I called a friend who is a believer...

[MTL]

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Well, when you think about it, I stuck myself in that pattern.  For years I'd repeat a mantra three or four times a day whenever the range was up about how anybody walking into a hostile city on foot might just as well make their funerary arrangements.  All day long, "you're dead, lay down..you're dead, lay down,.....you're dead, lay down".   Then you go out on a patrol or two and sure, you see the rewards for your work and feel validated in those propositions by your experiences.  

Thing is, I'd effectively convinced myself that all windows hid shooters, that there was a bomb in the canopy liner of every car.  That follows you into a scenario where it isn't remotely true...where it isn't even a good practical assumption.  Nevertheless, it's still there, always in the back of your mind.  So, I have this set of experiences, a reinforcing structure of ritual behavior.....and even the constant inner recitation of what a religious person might call a mantra or statement of faith with regards to those experiences.  Not only did I have a powerful experience..but if that experience had been divine in nature (or, more accurately, had been taken to be divine by myself) everything that arose out of it would be immediately recognizable as components of a religion.

However....nothing can convince the front of my mind that the shit the back of my mind worries about is actually true, that I'm actually in danger.....the position is intellectually indefensible.  OTOH, nothing can convince the front of my mind to ignore those things the back of my mind is whispering.  It's a sort of fugue state where something I act as though I take to be true is not, and is not taken to -be- true by myself......nor am I able to wash away those suspicions.

Long winded, but you'll be glad you stuck with me.  When I hear these stories about born again experiences....which by their very nature must produce some dissonance or inner conflict (or they wouldn't be seen to be miraculous in the first place)........I figure that they must have been even more powerful than my own experience described above...and that's pretty damned impressive.  You don't see a rock roll down a hill..like every other rock you've ever seen...and think "did you see what god just did, man!"  It's when you see the rock rolling up, that's when shit must get real.  So, what is it about those experiences which can overcome the sort of fugue state where you realize that the thing in the back of your mind is just your imagination, but still can't disabuse yourself of it?  I ask that because people with born again stories do not describe a fugue state, but a realization of what they perceive to be true knowledge from that moment forward.  

My own experience, visceral and in-arguably "real" in ways that no brush with the divine can be said to be - no matter how generously you choose to take their narratives...is less effective, less compelling than the experience of a person who sees christ in their toast and so drops to their knees shouting hosanna.  If there was ever a mystery to faith, imo...that's it, right there.  

(It's actually not that bad yall, no need to feel bad for me - I've long ago made my peace with the weird ass shit the back of my mind tries to fob off on the front of my mind, he's a godamned liar and I know better than to listen to him. Besides, it's gorgeous out here and the air doesn't taste like my neighbors toilet.  If you want to feel bad for somebody, there are joes I know who are crippled..positively crippled by a much stronger form of the same little ticks I have.  I can still function without mediation.  Feel bad for those who can't.)

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I understand this.

I was raised in a devout Baptist home and was indoctrinated heavily from an early age,
and that circling inner dialogue you mentioned is indeed tenacious.

You characterized it as the front and back of your brain;

well, the front of my brain is Agnostic;
the back of my brain is the little girl, the indoctrinated Theist,
and, like you, my front brain isn't buying the crap the back of my brain is handing out, even for a second;
but the same old dialogue continues to eddy back and forth between them,
like dead leaves stubbornly caught in a whirlpool current,
unable to continue downstream.