Pantheist lifestyles

[Diotima]

I don't know any other Pantheists IRL, so I'm curious.
How does your faith affect your lifestyle (or does it affect it at all?). Do you considering yourself leading a religious life? Has your faith affected any choices you have made in life, big and small?

I'll start. For me, my faith is always present. I don't do regular rituals, though my altar is in the living room. But my thoughts and ideas are pretty Pantheistic, and since I spend a lot of my time thinking, any new good ideas and revelations tend to affect the rest of my life sooner or later.
For me, it's important to try to live in harmony with the rest of the Universe. I would not take a job that, in my opinion, would lead away from this goal. I want my work to make the Universe a little better place. Ecological living is my thing- avoiding overconsumption and compensatig some of the damage I do.
I and my DH have chosen to live simple life (simplifying as we go!) in the countryside. I find gardening to be a very spiritual activity. I have discovered, that as I declutter my life, there will be more room for truly important things. I also practice plain dress (yes, as in Amish, except I wear certain items that would mark me as a Pagan for people who are knowledgeable about plain dress).
I love to learn about the Universe around me, and my lifestyle provides good opportunities for that. Plant and animal life, stars, geology...if my poor brain can grasp it, I enjoy learning about it.
I also try to take care that I always have a certain amount of silence in my life.

[airmist]

Nice, thought provoking, almost challenging topic, Diotima-thanks. You and cheddarsox both made me think this evening about how much what I believe affects my day and how I behave.

A saying I've heard which I like states more bluntly what you both say softly, "If what you believe doesn't make a difference, then it doesn't make a difference what you believe." I won't say I live up to what I believe 100%, but I give it conscious effort and acknowledge shortcoming.

I give conscious contact to my understanding of the divinity of our world every morning. I then meditate on it and ask for guidance and strength to live in t he world with respect for it all.

During the day I pay conscious attention to all of life and give respect to all things around me. I don't preach to co-workers, but I don't participate in the jokes or stories or expressed opinions which are offensive to what I believe. I will offer another way of viewing people, nature, life, whatever is under discussion. I'm not always appreciated but sometimes I'm heard. An example was simply gathering a bee in the office and taking it outside instead of crushing it. Some laughed at me, some respected me and one person said, "you won't kill anything will you." I don't like talking like this about myself but I wanted to give a concrete example.

I spend some of my lunch hour outside near a small waterfall (very small) but I again try to make conscious contact with the divinity or other spirits in my presence. I try to learn a little each day about my path (which is why I like this site and all of you so much) and I review the day at or near the end every evening. I have a set of questions I use which help me understand, non critically, how I did for the day.

I'm really appreciative of your starting this thread and inviting us to support each other. Thanks again. I hope to see more of what others do.

[Windsmith]

Great thread, Diotima; a real thinker.

I feel that Pantheism is making me more confident, braver. Or at least, in the situations where I'm unable to be confident and brave, I'm aware that I ought to be. I make my life; no one else does. If I cower in a corner, God isn't going to come along and give me what I want anyway. If it's going to happen, I have to make it happen (to be clear, though, "I have to make it happen" doesn't mean I do everything myself. A lot of the time, it means having the ovaries to deal directly with the person who has to make it happen and say, "This is what I need from you," rather than just looking longingly at them, hoping they'll read my mind).

Some people don't understand how I could give up the comfort of believing in a deity and the supernatural, but I'm more comforted by not believing. When a bridge collapses in my hometown, it's not God's punishment. When I wake up in the middle of the night, unable to move, understanding sleep paralysis is much more comforting than thinking a demon is sitting on my chest. When my basement floods during every thunderstorm, it's nice to know that the house is not "out to get me." I can stop being so afraid and get on with my life.

I feel a greater sense of connection to everyone and everything. True connection. When I was Christian, I often spouted the "we are all God's children" line, but it was with the attitude of a truculent child whose parents have yelled at them too many times for not getting along with their siblings. As a standard-issue Pagan, I was very lovey-dovey "We all come from the Goddess." But it didn't mean anything; it just created vague warm fuzzies inside. Now I understand much more fully how interconnected every organism on this planet really is. How every action of mine affects the people and things around me. Sometimes it almost overwhelms me to the point of inaction, but for the most part it makes me more thoughtful. More careful. Hopefully wiser about my actions.

