What Exactly Do I Believe?

[DesertBob]

But what if you're wrong? What if there is one Truth out there, with a capital T? Who knows? I think even if I came to a partial realization of this, I still don't think I could switch mindsets. The anxiety is still there. And to tell you the truth, I don't know why. I feel sad, depressed, angry, anxious, all the time, and I don't really know why. The performance anxiety that comes with trying to be a perfect Christian is gone, but I still can't snap out of it.

All I can say is that I have looked at many belief systems and philosophies from many different angles of approach and they all just go around in circles. My mind likes straight lines: beginnings, middles, ends. Life is mostly circles. Circles seem inherently pointless to me.

 

Since men have spent millennia searching for The Meaning Of It All, and still cannot credibly explain it and certainly can't agree on whatever mutually exclusive explanation's they've come up with, who am I to think I can do any better in my own lifetime with any reasonable amount of effort? I conclude that it is Information Unobtanium and therefore irrelevant. In other words, maybe for the sake of argument there is an Objective Reality, a Universal Truth. But if I don't have the perceptual and intellectual equipment to locate it, and neither apparently does anyone else, then its (theoretical) existence is irrelevant.

 

(Humorous aside: one can't help be put in mind here of Douglas Adam's Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the Answer to Everything turns out to be: 39).

 

So what if I am wrong? If it looks, walks, smells, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Best, for practical purposes, to treat it like one. If what as far as anyone can tell is a duck, is really a unicorn, well, excuse me!

 

If there is a god who wants men to know something important, he'll make it blantantly obvious to everyone. And I'll tell you something else. It'll pass something I call the Goatherd Test. It will be completely accessible to everyone, even a lowly goatherd. It will not require a degree in philosophy, decades of ascetic meditations, or any particular intellectual prowess. At least not unless god is only interested in communing with philosophers, ascetics, and intellectuals -- which, no doubt, many philosophers, ascetics and intellectuals would be quite okay with!

 

You speak of anxiety that would "still be there" even if you could "switch mindsets". In other words, if I correctly understand you, you'll never be 100% certain that you're not fatally wrong, thereby condemning yourself to hell, or some version of it.

 

I can only say, why fret about the remote possibility that an Invisible Friend who other people claim speaks to or through them, but who refuses to talk to you, might become a Visible Fiend and chain you up in a pool of boiling oil in some mythical place that no one has ever seen, but which sounds suspiciously like the invention of cynical manipulators who want to keep you fearful and dependent and giving up your power to them? I for one would rather not force-fit everything ... I would rather take life as it plainly is -- no more and no less. Which is, basically, what Jung called "mere being". He said the purpose of life appears to be no more than "lighting a candle in the darkness of mere being." In the absence of even decent circumstantial evidence to the contrary, why treat it as anything more than that?

 

"It is what it is" -- that's my mantra.

It's not necessarily that I beat myself up for making mistakes. What it really is, is that I hate the person that I've become. I hate everything about this person. And I want to commit mental suicide, slay the person inside that is me, and be reborn into something else... something much different.

I suspect you're uncomfortable sharing publicly everything that concerns you here. In order to hate what you've become you have to have done, or failed to do, something you consider important. Not knowing what that is, it's hard for me to comment on it. The most I can relate to it is that I can truthfully say I've become everything that I once loathed. I'm an unbeliever, backslider, unchurched, occasionally profane, currently living with a woman without benefit of marriage (*gasp*) and semi-estranged from my daughter. Divorced once, widowed once. I once considered such people losers and was quite conceited that I had all the "answers" that would insure that would never happen to someone so enlightened as myself.

 

So, I failed to live up to my preconceived notions of what I once considered important. And it's more than religious stuff. I failed to meet The One, fall deeply, permanently, and comfortably in love, and Live Happily Ever After ™ -- something I once considered of paramount importance to have even a hope of happiness and contentment. By definition, that went out the window with my first marriage. A marriage which, paradoxically, I stayed in way too long because of the Divorce Taboo.

 

Yet here I am. But guess what. I no longer believe all those old fairy tales and fantasies. I now understand that I am human like everyone else, blundering through as best I can. So I can love who I am. I suspect you have yet to let go of your illusions. And that letting go is indeed a kind of death -- a very real kind. For me it was like capitulating, giving up, committing suicide. So yes, I relate to what you are saying. Eventually life beat the last of it out of me, and I was reborn. Pardoxical, isn't it, since Christianity was trying to sell me a painless rebirth based on a simple one-time "decision for Christ" -- one which allowed me to keep my ego attachments, prejudices and downright arrogance intact.

What is true for me? It doesn't quite work that way. What is true is the truth for everybody, it doesn't vary from person to person. You can't say, Jesus is true to one person and Allah to another. It doesn't work like that. If Jesus is real, that means he's real, and that he's the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the father except through him. If Allah is real. that means Allah is real for everybody, whether they accept it or not, and not just for some people. Truth is truth, it doesn't matter who the person is.

We are descending into a morass of unending philosophical debate here about the nature of reality and truth. Is it absolute or relative? Given or self-created? There's no way to prove it one way or the other.

 

I would prefer a given, immutable, universal truth. Any sane person would. But the reality is that it's indeterminate. The canonical explanation is, you can't prove or disprove that while you slept last night, aliens didn't remove your brain, put it in a test tube, hook it up to a bunch of cables and fed you a bunch of impulses that now make up what you think is your reality. You can't prove that your body is real, only that it "seems" real. You can't prove that your consciousness is independent of your body, or that it survives death in any form that's recognizably "you".

 

No one has any standing to say that Jesus is the true Son of God, or that Allah is, or that Groucho Marx is. Or isn't.

 

The ONLY thing we have to go on is what works for practical purposes. What produces happiness, and hopefully joy, for you and those you care about without burdening your conscience with any harm or loss you might cause others? What produces guilt, suffering, remorse and regret? Be guided by these things, because at the end of the day, they are the only thing that matters.

 

I forget who it was that said, "Life is an enigma -- a harmless enigma made terrible by our mad attempts to explain it." Quit over-thinking and just LIVE.

...the problem is not that I'm holding myself back from taking that leap [of leaving the faith]. I've already took it. It's more like, I'm held down by tons of baggage, and I don't know what to do with it.

Without knowing what you mean by "baggage" I can't remark on it. It is probably little more than a thought structure in between your ears however.

What move do I have left to make? I'm just stuck, I can't go back, but I can't move forward either. It's not necessarily the hell thing holding me back. I've already accepted, I'm probably going to hell. I probably don't have much of a say in that anyway, as I'm probably damned and unforgivable where I sit. It's too late for me, biblically. So what's holding me back? I don't know.

Sounds like your Cloud of Doom ™ is largely constructed of a belief in hell, which requires that you believe in an omnipotent God who operates by rewarding those who please him and punishing and degrading those who displease him.

 

Seems to me that any God worthy of the label would be a lot more than a spoiled, vindictive child with unlimited super-powers bolted on. Many, many people who believe in God do not believe in hell. Perhaps you should try separating those things in your mind.

 

I take it that "going forward" for you would mean completely dropping your beliefs in God, heaven, hell -- or at least being completely open-minded about the possibilities that they do or don't exist and having no preconceptions that they must conform to the particular interpretation or understanding that you were weaned on.

 

In my experience, when people cling to things that are clearly unpleasant and maladaptive for them, they NEED it for some reason. At one level, I could be bitter at how the church misled me, confused me, duped me, and abused me, set my expectations all wrong, and otherwise confounded every aspect of my life. But I also have to recognize my own role. I desperately WANTED all that stuff to be true, and at bottom I wanted it so badly because it absolved me of most of the responsibility for my own actions. I don't have to justify this, it's the Will of God ™. I couldn't help it, the Devil Made Me Do It ™. I don't have to make tough decisions, I just have to look up the rules in some Holy Book. I know all this stuff is BS but I have ego invested -- I will have to admit that I've been a fool all these years. And so on.

