The Wiki-Spirit Manifesto:

A contribution to the conversation in the world about spiritual life.
If you dare to, pass it on to your list, with attribution below. And since it's a collaborative project, feel free to shoot me your contributions. It's open-source spiritual software, and I'll feel free to administer the contributions for greatest project evolution and effectiveness.

Thanks,
Don McAvinchey
CoachDon@CreateaMonthofMiracles.com
www.createamonthofmiracles.com


The Wiki-Spirit Manifesto:
An Open-Source, Collaborative & Sustainable Spirituality

1. All organized religions are set up to keep men in power. That’s it. ‘Nuff said on that.

2. If you’re arguing with that first point, you’re proving it.

3. Spirituality is about your individual experience of spiritual life, your connection with the numinous of life.

4. If there are rules or dogma, it isn’t spirituality. It's religion. Not the same thing.

5. Many organized religions narrow one’s thinking to close to other possibilities in life, and in spiritual life. I’m not sure if they all do. You’ll have to decide that.

6. Thinking a certain way, being a certain way, talking a certain way, isn’t spirituality. This is what organized religion does to you.

7. You have to fit a certain mold. This isn’t spirituality.

8. Spirituality is about living an ecstatic life. Wide open, fully expressed, fulfilled life. Not living by organized religions’ rules. That ecstatic living may be quietly led, and may be dancing for joy. But it’s about expressing Your Self.

9. It’s really good to hear different thoughts, and not be controlled by just one thought.

10. Spiritual life picks and chooses what works for you, from your knowledge, teachings of others, and what fits for you in your life’s unfolding situations. Not what forces you to fit into some pre-determined form.

11. Any organized religion that keeps women out of leadership roles is a lie.

12. Women are children of Spirit/God/Goddess/The Universe/Consciousness, equal to all other forms of life, especially equal to men.

13. If you believe otherwise, you have been brainwashed by men who wear long robes, and funny hats. They are manipulating you. Time to wake up.

14. If you have internalized these derogatory beliefs and are arguing about women being less than men, you’re again proving that you have been brainwashed. Sorry about that.

15. Life is far too rich, varied, and wonderful to be contained by such bigotry. How could one aspect of The Great Spirit be less than some other aspect? Silliness, pure and simple.

16. Spiritual life is based in our own individual experience of mystical, mysterious, and wonderful occurrences. No one else can judge our experiences.

17. Scripture can be a guide for living a deeper, more fulfilling spiritual life.

18. It can also be used to dominate people different from your group, keeping this belief of “they are less than us” going. That’s just wrong. And evil.

19. If you hear a minister, priest, rabbi or imam using scripture to portray others as less than his group, he is lying to you, and trying to manipulate you. Please don’t fall for that old trick.

20. No doctrine means freedom of spirit.

21. Not being attached to dogma is spiritual life.

22. To live life is what spirituality is all about. Living doctrine or dogma is about keeping men in power over women, indigenous peoples, and anyone who opposes those old ideas.

23. Trying to convert anyone to your way of ‘religious belief’ is using domination over his or her Spirit. Domination can be defined as you thinking you’re better than, have the true answer, and look down on the other person and their spiritual life.

24. This is inherently wrong and evil.

25. Evangelism is using domination over other peoples’ Spirit. I’m sure you’d guessed already that we were going there, right?

26. Thus, evangelism is wrong and evil.

27. If you don’t think so, just check out the television evangelists, and look at them objectively as to their level of compassion, understanding and acceptance of other peoples’ beliefs. You may not stop puking if you really let the truth of this into your belly.

28. Spiritual ideas that challenge your way of thinking aren’t necessarily bad.

29. Different is good.

30. You have to have an open mind and open heart to love those who have different spiritual experiences than you.

31. Even people with different beliefs from this manifesto. Check that out.

32. All spiritual dogma or doctrine is wrong, by definition.

33. The definition is that we honor individual spiritual experience above doctrine.

34. Any doctrine, dogma, preaching or rules must subjugate automatically to individual spiritual experience and expression.

35. Don’t hold your breath for this to happen. You’ll probably faint.

36. If you are getting angry in reading this manifesto then that is your reaction, not ours. But, we love you anyway.

37. Sometimes we have to think these things through a little bit, before we can really grasp them clearly.

38. If you just believe what someone else tells you, preaches to you, or interprets for you from scriptures, then you are sacrificing your connection with Spirit. Not wise.

