(February 9, 2021 at 4:56 pm)Five Wrote: I've never lived my life with uncertainty like this before. I was conditioned to believe that there was always this someone out there, who knew everything, who was always watching me, who knew the future and had a plan for me. I was abused by a cult to hold every thought accountable because this being who knew what was best for me had access to my thoughts, to the point where 80% of the personal prayers I gave were said inside my head.
And now, suddenly, after 32 years, I'm alone. There's nothing. I have no one to go to check my decisions and information. I have to trust me. Not only that...but it has always been this way. The only thing that has actually changed is my perception. So, yes, it is scary and painful.
Because religion stole from me this connection with myself. All this time, "the spirit" I felt and confided in was me, yet I don't recognize it.
Sorry to be a downer. I'm just realizing the real emotions and thoughts behind my making this thread. It probably should have stayed as a journal.
I find your realization inspirational! Don't get depressed by it at all. Yes, when you were talking to God, you were really talking to an idealized version of yourself. That means that idealized version of yourself is your own conscience. It's in you.
As for a feeling of being alone -- you aren't. The connection to something greater than yourself, that you believed you found with religion, exists all around you in nature and in your fellow humans. Meditate on the connections from you to everything else, and realize that you are an important part of the web of being.
You are both the most important thing in the universe, and a tiny speck compared to all that is. That is a melancholy and beautiful dichotomy. God belief just ruins real spirituality.
