BELIEF

If you read my blog regularly, you know I will at times diverge from the main topic of writing to delve into some of the more esoteric aspects of my personality. I generally try to stay away from controversial topics such as sex, politics and religion. Well, today I will be gently treading on matters of belief and on what the word "belief" entails.

First, a little background on my experience with religion. While I was young Mother made sure that I and my siblings attended Sunday-School at the local Pentecostal church. I do not remember much about the lessons themselves, only that afterward I had to sit through the boring (to a young child) sermons, often using the time to nap. Thankfully, as I got older the trips to church petered out and finally ended. I do remember evening get-togethers with other churchgoers where cookies could be pilfered and a recital where a six-year me got up in front of the congregation and proudly stated the long rehearsed phrase; "Children should be seen and not heard. So I won't say a single word!" This is also the church where my Mother married my Step-Father. The pastor during rehearsal asked, "if someone here objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace." At which point my siblings and myself stood and turning to the guests with huge grins, exclaimed "WE DO!" which led to thunderous laughter.

My child mind was neither inclined nor curious enough to question anything I was told, if a grownup told me such-and-such was truth - it was. Although, headstrong and bold as I was, truth or not, if my inclinations went against what I was told, I went with my gut and did it anyway. I was too involved in my own world of imagination. A world where I was in full control and everything was possible. A world with no rules but my own.

I was still very young when I experienced events which tore my world of imagination, and my family, apart. Suddenly, I realized that I was not in control of my world. Shame, hurt, distrust and fear distorted how I saw people and how I thought they saw me. I stopped believing the truths I was being told. I started questioning, if only internally, everything I once believed. I was an innocent child suddenly turned cynical and hostile toward anyone who could not provide answers or rectify my shattered vision of reality. Anger and retribution became my new driving force.

I had a friend who was a Jehovah's witness. Whenever I would spend a weekend at his house it was expected that either I would go home on Sunday morning or go to their version of services. Not wanting to go home and be bored, I went with them. I was now in my early teens and a building powder-keg waiting to explode. Maybe it was all the talk of eternal life, peace and happiness and never-ending joy, but I actually started to become interested in knowing about this mythical God everyone talked about. I started reading the bible. I started actually getting answers that made some kind of sense. I studied furiously. To this day, I honestly think that if I had not at this time let go, because of what I was learning, of the hurt and anger that was welling-up inside I would have done something terrible and regrettable.

Of course, when I started asking real questions.. the tough questions, when I noticed incongruousness between what I was being told and what I rationally inferred from the lessons I was being taught, I suddenly did not feel as welcome among the witnesses as I once had. By the time I graduated from high-school I had made a firm commitment to myself that if I was to get to know about spirituality it would be on my own terms.

My great fascination with Science-Fiction and Fantasy novels laid a foundation for questing after knowledge. In college I was approached by a fellow who gave me a copy of the Koran. After skimming through the texts I quickly realized there were no answers to be found there. I politely returned the tomb and excused myself from his company.

Christianity, Islam and Judaism were too closely linked and all too strict. I turned to the pagan systems and consumed them all with ferocity. Wicca, Buddhism, the Tao-Te-Ching, Agnosticism, witchcraft and transcendentalism; they all had flavor but no substance. In desperation I looked for even stranger sources of knowledge: Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, Edgar Cayce, secret societies and myths that predated modern society. Still, nothing but more questions and more than a little disgust. I even read the Satanic Bible, which, once you understand it is actually quite reasonable and nothing at all to do with skinning cats and sacrificing babies in black mass.

It was not until October of 2008 when finally everything I learned from every source crystallized in me and became real. The seed of it was from a novel I had read at least five times. In it a man who was raised by aliens, thus having an alien mind, learned what it meant to be human. He set out to teach man the magnificent truths which were as basic to him as drinking a glass of water; and we killed him for it. With his dying breath he looked upon a grasshopper and said, "Thou art god." It was when I read those words again for the sixth time on October 26th, 2008 that I had my epiphany. I renounced all other faiths and was reborn as an Autotheist.

TO BE CONTINUED ON MONDAY.

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