Hi, Anne Corbin, your Mind Body Spirit Mentor. I'm here with this week's episode of the mind body spirit connection. You are a complex being composed of 3 parts, mind, body, and spirit. Just get those 3 parts working together in harmony Anne upscale your life. I'm here to show you how. Last week, I was discussing organized religion. As a concept because I wanted to answer the question about whether the Mindbody Spirit Connection was religious or not.
Anne I only had time to scratch the surface of what I wanted to say, because religion is a huge topic in its own right Anne for me, a matter worthy of a lot of study and analysis. And just to recap on a sort of health warning that I gave last week, I might, in a fertently say something that you find offensive, but I'm not doing it intentionally. Believe me, so please let me off.
To be perfectly honest, I never gave any thought at all to the distinction between religion and spirituality for most of my life. I saw the two words as interchangeable. That was until I came across her meditation and energy healing Anne what are generally referred to as alternative practices.
So as I was weighing up different names for this podcast series, I wanted to select something that would allow me to discuss, cornucopia of matters that are important to me I'm passionate about spreading the word about the importance of energy and vibration Anne how an understanding of spirituality and embodiment can allow us to have enormously enhanced lives.
Anne also, the fact that so much empowering knowledge has been in tensionally withheld from the from the majority of people is something that both infuriates and intrigues me. So when I chose the name Mindbody Spirit Connection, I did so because that last word connection has profound importance Firstly, we learn the various means and methods of connecting the mind, the body, and the spirit, but secondly, and perhaps Corbin importantly, that we use this knowledge to connect dots, so to speak.
And yes, that's a reference to a Steve Jobs quote, that we make sense of our lives and sense of what's going on around us Anne that we develop the habit of questioning what we are told. Recently, I caught up with an address by William Cooper who is or was Anne American broadcaster. I don't know, the date of the speech I was listening to, but I liked some of his advice. He said, read everything, listen to everybody, and believe nothing unless you can prove it with your own research.
Now back to the subject of religion, and control, and the idea that god or the gods or Allah or whosoever Anne see you. Even if nobody else can, this notion was brilliant in terms of governing behavior. Anne take it even further that god can read your mind Anne that thou shalt not covet, that means basically want an envy and intend to do something about it, thou shalt not covet let alone do anything about it.
Anne combine this with threats of eternal damnation Anne the flames of hell Anne heaven knows what else, No wonder the population broadly speaking, toad the line for centuries. That thing about not coveting. Obviously, I'm talking about the 10 commandments given by the god of the Old Testament to Moses, Anne they define how a person could live a life that was pleasing to god.
And, 6 out of 10 are, in fact, rules for a stable society Anne 4 out of 10 are instructions how that god of Abraham preferred to be worshiped. Now the majority of religions followed these days, either worship god or at least acknowledge him, and Allah and god are the same being. Christianity Worships Jesus Christ as the only son of god, and Jesus is seen as divine, part of the holy trinity, along with the Holy Spirit.
And many other religions, including those originating in India, and Persia where probably the oldest religion itself originated, that was zoroastrianism. They acknowledge Christ as a major prophet. They don't call him Christ because Christ means the anointed Anne. So it would be Jesus or Esa, or whatever Anne name he's known by, that he's not considered to be the son of god.
It's rather interesting to look at how the traditions of the early Christians of where we would broadly, what we'd call the Middle East these days, how those religions have intermingled with existing practices from the times. There were a lot of so called mystery religions in that area. And the Roman army whilst occupying Britannia in the 1st 4 centuries, built temples to Mithras amongst other people, and Mithras originally was Persian.
Remains the, Roman worship Anne be seen at sites all along Hadrian's wall. That was where I remember coming across them first war. And, unfortunately, little is known about Mythras, but some say his life story is very similar to Jesus Christ. This can't be proven easily because it was a mystery religion so nothing was written down. However, recently I've been having a look at the the Persian origins of this, but I'm not going to go down that. Pathway at the moment.
These pagan religions were in existence throughout the Roman empire, and they were absorbed gradually into the Roman machine. And to make the process as seamless as possible, many pagan practices were kind of subsumed into Christianity. In other words, adopted by. For example, 25th December was just appropriated as Christ's birthday. In fact, it's more likely that he was born in the late spring when Anne ancient astrolod records are consulted.