39. Why is this not wise? Because you are intimately connected with Spirit, all the time. Therefore, to turn your connection over to someone else besides yourself, who probably wears a long robe and a funny hat, or a three-piece suit, means you are pretending that you have no spiritual power, and they have all of it.

40. This is obviously a delusion. Time to wake up.

41. There are no rules anymore.

42. Guess who has to decide to be an ethical person now?

43. Yep, you guessed it: It’s You!

44. Since there are no rules anymore, and we are evolving toward a personal ethic, then you have to take on the responsibility of your own ethical stance in life.

45. Tough shit if you don’t like that, it’s true, so get over it.

46. And get a life.

47. A life that has to have your own ethics about kindness, compassion, tolerance, connection and giving and receiving love from people who are different from you.

48. Do you really want every place in the world to look like McDonald’s?

49. From your own personal spiritual experience growing up, maybe being around different people who can’t believe you don’t go to church, can’t believe that you have no strict religious beliefs and no doctrine, so what their judgment ends up missing is that you have to work harder to come to a personal ethic, to be even more aware of how you are showing up in the world and showing up toward other people, even how you are showing up with those with different beliefs than you--now that's enlightenment.

50. This is true. Check it out in your own internal intuition. You’ll see it’s true.

51.For example: many gay or lesbian persons we’ve met have a better handle on sexuality than many heterosexual persons we’ve met. The gay and lesbian folks have been forced to figure out their own personal ethics about sexual life, apart from the institutional belief systems of the majority. That’s why they are generally clearer as a group about sexuality. Trial by fire, sort of.

52. So, what is an open-source, collaborative and sustainable spirituality? That’s the most important question of our age, in our opinion.

53. It is a spirituality that honors all paths.

54. No spiritual or religious belief is more legitimate than any other path.

55. We know, you folks who believe in a Savior cringe at this idea, and we’ll probably lose you at this point. Unless you are a courageous person. Yes, that’s a direct challenge.

56. Courage will lead you to engage intimately with someone else’s path.

57. Fear will lead you to try to convert them to your path.

58. Fear is what leads to the Dark Side, remember? Yoda taught us that.

59. Fear, anger, intolerance of others. That’s the Dark Side of the Force.

60. If you are trying to convert someone to your way of religious belief, then by definition you are afraid to connect with them intimately. No bull, this is true.

61. A sustainable spirituality calls on us to connect with other peoples’ spiritual paths.

62. A dead-end spirituality tries to convert others. That’s all you can say for it. It’s a lost cause from the beginning.

63. A conversion based religious structure sees other people as less than your group, less than you, evil, possessed by the devil, or just plain deluded.

64. This is silliness. If you believe this way, you again have been brainwashed, and again, we’re sorry about that.

65. But since there are no rules anymore, you have to come to a fundamental decision: Do you want to learn to be intimate with others, to experience others’ lives, hopes, beliefs, or, do you just want McDonalds everywhere?

66. In other words, do you want a rich and varied life, or do you just want little carbon copies of your own religious beliefs surrounding you everywhere you go?

67. Life is always more rich, thick, and wonderful than any one story can contain.

68. This applies to spiritual life, too.

69. Therefore, a sustainable spirituality is fundamentally within an ethic of absolute empowerment of the other person’s spiritual experience.

70. And, thus, empowerment of your own spiritual experience. You can’t have one without the other.

71. So, we honor your spiritual experience. Whether it is within a church building, scripturally based, or free-flowing outside of any dogma or doctrine.

72. Sustainable spirituality has no room for judging others, putting them down because they don’t believe in your personal savior or prophet, or anything like that.

73. And open-source spirituality must then hold that all contributions to the development of spiritual life contain goodness. You might not follow all contributions, because of who you are. But all contributions add to the structure and format, and enrich it.

74. Now, if someone tells you that this is wrong, off-based, theologically unsound, or against scriptural interpretation, then check if they are a man wearing a long robe.

75. No offense to anyone, but that’s just weird.

76. Not weird that a man would wear a long robe. To each his own. No, it’s weird that a man who wears a long robe and a funny hat would then turn around and declare women to be outside of the realm of good, solid spiritual life, so they can’t hold leadership positions. For example.

