Wednesday, April 09, 2008

WTF....

I'm having a bit of an existential crisis. I haven't had one for a long time.
I could call it a religious crisis, or spiritual crisis.

As I've mentioned here before, I've always cared alot about the God issue. Ever since I was little. I was raised a catholic, we went to church every sunday, and did cathecism, and all those things people do in catholic church. I spent alot of time at my grandma's house and they prayed everyday before bed, for about an hour, the whole familly.
At age 12 I converted to protestantism. I lived it intensily for 9 years. I learned alot about the bible and was very happy during that time. I learned to play guitar and played in the church band, and that was the happiest I've been. It was hard, being a minority sometimes. But that made the church closer to each other.
Anyway, at age 20 I started to study a science and my mind shifted. One day I woke up and God didn't make sense. living a life by faith seemed very irresponsible. Were if I was wrong? What if I died and a different God was there waiting for me, and asking me why was I following a christian God. Hadn't I thought that if I had been born in india I'd be hindu, or being born in a muslin country I'd be a muslim. How could I know that what my culture taught me was the right way? It was very unlikely to be so anyway. God gave me a brain to use so I was going to be held accountable to it. And so forth... I started questioning things, and battled my lack of faith for a year, untill I made the painful and very hard decision to assume my agnosticism and leave my church and my friends, and my life as I knew it. Then I wanted to die, but I didn't. I become terrified of dying, since there was nothing more after life. This was 6/7 years ago.
Eventually I started to find meaning in humanism, in nature, I became a hippie, then I found astrology and reiki and tarot and new age things..... and I was fascinated and extremely happy to have found a meaning for life, an Order to things. My understanding of people and life increased alot. My understanding of me. I began to truely and deeply love me and thus loving others after doing therapy for a few months, with a psychossinthesis therapist (another new age thing). Reiki helped alot too. It made my intuition increase alot, helped to harmonize me, heal, detox....it also opened the doors for regression to past lifes. I had been trying to do that for a couple of years, and 3 days after doing a Reiki iniciation I had a spontaneous and very vivid regression. And others followed.... I also started to contact my Higher self, a sort of guide everyone has. Some people even call it God. I never thought it was God though. I was introduced to lots of things considered new age. Amongst which, Alice Bailey and Djwal Khul... through esoteric astrology.. They seemed very interesting at first sight but not very practical, and that put me off alot, I never really read any book from them, just online things. But my astrology school is highly influenced by them. Later I heard they are satanic. Luciferian. And I was confused.

Fast forward to Now.... My familly is still protestant and they pray for me. They want to re-convert me, which is kind of agonizing for me. My mom was here recently while I was traveling and she left a book in my room called Deceived by the New Age. I started to read it and became really interested.
The author had gone deeply into alot of the same things I have and I respect his view enough to read it to the end.
The problem with all this is that the bible is not new age at all. And the bible predicts that satan will fool alot of people by playing god, and etc. It's really confusing now. I'm confused. The bible sounds pretty outdated for me. The aquarian idea that we reach God directly, by ourselves, going into meditation makes alot more sense then going to God through Jesus, by beleiving he died to save me from sin...... I mean. WTF.....we go to hell for eternity if we're not able to accept this and welcome it? I'm really confused after reading this book. because it made sense to a big degree. He talks about things I know about, the bible and new age things. and he makes sense. It could all be a satan's work. if he does exist. The problem is the author says the bible should be read literally, it's not a metaphor. anyway he does contradict himself a bit too.
I just don't know what to look for next. He says going into meditation opens doors for satan to put messages in your brain : I can't really say that isn't true. I can only say it sounds very unlikely. Basically he says the only way to find truth is in the bible. So does that mean gay people are being blasphemous? That's what the bible says. they're freaks. I know for sure that isn't true. And even if it was. God made them. I know God is Love. I know if there is a God he must honour the fact I've been honestly searching the Truth. And if he does honour that, I can say I know God is love above all. If I ever became a sort of christian again, I'd preach love, and find ways to be able to love more. I wouldn't preach any rules or laws. Because even though they may be good, most of them don't let love be the priority. People start to judge and not love.
I just want to be able to find God and know I've found him.
I problably wasn't eloquent enough writing this as to express the way the bible perfectly predicts how satan could be playing everyone in the world outside conventional christians. And maybe that's because this is such a weird thought for me. I don't know what to think.

6 comments:

sirbarrett said...

Yeah, I wish I could get like a really succint bible summary that was like a page to get a balanced idea on what it's saying. I mean, yeah, WTF Jesus died for our sins and whosoever belief in him will not die but have everlasting life in heaven. Are we, as humans, supposed to be able to conjure up an image of heaven to be an incentive to believe in something? And is it humanly possible to believe in something if you can't coherently imagine it? The bible seems in a constant state of being interpreted. There are some Christians that welcome gays, so it's as if the passages that (according to some) discriminate against gays themselves aren't even clear enough. It gets confusing because it's supposed to be like an Ethics for Life, the Universe and Everything...but no one has the answer. One thing I think all religions encourage (but then some religious folks forget that their religion is to encourage) adventure, experimentalism (including meditation), the search for knowledge, kindness etc. However, we often get tripped up in the details.

Violet said...

Hi sirbarret, let me comment on your comment in the next post, ok? =)

Devil Mood said...

I'm sorry you're going through a crisis. I see your doubts and some going back and forth in your post. I find it interesting that you have so many questions regarding this. Maybe what's more interesting is how I don't, because - well - this is a serious, complex issue.

My relationship with spirituality is completely relaxed. I was raised a Catholic, went to a school with Nuns, had a few doubts as all the kids do...I also became interested in Astrology later and I'm always interested in old philosophies. I've read some things on the Kaballah, I studied Tarot...and you know none of what I've learned excludes anything that was there before. I don't choose my beliefs and my faith, I build it gradually...in the end, we could say studying and learning is my religion. I have a strong 9th house, after all.
I think I'm very spiritual but if you ask me what my beliefs are I can't tell you, it's not something I've learnt from experience. I feel this faith is almost unconscious and abstract. And it's all light. No satan, devil, bad things...that doesn't exist to me.

I truly believe spirituality should be an individual thing because it's completely subjective. I'm not denying the role of churches and congregations as providers for the society but in terms of actual faith, it's up to you, not the people around you.

I hope writing about this has helped you.

Violet said...

Devil Mood, thank u. you're so sweet.
I'm not in crisis anymore.
I'm gonna watch The exorcism of emily rose today :D
I'm hoping it has a very psychological vs spiritual approach.
I'm taking it easy. I want to talk about the bible some more and then we'll see.
I'm building my beleifs too. It seems the only sain thing to do.**

Devil Mood said...

Do you like Tori Amos?
I was thinking of a song of hers called Crucify that I really like. Her father was a priest or whatever the exact name and many of her songs have the religious dilema in them.

Violet said...

I like her, I heard her talk about song and her past on mtv many years ago. I was very religious at the time and found it strange that she would not be as happy as me in church. Her father was a methodist pastor. I never noticed the lyrics... I'll google Crucify. =)