Bahai

Attempts to estimate the number of Bahá'ís face problems common to many religions. Unlike most other religions, the religion's governing bodies register new members and add them to voting lists. This is essential because the governing bodies are elected by all adult believers. But no religion has a way to track people who drift away without officially resigning their membership. In a few nations and regions (such as Bolivia, where there is a popular Bahá'í radio station, and Northern Ireland), the government census actually gives a membership number larger than the official Bahá'í statistic. In countries where the Bahá'í Faith is illegal (as in some Muslim countries) or where national infrastructure is very limited, it is difficult to obtain a reliable count of the Bahá'ís. Recent estimates of the worldwide Bahá'í population range from more than a million to upwards of seven million.The official Bahá'í number is five to six million.

Observers often notice a discrepancy between government and Bahá'í figures. Official Bahá'í statistics give a Bahá'í population in India of 2.2 million, whereas the 1991 Indian census recorded a mere 5,575 Bahá'ís living there. The World Christian Encyclopedia identifies the Bahá'í Faith as the second-most widespread religion in the world (Christianity being number one and Islam, number three).Because nine adult Bahá'ís will form a local "spiritual assembly" but nine adult Christians or Muslims will usually not establish a church or mosque, Bahá'ís are often more visible than their numbers would suggest.

It has been said that the Bahá'í religion is the fastest-growing world religion, based on the rapid growth the religion experienced in the late sixties and seventies.Mormons make a similar claim. Both claims refers to percentile growth rather than an absolute number of new believers; denominations and small religions often find it easier to achieve rapid percentile growth than larger ones. The Bahá'í Faith, historically, grows in spurts because of internal developments and external cultural factors. Its growth slowed in most areas of the world in the 1980s and 1990s, but has accelerated again since 2006. Overall, in the twentieth century its membership grew roughly fifty fold, from about 100,000 in 1900 to about five million in 2000.

Secularism

Secularism, the belief that religion and religious considerations should 

be deliberately omitted from public and private temporal affairs, is a 

direct outgrowth of the philosophical ideas which begat European 

humanism. Its appearance in the post-Renaissance west is logical, 

historically founded, and socially well-constructed. Even though it 

continues to find small pockets of resistance in certain religious 

communities living in the west, it pervades public life in all 

respects--from education to politics and from economy to culture. 

Secularism is not necessarily unethical, for it can have an ethical 

content, but the main consideration in all things secular is the absence 

of the sacred. That is to say the absence of anything higher than the 

humanly construed or humanly imagined. As such, it is a system of 

beliefs that seeks to replace revealed religions and, in time, it has 

become a religion itself, that is a pseudo religion, for it has no 

foundational texts which are universally revered, and no prophets whose 

words and deeds are cherished by the believers.

Since the very idea of eliminating religion from public life is an 

extreme idea, secularism is inherently extreme. That is to say it is 

intolerant, consistently severe in its application, and patently violent 

in its rigidity. Another aspect of its extremism is its inherent revolt 

against God. As a system of beliefs competing with revealed religions, 

secularism is on the extreme end of the spectrum; it refuses to accept 

any Creator and hence any causal factor in the affairs of the universe 

or of humans that is higher than what human beings can themselves 

construe. Thus, all natural phenomena are construed as merely the result 

of constant, predictable forces; no miracles are allowed; and all 

affairs of human beings are construed in a fashion that excludes all 

considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future existence.

Secularism arrived in most regions of the Muslim world along with the 

European colonizers who were able to entrench it in education and state 

systems. Since then, it has made steady progress, not only in the former 

colonies, but also elsewhere. This steady growth of secularism now 

pervades all aspects of state and governance in many Muslim countries 

and is most visible in the educated classes. But unlike the western 

world, the Muslim world could not cast Islam out of its public domain; 

Islam remains the most visible phenomena in public life all over the 

Muslim world: it is apparent in architecture (the mosques, the 

minarets), in the sounds (the call for prayer), in the rituals (the 

fasting, the hajj), in public festivals and thousand and one other 

aspects of public life. As a result, a "secular Muslim"--a contradiction 

in terms--has an irresolvable dilemma at hand: he or she cannot fight 

with the enormity of Islamic presence in the public life, and yet, 

cannot live with it.

