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Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA
Geddy, I like this thoughtful point you make about how struggling to do those things we find difficult but important can be very uplifting.
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Well it's true. The reward for persevering and sticking to whatever you're trying to acheive will nearly always outweigh the initial difficulties and problems of doing it.
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Some of the actions I've taken in my life that were most meaningful to me (such as deciding to become vegetarian and then vegan out of concern for other animals) were ones that required me to break out of my habits and old way of thinking as I worked toward a goal that felt more in keeping with who I was or wanted to be.
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Sometimes it's those habits and old ways of thinking which can be the most damaging. They essentially act as filters and color any other feelings or actions. Discovering what you really think or feel is mostly about bypasing and getting rid of these.
I'm currently going through psychotherapy, and one of the biggest parts of the process is really about finding out what internal rules or thoughts I've formed for myself, why they've been formed and how I can deal with them to get rid of them. Some of these thoughts, such as my feeling I'm never good enough, have been quite damaging.
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I've never thought of myself as observing any kind of religious belief in becoming vegetarian and then vegan...it was more observing my *own* feelings...yet I do remember when I learned about Buddhism and Hinduism that I felt comforted to know that what I felt had been given a name (ahimsa) because so many other people felt the same way as I:
I think it is interesting how I ended up deciding to be vegetarian when I was an isolated child in a meat-eating family and community...while halfway around the world there were huge numbers of people who had taken this same path as part of major spiritual religious philosophies. I would have liked to have known that at the time.
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Sometimes these things go beyond being about any one religious system or a particular system. Going to what you say in the last section of your post about how principles should and do stem from internal principles, it seems that well before you found out about the name of these principles and things you were thinking (the ahimsa thing) were known to you, you were already very much in tune with them.
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I see how spiritual organizations, whether secular or religious, can help encourage people to achieve their personal goals, which may actually be the goal of thinking more about others. Then observing the organizations' ideals for behavior is a way to practice using your will to obtain your own goals, such as the goal of living a healthier, kinder life.
I'm never sure to what degree my Unitarian Universalist background as a little child influenced my future choice to become vegetarian for the first time in elementary school, and later vegan as an adult. I imagine that thinking about the UU concepts helped set the stage for me to think about other sentient beings besides humans, since Unitarian Univeralist principles (themselves derived from a variety of religions including Buddhism and Hinduism) include...
* The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
* Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
As a child learning about these concepts, I felt that justice for "all" should include my animal kin, and I would best respect them by not eating them, just as I would not want to be eaten.
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That would make sense. I'm a believer that my upbringing among people of all sorts of different races, religions and backgrounds may have served to point me in the direction I'm going in now with regard to religion. Bear in mind my family isn't particularly religious. It was school and socially that I started to meet people of other religions, other cultures and languages, and really learn for myself about spirituality and religion. Made me really think and get out the vaguely Christian rut of my family.
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Ideally, I feel that observing a spiritual concept about a way to behave shouldn't be about observing a rule that is external to yourself, but instead should revolve around observing how the concept resonates with what is already inside you. I can see how having a spiritual organization of people who uphold a value that resonates with what you feel is very core to who you are would enable you to better observe what is in your own self, and follow your conscience rather than just move rather thoughtlessly through life, copying what others do and not listening to your own inner voice.
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This is what Judaism teaches. Judaism teaches that mere blind faith and practice is a bad thing indeed, whether it be belief in God or following a mitvot or keeping Shabbat. It's not just some external law which has to be followed but something which you have to find some connection with personally on a mental and emotional level.
For example, I keep Shabbat because for me personally, the idea of a representation of what it is like to be in the World To Come is important for me personally. The structures of Shabbat help me acheive that goal of being able to dedicate myself to G-d in a way which is to me personally meaningful. So the whole concept of Shabbat isn't anything 'new' to me in some ways, but it simply agrees with something I already held to be important.