As anyone who has been paying attention has probably caught onto by now, one thing Gehenna and I share is that neither of us have any use for the concept of reverence. We had a great discussion about this and decided to put our thoughts into a two-part rant article (Gehenna’s post can be found here).
Reverence is regarded as a requirement in most forms of spirituality. People revere their deities, their holy books, their clergy, their buildings of worship, their iconography and symbols.
With all this reverence going on, you would think it serves a valuable and necessary purpose in our lives! Right? Riiiiight?!
It doesn’t. In fact, when it comes to genuine spirituality and development, reverence does more harm than good. It moves us away from genuine spirituality more than anything else.
The reason for this is that reverence is a form of ritualized social distance.
That which we revere, we acknowledge our separation from, we put it in a special category somewhere “above” ourselves. In doing so we give away our own personal power.
So remind me, what was our goal again? Was it to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and others; between ourselves and the divine?
Hell no! The truth is that the divine is closer to us than our own skin! If there’s any separation, it’s because we have put it there; it’s just another illusion that has been created to rob us of our personal power, and we uphold it ourselves in order to maintain our own comfort zones. Reverence is an artificial human construct, it is just another form of ego-worship. It’s fear-based, and it’s idolatry. When we have the courage to smash our false idols, we get closer to truth, closer to the divine, and closer to our true selves. And then we realize how redundant that last sentence is. 
On that note one of the more ridiculous ideas I’ve come across was mentioned by Gehenna already — in many of the tutorials for connecting with one’s Higher Self they recommend doing so “with the utmost reverence.” Why?! All your wacky theatrics might provide your Higher Self with some amusement, and sure, if you feel you need that, s/he will play along in the interest of “speaking your language” to strengthen the connection between you. This probably sheds some light on why Christians receive Christian-themed visions, Buddhists see the Buddha and so forth. But the fact remains that this is an aspect of YOU, and at some point the time will come when, in order to keep evolving in his direction, you’re going to need to give the subservience a rest. I mean, I’m sure I have aspects of myself that are less evolved than I am at my current frame of reference, but if they were to start bowing down and licking my boots, I’d be a bit creeped out. I’d probably have to give them a swift whack on the head and tell ‘em to knock that crap off!
Apparently I haven’t changed much at the Higher Self level in that regard. Since Gehenna is sensitive enough to get visuals and more specific info and I’m still workin’ on it, she sometimes connects to my HS and we compare notes. One of our favorite HS stories is the first time she did this — my HS was posing as the stereotypical guru, sitting in the lotus position and trying to look pious… but not quite pulling it off. 
The exchange went something like: “Whoooo is it that speaks to meeee?” “…You know who I am! *indignant*” “Oh. Err… yeah. Hiiii Gehenna. *snicker*”
There have been many similarly amusing encounters since with our HS’s and others, but the point is that these beings don’t consider themselves to be high and mighty. They don’t put themselves on a pedestal, and they don’t expect us to either. They’re just as diverse as we are; maybe even moreso, since they’re under no pressure of social conformity and enjoy the freedom to just BE. They have their own personalities, likes and dislikes, their own personal “style”… it’s all just on a scale that, to us, seems very expansive. They’re completely secure in who and what they are; how presumptuous to think they need any validation of their position from us! If anything, what has helped me most in being able to connect more fully with divinity is not my ability to be subservient (which is a bit lacking if you haven’t guessed)… it’s a healthy appreciation for the absurd.
Don’t even get me started on reverence toward other humans like ourselves. That’s just another wall between you and the divine. All the spiffy titles and special treatment might give your priest an ego-wank to help make up for the action he’s not getting, but I can promise it isn’t going to get you, or him for that matter, any closer to God.
–His Most Holy Pontifex Maximus Palehorse Redivivus XIII
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