Losing My Religion…

…And Finding My Spirituality

It seems like a strange thing to say, as a lot of people consider the two things to be the same, or at least so closely related they never considered them as separate and unique. There perhaps was a time when I thought the same way too. But not now.

Losing my religion was the best thing that happened to me. It’s not been an overnight event, but a long process that I wasn’t even aware had begun. But I’m awfully glad it did.

It’s been a very liberating experience – and at times a difficult one. My own personal opinion is that Catholicism is indoctrination; and the indoctrination runs deep. Being schooled privately by nuns as a young girl will do that to you. It was years until I could finally believe that God didn’t punish you for doing something wrong; and it was years after that, that I questioned God’s existence in the manner in which I’d been conditioned to believe.

There may be some of you screaming heretic at me now, but consider the logic and realism of a heavenly father. Think for a moment, just one little moment about the idea or image you have of god in your heart and mind. What do you feel? Do you feel? Is what you know about god brought to you by your own experience with him? Or is it what you have also been led to believe all these years? Is your heavenly father the forgiving kind, or the vengeful kind? It would seem to me that the global god is many things and the more you search, the further away you go from finding your answer.

That statement itself raised further questions for me and without prior knowledge or understanding, I found myself loosely exploring the philosophy of Descartes. In trying to find out my own truths, I began stripping every thought and ideal I had once embraced, and applying his process of Radical Doubt to my questioning, I found some of my answers a little hard to take.

Very briefly, Descartes concluded that the only truth you can prove is of your own existence; the only thing you can truly rely on is that you think. He coined the phrase: ‘I think therefore I am’. Of course this led me to question the very existence of God, though Descartes says you can conceive of God. This was troubling for me as it seemed that despite all the scriptures and writings down the ages, the doctrines and the instructions, it left me with nothing heavenly, only the earthly dogma applied by man.

‘But I’ve had religious experiences,’ you might say; ‘I can feel God’. I would say ‘can you? Have you? Can you be absolutely sure that what you experienced was real? That it wasn’t some trick of the mind or the senses?’ Where does this kind of thinking leave a person? It left me in a void for a while, considering that Descartes also showed that your senses can be tricked and therefore cannot be trusted. I can’t say that aspect has been a pleasant experience. I too had religious experiences; I received healing in church and felt the heat throughout my body and I’ve spoken in tongues; so to find myself logically questioning my own experiences has been challenging to say the least. But challenge them I have. In the pursuit of freeing myself from the shackles of dogma and preconceived ideas that weren’t my own, I’ve had no choice. It’s also been a very liberating experience and for once I can ask those questions that have plagued me for years about myself, my existence and my purpose without fear of hell-fire and damnation.

I can finally question the god that has been presented to me by people who actually didn’t have my best interests at heart; or perhaps their own. What kind of heavenly father have they asked me to embrace? One that will punish me? One that will ostracise me and abandon me if I don’t conform? I am a mother and I cannot conceive of the idea of imposing any of those ideas on my own children. If I am truly a child of god, then why the heavy hand? Why does my spiritual health come with a compromise? Why so many conditions? Why apparently give and then restrict?

I have this body and it feels sensations. Sex is pleasurable and yet it is scorned upon and layered with conditions for its proper use. I’m a very sexual person and have always enjoyed sex. However, religiously, and in my religious mind, it has always been compromised with conditions and restrictions. Only when you can learn to drop the religion can you see sex as the most natural thing in the world; and most importantly, I feel, that sex is the link to spirituality. The point of orgasm is the closest thing to divinity that I have ever experienced; it’s otherworldly, sublime and something my body does so easily that I have to question why my so called heavenly father would want to physically give me the equipment and then scorn me for using it? He giveth and he taketh away? That’s not good enough. You can take my religion away, I’m finding my spirituality my own way, without the dogma; and I’m thoroughly enjoying the sex!

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Tagged as: Catholicism, God, Religion, Spirituality