(September 25, 2018 at 12:44 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Or people of no faith.
Are you feeling..right now, that the grieving process is much easier because of what you were taught about god, or are you feeling that you've been torpedoed when it comes to death? As you put it..your whole schema for life? Seems to me like those myths leave adults wholly unprepared. Now that you've come over to the dark side..so to speak, it might be helpful to remember that the duplicity of god belief isn't actually limited to statements about gods..but also about themselves and other people, and specifically about people who don't believe as they do.
First they scare you with bullshit stories....then they double dip by telling you that you'd just be lost without them. Life and death would be unrecognizable. In my experience, people who initially fall away from faith still believe those subtler but equally faithful claims. Are they really true though? Are you lost without god, or are we all lost without those we deeply love?
Personally...I -love- hymns...especially the morbid ones. I am a deeply southern person. The only place any of my loved ones could go to "be at home" is with me, and the only place I'd go to..if I were a ghost, is back home with my loved ones (I'll haunt this place like a motherfucker if it's an option - forever. They'll never get rid of me. I built it up!). That was their home, this is my home. Still, I appreciate the sort of longing and remorse and sorrow that leads to those sorts of expressions. I know it too. I feel it, so I can convincingly sing it, even if I don't believe the sorrounding mythology.
Whole lot of words..I guess..to say that it's okay that you can't cotton to the loss of your loved ones, or to be lost by them. Who can? Terrible bastards, that's who.
I'm feeling like the delusion helped me cope with the permanent nature of death a lot. Now I'm terribly depressed about not seeing them again. When relatives I love died, I was crushed by the loss, but still it was very comforting to think that I would see them again. I hung onto that hope. I still grieved, but it was for my loss, not theirs, as I thought they were in a blissful place where they felt nothing but joy. I've seen people of faith go through the Kubler-Ross model of grieving, and rather than be stuck in denial, they have gone through the whole process, but aided by their delusion. That's not to say that some don't get stuck.
Right now I'm torn because of what I feel that I've discovered about the world--that God doesn't exist--and the fact that I'm really not doing well with this realization. While it is/was a delusion, I functioned better in many ways with it. It didn't fully satisfy, no, because I often felt like I was praying to nothing. But there was always some measure of hope and comfort the delusion brought.
I am someone who has always had issues with anxiety, depression, and obsession. I wonder if I am psychologically strong enough to handle the truth and live without a belief in God and Heaven. I find myself wanting to claw my way back to religion--a "safe" place where there were perhaps easy answers to my questions, but they were answers that offered some measure of comfort. Now the unanswered questions and belief in the finite nature of life feel oppressive almost beyond toleration. I constantly rock when I sit or lie in bed. I don't want to get out of bed. I have headaches and am constantly sick to my stomach and running to the bathroom. I keep having these desperate thoughts that maybe I can somehow believe in evolution, the Big Bang, and that these thousands of other myths existed, but that there's still some kind of God out there? Yet I've opened Pandora's box. If I could somehow regain some semblance of belief in God, it would be even less satisfying than it was as I would constantly be reminded of the arguments against God's existence.
Despite my rationally not believing in God, I'm also having psychological abuse from my childhood surfacing. I think things like "now you've committed the unpardonable sin [by not believing], and at the Judgment when you die, Jesus will say 'I never knew you; depart from me,' and then I will be thrown in Hell. And another thought that "whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven." In short, all of my toxic, religious crap is surfacing even though my rational brain says it's not true.
I guess I am having a breakdown. I have immense respect for all of you who are functioning so well in your unbelief. You're apparently much stronger than I am. I don't know how/if I will get through this.