The easiest escape route for secular Muslims is to find faults with the 

bearded men and hijabi women--and there are plenty of reasons to blame 

them. However, no amount of criticism of the outwardly religious public 

or private figures can resolve the fundamental crisis of a person 

afflicted with secularism. The degree of affliction directly corresponds 

to the extent to which one has become secularized. When such persons 

attain power through whatever means, they attempt to remove Islam 

through force. A classic case in point is that of Mustafa Kemal of 

Turkey, who should never be called Ata Turk, the fathers of the Turks, 

for Turks have never accepted him as their father or god-father.

What Kemalism did to Turkey was so violent that it shook the very 

foundation of Turkish society. Turkey is still trying to recover from 

his extremism. It was not merely the cold-blooded execution of thousands 

of citizens who remained firm believers, nor the violent attacks against 

religious institutions, nor the banning of veil and beards, but the very 

act of trying to turn the entire direction of Turkish society toward 

Europe that created the greatest fissure with history. The result is a 

traumatized populace. Yet, at the same time, Kemalism was indirectly 

responsible for the emergence of a more vigorous and stronger commitment 

to Islam in a large section of Turkish populace.

Admittedly, not all secularists are as extreme as Mustafa Kemal, but 

since secularism is inherently extreme, no secularist can escape its 

extremism. Muslim secularists have also to constantly fight with the 

questions pertaining to afterlife. Their beliefs are thus confused, 

incoherent, for they are the riders of two boats going in opposite 

directions. But these individuals are not as dangerous as those who wish 

to impose secularism as state ideology on a Muslim populace. That form 

is the most violent and intolerant pseudo-religion, for it is a revolt 

against God and history.

Since attempts to enforce the secular writ are often done with a 

characteristic claim of freedom, it is pertinent to point out that 

freedom is not the ability to do whatever one's whims dictate, but it is 

the ability to conquer one's whims and allow a higher order of life and 

virtue to prevail. Golden balance, a sure cure for extremism, is to be 

found in that higher realm directed from beyond the human domain through 

the agency of a prophet in the form of a revealed religion.

Spirtulism

Destiny implies that we have come to earth with a mission or a focus for the soul. And although there is always danger in pinning a definition on something as numinous and awesome as the divine, for purposes of this article let's look at soul as that divine part of us which experiences life in human form. To forge ahead spiritually without reflecting on the unique, personal nature of an experience, the feelings it arouses and how those feelings expand our conscious awareness is to observe the divine, rather than engage it. In other words, when we engage soul, we are communing with the divine.
While it is easy to imagine the hand of the Mystery or the divine in a blissful moment, what about those times when we experience pain, conflict or ongoing challenges? Medical Intuitive Caroline Myss speaks to this in her book, SACRED CONTRACTS. Her understanding, which I share as well, is that before the soul incarnates it determines what it needs for growth. As this is, in a sense, programming our own destiny, we then choose which "teachers" can best help us achieve our life purpose. Though we all lose memory of these "contracts" at birth, we all agree to play roles for one another which present us with maximum soul growth opportunities. In many cases, our best teachers are our greatest adversaries. From parents to partners, we often discover, once life has brought us to a certain level of maturity, that pain and adversity met through our encounters with these chosen ones are necessary contributions to emerging consciousness. It is well known in Buddhist traditions, for example, that suffering deepens our understanding of what it is to be human. Suffering has the potential to open our hearts. Thus, liking or not liking pain and struggle are less important, for challenges enlarge our experience of life, opening us to more compassion for ourselves and others.

Accepting that life can be painful paradoxically allows us the potential to experience bliss. Although this concept can be difficult to grasp when we are steeped in adversity, we can continually remind ourselves that the nature of life is cyclical. This can give us hope that we will emerge from our current situation with more strength and wisdom. Once the tension created from our resistance to pain abates, we may well experience joy or even bliss, as our senses have been piqued by the painful encounter. This is presuming, of course, that we do not mask or medicate pain, but rather feel and experience it deeply, as one with an open heart will do.

