For many people, religion is a poison word. To them, "religion" is synonymous with Christianity, and given the sex scandals, pedophiliac criminal conspiracies, hypocritical teachings of a "prosperity gospel," and fascistic nationalism that have tainted Christianity in the United States, it's not hard to understand why.
But that antipathy doesn't squelch the longing for something transcendent, some framework of meaning that helps make sense out of life. So, looking outside the church, people identify as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) and graze at a buffet table of belief systems--a ladle of Buddhism, a heaping helping of Law of Attraction, a side of quantum theory, etc.
Which is fine! But also a missed opportunity.
Your enjoyment of almost any experience can be amplified by doing it alongside other people. Whether it's rock climbing, enjoying a comedy show, dancing, or eating dinner, when the right people--your people--gather to engage in an activity you all love, that's the stuff happy memories are made of.
We think that can extend to experiences of the transcendent, too. But if everyone's locked away in their own SBNR silo, how can that work?
The solution starts with redefining our terms. Let's say that "spirituality" means your personal ideas about, experience of, and relationship with the Source of your being. And then let's say that "religion" is the way you can gather with other people to have an experience of that Source that's much more powerful that what you can achieve alone. In this case, "religion" is less a noun than a verb.
And that's what we practice at the FCDB. Not a religion, but a new way to religion.
Pararealism
This "new way to religion" is based on pararealism. Pararealism is the recognition that our beliefs help determine the reality we experience.
This is true in all areas of life, but especially when it comes to matters of Spirit. And so the reality-determining beliefs of this new-way-to-religion are
- The God/dess (or Transcendent Reality, or Allah, or Brahman, or the Ein Sof, or Budhha-nature, or Gaia, the Universal Mind, or whatever you want to call it) is real, and
- Religions are make-believe.
That is, all religions are based on stories. Stories that were first written down decades or more after the supposed fact by people who were not even present to witness the events they claim to describe. Are these stories true? Until someone invents a time machine, there’s just no way to know for sure. The best we can say is that they are quasi-fictional. They are imaginally true. But that is all they need to be!
By acting as if these quasi-fictional stories are true, followers of traditional religions enable and condition specific kinds of experiences of the Sacred while simultaneously generating community. In other words, these games of make-believe can yield real-world results.
This insight—that religion is a game to be played, a game that becomes reality when it gets you up-close-and-personal to the Sacred—is important. If religion is a game, then perhaps we are free to create more sophisticated and efficacious religion games. Games that not only work as vehicles for experiencing the Holy in new ways, but are actually fun!
We can call these "parareality games." A parareality game is a complete-out-of-the-box system of practices and beliefs that enable and condition experiences of the God/dess while simultaneously creating community in which those experiences can be anchored.
Another way to understand parareality games is as imaginal universes in
which people can gather and with which they can interact. The settings
and characters may be made up, but the experiences you can have there
are real.
As religions, parareality games are no less earnest or life-changing for being self-aware that they are quasi-fictional, because they actually work.
At the FCDB we play a parareality game called Phonomancer.
Phonomancer
Phonomancer is a conceptually complete, highly effective, wildly original religion (that is, way to gather with other people and have an experience of Source that's more powerful that what you can achieve alone) that has roots in Hermeticism, Christian Gnosticism, ayahuasca shamanism, Jungian psychology, and the popular culture (music, movies, comic books, and games) of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
In terms of practice, it has a system for personality development called the Phonomantic Method. This personality development is demonstrated and tested in rituals called entheotainments, theatrical spectacles designed to create in participants a direct and immediate experience of the Divine.
The beliefs of Phonomancer are expressed in a mythos that includes
- a cosmogony
- an ontology
- a soteriology
- a teleology
- an eschatology
- an answer to the problem of evil
And it does this using explanations based in pop culture idioms.
Phonomancer's take on these myth categories (and the Phonomantic Method) will be covered in future posts.
Don't Be Scared
The reader is reminded that the FCDB's doctrine includes only two claims: the God/dess is real, and religion is make-believe. Thus the mythos of Phonomancer is regarded not as revealed truth, but a set of beliefs one can use to shape one's experience of reality. They are useful only to the extent they provide benefit. As such they can and should be constantly tweaked for better outcomes.
Just as important is the recognition that different people resonate with or are attracted to different kinds of stories. De gustibus non est disputandum ("In matters of taste, there can be no disputes") applies; no parareality game is superior to another, except to the extent that its practices and beliefs yield greater eudaemonia for the individual, their community, their society, and their civilization.
Parareality games like the FCDB's Phonomancer allow one to be spiritual and religious. They offer the amplifying benefits of shared practice and belief, without the tyranny of dogmatism. The experience is actually a lot like a group fitness class, like CrossFit or hot yoga or Soul Cycle. Everyone's doing the same workout, but for their own reasons, at their own level, and having their own unique experience.
Don't be scared. It's just the science fictional future calling :)
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