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For some reason, spirituality is something that I'm nervous to talk about in-depth. Perhaps due to a sort of religious upbringing that I'm not particularly fond of, or the fact that I've carried some of my childhood spiritual beliefs and practices into adulthood with me, there is some shame in it. I wouldn't say I'm anti-religion as a belief system, but I'm definitely anti-religion as an institution. We're all living our silly little lives for the first time and trying to make sense of it all, and I can't hold it against my fellow person for finding comfort in something larger than ourselves. After all, I, too, have found comfort in the idea of something larger than myself, it's just that their belief system has better PR.

What follows is a long stream-of-consciousness description of what I point to as the source of some of my spiritual beliefs, what I eventually landed on, and what I would like to practice and learn more about in the future.

Then

I grew up in a loosely catholic household. I say 'loosely' because, aside from the patriarch of the house, most of my family considered themselves catholic insofar as they celebrated Christmas and that's about it. I would sometimes go to mass with my grandfather just to see what was up (and because he promised me Burger King after...), but I very early on decided that it wasn't for me. I have a distinct memory of praying for something ridiculous like superpowers, not getting them, and basically throwing up my hands and going "welp I guess god isn't real then". I think the only real thing that I took away from Catholicism is the prototypical 'catholic guilt' and that's about it.

I have some memories of my mom being really into astrology and other adjacent topics, and I remember getting really into the topic for a while too, diving into stuff like numerology and natal charts. I personally don't think any of that shit is real but you'll still find me looking at what articles have to say about capricorns and the signs of people I care about. All for good fun. I have a really hard time biting my tongue when people do talk to me about it as though it had even a shred of truth to it, though. I'll let them tell me whatever it is the stars supposedly mean if they really want to, because some people are just really passionate about it.

This is maybe an experience that kids don't have anymore, but I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. I spoke to the wind, animals, trees, etc. fully believing that they understood me and that I had some sort of unique ability to comunicate with nature. I remember sitting in my backyard in the rain and feeling spiritually 'in the zone', so to speak.

Completely unironically, I think Wizardology had a non-zero impact on where I am today. I think I got that book at a book fair at some point as a kid and I was obsessed. I remember casting spells on my cat to make her my familiar and shit like that. Some of my earliest old-web experiences involved reading about spells that people had posted online. This eventually turned into me getting really into various extra-sensory perception topics, energy magic, healing, astral projection, and things of that nature that I remember practicing in private and during playground roleplay.

When my mom remarried, the woman who eventually became my step-grandmother ended up being a sort of 'new-age' christian. I'd go with her to crystal shops and she'd tell me about what all these rocks could do for me and my chakras or whatever. I willingly went with her to some activities at this 'metaphysical' christian church after having my first brush with meditation there. She was also the woman that taught me about Tarot, something that I still 'practice' today, though with less seriousness.

Throughout my middle school years, I attended schools that were hyper christian. Prayer every morning, prayer every afternoon. I was living in a very christian area, and after I offhandedly mentioned that I was an atheist during a religious education class, people looked at me like I was the devil and I got bullied hard. I continued exploring things like tulpas and meditation, but due to the onset of some issues that I had been going through at the time, I began to chalk up a lot of my spiritual experiences and beliefs to what I considered to be an unseen psychological crisis.

In high school, I got really, really pretentious about philosophy. I had abandoned the loose solipsism of my middle school years (partly inspired by an obsession with the Matrix, but that's for another shrine), and had, in its place, developed an interest in absurdism and existentialism, mostly through the works of Camus and Sartre. This doesn't necessarily correlate to my current spiritual beliefs, but what I took away from those two schools of philosphy helped form the basis of why spirituality is important to me. Whether or not there is a 'point' to everything isn't the question, it's what we do with the absurdity of existence that matters.

Now

A conversation that was foundational for me happened one late night at a diner in my hometown. Some friends of mine and I had started going to this 24/7 diner at insane hours to discuss philosophy and debate each other. That night, I guess the topic was where exactly everything came from, and I struggled to articulate my point then, but I think I can do it a little better now:

"I don't believe anything created the universe. I think the idea of there being a 'before' and 'after' for the universe is absurd. I think it just is, was, and always will be. What I do believe in is the baseline connection between all things living, dead, animate, inanimate. I think of everything as having two faces: the one you and I are looking at right now, and the one that spiritually binds us all together."

At this point I was scrawling a diagram of what I meant onto a napkin, sketching out what I was feverishly calling a "sea of consciousness, somewhat related to Plato's allegory of the cave," whereby all of the universe existed as one unyielding field of Platonic stuff, all the same 'material', but nevertheless was something we were unfortunately cut off from by our own body's inability to perceive it. It was like trying to look at your own face without a reflective surface.