77. By the way, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, who we believe was Jesus’ wife, quotes Jesus as saying, “Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it…Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Savior said..”

78. Duh. Wonder how that one got left out of The Bible?

79. When we are tired and exhausted from our own resistance to being close with other’s who believe differently than we do, we must take on the responsibility of our own resistance, and it’s effects on us.

80. It’s exhausting to judge others. That’s God’s work, by the way, as all scriptures tell us: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Duh, again.

81. Rather, we MUST work toward a sustainable spirituality, one that doesn’t hide behind dogma, doctrine or separating beliefs, but instead, connects us, one to another.

82. Anything less would be uncivilized, as Charles Barkley used to teach us.

83. From this place of acceptance, compassion, and collaboration, we can build a world-wide culture that creates a sustainable spiritual ethic amongst all of us.

84. The ‘powers that be’ won’t like this idea. They will argue against it, say it’s against scripture, spoken by the devil himself, and hurtful to children learning the ‘3 Rs’.

85. They will be trying desperately to hold onto their sources of power, namely, the systems of power that automatically subjugate others: women, indigenous peoples, and minorities, meaning, anyone who doesn’t believe as they believe, and anyone who doesn’t acknowledge them as the all-powerful speakers of the ‘Truth”.

86. Sorry, fellas. Game over.

87. What is right, and just, and spiritual, is to honor all people, honor all paths, and stop this insane separation based on religious dogma dictated by men.

88. An open-source, collaborative, sustainable spirituality holds us to the task of each person individually rising to the highest ethic possible for them, both in spiritual life, and in social discourse with those who are different in their beliefs.

89. It calls on us to collaborate in building a Life that is workable for everyone, not just for those who would make the world carpeted with McDonalds restaurants, and McDonalds churches.

90. An open-source, collaborative, sustainable spirituality brings people together, without requiring them to be converted. It honors who we are as people, first and foremost, not whether we fall in lock-step with the dogma of the pseudo-empowered minority.

91. A sustainable spirituality will not tolerate the elimination of unalienable human rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, because certain ‘groups’ of people don’t fall into the religious power groups' definition of what a moral person looks and acts like.

92. Therefore, for example, anyone who wishes to marry anyone else, must be allowed to do so, and be honored for the love that brings them together, rather than honoring the hate that judges them. Honoring such hate for folks such as gays and lesbians who wish to have legitimized marriages, is non-sustainable, non-collaborative, and thus, evil, since it only honors McDonalds church beliefs.

93. From the realm of mystical experiences to the agnostic and atheist living a life of self-determination, all these are legitimate paths, and we must honor them, as each person in their own turn follows their own path of love and life.

94. A sustainable spirituality leaves judgment up to Spirit, if at all.

95. Collaborative spirituality opens the door for contribution by all peoples, by all paths, and rejects the notion that ‘we have the one true path, the one true savior, the one true prophet, the one true interpretation of scripture’. That silly notion cannot be held in esteem, but felt compassion for it, as it is a spoiled child’s way of thinking and viewing the world.

96. Only a spoiled child would believe such nonsense, and, like a spoiled child being led to a better way by his parents, we take a stand of truth-telling, containment, and non-cooperation with such silly notions.

97. We hold those who think that way in the light of greater expectations, and refuse to lower our standards to accept this silly, childish way of thinking as something that must be legitimized by agreement, but instead, we tolerate the temper tantrums of such ‘children’, and keep them away from the other ‘children’, in order to not create a greater disturbance for all.

98. No offense, because all paths must be honored. But not accepted as the truth, nor, tolerated in their hurtful abusive ways of coercion, evangelism, or dogma. Spoiled children are not allowed to run rampant over everyone else, simply to appease them. That is abusive parenting, and we ain’t gonna do that, no sirree.

99. Finally, a collaborative, open-source, sustainable spirituality views each person’s contribution as holding the potential for greater learning, for increased effectiveness, for greater insight, for closeness and understanding, and for adding to the whole project.

100. Even those who say it is ‘sinful’ to believe the ideas of this manifesto, who judge us and scorn us, their path is honored as contributing, because within our consciousness, we are attracting this in some way with our own power.

101. Therefore, we reclaim our power as individuals back from this old paradigm, and honor our own path as well.

102. It is a beautiful thing!


Don McAvinchey & Friends
www.CreateaMonthofMiracles.com