Looking for a new start

[♦ ficino ♦]

Hi IAM4TRUTH, a further thought: you might get something out of checking out Sheila C's blog, A Gift Universe, and even commenting and/or sending her a message:

 

http://agiftuniverse.blogspot.com/

 

Sheila was raised and educated in a very traditional/conservative Catholic background, including college. She now has been blogging mostly about parenting and teaching her kids at home under COVID-19, but she used to post a lot about her reasons for leaving that Catholic system and what she has derived from leaving it. She has a lot of good perspectives, though I think she's younger than you - her kids are younger than yours.

 

Best, F

[IAM4TRUTH]

18 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

As with you, the more I delved into religion, the more contradictions ans unanswered or poorly answered questions came up

Hello Myrkhoos.  Sounds like we have a lot in common.  I was baptized and grew up in the Byzantine Catholic rite.  There are a lot of people of Eastern European decent in my home town.  Growing up, I thought that the Byzantine church was too ceremonial.  I would go to Roman Catholic Mass with friends and loved the guitar music and the modern songs.  It was funny though, the older  I got I had a greater respect and admiration for all of the Eastern rite ritual - the chanting, the incense, the formality.  But I settled into the Roman Catholic faith after my children were born.  

You completely nailed it with each and every contradiction you mentioned !  I could not longer handle the mental gymnastics I had to go through to keep all of my beliefs in a context that agreed with what the Catholic church was calling absolute truth.  The word MYSTERY is definitely their trump card for everything that doesn't make sense. 

18 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

And the top was when I went to some psychotherapy sessions, first christian therapist, then a secular one,  then to a buddhist mindfulness course and saw how deep intense and subtle inner exp and realizatiins I could have in a non Orthodox area.

Same with me.  I saw 2 Christian therapists in the 2000's, and more recently a therapist who was a former Catholic but in his 20's became a follower of Easter philosophies (Buddhist/Hindu).  Prior to the pandemic, I had started seeing a reiki master who was helping me with some life coaching.  I also started taking yoga classes a few years ago and in the right setting, I find that to be so relaxing and mind opening - hard to put into words.  

 

18 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

My quest now is reading psychology and philosophy and science. I just have a great thirst for knowledge in all area. More than my energy actually.

This is where I am now too.  I'm a little more lazy about it in that I tend to listen to various "experts" talk about the subjects.  I find good lectures on YouTube and listen to them while I'm walking my dog or while I'm in the car. My favorite so far in Alan Watts.  Sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, I will listen to one of his lectures, even if I have heard it before.  His voice just calms me.  

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts

[Margee]

Welcome to ex-c  IAMFORTRUTH. So good to have you here. \You are in the right spot. We understand everything you are going through. Keep reading and posting all your questions. Someone is always here to help you. Looking forward to hearing more from you!

[◊ Weezer ◊]

IAM4TRUTH, I mentioned it before, but have you looked into the Unitarian Universalist church?  They are anything but a traditional church, and might offer the ritual and other spiritual emphasis you like.  From what I have seen, they kinda take on their own flavor, and are eager to explore different "spiritual" paths.  

[Myrkhoos]

54 minutes ago, Weezer said:

IAM4TRUTH, I mentioned it before, but have you looked into the Unitarian Universalist church?  They are anything but a traditional church, and might offer the ritual and other spiritual emphasis you like.  From what I have seen, they kinda take on their own flavor, and are eager to explore different "spiritual" paths.  

Funny thing is, I always felt the more non traditional you go the more contradictions and emphasis on emotionality you get. One of the reasons I was hardly ever attracted to neo protestant things. 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

2 minutes ago, Myrkhoos said:

Funny thing is, I always felt the more non traditional you go the more contradictions and emphasis on emotionality you get. One of the reasons I was hardly ever attracted to neo protestant things. 

Perhaps "spiritual" was the wrong word to use.  I am referring to things that lift the human spirit.  Not necessarily with a God attached.  Members seem to be mostly atheist and agnostics, and are into things like yoga, self improvement, meditation, social movements, etc.  I would describe it as being for people who like the community feeling, without traditional God.  

