Did you ever believe?

[Angrboda]

In a word, yes. However my belief was somewhat different. From early childhood, I have been possessed off and on with a complex set of paranoid delusions. So during my childhood, I literally viewed reality through two separate lenses, the mundane world and mundane beliefs and acts measured to keep me hidden, and a view steeped richly in delusion and paranoia, possessed of secrets, just sure if I were revealed I would be tortured and killed. As such, when I believed, I had two beliefs, a mundane ordinary relationship with God and the world, and one in which my relationship with God was likewise disturbed. (I didn't actually see beyond my delusions until I was 21.)

Regardless, by early adolescence I had abandoned any outer faith. In high school during a class in Asian studies, my teacher read some verses from the Tao Te Ching. I asked to look at it some and he offered to loan it to me. I read it cover to cover in one night -- bells going off like the bell tower at Notre Dame. Excepting one period of 12-13 years in which I was largely non-practicing, during which I meditated on a stumbling block in my belief, I have been a follower of the Tao. (The problem in question is a question simliar to that of theodicy in Theism.)

"Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
and it will be a hundred times better for everyone."
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 19 (Feng/English)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-smMyAnJUc