TO INTERPRET OR NOT TO INTERPRET

A major decision that we must make along the way is whether or not to interpret what we are feeling spiritually.  This is to say, do we give the feelings a context? 
 
Our traditional religions are happy to provide this to us, of course.   Vedanta, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and so on, are more than willing to teach us how to conceive of and describe our spiritual feelings.

The other option we have is to let our spiritual feelings just be spiritual feelings, nothing more.  Nameless, faceless faith.  But there is a danger in doing so.  We may come to doubt the feelings over time and wind up abandoning them, or at least putting them on the back burner, out of sight, out of mind.

There is nothing wrong with our traditional religions as long as we understand what they actually are.  Eckhart Tolle underscores this.  Religious teachings are meant as sign posts, as pointers, rather than something to be taken literally.  They point to something greater than us, to God, usually, who is himself a pointer. 

On the other hand, there are those who want to take the teachings literally.  Believing that God is personal, for example, and that he has had representatives here on earth is helpful to some of us.  We can relate to Jesus, for instance, as he was a human just like us.  He can serve as an intermediary between us and God. 
 
Having somewhere to put our spiritual feelings aids us.  If it did not, we would not do it, and if we did not do it, we would not have all our religions that have lasted for thousands of years.