It is the dharma of the Church of Reality to be explorers and we therefore must be free to do so. We recognize that historically various societies have imposed severe restrictions upon belief forcing people to accept a world view that is not real - or being prohibited from believing things that are real - or having knowledge restricted by law in ways that prevent us from fulfilling our Sacred Duty. There was a time when people were jailed and killed for believing that the Earth was round and that the Earth was not the center of the universe. People are jailed today for easing the suffering of those who are dying a hideous death from a terminal disease. With these historical facts in mind the Church of Reality - as part of its mission - acts to protect and preserve the freedom in which the pursuit of reality and the Principle of Positive Evolution may flourish.
What is freedom and by what power do we assert freedom? We seem to be here and we seem to exist. We seem to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings. It is the nature of our existence as a species now that we have shared knowledge that we have the freedom to pursue that knowledge, and to understand the understanding of understanding. We are the defenders of the understanding of reality itself and we as a church claim that reality itself needs the freedom to become self aware. We are all part of a reality that we all share. Reality is sacred to us and as explorers, therefore we must be free to explore it. When we make the Sacred Choices and accept the Sacred Duty, we must also pursue the freedom that is required to grow the Tree of Knowledge.
Personal freedom leads to innovation, exploration and positive evolution. We will not progress unless the weird people are allowed to be weird.
Individual freedom is very important to the Church of Reality. Freedom allows explorers to come up with new and interesting ideas. It allows us to think "outside the box" without fear of punishment. If you look at the great inventors and the people who were behind much of the great leaps in human evolution you will notice that most of them were "weird people". It's the weird people who come up with most of the new cool ideas. Cultures that accept weird people, like the San Francisco Bay Area, tend to be the kind of places where innovation occurs. We can not evolve forward unless the weird people are free to be weird. Personal freedom is necessary for positive evolution to occur.
In order to pursue Reality as it really is the members of the Church of Reality have to be free. We need to be able to be different and to explore new things and new ideas. Without personal liberty, there can be no pursuit of truth. Curtailing freedom - or even the threat of curtailing freedom often scares people away from our quest for the truth. We recognize that many of the truths that are part of the Tree of Knowledge were once truths that were illegal. Based on this we have to assume that there are likely to be truths in the future that are prohibited today. And it is good for the society that imposes these laws to evolve into a society with better laws. Imagine if the world were such that it was still illegal to believe that the Earth was not the center of the universe? Even though we as a society are wiser today, we have not arrived at perfection. The Principle of Freedom give us the means of evolving in the Sacred Direction.
Explorers need the freedom to explore - to move forward - to expand the lines of knowledge and to allow ourselves to grow and to move forward. We can not move forward unless we have the freedom to move forward - to explore - and to find a better way. Thus the Principle of Personal Freedom is one of our core beliefs and Sacred Duties.
We require freedom to be free of oppression and injustice. We must be allowed to speak and to not be forced to endure silence. We must be allowed to make the Sacred Choices, assert the Sacred Principles, and perform the Sacred Duties. We must be allowed to have justice that goes beyond the limits of law and procedure. We must be allowed to think - to live quietly and privately - to pursue the understanding of understanding. We must be allowed to be Realists and to practice Realism. We must be allowed to evolve in the Sacred Direction. Because after all, if we are not allowed to be Real and practice Realism, then it is like taking away Reality itself. And when reality is gone - what's left?
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