Love and freedom

"If you spend a good amount of time around religious folk you soon begin to pick up on the fact that most of their focus and energy is upon being good. In order to achieve this goal they have built their individual and collective way of relating upon form. A set of rules and regulations that when kept do produce a temporary feeling of being good. This of coarse also comes with a side dish of fear and the realization that if you fail to keep up the rules you are no longer good. Leaving the evil religious empire we walk out into the realm of the secular world. Here we find the focus is not on being good, especially (your version of what that means), but instead on feeling good. Pleasure seems to be the highest rung on the ladder. For someone fleeing the strict rules of religion this can feel like the ultimate freedom. And though there is an allowance to participate in many things once forbidden you get the sense that you have traded on small jail cell for a much larger one. As I have observed these things in my own own life and in those around me I have found that in both you can have powerful experiences that touch things deep inside and as these are awakened they demand more from those systems than they are able to give. For me the freedom that I desire has not been found in form i.e.,the strict adherence to rules of men or in feeling i.e., the pursuit of what fulfills my senses, but in faith. Faith here is simply the belief that there is something apart from myself and those systems that can and has met my deepest longings. That which both the world and religion have awakened but failed to satisfy.The freedom it produces is not a freedom from religion or from this world but from myself. A freedom from a self centered life. A freedom from those deep longings that are motivating every human being as they strive to be good and to feel good.It seems for me that when I find this foundation beneath my feet the world and religion loose their hold over me and I can see clearly to move about and make rational decisions rather than feeling like a junkie looking for his next fix."

- Rodney Stepp

Yes, living a fulfilling and satisfying life would entail avoiding both extremes of religion/asceticism (trying to be good by following rules and rituals) and secular hedonism (trying to feel good by seeking sensual pleasures continually to find fulfilment). As the post noted, religion makes people temporarily happy when they think they obey the rules and miserable when they think they fail to be good. While secular hedonism may seem better, it doesn't satisfy one's deepest longings permanently. 

The middle path therefore is practising non-attachment to self and living a life knowing we are already loved and seeking the highest good of all. The pleasure that comes with seeking highest good is a complementary by-product. The act of loving and seeing others helped and blessed and uplifted is a pleasure and reward in and of itself.