This open-eyed living can be extremely challenging in the modern world, where, from a very young age, we are drawn into parallel realities by our highly creative media. If we are not vigilant, we might confuse the mythic Hero or Heroine's journey, depicted in such beautifully crafted films as SPIRITED AWAY and WHALE RIDER, with less evolved plots designed merely to heighten our senses or escalate our fears while making producers and studio magnates millions of dollars.

Living in today's society means that many of us have been moving too quickly to take time to honor rites of passage, observe sacred ritual, or to live our lives with deep, mythic significance. Popular media offers what appears to be a quick fix, for it may borrow the fantasy-like images and rapturous feelings from myth and project them onto the screen. This sets us up for longing, but much of this longing has an external object of desire. These fantasy projections are often cast onto other human beings, where they are found to be lacking or at the very least fleeting. What everyday Hero or Heroine can match the strength of Rocky, or the physical beauty of a (Charlie's) Angel? It becomes unfair for us to expect another person to carry these projections, the source of which is deeply personal and symbolic in nature. When our all-important life's journey seems insignificant in comparison to a superbeing saving the world, we are left with disappointment and feelings of failure. On the other hand, when media can inspire us to acknowledge our part in the current awakening of human consciousness, when we can observe characters working through situations which parallel our own life challenges, we can accept a more grounded version of reality permeated with the magic of the Mystery. Many consider this nourishment for the soul.

Making time to nourish the soul includes reflective time where we allow the deeper parts of ourselves to integrate experience. When we find ourselves trying to reduce life to something rational or logical, when we measure the soul's journey by a yardstick borrowed from our work ethic, we might expect life to give us a fairy tale, happily-ever-after existence in exchange for all the hard self-improvement work we have been doing. It is then helpful to remind ourselves that LIFE IS WHAT IT IS, that as surely as the sun rises, night will fall. Challenges will present themselves, and we can meet and move through them. They are key to us meeting our destiny with as little resistance as possible. As we emerge from each challenge, hopefully wiser, we can more fully appreciate life's little gifts, like the perfection of an unfolding flower or the grace of a hawk in flight. A deep attention to what is always around us can elicit profound gratitude and even bliss.

If we embrace life's journey with attentiveness to the symbolic meaning inherent in all things, we become more discerning and more self empowered as a heightened awareness begins to permeate our daily living. The appreciation of small miracles and indeed the miracle of life itself moves us more willingly toward the soul's inevitable destiny as it manifests through us as vehicles for divine expression. The attachment to our personal agenda becomes less overriding as we open ourselves to what is placed before us. We both actively make choices in life and let life come as it will. It is in holding this balance that we may discover greater levels of inner peace. Some equate inner peace with a state of bliss. Deepening this sense of inner peace or following our bliss then facilitates the unfolding of our life path. We become more trusting that whatever we are meant to experience and learn will come, along the way. We become more open to truly living our lives. We are less guarded by our fears of what is unknown, for we realize we are not in control of what lies ahead. In essence, we move into our destiny with openness and acceptance of what will be.

Perhaps it is helpful to imagine destiny as a river, flowing through the core of our lives. On the banks of this river are structures, houses, farms and businesses, which inevitably will crumble and turn to dust, as do all man-made creations. We keep ourselves busy throughout our lives, building, remodeling, tearing down, rebuilding. And still the river flows on. We might move downstream, upstream, or further from this Source, yet it continues along, throughout time and eternity, unchanged but for humans trying to alter its course or its nature.

Eventually though, even dams will disintegrate, and on and on the river flows. We might distract ourselves, yet even in this process of diversion, we deepen our experience of the river. Though we might not touch onto its banks for years at a time, when we do, we perceive it differently. We notice things about it that were not obvious before. In this way, we have not lost track of our destiny. It is foundational. Our peripheral experiences, whether painful or blissful, contribute to our perception of the river. And perhaps that is how it is meant to be.