Before there were churches or temples, or dogmas, or names, people felt something…

A sense of awe at a waterfall.

A sense of awe at the sound and silence of a waterfall.

A sense of connection to the night sky.

A sense of guidance from within, beyond our animal nature.

From this came a longing… for meaning, for connection, for something beyond the ephemeral into the eternal in the everyday.

That feeling planted the seed for religion, not the institutions and dogma, but an intuition. A way of saying, “Something is going on beyond the forms we see and the forms we are, and I want to find it.”

So what is religion, really?

Unfortunately, instead of personal experience shared with like-minded people, we get rules that tell us someone thousands of years before had an experience. And because of that experience, it’s become the law and the rule. Do not think for yourself, you must do this…

We get leaders who claim to know the truth, and of course, rituals to make it all seem real.

But let’s be real, in its purest form, religion isn’t a set of rules and answers. It’s contemplation, an inward journey that’s shared with others. It’s an invisible portal between the seen and unseen.

If you break the word “religion” down to “re-legion,” it means to bring a large group of people back together. But to what?

For some, it’s a supreme being we’ve called God… a single creator, often in male form. But really, it’s a presence within both ourselves and everything around us; it’s a guiding intelligence. That inner spark of light that we see visibly in the cosmos.
It’s about re-member-ing and coming together.

The Origins: Religion as Direct Experience

Long before doctrines, the sacred was experienced through:

• Contemplation in silence and solitude
• Storytelling passed through generations
• Symbols drawn from nature, rivers, trees, stars, and most importantly, the womb
• Rituals that helped communities grow, get through grief, and celebrate the journey.

Religion and philosophy aren’t opposites. They’re twin paths, one simply describes through contemplation, observation, and experience how we should live and treat each other. The other is based on prior personal experience, and so an image was created to understand it on a material, relatable level because everyone is experiencing similar feelings and ultimately fear of the unknown.

And that fear is where both hope and control took form…

Religion became institutionalized. The mystics were replaced by managers of “God.” The feminine voice that resides deep within the womb of the soul, that intuition, was silenced and mistranslated for control. Wisdom is no longer Sophia, but historical fiction translated as the ultimate truth. It was no longer an experience to share with others, but a decree.

The Feminine Face of Religion

So much of what was lost was her.

Even in Christianity, the feminine was once symbolically acknowledged through the number 40, the dove, and the perfect harmony of 3. She was Sophia, the Spirit that gently guided through grace. The Gnostics knew her, but that would have killed the orthodoxy and their rhetorical pathos of fear, a devil, and hell. So it came to be… her voice was edited, suppressed, and replaced.

But she’s still there, ever present in the silence of intuition
In the symbolism of her nurturing care.
Layered beneath the literal words.

The Silent Bridge Between Religion and Philosophy

If we strip away the dogma and move back into the matrix, we can see that religion and philosophy are two sides of the same coin: a mystery to be experienced and shared through questions and frameworks. To understand, through those shared experiences, what it means to live a good life, how to treat oneself and others…

But to bridge the gap between philosophy and religion, it’s meditation, the ancient contemplative practice found in both, that becomes the meeting place.

When we meditate, we enter the silent space behind belief.
When we go within, we remember that we’re not separate from the Source we seek.

“The kingdom of heaven is within.” – Jesus
“Atman is Brahman.” – Upanishads
“Be still and know.” – Psalms
“The way that can be spoken is not the true Way.” – Tao Te Ching

These are not contradictions.
They’re eternal truths.

So what is religion, really?

It’s not what divides us, but what originally brings us back…to the sacred, to each other, to the deep feminine wisdom that was once central to all things holy.

And maybe now, in this moment of history, we’re being invited not to abandon religion, but to reclaim it. To listen again to the silenced voice of the soul, and to remember that all true paths lead inward.