Too right.
I fear authority, that's why it scares me that you insist you have to find this out from outside yourself, Signal.
I'd rather you adopt some sort of practice and grow to be your own authority through connection to the Divine.
But this would simply be a denial of thow things already are.
Is there anything that we know that we don't learn from others, in some way or another?
The moment one uses the word "God", one already latches onto a religious/spiritual tradition.
Surely, there is a categorical difference between mere theoretical knowledge one acquires from others and personal realization. Personal realization being the desired outcome.
But how can one have personal realization without
first learning from others how to go about attaining it?
What some people (notably those who dread authority when it is occupied by a human) are suggesting is the reinvention of the wheel: that each person is supposed to, from scratch, find their way to God.
Yes, this theoretically seems to be a way around the problems connected to authority.
It is also a denial of how things already are. A true re-invention of the path to God would mean that the person would somehow annull all the effects, all the words, all the practices in relation to seeking God that they have taken from other people. They would have to put away the Bible and any other scriptures. They would not use the word "God", or "communion".
I do not see how such would be even possible; I think no person living in the civilized world can do that.