[Myrkhoos]

5 hours ago, IAM4TRUTH said:

Hello Myrkhoos.  Sounds like we have a lot in common.  I was baptized and grew up in the Byzantine Catholic rite.  There are a lot of people of Eastern European decent in my home town.  Growing up, I thought that the Byzantine church was too ceremonial.  I would go to Roman Catholic Mass with friends and loved the guitar music and the modern songs.  It was funny though, the older  I got I had a greater respect and admiration for all of the Eastern rite ritual - the chanting, the incense, the formality.  But I settled into the Roman Catholic faith after my children were born.  

You completely nailed it with each and every contradiction you mentioned !  I could not longer handle the mental gymnastics I had to go through to keep all of my beliefs in a context that agreed with what the Catholic church was calling absolute truth.  The word MYSTERY is definitely their trump card for everything that doesn't make sense. 

Same with me.  I saw 2 Christian therapists in the 2000's, and more recently a therapist who was a former Catholic but in his 20's became a follower of Easter philosophies (Buddhist/Hindu).  Prior to the pandemic, I had started seeing a reiki master who was helping me with some life coaching.  I also started taking yoga classes a few years ago and in the right setting, I find that to be so relaxing and mind opening - hard to put into words.  

 

This is where I am now too.  I'm a little more lazy about it in that I tend to listen to various "experts" talk about the subjects.  I find good lectures on YouTube and listen to them while I'm walking my dog or while I'm in the car. My favorite so far in Alan Watts.  Sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, I will listen to one of his lectures, even if I have heard it before.  His voice just calms me.  

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts

You are welcome. I personally could not stand the modern services with guitars. That is an innovation even in the Roman Mass which prior to Vatican II was more similar to the byzantine rite. I did not like the ceremonial one either, but the modern one seemed a worse version. It seemed to emotional driven. Maybe it is my structure but I have an innate rejection of the very emotional ceremonies without proper intelectual/ contemplative framework.As such  I always valued the more monastic, hesychast rites and practices of stillness than rituals of any sort, anyway.   Maybe I just a problem with levels of overt emotion , who knows :).Always had a problem with the rigidity of sacraments and the idea of sacraments in general. I feel that those parts of the gospel about his flesh and doing the final supper in remembrance should be taken metaphorically. Sacraments just seemed like an exterior part of prayer, like let's say you are in love with your husband and kiss him. The kiss is the exterior manifestation of the feeling but you could also hug, look , give a gift etc, many types of actions. The rigidity and scarcity of lithurgy is even deplored by the likes of church historian and theologuan Andrew Louth in some conferences. 

     I do not know if you are lazy or that is just the christian guilt trip speaking. I have not listened to watts a lot but he had a great rant about institutionalized guilt in christianity. 

     I tried a yoga course, hated the religious undertones of mantras and whatnot, I preferred a secular qi qong altough I do not practice often. I live in a small town in Eastern Europe so there is only one yoga class on offer :).But I DO like stretching exercises and finding body psychotherapy exercises like TRE . Trauma releasing exercises.

[Myrkhoos]

By the way MYSTERY seemed like get out jail free card. Jolly joker. Except I found out painfully it does not work. In order to have a relationship you NEED a explanation. there not a MYSTERY. 

    Let us take the example of free will and omnipotence. In order to pray and act you need one or the other to be false. Saying it is a mystery without resolving the issue just blocks your action and cognition. The mustery card works only like say you drive your car. You have no idea how it works BUT it works and you have precise easy to understand instructions for use. If sonebody said well the brake pedal is sometimes also the acceleration pedal and it is A MYSTERY,  you could not use the car. I have no problem , no big one, with my owm limited knowledge of things, my problem is that you are offering me an unworkable model for my level. Mathemathics for kindergarten still HAS to make sense and be easily used and understood. 

     God should be able to offer a functional model for my level of understanding.  So far what I have been offered, and I emphasize so far because I am still trying to be open for new knowledge,  is unworkable.  That is the fault of the car maker to say it so. A car makes produces cars for users not mechanucs and other car makers. If you make a car which I do not know how to use and cannot make sense if the instructions and the thretean me with jail if I do not use it...the fault is mainly if nit totally with you.

[♦ ficino ♦]

10 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

If somebody said well the brake pedal is sometimes also the acceleration pedal and it is A MYSTERY,  you could not use the car.

Great analogy! ETA: though I guess a Christian apologist could say it doesn't hold because mysteries are not about precepts, telling you what or what not to do, but about doctrines.

