Religious Horizons outline

First pick a tradition: Paganism

1.  What is the highest aspirations for human beings?
1. In paganism there is no agreed upon highest aspiration - if you ask a pagan what the purpose of life is the answer will vary vastly from person to person. That is the beauty of non-organized religion - it is all personal and individual. Ergo - through the pagan lens of individualism I will answer the questions in this paper from my own pagan perspective. 
2. The highest aspiration is self and soul development. You see, I believe that each life is meant to teach our souls a specific lesson - if you do not learn it in one life you repeat the lesson until you do. Then you develop another lesson based on something else that happened in a past life and continue the cycle. The soul's highest aspiration is to learn. A human's highest aspiration is to be authentic to themselves so that they are able to learn the lesson of that life - in most cases I believe that means to live life as happy and fulfilling as possible. 
1. Example: My soul lesson - to love humanity. I believe in my past life i saw humans as a virus. My life lesson/how I learn this - serving others and serving myself. 
2. Sometimes your purpose in this life is to help someone else learn their lesson - sometimes this is by way of antagonism, sometimes this is by way of temporary contact (early death). 
3. There is no agreed upon answer as to what awaits us after each life, there is no agreed upon "end goal". For some it is enlightenment and return as a teacher for others in each life. For some it is reaching godhood - believing once the soul has learned all it needs to it will begin an immortal life as a god. For others it may be to reach a sort of enlightenment and to have the soul dissolve and rejoin Spirit directly - becoming a life sustaining force without life itself. I personally think there is no goal - there is only learning. There are an infinite amount of lessons one can learn, an infinite amount of lives one can live, to the point that there is no end. 
2. What practices does paganism offer to become attune with the sacred/Spirit?
1. There are too many to count, so once again I will simply list the ones that I use.
1. Prayer
2. Witcraft - as a prayer, as power
3. divination - when the gods speak back to you (the benefits, the limits, the hard truths)
3. Which vocabulary of human becoming is most helpful for thinking about religious goals and aspirations?
1. Authenticity - Living life as the true self is the only way to listen to one's soul and go through life open to the lesson. Being authentic to ones self is to live in joy and love - if you do not embrace life then you have not taken the first step to learning the soul lesson. I cannot love humanity if I cannot love myself - seeking my own personal development will help me grow into a person that can better serve others in love because I love life.