 

No one is powerless to change. Ask yourself honest questions about why you WON'T JUST DO IT. Why are you DELIBERATELY CLINGING to it?

 

I am not judging you -- I have walked this path. It's bitter medicine and I'm the first to admit it.

[DesertBob]

I identify with that "empty" feeling. I've struggled with it all my life, just not as intensely. I find little in life compelling without certain prerequisites in place. In my case I need one or more persons that I completely respect, care about and love, that I can give to and receive at least a reasonable amount of appreciation in return. If that dynamic is in place, my life feels reasonably purposeful. Without it, I feel like I'm just passing pointless time. Even hobbies and interests seem pointless. Generalized giving to random people, as in volunteer work, doesn't really cut it for me.

Have you found any ways to take away from that feeling, other than what you mentioned above?

Not so far. However, I recognize that I am only just beginning to have a life of my own. I was a puppet of the church, in a really horrible marriage, then consumed by my second wife's death-struggle and her efforts to survive. I have a daughter who is very aggressive and knows how to manipulate me to her advantage and take advantage of my gentle, easy-going nature. And so on. I'm 53 years old and it's only been in the last 3 years or so that I've actually started to come into my own and figure out who I am and what I want and start to build some balanced, healthy relationships (including a painful and tricky reboot of my relationship with aforementioned daughter).

 

I have no idea whatsoever, but maybe you have defined yourself entirely in terms of what others expect or demand of you. You seem quite guilt-riddled, and you don't seem to have ready access to what you really think and feel, as if it's been defined by others all along. If I'm even half right, then the place to focus is on figuring out what you want and setting boundaries and insisting that other people and their beliefs respect those boundaries.

 

Easier said than done, but I'm finally getting the knack.

I already know what inspires me. I don't even have to think about it. But, too bad I suck at it myself ... I'm a loser for other reasons [than living an inauthentic life].

Perhaps you could discuss what you mean by this??

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

"All I can say is that I have looked at many belief systems and philosophies from many different angles of approach and they all just go around in circles. My mind likes straight lines: beginnings, middles, ends. Life is mostly circles. Circles seem inherently pointless to me."

 

I see.

 

"Since men have spent millennia searching for The Meaning Of It All, and still cannot credibly explain it and certainly can't agree on whatever mutually exclusive explanation's they've come up with, who am I to think I can do any better in my own lifetime with any reasonable amount of effort?"

 

I feel the same way. What's the point?

 

"I conclude that it is Information Unobtanium and therefore irrelevant. In other words, maybe for the sake of argument there is an Objective Reality, a Universal Truth. But if I don't have the perceptual and intellectual equipment to locate it, and neither apparently does anyone else, then its (theoretical) existence is irrelevant."

 

That could be the case.

 

"So what if I am wrong? If it looks, walks, smells, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Best, for practical purposes, to treat it like one. If what as far as anyone can tell is a duck, is really a unicorn, well, excuse me!"

 

Hmm.

 

"If there is a god who wants men to know something important, he'll make it blantantly obvious to everyone."

 

I would think so.

 

"And I'll tell you something else. It'll pass something I call the Goatherd Test. It will be completely accessible to everyone, even a lowly goatherd. It will not require a degree in philosophy, decades of ascetic meditations, or any particular intellectual prowess. At least not unless god is only interested in communing with philosophers, ascetics, and intellectuals -- which, no doubt, many philosophers, ascetics and intellectuals would be quite okay with!"

 

Who said it's not accessible to anyone? If we're going by the Bible here, God usually seems more interested in using the lowly folks.

 

"You speak of anxiety that would "still be there" even if you could "switch mindsets". In other words, if I correctly understand you, you'll never be 100% certain that you're not fatally wrong, thereby condemning yourself to hell, or some version of it."

 

To a small extent, kind of. But it's more than that. I know in my mind that some things just can't be known for sure, and that it's probably better to go for more of an agnostic kind of stance than anything else. But it's not that I'm thinking "oh shit I better get this exactly right or I'll go to hell" For the most part, it's nothing like that at all. I just don't want to willfully live in denial. I don't want to deny something with my mouth, when deep down inside I know it's true. And I'm not saying I know Christianity is true. But I do feel that way quite a bit. But if feelings is what I'm going by, that's worthless. Feelings are deceptive. So who knows?

 

"I can only say, why fret about the remote possibility that an Invisible Friend who other people claim speaks to or through them, but who refuses to talk to you, might become a Visible Fiend and chain you up in a pool of boiling oil in some mythical place that no one has ever seen, but which sounds suspiciously like the invention of cynical manipulators who want to keep you fearful and dependent and giving up your power to them?"

 

Sounds like a waste of time to me.

 

"I for one would rather not force-fit everything ... I would rather take life as it plainly is -- no more and no less."

 

Me too.

 

"Which is, basically, what Jung called "mere being". He said the purpose of life appears to be no more than "lighting a candle in the darkness of mere being." In the absence of even decent circumstantial evidence to the contrary, why treat it as anything more than that?"

 

I don't know.

 

"I suspect you're uncomfortable sharing publicly everything that concerns you here."

 

Other than a few things, no. I'm open enough to share just about anything here. It's just that I don't know how.

"In order to hate what you've become you have to have done, or failed to do, something you consider important. Not knowing what that is, it's hard for me to comment on it."

 

It's several things. I'd have to make a list and go through it.

 

"The most I can relate to it is that I can truthfully say I've become everything that I once loathed. I'm an unbeliever, backslider, unchurched, occasionally profane, currently living with a woman without benefit of marriage (*gasp*) and semi-estranged from my daughter. Divorced once, widowed once. I once considered such people losers and was quite conceited that I had all the "answers" that would insure that would never happen to someone so enlightened as myself.

 

So, I failed to live up to my preconceived notions of what I once considered important. And it's more than religious stuff. I failed to meet The One, fall deeply, permanently, and comfortably in love, and Live Happily Ever After ™ -- something I once considered of paramount importance to have even a hope of happiness and contentment. By definition, that went out the window with my first marriage. A marriage which, paradoxically, I stayed in way too long because of the Divorce Taboo.

 

Yet here I am. But guess what. I no longer believe all those old fairy tales and fantasies. I now understand that I am human like everyone else, blundering through as best I can. So I can love who I am. I suspect you have yet to let go of your illusions. And that letting go is indeed a kind of death -- a very real kind. For me it was like capitulating, giving up, committing suicide. So yes, I relate to what you are saying. Eventually life beat the last of it out of me, and I was reborn. Pardoxical, isn't it, since Christianity was trying to sell me a painless rebirth based on a simple one-time "decision for Christ" -- one which allowed me to keep my ego attachments, prejudices and downright arrogance intact."

 

But your views changed, right? You no longer consider yourself a loser? Those don't really seem like reasons to call yourself a loser in the first place, not to me. But my reasons.... my reasons for calling myself a loser are different. Way different. I know what I am inside... and that's a fucked up piece of shit.

 

"We are descending into a morass of unending philosophical debate here about the nature of reality and truth. Is it absolute or relative? Given or self-created? There's no way to prove it one way or the other."

 

Dude, I'm an idiot. I am not debating, I can't debate. I'm just speaking my mind and asking questions. Half of the words you just mentioned I don't even understand.

"I would prefer a given, immutable, universal truth. Any sane person would. But the reality is that it's indeterminate. The canonical explanation is, you can't prove or disprove that while you slept last night, aliens didn't remove your brain, put it in a test tube, hook it up to a bunch of cables and fed you a bunch of impulses that now make up what you think is your reality. You can't prove that your body is real, only that it "seems" real. You can't prove that your consciousness is independent of your body, or that it survives death in any form that's recognizably "you"."

 

I guess you can't.

 

"No one has any standing to say that Jesus is the true Son of God, or that Allah is, or that Groucho Marx is. Or isn't."

