Turns out, I'm an atheist.
Yeah, caught me by surprise too. I just realized over the past week that for years I've been dancing around the point, trying to find ways to "believe in god" by finding different ways of defining what god is. But just about everybody, when they hear the word "god," thinks one thing: a personal god, a supreme being -- most often the creator of all things -- who has an interest in the lives of individuals.
I don't believe in that.
I believe in a "god principle," that there is something that emerges from within us -- whether from biology or from some intangible 'spirit' -- that demands living an ethical, authentic life. But that's not what the monotheistic world (i.e. Western/Near-Eastern culture) means by "god."
So I guess that makes me an atheist.
And when I say that I can feel decades of conditioning turning and raging against the possibility. But when I say it, I know it's the truth. I have practiced experiential spirituality my whole life, basing belief on my interpretation of interior experiences. But an interpretation is not verifiable; we're just telling stories. All of history, telling each other stories. And those stories might make us feel good, but that doesn't make them true. It doesn't make them accurate.
I’ve had some very powerful religious experiences and I’ve experienced some far-out peak states. And I’ve come back with lots of good stories that ultimately fail me, just as the traditional stories have failed me. How do they fail me? They do not reconcile with reason and intellect. They fail because development is an inherently inclusive process. That is, every level of development must integrate and transcend the previous level. Thus, our next evolutionary breakthrough must not demand that we abandon empiricism and formal logic. No. It must incorporate the rational mind into a larger context that adds a new dimension to human awareness and experience.
But some things get left behind. For example, ritual sacrifice was a casualty of the radical ethics of Jesus of Nazareth. Don’t really hear anyone complaining about that one. And the records of Paul indicate that that was not an easy transition for people. Giving up old practices is not an easy thing.
But maybe we need to give up the time-honored, much cherished practice of belief. Let go of the need to believe, and to protect those beliefs by any means. Find out what life is like without the barriers created by belief, and the conflicts that arise protecting belief. Discover what the world is like if we all just stop fighting to force reality to match our insistent beliefs. Just live together in possibility and see where that takes us.
That may be the most difficult and most important step for humanity.