I was lightly ridiculed for how little sense I was making but I definitely felt like I was onto something that I would take with me for a long time. In retrospect, writing this out now, I think what it boils down to is a spiritual connection between atoms, probably. Nevertheless, this whole rant pulled me in two directions.

First, I was lucky enough to read an article about the concept of 'mu', a concept in Zen Buddhism that I would not claim to have any 'true' understanding of, that to me described this sort of impossible-but-not-impossible thing that I was trying to get at. This "is, was, and always will be". I have since delved into Zen Buddhism and concepts of nonduality that seem to approach, if not arrive at, this feeling that I was trying to express. I also began to just read more about meditation practice more in general. Though my meditation practice is infrequent, I usually gravitate towards two focal points, though I occasionally delve into metta/loving-kindness too:

During my witchier phases I briefly got into the idea of druidry but didn't pursue it super far. The idea of building a belief system around reverence to nature appealed to me and my history with spirituality, but due to a lot of factors at the time, I sort of abandoned any sort of labeled spirituality for a while. However, during a profound experience with psychedelics during a particularly difficult period of my life, I had this bone-deep realization that almost everything beautiful and tragic that has happened in the history of life as we know it has happened on this big rock we call home. The bench I sat at during that moment was built by hands whose owners I'll never meet. Wars were fought here and love was found here. The land has a history far beyond the history that we've recorded. Before the colonizers, before the indigenous peoples whose land they stole, before the very first hominid, the planet we live on has been here with or without us. This was something worth being reverent about.

I explored big names in druidry for a little while, since to me it was "that one school of spirituality that had a special focus on nature". I even joined a local druid circle and participated in some Wheel of the Year rituals. But, despite reading about how anyone of any culture could become a druid, I was super turned off by the heavy Celtic influences and messaging. It was important to me that I not sideline the indigenous peoples of North America as stewards of the land in favor of what I considered a sort of superficial, white obsession with heritage or something like that. I think I would still consider myself aligned with druidry as a school of thought, but probably not with druidic organizations like OBOD.

Sometime just before I really got out on my own as an adult, I had another profound experience involving a rabbit. The story involves a lot of trauma-dumping, but in short: the rabbit was captured, died in captivity due to (what I perceived as) my own inaction, and that rabbit was me, and the rabbit dying was the universe's way of telling me that I needed to get out the situation I was in or risk suffering the same fate. I've heard that the idea of spirit animals is a closed practice so I'm careful not to describe it as that, but as a result of this experience, rabbits have a special spiritual significance to me that is hard to articulate. There is some self-recognition when I see them. I'm vegetarian already, but even if I wasn't, I absolutely would never eat a rabbit, ever.

On the topic of 'the universe', by the way. Throughout this, I've written about 'the universe' conveying something to me, about performing rituals, and about Tarot. It's hard for me to describe, but I don't truly believe all of that? In general, I think of spirituality as being a tool for feeding the soul, for giving oneself a sense of purpose, belonging, or connection in the world. When I perform rituals, I don't truly believe I am affecting any change or communicating to some higher 'something'. It is an action that expresses reverance to something that I feel deserves it. When I describe something as "the universe's way of telling me (something)", I don't mean to say that literally. I believe that as long as you are looking for it, you can ascribe significant spiritual meaning to anything. It's about what feeds you, what fills the void that keeps us disconnected from the world around us. I use Tarot not as some grand divination tool, but as a mirror and as an invitation for me to self-reflect through games of chance. Sometimes it's fun to think of it as truly divining something, especially if I get a 'good' reading, but if you asked me at gunpoint to say whether or not I believe any of it was real, I'd have to say no.

Nowadays, most of my spiritual practice is in the form of nature walks and learning about the world around me. Spending time outdoors and doing some form of walking meditation, and just letting myself feel like a part of the world that I care about so much. I became vegetarian due to my reignited interest in druidry, but also in response to a mandate from my employer to use environmentally destructive LLMs as much as possible as part of my work. I try to do some sort of Tarot reading around Wheel of the Year days in the absence of group ritual, though I'd like to do something more elaborate in the future since I think it deserves more reverence than a card game. I don't meditate as often as I'd like due to lack of discipline, but it's something I'd like to get more practice with. I've considered seeking out Zen Buddhist teachers in my area to get more instruction on it, but I am hesitant to feel like I'm putting a label on the practice with any finality.

For the most part, I think my spirituality, in practice, is sort of wishy-washy and indefinite, but I think that's what I like about it. I like that it's something that grows and evolves with me and my relationship with life as I age. I like that it's uniquely mine and no one else's, even though it borrows from a variety of sources. As I said, it's something that feeds me personally, and that's what matters. If you read this far, thank you for caring to read about my thoughts on this. It is just as much an act of reverence to write it all down and describe it and I'm thankful to have an audience to that.