 

I would say that the only time anybody has a right to say something like that, is when they've had a personal experience that can't be explained away as something natural. And some seem to do that.

 

"The ONLY thing we have to go on is what works for practical purposes. What produces happiness, and hopefully joy, for you and those you care about without burdening your conscience with any harm or loss you might cause others?"

 

I don't know yet.

"What produces guilt, suffering, remorse and regret?"

 

Religion.

 

"Be guided by these things, because at the end of the day, they are the only thing that matters."

 

But what if a person doesn't have these things to be guided by? Guess they're fucked.

"I forget who it was that said, "Life is an enigma -- a harmless enigma made terrible by our mad attempts to explain it." Quit over-thinking and just LIVE."

 

That's like telling a sick person to just stop being sick. It doesn't work. I have an obsessive, over-analytical mind. I can't just stop over-thinking, my mind is flooded with constant thoughts every waking hour of the day.

 

"Without knowing what you mean by "baggage" I can't remark on it. It is probably little more than a thought structure in between your ears however."

 

I basically mean, I'm not a Christian, but I still carry a lot of the baggage that these beliefs bring.

"Sounds like your Cloud of Doom ™ is largely constructed of a belief in hell, which requires that you believe in an omnipotent God who operates by rewarding those who please him and punishing and degrading those who displease him."

 

Partially, yes.

 

"Seems to me that any God worthy of the label would be a lot more than a spoiled, vindictive child with unlimited super-powers bolted on. Many, many people who believe in God do not believe in hell. Perhaps you should try separating those things in your mind."

 

I try. But it often doesn't work. Just because I don't like the idea of hell doesn't make it any more or less true. If I stop believing in something purely because I don't like it, that's wishful thinking of how I want things to be. It would be inventing my own God, which I can't do.

 

"I take it that "going forward" for you would mean completely dropping your beliefs in God, heaven, hell -- or at least being completely open-minded about the possibilities that they do or don't exist and having no preconceptions that they must conform to the particular interpretation or understanding that you were weaned on."

 

I like to think I'm already open minded. Not enough maybe, but I'm getting there. By moving forward, I mean living a full life without being overburdened with all this anxiety and depression.

 

"In my experience, when people cling to things that are clearly unpleasant and maladaptive for them, they NEED it for some reason."

 

Why would I need such a mindfuck?

 

"At one level, I could be bitter at how the church misled me, confused me, duped me, and abused me, set my expectations all wrong, and otherwise confounded every aspect of my life. But I also have to recognize my own role. I desperately WANTED all that stuff to be true, and at bottom I wanted it so badly because it absolved me of most of the responsibility for my own actions. I don't have to justify this, it's the Will of God ™. I couldn't help it, the Devil Made Me Do It ™. I don't have to make tough decisions, I just have to look up the rules in some Holy Book. I know all this stuff is BS but I have ego invested -- I will have to admit that I've been a fool all these years. And so on."

 

But I don't want it to be true. I don't feel like I need some invisible sky daddy watching out for me. I can't think of any reason why I would want it to be true. It's not for moral reasons, because I know I can be an overall better human being apart from religion. Maybe it's just... for whatever reason, I guess fear in this case... I feel like I need to fill in the gaps and know the answers to some of the biggest questions in life... Then again, I don't really give a damn. I don't know. I don't understand myself.

"No one is powerless to change. Ask yourself honest questions about why you WON'T JUST DO IT. Why are you DELIBERATELY CLINGING to it?"

 

I feel like it's clinging to me, not the other way around.

 

"I am not judging you -- I have walked this path. It's bitter medicine and I'm the first to admit it."

 

I know you're not.

 

"Not so far. However, I recognize that I am only just beginning to have a life of my own. I was a puppet of the church, in a really horrible marriage, then consumed by my second wife's death-struggle and her efforts to survive. I have a daughter who is very aggressive and knows how to manipulate me to her advantage and take advantage of my gentle, easy-going nature. And so on. I'm 53 years old and it's only been in the last 3 years or so that I've actually started to come into my own and figure out who I am and what I want and start to build some balanced, healthy relationships (including a painful and tricky reboot of my relationship with aforementioned daughter)."

 

Sounds like a shitty situation.

 

"I have no idea whatsoever, but maybe you have defined yourself entirely in terms of what others expect or demand of you. You seem quite guilt-riddled, and you don't seem to have ready access to what you really think and feel, as if it's been defined by others all along. If I'm even half right, then the place to focus is on figuring out what you want and setting boundaries and insisting that other people and their beliefs respect those boundaries."

 

I think you're right.

"Perhaps you could discuss what you mean by this??"

 

Maybe I misunderstood you, but when you mentioned that about finding what inspires me, I assumed you meant anything, not just in the realm of religion/science/etc. But what inspires me is music, art, things like that. I like that stuff a lot, and I'm very interested in it, but I lack the creativity I need to actually participate in that stuff. I suck. Not just at that, but at everything. I suck at everything.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

I'm so fuckin' pissed off right now. I watched a video earlier of a Christian protesting some college campus, and he told a girl that if a woman was being beaten by her husband, she was to submit to him anyway. What an asshole. I was already mad, but... that just infuriates me. I want to take those goddamn signs and shove them up their asses.

[DesertBob]

But it's not that I'm thinking "oh shit I better get this exactly right or I'll go to hell" For the most part, it's nothing like that at all. I just don't want to willfully live in denial. I don't want to deny something with my mouth, when deep down inside I know it's true. And I'm not saying I know Christianity is true. But I do feel that way quite a bit. But if feelings is what I'm going by, that's worthless. Feelings are deceptive. So who knows?

I'm not saying that 100% of what I was taught by the church is wrong. Even the church teaches that all error / heresy is built around a grain of truth. One of the things I learned from my faith that I still agree with is that feelings, as you say, are deceptive and not to be mindlessly followed. By extension, feelings tend to line up with actions and habits over time. I happen to hate exercise, for instance, but I have forced myself to exercise and I have found that I now more often feel neutral about it. If I were blessed with the sort of endorphins some seem to have, I might even have come to look forward to it and actively enjoy it. I don't, but if nothing else, the health benefits have gradually caused me to at least see exercise as a Good Thing. In the same way, if you force yourself to live in agreement with your new beliefs, eventually the anxiety, doubt and fear of your old beliefs will quit benefiting from reinforcing feedback loops and will lose their hold over your mind.

 

You are probably wired so that you'll have to be more dogged about this for a longer period of time than some, but the basic principle still applies.

But my reasons.... for calling myself a loser are ... way different. I know what I am inside... and that's a fucked up piece of shit.

We're all fucked up pieces of shit. From a certain perspective.

 

Look, it's human nature to underestimate your own performance and overestimate the performance of others. You seem to be quite articulate and thoughtful and humble, and you're evolving. Perhaps if a total stranger like me can cut you some slack, you could see your way clear to do the same for yourself.

 

It's the flip side of what I said above about feelings following practice. You keep calling yourself a fucked up piece of shit, you've probably been doing this for years, and so it's unsurprising that you feel like a fucked up piece of shit. On the other hand when you feel this inner dialog rising up in you, if you consistently cut it off and tell yourself "stop", I guarantee that before long you'll start feeling better about yourself. I'm not even saying you have to look in the mirror and preen and tell yourself you're wonderful, as some will. Just stopping the negative self-talk will help.

"No one has any standing to say that Jesus is the true Son of God, or that Allah is, or that Groucho Marx is. Or isn't."

 

I would say that the only time anybody has a right to say something like that, is when they've had a personal experience that can't be explained away as something natural. And some seem to do that.

Personal experiences and beliefs are just that: personal. They're not verifiable or provable to anyone but yourself. People can discuss and compare their feelings, experiences, and beliefs, but as soon as they start holding forth personal experience as universal fact they have no standing.

