The Wisdom Tradition and Me

Adrian Lee

Religions everywhere share a common trend. They tend to

have something that they believe in. Christians believe in God,
Hindus believe in Brahman, Muslims believe in Allah etc. But why do
people believe in certain religions, and what is the purpose of
believing in these religion? Today, I will talk about why it is
important to learn of the Wisdom Traditions of the worlds religions.

Metaphorically, there are two dimensions. One of those

dimensions is the horizontal dimension. This is the dimension that
everyone sees and am aware of. It is everything that you experience
in life: grades, politics, and news. Technically it is the world you live
in at the moment. But there is this vertical dimension. This is the
dimension no one can see, but you know that its there. Generally,
this is the dimension that is more spiritual, the dimensions where
you experience religion. When you are in the vertical dimension, you
will actually feel true happiness. But what is the goal of human
existence? You may think that the goal may depend on what the
religion is, but they all share one thing in common. The ultimate
goal is to bring the vertical and horizontal dimensions into one. The
problem that prevents us from doing this is that society wants us to
think that there is only the horizontal dimension, and not the
vertical. We are always so stressed on trying to make ourselves
valued in society in various methods. These methods include
making money, having valued talents, and sharing personalities. You
can not actually step into the vertical world and leave the horizontal

The Wisdom Tradition and Me

Adrian Lee

world because that world is always there, and it will never leave
you. So to access the vertical world, we must bring you heart,
body, and soul to one. We experienced this when we were told that
we had to do spiritual practices to feel the mind, body, and soul
come together and focus on your vertical dimension, not what was
happening in the horizontal world. I did the Conscious Walking
activity, and by consciously walking, I felt everything come
together, even though sometimes my mind wandered off.

As a Christian, I believe that God is the only god, and that

when you die, you will either go to Heaven or Hell. This conflicts
with other religions, as some people believe in things like
reincarnation and having multiple lives. We experienced this when
we did our NDEs and reincanation projects. Simon and I talked
about Eben Alexanders NDE, and talked about how sound had a big
part in believing. This was kind of strange because before having
the NDE, he had never been religious, and had never believed in
anything until that NDE. It conflicted with other religions, like when
we went to the ISKCON temple and were experiencing Hinduism.
The people who ran the temple talked about reincarnation, and how
you could become one by doing things like chanting and doing yoga.
I personally believe that to bring your mind, heart, and body, you
would have to pray to God for him to help us bring the three into
one. As of now, I believe that I am in a stage where I am still soaking
in knowledge of a religion. This is because when I was growing up, I

The Wisdom Tradition and Me

Adrian Lee

was always going to church and was always taught the Christian
faith, so I was still soaking in knowledge. Metaphorically, this is
called the construction phase, where I am still constructing who I
am, and havent really started questioning my beliefs. This
metaphor came from Katie Larson, who came to our class to share
about her experience regarding knowing about her past lives. We
learned that in the deconstruction phase, we were kind of
questioning why we think that our religion is right, and think about
what the purpose of life is. In the reconstruction phase, we try to recollect, and we feel more open to what there is in life.

After learning about the worldview and wisdom traditions of

world religions, I would like to learn more about how other religions
can bring the mind, heart, and body into one item. This is because I
know that different religions would have different ways of
concentrating to bring everything together, and I would like to know
their methods. This is so maybe when I am at home, and when I am
feeling stressed, I can try to use those methods to try to calm
everything down. It might be very helpful to me, because I have four
years of high school to deal with, and by learning these methods, I
could make my high school experience into a good one.