This is a path I have been walking for a long time, without help from other people or support from friends. I take personal belief seriously like I take my sex life seriously, except I’m more private about what I believe (usually), mainly because I have a simple view that continues to grow simpler. I am now as before I wasn’t and someday again will no longer be. This includes life from day to day to the very reality of the self coming into and going out of existence, though it took me a while to get here. I cannot say I am comfortable with the idea of dying now, nor have I ever been, though that fear has been so centric to my development as a person, in some ways it leaves me wondering how others handle it. This however is not a question of how you handle the inevitable. I merely want to put it out there that it scares the crap out of me. I’m sure some people can relate, and others, not so much.
Anyway, on with it.
I grew up in the UCC (United Congregational Church, Protestants) . As far as churches go, I like them. Less fire and brimstone, no fear instilled minus the odd mention of hell. It was more about love and accepting your fellow person. The church never bashed gays or criticised other religions. It focused on the imperfection of the self mainly and how to be a better person on the whole, above all else. Some of those lessons are entirely secular, but I wont defend the religion.
Needless to say, I wasn’t held to a rigorous system like some others who grow up in deist households around the USA and around the world. I had no intrinsic fear of hell. I wasn’t afraid to be who I wanted to be. Maybe the lack of fear-mongering allowed me to think. I can’t be sure. I do remember though, from a very young age, having doubts about religion. This is still when Santa was a very real thing and the easter bunny was as real as the sky. I learned, at a young age, about other religions. I learned about the greeks, the egyptians, and even about some native american belief systems. I was exposed to other ways of thinking, and the first thing that came to my head, a seed that was planted by none other than public education (thankfully), was “Why is what I believe any less valid than what they believe?” It was hardly so articulate at age 6 or 7. I was so young I barely remember not thinking like that.
As time went on I doubted more and more what I was being told. As a child I could only reach so far intellectually, while others tried to bend me around. Yet, doubt clouded my mind. I lost faith in what had been true. I felt, for the first time, the fear of death in earnest. I realized what it was. I still remember that night, one of my earliest memories, utterly weeping because I was so afraid. No one could help me with that knowledge largely because they had no idea where I was mentally, and furthermore they were religious and would have been only able to provide me with some blind reassurance offered by their faith. It would have failed to comfort me.
Years later I had a weird “born again” moment where I read one psalm a night until I made it through the book. I think it was honestly the fear culminating in a return to a comfortable place. This was also right around when my parents got divorced. It was a really hard time on everyone in the family. Less so my mother, who had been cheating on my dad (something I only figured out years later).
Then, suddenly, as quickly as the fervor for Jesus had set in, it vanished. I suppose, in a sense, it was because I couldn’t find answers that way. There was no salvation there. I still was in pain. I didn’t do it to solve the pain though, I don’t think. I just ran to it out of familiarity. Perhaps it was an attempt to regress to an earlier state, when I had my family, as a whole. Either way, it did fail.
I ended up having some weird new-age pagan kick for a while in middle school and through early high-school. I spent way too much time online trying to literally fabricate a new reality for myself. I hid online and in polytheism. I left the church after a stint in confirmation, which I nearly completed, but then refused to get actually confirmed. It was the last time my parents tried to keep me in Christianity. I was in all truth trying to find answers to the world in new ways as the old ones had failed me. I was young and impressionable.
For a time, things like spirit animals and demonic possession seemed real to me. Dragons existed as guardians of the home; for a few weeks I convinced myself I was some alien trapped in a human’s body named “Otter”. It was verging on benign insanity. I grew out of it though. The more I thought about the world, the more I learned, especially about human psychology, group-thought, the power of suggestion... the less I believed in anything. By the end of high-school I was Agnostic. It was a good step in a process I had been undertaking largely on my own. The only time it got crazy was when people got involved.
Let me backpedal for a moment and tell you all about something that happened on my 16th birthday. It is a major part of my growth in the sense that it held meaning at the time. Looking back, it could have gone very badly.
It was an all night party I had with everyone I played D&D with at the time. The group was pretty much most of my friends. We were all obsessively engrossed in weird new-age stuff, magic, demons, etc. It had NOTHING to do with D&D, it was just an odd coincidence that we all sort of were involved in both things. It made us a tight group.
