater for attempts to live this life more fully and properly. Thus, it seems the reward must be external to the process in many cases. Some religions, though, use the process of this life itself as the carrot. Examples of the former include Heaven as a reward for a moral life vs. simple serenity as a reward for a mindful life as an instance of the latter.

I am wondering if the reward is the same in both cases, perhaps some effect in the area of diminished anxiety? And that if anxiety is a direct effect of a focus on future possibilities or rumination over past mishaps, then perhaps there is a clue as to why religion is human-centric? We have the brain that produces the survival tool labeled "ego" and thus we have the anxieties that require management.

Carried further, this train of thought leads back to mindfulness and similar present-moment skills as direct management of anxiety by turning attention away from dwelling on memories and scenarios. Could so much of neurosis be simply the effect of a commonly experienced dysregulation of our natural ability to consciously remember and predict?

It seems to me that this may be a case of Occam's razor.

D