On a Spiritual path where do Self-inquiry and Religious paths Merge and Diverge?

Tonight's meeting we will discuss what we feel is relevant to seekers of Truth. I feel religion has a lot to offer, personally I have been raised Catholic and have recently taken an interest in practicing the faith again. It is easy to overlook religion in these fast-paced days, it barely seems relevant to our "modern" lives. However, there seems to be a light coming from the church, a light in the darkness if you will.

From studying the saints over the past while I sense that they all have a certain "quality" that is lacking in everyday man, which is why we call them saints I guess. My researching of the saints is to try to touch upon the "highest good" that we mere mortals can get in touch with. The heart and soul seem to be drawn to this "quality" that emanates from the saints and the holy figures like Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the disciples etc. What is the quality of being "holy"? What is it to be holy? What set saints apart from everyday man? Were they deranged people as many of them were tortured to death because of their faith?

So how does religion "connect" with a self-inquiry path? I'm not sure, at the moment on my path, I seem to be pulled in both directions. I want to use this meeting to ascertain how congruent or incongruent these paths are when put together. Self-inquiry is about becoming conscious of myself, my interior operations. These interior operations include my thoughts, feelings, reactions, intuitions etc. The goal of the self-inquiry path to me is to find the answer of the age old zen koan "who/what am I?" Enlightenment/Awakening is to become the answer, it is not an intellectual understanding, although intellectual reasoning is a tool to use on the path. I believe Awakening to be the answer to the "existential angst" problem that resides in the root/core of the soul. I feel existential angst is that root problem in every man only we have so many outer layers of dissatisfaction like an onion and our attention gets trapped in the outer layers. Happiness to me means to solve the root problem, my "identity".

Two areas that I feel overlap between the religious and self inquiry paths are (1) a devotion to something higher. A higher Perfection, The highest Love, The greatest Good, Thy will and (2) Prayer. To enter into a practice of prayer I feel of great necessity. As a mere mortal I can only pray, try to raise my heart and soul to God, Thy will, the Highest Perfection that I can conceive, that I long for to become aligned with.

Although I do certainly face doubts about whether I am on a bone fide spiritual path. I wonder if I am cooking up my path as legit and progressive when it could have major flaws and be seriously lacking. Does any of this strike a chord with your path? Do you have a spiritual path? Ever considered about getting serious about your spiritual path? Please join the meeting to discuss this topic further and challenge and question these ideas put forward here. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Thanks to unsplash.com for the event image: Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash

Check out the "What we are about" section in the groups' main page for some guidelines we work to adhere to. Meetings are run on the Microsoft Teams platform. Please contemplate the topic in advance of the meeting to get the best out of it and bring your views and convictions to the meeting, if possible have a pen and paper close by to record anything useful that may come up that you resonate with on the night, little things you may want to contemplate further.