"Be guided by these things, because at the end of the day, they are the only thing that matters."

 

But what if a person doesn't have these things to be guided by? Guess they're fucked.

Not at all. You've already identified religion, at least as practiced by you in the past, to be producing suffering in your life -- so you already have the guidance that this is not working for you and you've already acted on it. You've identified certain things that build you up -- so you know that these are things to pursue and investigate.

"I forget who it was that said, "Life is an enigma -- a harmless enigma made terrible by our mad attempts to explain it." Quit over-thinking and just LIVE."

 

That's like telling a sick person to just stop being sick. It doesn't work. I have an obsessive, over-analytical mind. I can't just stop over-thinking, my mind is flooded with constant thoughts every waking hour of the day.

Different people have different levels of instant success with directly controlling their thoughts. My own experience varies from day to day. Most nights I can shut my brain off and fall to sleep pretty quickly. Some nights I toss and turn half the night. And it's not nearly as amenable to techniques like meditation that work well for others.

 

However, what still applies here for everyone is that "you can't stop birds from flying over your head but you can stop them from building nests in your hair". Thoughts can be dispassionately observed but they don't have to be entertained. How many people have stood on a cliff and had the thought, "what would it be like to just jump"? ... but they mostly don't act on it, thankfully.

 

You give life to many thoughts by fighting them. My GF is a lifelong insomniac but she learned long ago to not fight it. If she can't sleep she just gets up and reads or watches TV or works at her writing projects. She ignores the thoughts that go round and round in her brain and does something useful or if too exhausted, something neutral. She accepts that she'll be two sheets to the breeze the next day if she only gets 2 hours of sleep. And over time, she gets more sleep this way. She just builds up bigger sleep deficits at times than most people but she's learned to roll with it. What's the point in wringing your hands about it? That's not going to help.

 

She recognizes that her insomnia is a product of chronic anxiety but you never see her fretting or taking it out on anyone else. It's HER anxiety and she owns it. And through this sort of mental jiu-jitsu, she mostly defuses it.

 

Some random thoughts, for what they are worth. I know it's tough, but I'm just saying, whatever you're doing or not doing isn't working -- change it up a bit and try some different approaches.

If I stop believing in something purely because I don't like it, that's wishful thinking of how I want things to be. It would be inventing my own God, which I can't do.

I agree. But that's not what I'm suggesting. Don't (dis)believe something based on whether or not you like it; do so based on whether or not it's likely to be true. You have been judging the odds based on how many other people agree or disagree with a belief, which has little to do with whether or not it's true. During most of human history most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. That didn't make it true.

 

In addition, it may seem intuitive at first glance that the earth is the center of the universe, since it's what's in front of us every day and the sun, moon and starts "appear" to revolve around it. Many truths are counter-intuitive, at least until you have all the facts. It seems to me that you have enough facts to disbelieve in Christianity, but you still see the sheer number of people we believe it to be true, and you feel the emotional force of the guilt trips and other subjective leverage that's used to convince people of Christianity. This is like the appearance that other heavenly bodies revolve around the earth.

 

This is where many agnostics / atheists succumb to the temptation to hold people of faith up to ridicule. At one level, the beliefs are laughable; at another, though, they are entirely understandable and even necessary for societies and individuals at a simpler level of understanding.

"In my experience, when people cling to things that are clearly unpleasant and maladaptive for them, they NEED it for some reason."

 

Why would I need such a mindfuck?

It is commonplace to act contrary to your best interests because of unconscious needs that haven't been brought into your awareness. Most people don't realize the extent to which they act out and project based on repressed needs that they aren't even aware of. People over and under react or react inappropriately all the time to various things, because of this. I do it ... you do it ... everyone does it.

But ... I don't feel like I need some invisible sky daddy watching out for me ... Maybe it's just... for whatever reason, I guess fear in this case... I feel like I need to fill in the gaps and know the answers to some of the biggest questions in life...

Some questions aren't answerable. Part of handling life effectively is accepting ambiguity and paradox. I personally believe that we are too finite and limited for our understanding to extend far enough with any confidence into the "biggest" questions. Some of them just have to go unanswered.

 

Religion takes advantage of this by purporting to answer the unanswerable and suggesting that if you fail to do so you will be in some form of deep doo-doo. My response is that if some tin-pot dictator of a superior being is out there looking to torment me for my own limitations, what can I do about it anyway.

"No one is powerless to change. Ask yourself honest questions about why you WON'T JUST DO IT. Why are you DELIBERATELY CLINGING to it?"

 

I feel like it's clinging to me, not the other way around.

I'm just gently suggesting that there are things you could let go of. Attachments to particular outcomes, such as knowing without doubt the answers to certain things, for instance. Let go of what you can. Let things be as they are. This is the only way to any kind of peace.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but when you mentioned that about finding what inspires me, I assumed you meant anything, not just in the realm of religion/science/etc. But what inspires me is music, art, things like that. I like that stuff a lot, and I'm very interested in it, but I lack the creativity I need to actually participate in that stuff. I suck. Not just at that, but at everything. I suck at everything.

I did mean "anything".

 

If you like music and art, you could indulge in them for your own amusement and amazement rather than to please someone else. I am a pianist and organist. I "suck" at both, in terms of what I would in my fantasies like to be able to do. But I enjoy playing for myself and guess what, on the few occasions I play for others they seem to like what they hear too.

 

Don't set such high standards. Excelling and being perfect are two different things -- and you don't even need to excel to enjoy doing something.

[DesertBob]

I'm so fuckin' pissed off right now. I watched a video earlier of a Christian protesting some college campus, and he told a girl that if a woman was being beaten by her husband, she was to submit to him anyway. What an asshole. I was already mad, but... that just infuriates me. I want to take those goddamn signs and shove them up their asses.

Reminds me of The Total Woman, by Marabel Morgan, circa 1972. Although its roots are much more ancient. It's a variation on "if you have enough faith you can transform any situation". The "thinking" is, marriage is ordained by God as a holy institution; this involves the husband being the spiritual and temporal head of the family, and being respected as such; and any woman who thwarts a man from fulfilling this responsibility, even if he's doing so imperfectly, is against the ordained order of things.

 

Yes, it's hideous. But when you see someone following an idea through to its ugly ultimate conclusion, at least it's easier for people to spot the evil in it. In that sense, the guy is refreshingly honest. He's saying, "I believe that men have no accountability for their actions, even if it means women get abused" and he's saying it very clearly. Relatively few people are going to be buying the Kool-Aid he's selling, and those who do buy it, will be obvious idiots. There's that, at least! Much of the trouble with modern religion is that it's been gussied up with Madison Avenue marketing to look much prettier than it really is.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

I'm not saying that 100% of what I was taught by the church is wrong. Even the church teaches that all error / heresy is built around a grain of truth. One of the things I learned from my faith that I still agree with is that feelings, as you say, are deceptive and not to be mindlessly followed. By extension, feelings tend to line up with actions and habits over time.

 

I wouldn't say all churches teach that. A lot that is involved in Christianity has to do with feelings. Deceptive, misleading feelings.

 

I happen to hate exercise, for instance, but I have forced myself to exercise and I have found that I now more often feel neutral about it. If I were blessed with the sort of endorphins some seem to have, I might even have come to look forward to it and actively enjoy it. I don't, but if nothing else, the health benefits have gradually caused me to at least see exercise as a Good Thing. In the same way, if you force yourself to live in agreement with your new beliefs, eventually the anxiety, doubt and fear of your old beliefs will quit benefiting from reinforcing feedback loops and will lose their hold over your mind.

 

Forcing yourself, against your will, to do what you know you need to do... I like it. That's often how things have to go down. But when it comes to beliefs, I don't technically have any beliefs right now, so how can I apply it to that?

 

You are probably wired so that you'll have to be more dogged about this for a longer period of time than some, but the basic principle still applies.

