Suzhou

Hello to all. My name's Ben Overmyer. I chose the user name "Suzhou" because I was enchanted with that city's inhabitants when I visited in 2005. I seek knowledge first, and knowledge of the Dao second. I have not yet found my way, and wish to explore many things before settling on a path. I am 26 and living in South Dakota. I hope to learn much from you, and perhaps you will learn a thing or two from me in the process.

I follow the same path as you, friend, in that I do not yet belong to any particular path. I am too much in conflict with dogmatic thinking - that is, the acceptance of something as True without any reason Why - to accept any existing church, school, or temple. However, I do perceive the same as you do - that there is an undercurrent of similarity running through all religions. Every single one emphasizes that there is something greater than Self that cannot be perceived through the five "normal" senses. Christianity calls it God. Wicca calls it Goddess and God. Daoism calls it Dao. Star Wars calls it the Force. =P Similarly, each religion provides a way to expand beyond the normal sufferings and feelings of terrestrial senses to open Self to that extraordinary Greatness - whether meditation, or prayer, or even "being in the zone" in sports and athletics. The very existence of things that we cannot perceive - for example, a person ten miles away, or the quarks at the center of an atom - says that we cannot perceive everything with our normal senses. What spiritual paths try to do is provide a way to know the unknowable, and in that, all religions are the same.