Posted by Tabitha on June 9, 2002, at 5:12:49
In reply to Giving up on one, trying another, posted by wendy b. on May 27, 2002, at 20:21:24
Hi,
Highlights from my spiritual history:
Occasional force church attendance (Methodist) as a child. Found it provided nothing. I tried, really I tried, as a child to get something out of it, but nothing. It seemed no one else got much out of it either. It was some kind of social respectability to go is all.
After I had left home my brother and mother got into the Pentecostal church in a big way. My mother was baptised, got the Holy Ghost, started following their dress rules (no makeup, skirts only, hair uncut). My parents divorced over it. For years she quit sending letters, just Pentecostal propganda, occasionally a little personal note in the margins. She and my brother could not grasp that I wasn't into the Bible, and that I didn't worry about whether I was going to heaven or hell.
In college my boyfriend got into the Way International (sort of a Bible cult leftover from the 70's) and to try to hang onto him I went to their introductory class. Got nothing out of it. Toward the end we all had to share what we got out of it. People saying they had found what they were looking for, how wonderful it was, etc. I felt utterly alone. On the last class we had to speak in tongues, all in unison. It felt really fake but I did it. The boyfriend left ne anyway, to work for the Way. I fell apart, felt like everyone I loved abandoned me for some nutty religion. I starting hanging out with artists and dropouts. Attempted suicide, rather feebly.
Later in graduate school, the next boyfriend (an artist dropout) used hallucinogens in search of religious experiences. I took more of a recreational approach, but then I met God while on mushrooms. Honestly, God showed me all of creation from a great distance, it looked kind of like the Mandelbrot set, or a big kaleidescope. Indescribably beautiful. I asked God why? Why all this? Why create? God answered with a big rush of love. Wow. I get chills remembering it. After that experience everything seemed precious and I felt teary-eyed and sentimental for days. Unfortunatlely it wore off, and God never talked to me directly again.
Got interested in Zen for a while, read the books of Charlotte Joko Beck and Pema Chodron. Eventually I decided that Zen practice wasn't psychologically healthy for me (sitting motionless in a row, staring at a wall). It was too much like my childhood deprivation, so I quit Zen and started therapy.
Wrote a lot of crazy stuff about God in my journal, how we're all just little chips off of God, how my purpose was to be a vessel for bringing God's love into the world. It never seemed to translate into any real direction or action. After my brain chemistry got stabilised with medication I found I wasn't so interested in thinking about God anymore. Go figure.
My mother killed herself, though suicide was a mortal sin in her church. She had severe depression and chronic pain, and mostly prayed for healing instead of getting regular medical care. Her faith seemed to encourage depression, since about everything was forbidden except reading the Bible. It was a shock. I thought the fear of hell would keep her from doing it.
Since then tried a New Age church, couldn't stand the intensity of positive-ness everyone projected. Read about Wicca, it sounded nice but I couldn't really figure out what to do with it. Went to 12-steps, never really grasped the spirituality of it, but it was a nice group. Did yoga for a couple of years, it was sort of spiritual at times.
I honestly don't know how to find spirituality anymore. Lately the most spiritual moments are gardening, or sitting in the yard looking at the sky.
poster:Tabitha
thread:2
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20020527/msgs/112.html