 

I'll tell you what my problem is. I'm a fucking wuss, and I hate it. I need to just look religion in the eye, regardless of whether it's true or not, give it the finger, go the opposite way, and never think twice about it. But no, I'm stuck with this stupid "what if I'm wrong" "what if I'm demon posessed" "what if God kills me in my sleep" and other stupid shit like that. Fucking sensetive over-analytical obsessive mind!

 

We're all fucked up pieces of shit. From a certain perspective.

 

Look, it's human nature to underestimate your own performance and overestimate the performance of others. You seem to be quite articulate and thoughtful and humble, and you're evolving. Perhaps if a total stranger like me can cut you some slack, you could see your way clear to do the same for yourself.

 

That's just it.... you're a total stranger, you don't know me deep inside like I know myself.... I know myself better than anybody else knows me, so I can see how fucked up I really am. Anytime anybody sees good in me, and tells me I'm not a loser like I say I am... I'd be willing to bet, they don't truly know me at all. Even amongst friends and family, I have very, very few people who TRULY know me. Then again, I don't know if there's anyone who knows me that well. I tend to wear masks. A lot. I hate it, but I still do it. I don't know why.

 

It's the flip side of what I said above about feelings following practice. You keep calling yourself a fucked up piece of shit, you've probably been doing this for years, and so it's unsurprising that you feel like a fucked up piece of shit. On the other hand when you feel this inner dialog rising up in you, if you consistently cut it off and tell yourself "stop", I guarantee that before long you'll start feeling better about yourself. I'm not even saying you have to look in the mirror and preen and tell yourself you're wonderful, as some will. Just stopping the negative self-talk will help.

 

Sure, I could do that. But I don't want to feel better about myself. I don't want to convince myself that I'm something good, when I'm really not. I want to be my best critic. What I really want, is to change who I am as a person, and then give myself compliments, only when they're due. I'm not going to lie to myself and try to convince myself that I'm not a fucked up piece of shit... because I am. I truly am. I need change, not positive compliments that I haven't even earned.

 

Personal experiences and beliefs are just that: personal. They're not verifiable or provable to anyone but yourself. People can discuss and compare their feelings, experiences, and beliefs, but as soon as they start holding forth personal experience as universal fact they have no standing.

 

But you've got to admit, if there's any truth to these stories (with some, there has to be) then that would make them very hard to just dismiss, am I right?

 

Not at all. You've already identified religion, at least as practiced by you in the past, to be producing suffering in your life -- so you already have the guidance that this is not working for you and you've already acted on it. You've identified certain things that build you up -- so you know that these are things to pursue and investigate.

 

Yep, I can clearly see the fruits that this religion has brought forth in my life. Whatever that's worth.

 

Different people have different levels of instant success with directly controlling their thoughts. My own experience varies from day to day. Most nights I can shut my brain off and fall to sleep pretty quickly. Some nights I toss and turn half the night. And it's not nearly as amenable to techniques like meditation that work well for others.

 

However, what still applies here for everyone is that "you can't stop birds from flying over your head but you can stop them from building nests in your hair". Thoughts can be dispassionately observed but they don't have to be entertained. How many people have stood on a cliff and had the thought, "what would it be like to just jump"? ... but they mostly don't act on it, thankfully.

 

You give life to many thoughts by fighting them. My GF is a lifelong insomniac but she learned long ago to not fight it. If she can't sleep she just gets up and reads or watches TV or works at her writing projects. She ignores the thoughts that go round and round in her brain and does something useful or if too exhausted, something neutral. She accepts that she'll be two sheets to the breeze the next day if she only gets 2 hours of sleep. And over time, she gets more sleep this way. She just builds up bigger sleep deficits at times than most people but she's learned to roll with it. What's the point in wringing your hands about it? That's not going to help.

 

She recognizes that her insomnia is a product of chronic anxiety but you never see her fretting or taking it out on anyone else. It's HER anxiety and she owns it. And through this sort of mental jiu-jitsu, she mostly defuses it.

 

Some random thoughts, for what they are worth. I know it's tough, but I'm just saying, whatever you're doing or not doing isn't working -- change it up a bit and try some different approaches.

 

You're a very wise person.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

I agree. But that's not what I'm suggesting. Don't (dis)believe something based on whether or not you like it; do so based on whether or not it's likely to be true. You have been judging the odds based on how many other people agree or disagree with a belief, which has little to do with whether or not it's true. During most of human history most people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. That didn't make it true.

 

In addition, it may seem intuitive at first glance that the earth is the center of the universe, since it's what's in front of us every day and the sun, moon and starts "appear" to revolve around it. Many truths are counter-intuitive, at least until you have all the facts. It seems to me that you have enough facts to disbelieve in Christianity, but you still see the sheer number of people we believe it to be true, and you feel the emotional force of the guilt trips and other subjective leverage that's used to convince people of Christianity. This is like the appearance that other heavenly bodies revolve around the earth.

 

This is where many agnostics / atheists succumb to the temptation to hold people of faith up to ridicule. At one level, the beliefs are laughable; at another, though, they are entirely understandable and even necessary for societies and individuals at a simpler level of understanding.

 

I think the reason my mind always places Christianity as the default truth, no matter how stupid the beliefs get, is because, I can't be an atheist for one thing, and I don't see myself as believing in any of the gods from other religions, so just because nothing else makes sense to me, I crawl back to Christianity, even though it doesn't really make sense itself. If it wasn't for a few things, I could see myself as becoming a deist, but certain things about deism don't make a lot of sense either, so I don't know if I buy that. Seriously, it would be nice to believe in something that actually makes sense for once.

 

It is commonplace to act contrary to your best interests because of unconscious needs that haven't been brought into your awareness. Most people don't realize the extent to which they act out and project based on repressed needs that they aren't even aware of. People over and under react or react inappropriately all the time to various things, because of this. I do it ... you do it ... everyone does it.

 

This thing is more than I can possibly understand.

 

Some questions aren't answerable. Part of handling life effectively is accepting ambiguity and paradox. I personally believe that we are too finite and limited for our understanding to extend far enough with any confidence into the "biggest" questions. Some of them just have to go unanswered.

 

I completely agree. This is why some type of agnosticism seems the most reasonable to me. At least with that, a person can be humble enough to say "I don't know." Religion isn't quite so humble when it comes to that.

 

Religion takes advantage of this by purporting to answer the unanswerable and suggesting that if you fail to do so you will be in some form of deep doo-doo. My response is that if some tin-pot dictator of a superior being is out there looking to torment me for my own limitations, what can I do about it anyway.

 

And even if we do figure out some idea of how to "get it right", who's to say we really are? We can't possibly know for sure. Religion is a waste of time. I think humanity would be way better off if people would quit obsessing over who is right, and just try to do some good in this world. Seriously, who gives a flying fuck who is right? It doesn't matter.

 

I'm just gently suggesting that there are things you could let go of. Attachments to particular outcomes, such as knowing without doubt the answers to certain things, for instance. Let go of what you can. Let things be as they are. This is the only way to any kind of peace.

 

Small steps.

 

I did mean "anything".

 

If you like music and art, you could indulge in them for your own amusement and amazement rather than to please someone else. I am a pianist and organist. I "suck" at both, in terms of what I would in my fantasies like to be able to do. But I enjoy playing for myself and guess what, on the few occasions I play for others they seem to like what they hear too.

 

Don't set such high standards. Excelling and being perfect are two different things -- and you don't even need to excel to enjoy doing something.

 

I guess so.

[stillalive]

The Land of Confusion by Genesis perfectly sums up my beliefs

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

The Land of Confusion by Genesis perfectly sums up my beliefs

 

Good song.

[DesertBob]

One of the things I learned from my faith that I still agree with is that feelings, as you say, are deceptive and not to be mindlessly followed. By extension, feelings tend to line up with actions and habits over time.

 

I wouldn't say all churches teach that. A lot that is involved in Christianity has to do with feelings. Deceptive, misleading feelings.

