““Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God himself.””
The question "do I have to believe a certain way to do Arkitekt" often comes up.
The short answer is no. You don't have to believe a certain way to join Arkitekt.
But we do ask you to risk belief.
There are a lot of places where people talk about belief but what they really deal in is exclusive certainty. We don't believe belief can be certain. Belief is an act of faith- it's saying yes to the unknown, and to the journey.
We ask you to believe you are worth this work. Believe you are worthy of love. Believe your life can be abundant and beautiful, even if you are going through the midst of the mess.
It's up to you to work out, for the rest of your life, how your belief shakes down (into words, but more importantly into ACTION) as a natural outflow of interacting with LOVE.
Arkitekt Is Not A Uniform Experience.
The type of language used in an Arkitekt gathering reflects the voice of your facilitator and the voice of each woman in your gathering. Some groups use more of the language of Jesus, some use God, some use Source.
We care more about what people do with their belief system than what they call their belief system, trusting each person has the right and the responsibility to constantly engage with WHY they believe what they believe, and that the words will come as they journey.
We believe each person gets to be the steward of their relationship with God.
We work to dismantle language triggers and whatever stands in the way of women tasting and seeing and experiencing the embodied presence of LOVE and their own fully aliveness- because it is the experience, not the words, that changes us.
Arkitekt Is Not About Defining source For You.
Although Arkitekt is rooted and grounded in faith, our hope is not conversion toward a belief system but the awakening of and surrender into the lifelong experience of discovering God. We believe LOVE is a banqueting table, and there is room for all people who are willing to show up and say yes.
Perspective shifts based on where you stand in your spiritual journey. We believe the spiritual journey is lifelong, not a static arrival or one-time commitment. Questioning and doubt are an essential part of the journey, and truth is not in the hands of a certain set of people.
In our experience, many people feel disconnection within typical religious gatherings because there is no space provided where it's encouraged to wrestle with language and ask hard questions and speak out your doubts and admit that we are all on a journey of discovering what we believe, and we can learn from each other instead of trying to convince each other.
We like how God named God: I AM...which seems like a twinkle in the eye refusal to claim a particular identity, and an empowering invitation to go ahead and start discovering.
It's important to remember that what you think when I say God or Jesus or faith or spirituality might be worlds away from what I think when you say God or Jesus based upon our very different life experiences and paradigms. This is why we commit to being together and learning each other's story.
We are meant to be loved and to love, bottom line. Anything that stands in the way of that is distraction.
“Religion is insidiously idolatrous, taking good things and giving them a centrality and veneration out of proportion to the thing itself. Religion makes fetishes out of mere tools, icons of sheer gifts.
It hallows the form and profanes the substance.”