The tenets of every religion are declarations of war. Religious places are not meant to be places of peace. They are places where followers gather to get charged up in their ongoing struggles against the forces of darkness and materialism.
This is especially true with the Abrahamic faiths. In all of them, there is an endgame, where all souls will face a day of judgement, when it will be determined whether they end up – for eternity – in a pleasant place, or in a place of torment.
So, living out their earthly years is really a constant battle people face between the forces of life that promise to bring pleasure right now through indulging in material glitter, or heavenly bliss after having rejected the lure of earthly desires.
Peace can only be experienced when the soul has been completely freed from any material bond and finds itself in a state of eternal purity. A temporary excursion into this pure state can be achieved through deep meditation while one still inhabits this body.
However, the battle for one’s peaceful state of mind begins anew when one is faced again with the forces of life, once one opens one’s senses again to the whispering temptations of the material manifestations surrounding us.