My flavor of fundamentalistm was anti-charistmatic and one of their criticisms of the charismatic movement was that it put way too much faith in subjective experience. I tended to agree with that, and still do -- and I find it is a principle that applies to many other aspects of life. Many people don't feel alive unless they are constantly over-stimulated with pounding music, drugs, extreme sports, or whatever.

 

Of course there are other schools of thought that rely on various forms of ecstasy to validate religious experience.

Forcing yourself, against your will, to do what you know you need to do... I like it. That's often how things have to go down. But when it comes to beliefs, I don't technically have any beliefs right now, so how can I apply it to that?

It's not really true that you don't have any beliefs. Belief that absolute certitude is not achievable is itself a belief. Force yourself to act in accordance with that, and it will feel more like truth to you. Actually, you're already doing this to an extent, you're just a bit tentative about it.

I'll tell you what my problem is. I'm a fucking wuss, and I hate it. I need to just look religion in the eye, regardless of whether it's true or not, give it the finger, go the opposite way, and never think twice about it. But no, I'm stuck with this stupid "what if I'm wrong" "what if I'm demon posessed" "what if God kills me in my sleep" and other stupid shit like that. Fucking sensetive over-analytical obsessive mind!

I didn't do it myself all at once. It took me, conservatively, 20 years to work up to it. I suffered less than you seem to be, though, because I was willing to set it aside on a moment to moment basis. I tend to be a back-burner kind of guy -- things have a way of working themselves out most of the time. You can then concentrate on the relatively few things that don't go away or present clear solutions.

 

Remember that regardless of your beliefs, you're a work in progress, not a finished product. That's true of everyone (whether or not they think so). This buys you time. The direction you're moving in is far more important than actually arriving.

Anytime anybody sees good in me, and tells me I'm not a loser like I say I am... I'd be willing to bet, they don't truly know me at all. Even amongst friends and family, I have very, very few people who TRULY know me. Then again, I don't know if there's anyone who knows me that well. I tend to wear masks. A lot. I hate it, but I still do it. I don't know why.

You are just as capable of judging yourself worthy as you are capable of judging yourself to fall short.

 

We all fall short, anyway; even the church teaches that ("sin" simply means "missing the mark"). The question is, what's the best response to that fact. The church teaches that we must strive to be something we're not -- perfect, complete, well-rounded -- and that's just its milder forms. In reality the Bible quotes God thusly: "Be ye perfect, as I am perfect". Good luck with that.

 

Isn't it better to be the best person we can and leave it at that? Recognize that you will make mistakes, learn as much as you can from them, and move on.

 

Life is NOT a zero-sum game with only winners and losers. In fact, the older I get, the more convinced I am that it's better to regard it as an absurdity, a game, a dance. A form of divine play, I suppose some would say. I mean "divine" here in the generic sense of "transcendent", not in the sense of any literal god. It's not about winning and losing, it's about evolving or devolving. I submit that you are evolving.

 

We have a tendency to over-classify. Winners and losers, haves and have-nots, good and bad, pleasure and pain. Some would say that this is a fundamental error, the illusion of duality. You can choose to opt out of the comparison game and just BE.

...I don't want to feel better about myself. I don't want to convince myself that I'm something good, when I'm really not. I want to be my best critic. What I really want, is to change who I am as a person, and then give myself compliments, only when they're due. I'm not going to lie to myself and try to convince myself that I'm not a fucked up piece of shit... because I am. I truly am. I need change, not positive compliments that I haven't even earned.

As you wish. But again, it's not a zero-sum game. You can be imperfect and confused and still do some things worthy of praise. Even being aware of your imperfections is praiseworthy.

 

In the original Greek, the Biblical injunction that "a man ought not to think of himself more highly than he is" really reads something closer to "a man ought to have a sane estimation of himself". I don't think you have a sane estimation of yourself. You're the mirror image of a megalomaniac who thinks he's perfect and flawless in every respect. You desperately need to focus on what's good in you, to enjoy your successes, modest though you think they may be. Don't be afraid that you will become proud and insufferable. It's just not going to happen with you.

 

You're humble. That's a positive character trait. But your greatest strength is always your greatest weakness. Constant self-condemnation actually becomes a form of self-preoccupation. Consider changing it.

But you've got to admit, if there's any truth to these stories (with some, there has to be) then that would make them very hard to just dismiss, am I right?

This is known as "circumstantial evidence". Or as Curly of the Three Stooges said, "I'm a victim of soikumstanchul evidence!" To me, all it proves is that people tend to share very similar hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears. Christianity is nothing more than a very popular way to understand and respond to those common aspects of the human condition. It's not proof that Christianity is partly or completely true; it's proof that Christianity has been, for a couple of millenia now, a popular way to interpret and respond to the riddle of life. And as I said before, millions of people believing something is true, doesn't make it so. It's probably a source of clues, but not a source of certainty.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

One of the things I learned from my faith that I still agree with is that feelings, as you say, are deceptive and not to be mindlessly followed. By extension, feelings tend to line up with actions and habits over time.

 

I wouldn't say all churches teach that. A lot that is involved in Christianity has to do with feelings. Deceptive, misleading feelings.

My flavor of fundamentalistm was anti-charistmatic and one of their criticisms of the charismatic movement was that it put way too much faith in subjective experience. I tended to agree with that, and still do -- and I find it is a principle that applies to many other aspects of life. Many people don't feel alive unless they are constantly over-stimulated with pounding music, drugs, extreme sports, or whatever.

 

Of course there are other schools of thought that rely on various forms of ecstasy to validate religious experience.

Forcing yourself, against your will, to do what you know you need to do... I like it. That's often how things have to go down. But when it comes to beliefs, I don't technically have any beliefs right now, so how can I apply it to that?

It's not really true that you don't have any beliefs. Belief that absolute certitude is not achievable is itself a belief. Force yourself to act in accordance with that, and it will feel more like truth to you. Actually, you're already doing this to an extent, you're just a bit tentative about it.

I'll tell you what my problem is. I'm a fucking wuss, and I hate it. I need to just look religion in the eye, regardless of whether it's true or not, give it the finger, go the opposite way, and never think twice about it. But no, I'm stuck with this stupid "what if I'm wrong" "what if I'm demon posessed" "what if God kills me in my sleep" and other stupid shit like that. Fucking sensetive over-analytical obsessive mind!

I didn't do it myself all at once. It took me, conservatively, 20 years to work up to it. I suffered less than you seem to be, though, because I was willing to set it aside on a moment to moment basis. I tend to be a back-burner kind of guy -- things have a way of working themselves out most of the time. You can then concentrate on the relatively few things that don't go away or present clear solutions.

 

Remember that regardless of your beliefs, you're a work in progress, not a finished product. That's true of everyone (whether or not they think so). This buys you time. The direction you're moving in is far more important than actually arriving.

Anytime anybody sees good in me, and tells me I'm not a loser like I say I am... I'd be willing to bet, they don't truly know me at all. Even amongst friends and family, I have very, very few people who TRULY know me. Then again, I don't know if there's anyone who knows me that well. I tend to wear masks. A lot. I hate it, but I still do it. I don't know why.

You are just as capable of judging yourself worthy as you are capable of judging yourself to fall short.

 

We all fall short, anyway; even the church teaches that ("sin" simply means "missing the mark"). The question is, what's the best response to that fact. The church teaches that we must strive to be something we're not -- perfect, complete, well-rounded -- and that's just its milder forms. In reality the Bible quotes God thusly: "Be ye perfect, as I am perfect". Good luck with that.

 

Isn't it better to be the best person we can and leave it at that? Recognize that you will make mistakes, learn as much as you can from them, and move on.

