By the end of high school, I was very much in the “spiritual but not religious” camp. Conveniently, it was also a great way to get people to stop asking you about religion, and to avoid thinking too deeply about things. Religion had been a background part of my life for so long, I probably didn’t know what I’d do without it. But looking back at it now, the choice to be “spiritual but not religious” was probably my first step down the road away from belief.

Like I said, it allowed me to avoid thinking critically about my beliefs, and at the time this was a good thing. I had graduated high school a year early, and was well on my way to going to college. I planned to double major, and would have little time to spend pondering the vagaries of existence.

Unsurprisingly, religion and spirituality became less of a daily concern. I was more concerned first with keeping my head above academic water, and then avoiding completely burning out after a grueling freshman year. I began to say and think things like “I’ve got too much going on in my normal life to worry about the next one.” I even stopped referring to myself as “spiritual but not religious.”

I woke up one day and realized how little my previous beliefs had to do with my life. But more surprisingly, I realized how little difference that made to me. I still got up in the morning. I still went to class and work. I still enjoyed my hobbies and the company of my friends. My life still felt full.

For a while, that was enough for me. I became wholly unconcerned with the question of whether or not there was anything “out there,” metaphysically speaking. I guess you could call me “un-gnostic:” I didn’t need to know.

But as it turns out, I was merely ignoring the issue. I had yet to really ask myself any tough questions. As a result, I still held on to a lot of internalized beliefs that I hadn’t critically investigated. The big one was whether or not life (…the universe, and everything) had any overarching purpose that it/we/I was meant to fulfill.

This became my greatest source of angst for quite a while. Unlike other people around me, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, let alone what I was supposed to do. So I worried. And then my old friend Catholic Guilt reared its head to make things even better. So I wandered. I finished college. I fell into a job. I tried grad school. I quit the job, finished grad school. I got depressed.

Until one day I was driving my car and had an epiphany: what if there wasn’t any purpose to things? What if there wasn’t any deeper meaning to life? What if what we saw in front of us was all there was, the only meaning that which we give to things?

I don’t know if I can communicate how freeing that realization was. It was like the sun came out after a long, dark winter. I actually smiled, laughing slightly to myself as I drove down the road. “Everything is meaningless!” I told myself. And I knew that it was true. Rather than sucking the wonder and vitality out of everything, it seemed to enhance them.

So there’s my story, how my faith ended with mostly a whimper. It trickled out gradually, and I found that I didn’t miss it. I still have some baggage from my religious and spiritual past, of course. I don’t always remember that life is meaningless, but when I do, it frees me from a bit of the guilt I carry around with me. And talking with people who may not know about my journey and current worldview can get awkward. Especially given my tendency to not want to rock the boat/cause a scene.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look into my mind. Hopefully you came away educated rather than offended. But just in case, I will add a final disclaimer: this is what works for me. What works for you and makes you happy may be different, and I respect that. I’m willing to have a good conversation about things, even a debate. But if you want me to respect your beliefs, all I ask is that you respect mine.

I mentioned in my last post that my parents had some difficulty finding a new church after we moved to Colorado. They tried several, but failed to find any that truly struck a chord within them. So they broadened their search, outside the bounds of Catholicism, and even traditional Christianity.

I guess you could say this was the start of our experience with New Age woo.

Past life regression. Angel therapy. Auras. Chakras. The Law of Attraction. The “power of positive thinking.” Things like that.

They found a church that practiced something called Religious Science. Even though it was clear on the other side of town, we started attending every Sunday. Major tenets included the connectedness of all things, that we were all expressions of a “Christ Consciousness” that permeated and touched everything in the entire universe. It seemed to pull teachings and philosophies from both Western and Eastern sources, recognizing a number of great teachers throughout the ages. Positive thinking was paramount, and one simply had to put the intention “out to the Universe” to achieve a desired result. In addition, one always got back what one put out.

I remember a bit more about this time period, not just because I was older, but because the contrast to what came before was quite visible. The philosophies and teachings of my parent’s new church became a larger part of our day-to-day life. Looking back, it still felt fairly Christian at its core, just with some more elaborate window dressings. They even said a version of the Lord’s Prayer during services.

