Thinking Through Religions. Humans and the Sacred Essay

Thinking Through Religions. Humans and the Sacred - Essay Example The paper will discuss two of those places and discuss how union is attained through uniting the exterior state and an individual’s interior state. The Golden Earth as the middle place Native Americans attach all their wealth or richness to the earth and the earth remains Golden to them – the greatest treasure. For instance, the most respected myths, Cibola’s seven villages are located at the middle pace of the earth- a place where natives entered completely into a relationship with the earth – land, (Bauer 45). The attachment to the earth-soil as source of nurture forms a theme very crucial to spirituality of Native Americans. To respect and honor the earth with the whole of an individual’s sense is central to the theology of Amerindians grounded in the concrete and sensate world. Additionally, an individual’s relation to the land is a way of making subtle linkage with the holy and one’s consciousness with the world is prevalent Nativ e Americans culture as a way of uniting the interior state and the exterior state (Lane 73-94). The sweat lodge This is an individual’s vision place; it is a symbolic location set aside for having close contact with sacred and a place designed to invite the holy, for instance, a ceremonial Hogan or a Pueblo – sacred places for soliciting totemic spirits presence. The significance of the sweat lodge is to have a godly encounter because they are restricted and dark. In these places, the spirits of the living things are unified; - the purifying water, fire, and earth qualities join to provide new visions and life to the people entering the places. People associate with the lodge the sacred place, which forms a crucial dreams landscape and people perform various rituals such as dances to connect to the supernatural, (Versluis 12). 2. Heaven and earth are threads of one loom This means that all spatial relationships and normal experiences would turn out to be sacramental ma king an extensive and increasingly powerful reality. For instance, the geographical configuration of various villages of Shaker with many families, structures, and main meeting places would indicate an order inspired from beyond and shapes, angle and colors all shows an apocalyptic vision. All structures and actions are just allusions to the archetypal reality in their midst, for instance, the meetinghouse was painted white with heavenly blue interior trim. Similarly, the house was covered with a roof of gambrel, its sloppy edges indicating heaven dome. There are various thoughts in support of Shakers spiritual correspondence theory, for instance, the Swedenborgian and Puritan spiritual correspondence idea has a great influence. In their school of thoughts, the reciprocal spiritual and natural world overlaps would be analyzed. The theology of Puritan with the focus on the New England commonwealth as an Old Testament typology fulfillment had focused on this aspect as divine represent ative or emblematic, archetypal event. The transcendentalists like his friends and Emerson furthered this notion and argued that each world piece is able of being fitted to various spheres. His nature contemplation led to a universal awareness of being, just as Plotinus has discovered in himself the correspondence images to the distant constellations, (Walters 96). Swedenborg also focused on human instrument divine inspiration through the second coming reality and had envisaged himself persistently existing between the natural and spiritual experience worlds. Generally, Shakes idea serves to draw a connection between the two experiences – the natural and spiritual world. For instance, they argue that the light established in invisible universe is highly linked to the earth’