 

Life is NOT a zero-sum game with only winners and losers. In fact, the older I get, the more convinced I am that it's better to regard it as an absurdity, a game, a dance. A form of divine play, I suppose some would say. I mean "divine" here in the generic sense of "transcendent", not in the sense of any literal god. It's not about winning and losing, it's about evolving or devolving. I submit that you are evolving.

 

We have a tendency to over-classify. Winners and losers, haves and have-nots, good and bad, pleasure and pain. Some would say that this is a fundamental error, the illusion of duality. You can choose to opt out of the comparison game and just BE.

...I don't want to feel better about myself. I don't want to convince myself that I'm something good, when I'm really not. I want to be my best critic. What I really want, is to change who I am as a person, and then give myself compliments, only when they're due. I'm not going to lie to myself and try to convince myself that I'm not a fucked up piece of shit... because I am. I truly am. I need change, not positive compliments that I haven't even earned.

As you wish. But again, it's not a zero-sum game. You can be imperfect and confused and still do some things worthy of praise. Even being aware of your imperfections is praiseworthy.

 

In the original Greek, the Biblical injunction that "a man ought not to think of himself more highly than he is" really reads something closer to "a man ought to have a sane estimation of himself". I don't think you have a sane estimation of yourself. You're the mirror image of a megalomaniac who thinks he's perfect and flawless in every respect. You desperately need to focus on what's good in you, to enjoy your successes, modest though you think they may be. Don't be afraid that you will become proud and insufferable. It's just not going to happen with you.

 

You're humble. That's a positive character trait. But your greatest strength is always your greatest weakness. Constant self-condemnation actually becomes a form of self-preoccupation. Consider changing it.

But you've got to admit, if there's any truth to these stories (with some, there has to be) then that would make them very hard to just dismiss, am I right?

This is known as "circumstantial evidence". Or as Curly of the Three Stooges said, "I'm a victim of soikumstanchul evidence!" To me, all it proves is that people tend to share very similar hopes, dreams, aspirations and fears. Christianity is nothing more than a very popular way to understand and respond to those common aspects of the human condition. It's not proof that Christianity is partly or completely true; it's proof that Christianity has been, for a couple of millenia now, a popular way to interpret and respond to the riddle of life. And as I said before, millions of people believing something is true, doesn't make it so. It's probably a source of clues, but not a source of certainty.

 

I don't know what to say. All I know is I either have to make some drastic changes very soon, or my existence needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. I can't go on like this. Most of my problems have to do with how I grew up, I think. It's all my fault. I don't know if I can repair the damage.

[DesertBob]

I don't know what to say. All I know is I either have to make some drastic changes very soon, or my existence needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. I can't go on like this. Most of my problems have to do with how I grew up, I think. It's all my fault. I don't know if I can repair the damage.

In what sense is how you grew up all your fault?

 

Most people blame their parents, the church, society, the government -- anything but themselves. You do the opposite.

 

Balance in all things, okay?

 

It isn't a big deal that your life didn't turn out as you thought it should. It never does, for anyone. Some come closer than others, and I'm convinced it's as much luck as anything else. Besides, how you think it should go is not even always optimal. In many ways I'm glad that life didn't go as I originally thought it should; if it had, I'd still be a religious asshole.

 

The above statement is true whether the blame lies entirely at your feet, or not. So you're fallible. So are we all.

 

I think we're both sensing that there's not a lot more to say here because it's all starting to repeat. You are stuck on certain aspects of the past that you can't change. You have to let them go. It's water over the dam. At the risk of sounding trite, today is a fresh start. Every day is. Just go forward and quit flogging yourself. It's tiresome for you and everyone around you. And you have to let go of the fact that you're not the person right now that you'd like to be and it's going to take some time to become more that person. This too, is beside the point. It is what it is. You are what you are, not what you wish you could be. The only thing you can change is what you're becoming -- and heck, you've made a credible start on that already.

 

One thing I learned a long time ago is that no one is ever going to fully understand the things that eat me and more to the point, absolutely no one wants to hear about it, not even those closest to me -- and maybe especially not them. I have gotten greater mileage out of sucking it up and carrying on despite the fact that I feel it's all wrong. And oddly, over time, I feel less empty, wronged, put upon and misunderstood.

 

In a nutshell, make it about others and not about you. Too much navel-gazing is going on. Please accept this in the spirit in which it's intended, which is, very friendly and kindly disposed toward you and non-judgmental. Okay? Okay. You have much to offer, I guarantee you. Screw ups and all. Protesting that you screw everything up is not a valid excuse for sitting out life and avoiding taking risks and making an effort.

 

Good people respect you for making an effort, and they understand that it'll be imperfect. As long as you own up to your mistakes you'll be fine. Quit apologizing for your existence.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

In what sense is how you grew up all your fault?

 

The way I lived, the choices I made, everything I chose to be.

 

Most people blame their parents, the church, society, the government -- anything but themselves. You do the opposite.

 

Balance in all things, okay?

 

Maybe some of those do share the blame, but I hold more of it.

 

It isn't a big deal that your life didn't turn out as you thought it should. It never does, for anyone. Some come closer than others, and I'm convinced it's as much luck as anything else. Besides, how you think it should go is not even always optimal. In many ways I'm glad that life didn't go as I originally thought it should; if it had, I'd still be a religious asshole.

 

That's not what I mean. Either my life changes, or I will end it. That's that. I refuse to live as a loser.

 

I think we're both sensing that there's not a lot more to say here because it's all starting to repeat. You are stuck on certain aspects of the past that you can't change. You have to let them go. It's water over the dam. At the risk of sounding trite, today is a fresh start. Every day is. Just go forward and quit flogging yourself. It's tiresome for you and everyone around you. And you have to let go of the fact that you're not the person right now that you'd like to be and it's going to take some time to become more that person. This too, is beside the point. It is what it is. You are what you are, not what you wish you could be. The only thing you can change is what you're becoming -- and heck, you've made a credible start on that already.

 

I agree with what you said. Although, I would not say I'm making a good start, because I'm not.

 

One thing I learned a long time ago is that no one is ever going to fully understand the things that eat me and more to the point, absolutely no one wants to hear about it, not even those closest to me -- and maybe especially not them. I have gotten greater mileage out of sucking it up and carrying on despite the fact that I feel it's all wrong. And oddly, over time, I feel less empty, wronged, put upon and misunderstood.

 

I agree with this too. I don't talk about it to the people I know in person anymore, because they would never fully understand, or even want to. Instead of helping you, all they'll do is get this judgemental image in their head, intentionally or not, and treat you different. It's a waste of time even talking.

 

In a nutshell, make it about others and not about you. Too much navel-gazing is going on. Please accept this in the spirit in which it's intended, which is, very friendly and kindly disposed toward you and non-judgmental. Okay? Okay. You have much to offer, I guarantee you. Screw ups and all. Protesting that you screw everything up is not a valid excuse for sitting out life and avoiding taking risks and making an effort.

 

What can I offer to anybody? And I'm not talking about giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, etc.

 

Good people respect you for making an effort, and they understand that it'll be imperfect. As long as you own up to your mistakes you'll be fine. Quit apologizing for your existence.

 

I don't own up to my mistakes.

[Shyone]

That's not what I mean. Either my life changes, or I will end it. That's that. I refuse to live as a loser.

 

Life changes all the time. As often as you want, and more often than that.

 

Sometimes you win sometimes you lose,

And sometimes the blues just get ahold of you

Just when you thought you had made it.

All around the block people will talk,

But I want to give it all that I've got

I just don't want, I don't want to waste it.

 

Talkin' 'bout sweet seasons on my mind.

Sure does appeal to me.

You know you can get there easily,

Just like a sailboat sailin' on the sea.

 

Sometimes you win,sometimes you lose,

And most times you choose between the two

Wonderin', wonderin' if you have made it.

But I'll have some kids and make my plans,

And I'll watch the seasons running away

And I'll build a life in the open, a life in the country.

 

Lyrics by Carole King

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

That's not what I mean. Either my life changes, or I will end it. That's that. I refuse to live as a loser.

