FInally stopped lying to myself, now a little lost.

[Rahul]

I'm not fooling myself anymore but I do feel like I've lost a family member or loved one. I feel like a safety net I had always counted on being there was never there in the first place.
And that's me and where I am right now. Eyes open to the truth but living in a world that seems less magical to me. It's a bummer.

Welcome Hookakat. I know what you're going through buddy. I've been there. I was around 30-31 when I came to the inevitable conclusion.

That "personal relationship" I had with god, the delusion of it, it's loss does kind of make you feel a little empty.

I think I spent the first couple of years just... I don't know. Ignoring it or something.

But the world being less magical? heh. No, my friend. This is when the magical time starts.

There is a great intro to a book, I think a book about evolution, that it really makes you sit back and realize how absolutely fucking amazing it is that you and I are here. That we even exist. I looked all over for it just now and I can't seem to find it.

Here, on this little pale blue dot, life started. And for around 4 billion years it's been adapting and fight and scrounging, passing on their genetic material all those eons. Swimming in the oceans, crawling up on shore, scurrying from cover to cover, climbing the trees and swinging through the branches. And then eventually coming down, striding on two legs, fighting, struggling, competing. And all those lines came together in the most astronomically exact, perfectly timed way to create you.

One little tiny thing happening to any of your incalculable ancestors and poof! You would have never drawn breath, my friend.

That's not magical? That's insanely magical!

Way more magical than some sky magician deciding to create you as one among billions of others.

The feeling of emptiness will fade. Now it's time for you to find out the reality of where you came from.

Have you ever read Cosmos by Carl Sagan. That's one of my favorites. It's dated since Carl died in '96, but it still really makes you sit back at times and think, "Wow!"

If you need anything, want to talk, anything at all. You let me know. Us emancipated Christians need to watch out for each other.

Stay away from Tartarus. He's a troublemaker.