[DanForsman]

12 hours ago, ficino said:

Great analogy! ETA: though I guess a Christian apologist could say it doesn't hold because mysteries are not about precepts, telling you what or what not to do, but about doctrines

It works pretty well for praying to solve a specific problem.

[Myrkhoos]

19 hours ago, ficino said:

Great analogy! ETA: though I guess a Christian apologist could say it doesn't hold because mysteries are not about precepts, telling you what or what not to do, but about doctrines.

Well, that would be wrong,  precisely because  doctrines, as in the dogmas, are there to solicit a response, an action on the part of the believer. When they say God is a trinity, God had a son, etc, this solicits a response from you. How to relate to this God- as in prayer, attitude, actions, etc. Otherwise, if doctrines are not there to solitict a response from the believer, they would be useless, in a way, and would have no effect on you. But beliefs, especially religious beliefs, that is their nature, usually HAVE effects upon people.

     That is why I chose the free will/omnipotence example. You act in a way if you believe in predestination, you act in another way, completely opposite maybe, if you believe in a sort of libertarian free will. And I chose that example because there are sects of christianity that actually differ in this point. 

     I act in a way if I believe God is extra forgiving, or extra harsh. 

    And, frankly, it does even work even if we considered just the doctrine approach. Because they present contradictory ideas, you cannot KNOW, or even have any IDEA, WHAT to believe. You cannot believe, like Dan Barker once said, in a married bachelor. I cannot even picture such a thing, because it is contradictory language. You cannot say stuff like believe Jesus was an all powerful, invulnerable God, in the same time having a time bound, and space bound body, that suffered and killed. There could be NO such thing, according to your definitions. You are asking me to believe in a non existing entity. Your words , to speak more linguistically, have no reference point , either as literal or metaphor.

       Like saying I know I typed this message in English, but it is Spanish, in the same time.  And if they just did not properly express their doctrines, that is THEIR problem, not mine. Because, if we go down that route of MYSTERY, then you can say absolutely anything at random. MMmmdmmdmd asasamsmamsma - this the ultimate truth, something like that. We would just act and talk and be at complete randomness. That leads to no difference between true or false, between anything at all, really. Something like utter madness probably.

        Again, I do no think you can use the mystery card as a way to excuse impracticable and contradictory doctrines. Especially if you do not show me the reality they are referring to. 

[Myrkhoos]

In short, to me it seems that an unclear and contradictory doctrines lead to an impossibility of actual belief, let alone testing that belief, and to impracticable and impossible practices. It leads you, eventually, to a sort of block of thinking and/or action, or to a complete meltdown where you either run around exausted, mentally and phisically, trying to make sense and fulfill the impossible demands, or to become a pawn in the hands of someone else with little to none conscious awareness. Personal opinion/exp , not a specialist here, opinion subject to debate and change and refining.

[♦ ficino ♦]

2 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

Well, that would be wrong,  precisely because  doctrines, as in the dogmas, are there to solicit a response, an action on the part of the believer. When they say God is a trinity, God had a son, etc, this solicits a response from you. How to relate to this God- as in prayer, attitude, actions, etc. Otherwise, if doctrines are not there to solitict a response from the believer, they would be useless

Good point. I was thinking of how Thomistic types will usually say that faith is an act of the intellect, affirming that certain propositions are true, and then they'll talk about actions as coming from the will, choosing and doing certain things that the intellect has perceived (or falsely believes) are good. But they muddle things when they start talking about "the Mystery of evil" and such.

[Myrkhoos]

1 hour ago, ficino said:

Good point. I was thinking of how Thomistic types will usually say that faith is an act of the intellect, affirming that certain propositions are true, and then they'll talk about actions as coming from the will, choosing and doing certain things that the intellect has perceived (or falsely believes) are good. But they muddle things when they start talking about "the Mystery of evil" and such.

I got this answer of it is a mystery, when I asked why would Lucifer ever rebell against God. He was blissful and wise and somehow chose everlasting suffering and delusion. It seemed such stupid and self harming choice. I think even an animal would not choose that. Pretty sure , if asked, my dog would choose everlasting bliss. Even the fact that he, Lucifer, invented evil is actually contrary to what Jesus said that a good tree does not make bad fruit. So...something has to give.

[AcrobaticDetective]

Welcome to the forum. I'm a newish ex-Catholic myself. This forum has the kindest and most helpful people. You've come to a good place.