My personal experience in this church was a little different. When we started going, I was still fairly young to sit through the Sunday services, so I instead got to go to what was effectively Sunday school. I don’t remember much about what was taught, but at least I didn’t come home with nightmares.

As I got older, I was given the opportunity to sit with my parents during the service. However, I had a hard time sitting still and paying attention for that long. Whether I can blame that completely on my ADD is open for debate. It’s also possible that I just didn’t find the sermons that interesting. I will say this about my parent’s church, though: the music was pretty phenomenal.

So as my parents had searched, so too did I start searching. I took the more mystical aspects of my parent’s church and went one step further. That’s right, it’s time for the High School Pagan Phase!

I jumped in pretty strongly, too. I meditated regularly in front of my altar. I even attempted some rituals of my own, using props scrounged from what I had lying around. My altar was a white particleboard nightstand, my ritual dagger an ornate letter opener. My candles were glass votives from the grocery store. I started reading a lot, mostly about Celtic Shamanism and other new/old religious like Wicca.

I approached my research and practice dogmatically, trying out what I found in various books. But too often it felt like I was just going through the motions, doing things because I was told that was “the way it was done.” The rituals began to feel empty, and I found myself meditating less and less. I eventually came to the realization that maybe organized religion of any sort wasn’t for me.

I started to think of myself as “spiritual but not religious.”

I will admit: I’m a little nervous about writing this next series of posts. I’m going to be talking about very personal things. Things I haven’t really discussed much with friends or even family. Things that many people get very passionate about. True, some of my recent philosophy rants may have alluded to the subject, but this will be the first time I’ve talked about it this plainly, maybe even to myself.

I’d like to talk about how I lost my faith.

I hope you’re still with me. For those of you that are, thank you. I’d like to take you on a journey through my personal history with religion. I’m not trying to offend anyone, and would welcome thoughtful, considerate discussion on the matter. This is a big topic, and one I may be revisiting if better words come to me in the future. With that said, let’s jump in!

Like many people born in or near the American Midwest, my early life was spent growing up Christian. Catholic, in fact. Even though my family wasn’t overly religious, it was still a big part of the background culture. We went to church on Sundays. We got dressed up for Easter. I even received my First Communion. At the time I wasn’t really aware of religion as a “thing;” it was just part of the culture, as ubiquitous and unremarkable as water to a fish. In other words, it was most definitely taken for granted as a given.

But not all my experiences with religion at that time were benign and forgettable. My experience with Catholic school, for instance. While my family lived in Cincinnati, I attended Catholic school (creatively named St. Mary’s, of course) for first and (most of) second grade.* I don’t remember much about this time, other than having to go to Mass as part of school. Even then, it wasn’t very fun. I also remember getting into an argument with my teacher about the number of syllables in the word “tire” (I was convinced there were two, for the record). Other than that, I can’t really comment much on the quality of my education.

That being said, there are a few things that stick with me from this time period. One of them is good old Catholic Guilt. That’s something I internalized all too well, and it’s still affecting me to this day. Sometimes it gets to the point where I can’t even enjoy a day off without feeling like I should be doing something productive, or if I don’t give an activity 110% effort I’m somehow letting someone down. Let me tell you, it’s been great for my self-esteem.

The other thing that sticks out for me is an experience I had once my family moved to Denver. We didn’t know many people out here when my dad got transferred, ans had to start looking for a new church from scratch. One of the ones we tried was a little more… vigorous than what I had been exposed to back in Cincinnati. I don’t remember the specifics of what I was told; all I remember are the nightmares. I had always had an overactive imagination, and it swung into vigorous action filling my head with visions of hellfire and burning pits whenever I closed my eyes to sleep. These visions, on top of my already internalized guilt, were devastating for me. I was convinced that I had done something wrong, and would be damned to suffer for all eternity. I was literally so worried I couldn’t sleep.

Needless to say, my family didn’t stick with that church for very long.

*It turns out telling the parents of a bored second grader that “he would be much happier if you didn’t let him do science experiments at the kitchen table and made him play Candy Land instead” doesn’t endear one to said parents.↩