We all had gone out for a walk. One of my friends, who I will call Greg, started to act funny. He was feeling ill. The GM and oldest member of the group, John, suggested that Greg was possessed. He sensed a “dark aura” about him. Greg’s condition worsened. He began to act oddly, standoffish, quiet, mumbling in tongues. Me, young, stupid, and impressionable, believed in everything that was going on. Looking back, I think we were all so deeply into this stuff, that even the slightest power of suggestion had a pretty significant effect. It was a fantasy that had become real. No one was in control of it, it was just some odd, collective insanity.
We hurried back to my house and gathered some rocks and crap, supposedly to help with exorcising the demon from my friend Greg. The group of us took him to the park across the street. He was getting belligerent, admitting in moments that he was possessed, that he needed help. He said he was fighting for control, but loosing it. Then he went back to gloom and tongues.
When we got him to the park, we tied him to a tree. I’m not kidding. I’m not particularly proud of this, but it was what was done. John told us to get in a circle around him, and to try to do some energy-transfer b/s with the rocks we had. Greg was literally thrashing, growling, talking as if he was channeling some evil spirit... Freaking crazy stuff. John proceeded to ‘exorcise’ the demon from within Greg. Greg hit his head on the tree pretty hard. He didn’t bleed, but he was in pain. I can’t remember if it was due to his thrashing or John’s hand on his head... this was almost a decade ago.
All in all, it was a “success”, supposedly. Greg was thankful for us tying him to a tree and allowing him to get injured. Of course, what if he’d thrashed harder, or if John felt the need to get rougher? He could have been seriously injured, maybe, and I mean maybe, killed. I’m doubt it would have gone that far, but I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility. And for what, some grand, shared delusion of reality? It was perhaps the darkest hour in my personal growth, looking back, and certainly something I am not proud of ever having anything to do with. When people mention the dangers of religion, I can relate.
Anyway, that was high school. The night stuck in my mind for a few years until reason provided an explanation for the behavior. Group-thinking, coincidence, suggestion, etc all took place. It drifted in my mind from something that proved the supernatural to a lapse of sanity. It went from “taking care of my friend” to “almost seriously hurting him”.
I went to college, agnostic, as I mentioned before. In my first year I took an eastern religions class with a man who studied cults in depth during his career. Naturally, his studies came up, a lot. Being able to look into cultist sects gave me a way of looking into religion that I had never previously considered. I just had no idea what people believed in and how easily the mind could be swayed, even after the park incident and reflection. Even at that point I was conflicted over that evening, not that I gave much thought to it.
I remember a story the professor told us about two weeks he spent living with people who believed that the sky was actually green. Somehow, this was integral to their belief system. Near the middle of his second week, he was watching the sunset with one of the followers of the cult, and as the sun set, the follower pointed to the horizon and said. “See, there you can see it, at the edge. It’s green.” And unlike the previous attempts these people had put forth to convince him of the green nature of the sky, he indeed saw it that evening. He found himself starting to believe in what was clearly a wacky system. A rational person, as he was, he did of course maintain his senses, but even after 10 days or so, his mind had already begun to adapt to those of the people surrounding him. It was kind of like Stockholm syndrome in a much more benign situation. (It’s not like he was held captive and then robbed a bank, obviously.)
I think that single conversation was a real turning point for me. I’m not sure I changed a lot around that period, but as a point in my life, it continues to inform me on how people behave, along with my simple knowledge of psychology. (I’m an art student, it’s not really my concentration).
I’ve had a hard time admitting to myself that I lack any sort of faith. It’s honestly fear, and it dogs me. It’s irrational. Perhaps I am phobic of some fictitious retribution, in a way, but I have never been someone to draw lines in the sand at all, in any sense. I tend to be very fluid in my behavior.
As time has gone on, and I have been exposed to more realizations, and more nights under the stars, looking up, I feel like I am getting it. I am a superstitious person, despite what my rationale otherwise might tell me. It’s taking me time but I am making my way as I suppose I always will be.
In a way though, I feel like religion cheapens the experience of life. This is something I really thought about on my drive home from work tonight, actually. (I work in the mountains as a ski instructor. It’s an amazing place to be.) The further I stray from faith, the more awe seems to fill me. The world feels more alive, the universe more vast and sublime. My life is enriched by the idea that this experience that I am so gifted to be a part of is something that happened not of some divine hand, but rather that of the consequence of matter, time, and space. Sometimes I am so utterly overwhelmed with what an amazing place I live in, in such an amazing time, with the ability to be free, to explore, to become actualized, I cry. I really do. Not because I am sad, but because I am happy to be here. Life is a priceless gift. Live it. Don’t spend it on your knees.
