I used to be a born again Christian with plans of becoming a chaplain in the Army. It was my studying in preparation for that that led me to abandon Christianity. I was a deist for a couple years but eventually gave up that “god of the gaps”. I’d don’t feel like getting into my whole deconversion story because then someone will drag me into the same discussion I have had countless times.
Am I spiritual? It depends on how you define it, I guess. I don’t believe in souls and I don’t believe in gods and I don’t pray.
Up until a few years ago I would have laughed at even the possibility of considering myself “spiritual”. But a few years I tried some things for the first times in my life: weed and magic mushrooms.
And then I began reading everything I could on consciousness and neurology.
So if by spiritual you mean a
feeling that I am one with everything, then yeah. But that doesn’t mean I believe in the supernatural. I also tend to subscribe to Sam Harris’ view that while consciousness is the one thing we can know with absolute certainty exists, I do believe that this sense of “self” I have is just an illusion. And being a shroom user, I know what it is like to be dispelled of that illusion. Again, nothing supernatural. Your brain creates all sorts of illusions to help your meatsack navigate the world safely. Psychedelics shut down parts of the brain, and activate some others. And the parts of your brain that control that sense of self are among those that have less activity.
I believe at the most fundamental level of existence there is
probably just one thing. And everything in the likely infinite multiverse is just that one thing arranged in different patterns and dimensions. I also don’t believe in free will. So in the end I am left with this
feeling that what happens is what is “supposed” to happen and that “I” am just what the unviverse is doing at this point in space and time just like a wave is what the ocean is doing at that point in space and time.
