Belief, or Religion ?

We live in a multi cultural and very diversified society. There are many different paths, beliefs and various traditions to explore, peruse and follow along the way, the choice is infinite and should remain unstructured, free from hypocrisy and duplicity.
A few thousand years ago, the Christians invaded many lands far and wide, in the name of their God, they butchered, raped and mindfully murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people, all in the name of religion.
This has happened throughout history, barbaric mass genocide, with a get out clause for the perpetrators, of committing mass murder and other horrific crimes, all, apparently in the name of religion.
Wars are fought today in the name of some deity and I cannot see this changing unfortunately in the near future.
This brings me to the question of, where does religion and a belief cross over ?
For me personally, religion wreaks of structure and enforced indoctrinations, basically meaning you have to follow it precisely, otherwise you are deemed to be doing it wrong and are then subject to receiving the wrath of those who push you into being nothing more than subservient.
Belief, traditions and various paths should not be about that at all, neither should any religion, but in order to control, even modern day takes on beliefs are now succumbing to law and order.
I left the Christian church at the tender age of 9 years old, I saw through their façade even then.
As a seeker of knowledge, wisdom and insights, I have followed several different paths and explored many others.
All I have found is constant hypocrisy, hierarchical nonsense and bullying from these so called spiritual beings and all I can say is that it is shameful.
We are all looking for and searching for something, thing is though, we won’t find it in these shallow superficial and totally fake places of hierarchy and falsified belief structures, where total control leads the way, judgements are constant and the people involved are only doing it to feed their self centred and gluttonous ego’s.
How can anybody grow and evolve, on any level of consciousness, when they are being fed corrupted lies, sarcasm and falseness.
Life is not about forming a cult, then exploiting people who may be lost and trying to follow their hearts, its about joining together, leaving ego’s and judgements behind and supporting, nourishing and being there for each other.
Its no wonder more and more people are now realising this and walking away from these toxic groups which are run, more often than not, by toxic, power crazy individuals whose only goals are to extort power over others.

What we each are looking for, is there inside us already, we just need to delve deep within, realise it and let it all manifest into being.

I will say, as with anything, there are some very genuine people who follow all paths and traditions, unfortunately though, they become obscured by the twisted corrupted egotistical self serving narcistic individuals that seem to be rife in mainstream beliefs and in society nowadays.