There is one downside to Pantheism. Know that old saying, "There's no zealot like a convert"? The further I walk down my own path of Pantheism, the less tolerant I become of other people's viewpoints when they differ significantly from my own. When I was a Christian, and when I was a "normal" Pagan, I was super tolerant of whatever anyone wanted to believe. I didn't really believe what those religions taught that I should, so I figured, hey, if other people have found something that works for them - or if they're all faking it, too - by all means, let 'em have it. But now that I've found something that's so right for me, I sometimes have trouble remembering that it's far from right for everyone, and it's not self-apparent to everyone. Once I have some time to settle down and get more comfortable in my Pantheism, this should go away; in the meantime, though, it's annoying and frequently embarrassing.

What about anybody else? Care to divulge the "darker side" - if there is any? Anything about the Pantheist lifestyle that you're not so keen on?

[airmist]

I want to take up Windsmith's suggestion of offering some light to any dark side of pantheism.

But first I want to just add a big ditto to the point made that some people don't get the idea of giving up the comfort of a god or supernatural daddy. (More on my dark side of arrogance in a minute.) Like Windsmith I have been asked more than once, how are you comfortable with that-no god, no afterlife, no miracles to rely on, no certainty of some type of scripture. Like Windsmith, I find great comfort in just being part of what is.

I too can get intellectually arrogant and sometimes self-righteous about my beliefs. I work really hard at not being that way; I don't like it one bit. But it does seem to be a kind of default reaction. I guess I see that as more my dark side than pantheism's.

One downside to pantheism, I would not call it a dark side really, is the lack of a faith community. I really do like being with people who believe as I do. I don't need their support as much as I just like the company on occasion of similar thinking/believing friends. This community certainly serves this purpose somewhat, but I'm really a flesh and blood person who likes people, not just cyber-relationships. There may be some, but I've never really found any. I sometimes visit Wiccans or other pagans in their rituals and that is always nice, but it still isn't how I believe. That's my contribution to Windsmith's good topic expansion.

[Diotima]

Wow, this seems to have developed into a great discussion. Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts.

I'll join the club for the intellectually arrogant. I guess that my problem is, that Pantheism is the first religious idea that makes sense to me. It doesn't contradict logic, it doesn't contradict anything I know about metaphysic or science. While I still don't have hard proof on what I believe, the lack of negative evidence makes me very often think that I am *right* and anyone who doesn't agree is somehow less enlightened than I am. That's terribly arrogant, but I catch myself thinking this way sometimes.

I don't know if Pantheism has a dark side...but there are downsides

-lack of organization. I was brought up in a Christian family, and while Christianity as a religion didn't impress me, I got a first hand experience on the good sides of organized religion. It's easy to maintain a religious routine- just show up in the church every Sunday, pray as you have been taught etc.

-related to above, lack of community. I'm a very introverted person IRL, but still, it'd be great to spend time IRL with people who share my beliefs. Perhaps even have some sort of religious meeting with them or something.

-And of course, lack of tradition. Christianity, for example, has a wealth of tradition: literature, symbology, rituals etc. Whereas, I'm pretty much making things up as I go and need rises. It's a great freedom, but sometimes it is also a burden- giving me a feeling that I'm not rooted anywhere.

-In many ways, Pantheism is quite an ambiguous thing. For example, like Windsmith said, we do not believe that we are "children" of any personal Deity. That sounds pretty secular. Yet we believe, even quite passionately and many of us wish to express that in some way. Pantheism does not dictate any particular moral code- yet we agree that All That Is is interconnected and that our lives are meaningful parts of the great whole. That is certainly a thought with moral implications! On the one hand, we humbly believe that we can never hope to completely understand Universe- on the other hand Pantheism is an intellectual path and many of us agree that it is beneficial for us to try.

-Even if you can compress a Pantheist idea into one sentence, there is an immense depth of thought behind that sentence. Consider, for example: " All That Is, Is Holy." I have believed that sentence for years, yet I feel I have barely scratched the surface of what it means. To me, my inability to understand even the basic ideas clearly, has a rather surprising consequence. In spite its overwhelming intellectuality, Pantheism appears to me as a mystical path. When I dimly understand that something is true, but fail to understand it completely, I have to deal with a mystery until understanding comes (if it comes at all). That's probably why symbols and rituals are somewhat important to me: though I can not put the mysteries into words, I may still be able to represent them to myself somehow, to remind myself that they are important.
...which is to say, that Pantheism is probably never going to be a huge big world religion, no matter how much it makes sense. It's a path for those who love to tie their brains into tight knots and then deal with the resulting reality. No commercial potential.

[Windsmith]

One downside to pantheism, I would not call it a dark side really, is the lack of a faith community. I really do like being with people who believe as I do. I don't need their support as much as I just like the company on occasion of similar thinking/believing friends. This community certainly serves this purpose somewhat, but I'm really a flesh and blood person who likes people, not just cyber-relationships. There may be some, but I've never really found any.