It's all to do with the star of Bethlehem, which might have been Haley's comet and that sort of thing. But there were already celebrations going on, on 25th December, so it seemed like a really good idea once Christianity became the official religion to just carry on having all the celebrations at the same time. Anne, and this was an integral part of Celtic folklore.
Used by the druids, stonehenge and all that, and Yeah, mistletoe was sacred, so sacred to this pagan religion, that for many years, mistletoe was not allowed into Christian Churches. The word Pagan, eventually became a sort of a derogatory term, referring to somebody who was outside of any religion, but they weren't.
Paganism now is an existing religion, but it only has a very, comparatively small number of followers, but back in the day, the term Pagan, it was outside religion Anne therefore uncivilized. Back to the question of modern religions. When the UK census is held every 10 years, there is space on the forms where you are supposed to fill in what religion you follow if you follow on.
And 20 years ago, the 2000 and one figures were, when they were released, I recall hearing comments about how the totals of people declaring Anne allegiance to any specific religion were declining decade by decade. No surprises there, I guess. But in the section denoting other, please specify, there had been a remarkable number of people declaring themselves as Jedi Knights. And I'm talking about 390,000. Apparently, this was the result of a prank.
It was an email campaign that had inspired a lot of young people to declare themselves as that, in connection with Star Wars, which was very popular at the time. They revived the, the franchise, I think, round about the end of the 90s. Anyway, joking apart, would you believe that an estimated 84% of the world's population actually self identify as believers. I'm right off the topic of the UK census now.
I'm referring to, a pie chart, which had been compiled in 2015, and I found that online I was trying to get a feel for how the distribution of religions Anne worldwide. Anne the most up to date figures I could get was this pie chart from 2015. I thought it was quite enlightening. Starting with Christianity, which accounts for nearly half of the pie, still in these days, makes me think those missionaries were very active. Out of that Anne, 50%. Roman Catholicism accounted for half of it.
In other words, 25% of the total. Anne, okay, enthusiasm for that has been declining for many years, especially in the light of the child abuse scandals, but those are not confined to the Catholic church incidentally. There is a saying, once a Catholic always a Catholic, I mean, that actually describes me because I was raised as a Catholic, and I Well, I still feel like 1, but I can't call myself that anymore because I don't comply with the rules, which are a bit onerous.
So unless you convert actively to another faith, you are considered to be flick. Christians of Other, mainly Protestant varieties, together account for a other 24%. So in descending order of magnitude, the groups comprise Orthodox Eastern, Then protestants, including the church of England, then African indigenous sect anglicans, pentecostalists, and baptists. And Together, comprising less than 1% of the pie are jehovah's witnesses, quakers, and all those numerous American sects.
So Christianity developed from Judaism. But although the Jewish religion is widely spread all over the world, in addition to with is to within Israel, it self, it comprises only naught point 2 of the world population. I found that really amazing naught 0.2%.
And frequently commentators refer to Judeo Anne, and the 2 of these together with Islam are referred to as the Abrahamic religions because all three follow the god of the Old Testament in which Abraham is an important or a foundational character, if you like. Islam, incidentally, is the fastest growing religion today. And the adherence to that, of course, are Muslims, Anne their 25% of the pie, back in 2015, comprised mainly sunny with a very much smaller component of shiite Muslims.
Hinduism, of which there are 2 branches account for 19% and Buddhism, which grew out of Hinduism, Anne also has 2 main Anne, accounts for 7%. So we're already up to 100% if you're keeping count. And I haven't even mentioned Janism, shintoism, confucianism, taoisms, ororoastrianism, Native American sects, wicker, pagan ridgians, and possibly several more. Seekism just crept into the pie chart at less than 1%. But thanks to rounding, it would have brought that total. Up to 101%.
So since 2015, those percentages will, of course, changed, but they nevertheless give an idea of world belief systems, and the huge percentage that follow at least some sort of religion rather than nothing at all.
Well, time is marching on as usual, and this would be a convenient place to stop because I finished what I wanted to say about the spread of World religion, I want to go into more detail before too long about how religions and control have basically got us to where we are but no time this podcast, so it's gonna have to wait for another one. Do get in touch with me via social media.
If you find this interesting, if there's anything that you would like more detail on, or if you have any suggestions for future podcasts, I look forward hearing from you. So friends, that wraps up the mind body Spirit Connection for this week. Let me know, please, if there are any specific subjects that you would like me to lead in a future podcast, join me, same time next week, or connect with me anytime. I'll social media.