Various religions offer different rituals, practices, worship experiences, sacraments. No one size fits all as the existence of all the world's religions attest, but they all aim to the same result, remembering the Divine.
Unitarian Univeralism has recognized this phenomenon and only asks the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for Truth and meaning. This search is first for Truth, secondly for cosmic consciousness, and third for bliss.
Like most religions, Unitarian Universalism dawdles and muddles with the mundane. There are few spiritual Masters to be found among their leaders. As with most religions, religious leadership is perceived, and all too often understood, as political. UUs believe in democratic governance which is fine for the religious organizational management, but spiritual leadership is not based on democratic votes. Spiritual leadership is based on experience of the Truth and Love of the Divine and this experience is intensely personal. It is written in A Course In Miracles, “Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience.” T-1.II.2:1-3
Religions, to flourish and achieve their mission, must leave the organizational management to the administrators. Administrators can be elected, but spiritual leaders cannot. Spiritual leadership is manifested by a person who has been there, who has achieved oneness with the All, who has dropped the ego, and who has embarked on the walk with Love on the path of the spiritual. These people are rare and even more rarely recognized, but if the student is ready the Master appears and a mutual Love relationship begins and is nurtured and flourishes.
It is rare to find spiritual Masters among religious people. If spiritual Masters are recognized, they often are perceived as a threat to the existing political structure of the religious organization and will be shunned, exiled, excommunicated, or even, as the case with Jesus, killed. Religious organizations, paradoxically from what one might expect, can be hostile territory for spiritual Masters to appear and abide. Spiritual Masters, if they are to survive, often move outside the organization which has not only no longer been a source of nurturance and validation, but antagonistic and hostile.
If you are looking for a Spiritual Master, you will not find him/her within the walls of organized religion but rather on the periphery, if at all connected. The spiritual Master no longer identifies with a religion because the God the Master has found is too big for any one religion.
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