-related to above, lack of community. I'm a very introverted person IRL, but still, it'd be great to spend time IRL with people who share my beliefs. Perhaps even have some sort of religious meeting with them or something.Word, word, and...word, as one of my coworkers would say. There are a few Pantheist Meet-Ups around here, but, oh jeez. A bunch of people sitting around in some dimly lit, snooty bar discussing Pantheism's finer intellectual points for two hours. :zzzzZZZ: Pantheism is my religion, as alive for me as Wicca or Hinduism or Catholicism are to their followers. I'd love to find some local fellow Pantheists or similarly naturalistic Pagans to share rituals with, but I'm having a dickens of a time finding 'em.


And of course, lack of tradition. Christianity, for example, has a wealth of tradition: literature, symbology, rituals etc. Whereas, I'm pretty much making things up as I go and need rises. It's a great freedom, but sometimes it is also a burden- giving me a feeling that I'm not rooted anywhere.I know that cheddarsox, in particular, is working on the liturgical end of things and hopes tobe able to share some of her ritual creations with others someday. I love impromptu, made-up rituals as much as the next guy (maybe more), but I would get a real kick out of celebrating, say, a Summer Solstice ritual and knowing that hundreds of other Pantheists all over the place are participating in the exact same (or gosh-darned similar) ritual with their own communities.


...which is to say, that Pantheism is probably never going to be a huge big world religion, no matter how much it makes sense. It's a path for those who love to tie their brains into tight knots and then deal with the resulting reality. No commercial potential.Super-duper true.

[Diotima]

Hmm. My ethical system (modern virtue theory) and Pantheism are not 1 on 1, but they are very well compatible. As I see it, we are beings of great power (after all, I have not yet met any more powerful beings than humans) and great power means great responsibility- I don't that Universe made us sentient and moral beings just so that we could keep these capacities unused. We have great potentials, and I believe we should try to realize our full potential. If I am right in believing that we are the Universe's way to think of itself, then that thought alone has huge moral implications.
No...there are no stone tablets- but then, it does not require Socrate's intelligence to tear pretty much any rule "written in stone" apart. Universe offers guidance, and It has provided us with reason we can apply to moral questions. But it is not going to beat us with stone tablets. I think that's good...
I know from observing the world around me, that there is pure good (perhaps the Kantian good will), and there is also true evil...and a huge great gray area. So all these things are part of the Universe. I don't think that Pantheism has to content with simply observing this fact. As beings, we are capable of making moral evaluations and making moral choices. Therefore, to me it seems that it is in our very being that we necessarily make choices that mark us as who we are, though not necessarily consciously. Our actions have the power of turning us into beings of Light, Dark or some shade of gray (which isn't really that good a position to hold, because there one still refuses to realize her best qualities). If we so choose to be, we can be the power of Light on Earth. That's plenty of ethics for me. :)

Afterlife is an interesting question. I don't think we should think about it too much though- no matter what it will turn out to be, I don't believe that there is nothing to fear for one who has lived this life well. I am pretty certain that death is not the end- it is just the horizon, and though one can not see farther than the horizon, it is not the edge of the world. I know I am more than my material parts- so I have hope. Pantheism does not necessitate materialism, and it does not deny the existence of soul (btw. neither does science, and scientific metaphysics on the subject is very interesting).
I guess that my personal version of Pantheism does not promise security or great reward, but there is great hope and comfort in it.

I don't believe that one is happier with fantasies than with clear understanding of what is true, even if the truth is that one does not know much at all. Doing things in hope of being rewarded in afterlife is not, IMO, very moral action- it is not doing good because one understands that good is something valuable and that good things should be. Being comforted by fables is behavior fitting for ostriches, but for human beings it is more fitting to be brave enough to face what appears to be the reality.

A practical side note: I've thought that funeral issue as well. I have discussed it with my DH, and I am also planning to make a "funeral will"- a paper describing how I would like to have my burial arranged.

Who am I to talk? If I kept all these thoughts to myself, no one could help me to improve my understanding, my mistakes in thinking could not be corrected. I would, in effect, be content in remaining at my current level of ignorance instead of trying to improve.
If someone finds some wisdom from my thoughts...well, that's nice, but not the point.

[airmist]

I don't think that Pantheism itself provides a clear ethical system....

I guess, the darkest side is the human factor. loneliness... Now at least I have the comfort of my faith, even if not the comraderie that would feel nice from time to time....

That's the loneliness, finding people who are as invested as I am in experiencing life, not just building a fortress of stuff ....