 

Life changes all the time. As often as you want, and more often than that.

 

Sometimes you win sometimes you lose,

And sometimes the blues just get ahold of you

Just when you thought you had made it.

All around the block people will talk,

But I want to give it all that I've got

I just don't want, I don't want to waste it.

 

Talkin' 'bout sweet seasons on my mind.

Sure does appeal to me.

You know you can get there easily,

Just like a sailboat sailin' on the sea.

 

Sometimes you win,sometimes you lose,

And most times you choose between the two

Wonderin', wonderin' if you have made it.

But I'll have some kids and make my plans,

And I'll watch the seasons running away

And I'll build a life in the open, a life in the country.

 

Lyrics by Carole King

 

The moral of the story: things must change.

[Shyone]

The moral of the story: things must change.

Lessons from life: Things will change.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

The moral of the story: things must change.

Lessons from life: Things will change.

 

They better.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

The anxiety and fear of hell is starting to get worse. In my mind, I've begun to realise.... if this place is real, that means every little thing I do that is considered a sin will be added to my "file", and the more that get added, the worse my suffering will be. My suffering will probably be a hundred times worse just considering that I'm an EX Christian... I left the faith.... I probably blasphemed the Holy Spirit..... I'm fucked. Oh God, where does it end.

[Shyone]

The anxiety and fear of hell is starting to get worse. In my mind, I've begun to realise.... if this place is real, that means every little thing I do that is considered a sin will be added to my "file", and the more that get added, the worse my suffering will be. My suffering will probably be a hundred times worse just considering that I'm an EX Christian... I left the faith.... I probably blasphemed the Holy Spirit..... I'm fucked. Oh God, where does it end.

I'd say you have a phobia; an irrational fear of something. It's irrational because there is no such place.

 

Hellophobia - or is that fear of saying hello?

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

The anxiety and fear of hell is starting to get worse. In my mind, I've begun to realise.... if this place is real, that means every little thing I do that is considered a sin will be added to my "file", and the more that get added, the worse my suffering will be. My suffering will probably be a hundred times worse just considering that I'm an EX Christian... I left the faith.... I probably blasphemed the Holy Spirit..... I'm fucked. Oh God, where does it end.

I'd say you have a phobia; an irrational fear of something. It's irrational because there is no such place.

 

Hellophobia - or is that fear of saying hello?

 

Yes, I have a phobia. More than one, actually.

[Shyone]

The anxiety and fear of hell is starting to get worse. In my mind, I've begun to realise.... if this place is real, that means every little thing I do that is considered a sin will be added to my "file", and the more that get added, the worse my suffering will be. My suffering will probably be a hundred times worse just considering that I'm an EX Christian... I left the faith.... I probably blasphemed the Holy Spirit..... I'm fucked. Oh God, where does it end.

I'd say you have a phobia; an irrational fear of something. It's irrational because there is no such place.

 

Hellophobia - or is that fear of saying hello?

 

Yes, I have a phobia. More than one, actually.

That's rough. There are some phobias that can paralyze a person. Agoraphobia is a nightmare - can't go out, even to eat.

 

On another subject, it occurred to me that in some of your arguments you are using oversimplification in order to understand, but that leads you to faulty conclusions. When used as an argument, it becomes a fallacy called the "straw man fallacy."

 

There are perhaps dozens of ideas about mass, its origin (if there was one) and the relationship between the universe and matter. None of them are characterized by "something coming from nothing." None. That's your invention, your description, your distortion.

 

And yes, it's a pretty easy strawman to knock over. But you're only knocking over your own representation of the nature of the universe.

 

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

The anxiety and fear of hell is starting to get worse. In my mind, I've begun to realise.... if this place is real, that means every little thing I do that is considered a sin will be added to my "file", and the more that get added, the worse my suffering will be. My suffering will probably be a hundred times worse just considering that I'm an EX Christian... I left the faith.... I probably blasphemed the Holy Spirit..... I'm fucked. Oh God, where does it end.

I'd say you have a phobia; an irrational fear of something. It's irrational because there is no such place.

 

Hellophobia - or is that fear of saying hello?

 

Yes, I have a phobia. More than one, actually.

That's rough. There are some phobias that can paralyze a person. Agoraphobia is a nightmare - can't go out, even to eat.

 

On another subject, it occurred to me that in some of your arguments you are using oversimplification in order to understand, but that leads you to faulty conclusions. When used as an argument, it becomes a fallacy called the "straw man fallacy."

 

There are perhaps dozens of ideas about mass, its origin (if there was one) and the relationship between the universe and matter. None of them are characterized by "something coming from nothing." None. That's your invention, your description, your distortion.

 

And yes, it's a pretty easy strawman to knock over. But you're only knocking over your own representation of the nature of the universe.

 

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

 

About mass, if it began at any point, then it did come from nothing. If not, then it always existed in some form. But if that's the case, why? How? I'm not trying to piss anybody off when I say this, but I honestly don't see how so many people can be atheists when it's admitted that the origins of whatever started things off at the very beginning are a mystery. If it's not (yet) understood how something is possible, or even if it is possible, what sense does it make to believe that it somehow happened, even though it seems impossible that it even could? That's why I still have my God theory, because it doesn't make any sense to me without that. Hell, it doesn't make much sense even with a God in the picture, but it seems to at least make a little more sense that way, as opposed to there not being one in the picture.

[Shyone]

About mass, if it began at any point, then it did come from nothing. If not, then it always existed in some form. But if that's the case, why? How? I'm not trying to piss anybody off when I say this, but I honestly don't see how so many people can be atheists when it's admitted that the origins of whatever started things off at the very beginning are a mystery. If it's not (yet) understood how something is possible, or even if it is possible, what sense does it make to believe that it somehow happened, even though it seems impossible that it even could? That's why I still have my God theory, because it doesn't make any sense to me without that. Hell, it doesn't make much sense even with a God in the picture, but it seems to at least make a little more sense that way, as opposed to there not being one in the picture.

The flaw in your reasoning is in the bolded section. I'm not saying I know the answers, but no one says it came from nothing except you.

 

Vacuums are not empty. Do you think there is nothing in a vacuum? It can be demonstrated experimentally that there is indeed "something there."

 

Here's an article on the nature of matter and its relationship to quantum vacuum fluctuations.

 

Here are the calculations.

 

And here is one example of the experimental evidence.

 

And that's just one tiny part of the process of finding answers. "Something came from nothing" is a simplistic and inaccurate way of describing the origin of matter. Read about some other explanations.

 

Or not.

 

Something came from nothing. "In the beginning..."

[Guest Perfect Insanity]

About mass, if it began at any point, then it did come from nothing. If not, then it always existed in some form. But if that's the case, why? How? I'm not trying to piss anybody off when I say this, but I honestly don't see how so many people can be atheists when it's admitted that the origins of whatever started things off at the very beginning are a mystery. If it's not (yet) understood how something is possible, or even if it is possible, what sense does it make to believe that it somehow happened, even though it seems impossible that it even could? That's why I still have my God theory, because it doesn't make any sense to me without that. Hell, it doesn't make much sense even with a God in the picture, but it seems to at least make a little more sense that way, as opposed to there not being one in the picture.

The flaw in your reasoning is in the bolded section. I'm not saying I know the answers, but no one says it came from nothing except you.

 

Vacuums are not empty. Do you think there is nothing in a vacuum? It can be demonstrated experimentally that there is indeed "something there."

 

Here's an article on the nature of matter and its relationship to quantum vacuum fluctuations.

 

Here are the calculations.

 

And here is one example of the experimental evidence.

 

And that's just one tiny part of the process of finding answers. "Something came from nothing" is a simplistic and inaccurate way of describing the origin of matter. Read about some other explanations.

 

Or not.

 

Something came from nothing. "In the beginning..."

 

My brain exploded.