I agree. But I don't view Pantheism as a "religion" or "ethical system" of itself. I use what I learned early in life (even if I didn't follow them until late in life) were spiritual principles--love, patience, understanding, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, honesty, and on. Most religious/ethical systems I know of all promote these. I work at applying them in my life. I don't have any problem with the spiritual principles just because other systems claim them. I don't need to claim them for Pantheism. I also agree completely with Diotima's comment that doing something in hopes of a reward or to avoid punishment is not particularly moral behavior.

Camaraderie/fellowship is important. I find it partially in a UU church. At least they are very accepting of my beliefs and asked me to speak to one of their classes of 8th graders about what I believe. But there would be a stronger connection with other people who believes deeply the same way. Besides the UU church, I try to find friends who enjoy hiking or other outdoors activities which cause at least a partial shared connection to nature.

Maybe a topic for another thread, I don't know, is the question of "prayer" or communication with what? I don't believe in god, but I am a spiritual pantheist. I am not what I've heard referred to as a "scientific pantheist." I do believe that the divine in the unity of everything can be communicated with. I am not sure how it "listens". I mention this because I find it absolutely necessary to have some intentional conscious contact with that divinity and it is part of my daily practice which I believe keeps me out of less than spiritual behavior, out of lonliness, out of depression (on very rare occasion now.)

Since I don't think I believe in an afterlife, I am not particularly invested in what happens to my remains. I hope any love ones in my life do something that brings them comfort. And if my spirit does persist in some sentient sense, then I hope I'm compassionate about whatever they do. (But since I'm self-righteous, probably not. :) )

[Diotima]

cheddarsox, I think I understand what you mean when you say that you believe that some persons are happier with fantasies than truth. I just tend to ask one more question: Is it a happy state of being to be someone who is happier with fantasies than with truth? To that, my answer is, that it is better in every way to possess a character that loves truth, even when it is difficult and uncertain.

I feel about the Universe much like you do...that it is trying out some options, exploring some things. Yet, in my thinking it makes a loop: there is goodness and morality in the Universe, because I can perceive that there are such people and those people are part of the Universe just as much as its "indifferent" side. I cannot say, if Light is a greater principle than that...maybe it is and maybe it isn't.

On prayer

I think the question about prayer is a good one. Here's what I think of it...

I went years without praying. I felt, that because Universe contained also things that I find unpraiseworthy (like evil, ignorance, destruction), and because I didn't think that the huge Universe had any reason to care for prayers of one small human being, there wasn't much for me to pray. However, it left me somehow unsatisfied. My faith felt nothing more than some kind of philosophical understanding on how the world is. I felt I had some understanding, but there was not much joy in it. It was all intellectual speculation, but it did not make my life better in any way. The best I got out of my Pantheist faith was a smug knowledge that "I know that Universe is huge and indifferent, and I can live with that understanding. Gee, I'm so bright and strong!"

Then it dawned to me, that Universe consists of parts- including the sum of everything good there is, which I have started to call Light. Light is not greater force than the Universe, but because I think that good things should be, I wanted to connect with it. While I could still believe that there's much more to the Universe than Light, I would not have to absorb it all and accept it all.
So, I tried to pray, addressing my prayer to Light and everything that is part of it.
...fast forward to this day. I don't pray every day, not even every week. When I pray, it is always a ritual occassion. The rest of the time, I am in prayerful silence, waiting for what the Universe has to teach to me.
When I pray, I pray Light. I have come to believe that Light is a real force within Universe. It may not be the greatest force there is, but it is still very powerful. It can always give me strength and hope, and a couple of times I have experienced it arranging directly my affairs.

This little theological development has made me a different Pantheist. My faith is not just intellectual pondering on how the Universe is, knowing my place in it and perhaps occassionally learning a bit. Nowadays, my faith is also acting, and most importantly, interacting with a very important part of All That Is.
That's just cool.

[airmist]

Wishing I knew how to use the quote boxes better, I'd quote a bunch of things each of you said! I agree with so much of what was said about prayer.

Worship, Cheddarsox called some prayer-a great way to look at prayer or what I like to call conscious contact. I too talk to pretty much everything, at least that I think of as part of nature-maybe not furniture or cars, but I'll have to think about that. I believe that each of the "things" I talk to (worship-I really like that even though I suppose it might offend traditional monotheists) has a spirit which can "hear" me. As was said, one may not understand this until that communication has been experienced.

Parenthetically, my effort to gain an understanding of the spirits I've come to conscious contact with and ask for help from led me to explore Druidic type polytheism. I've not continued with that; it was a digression I guess I needed to make. I've been struck by another thread here on animism. I will look into that; I don't see that as conflicting with pantheism since I don't think of those spirits as deities, rather, spirits that share a part of all that is with me (us) although it is considered a very fundamental kind of belief system, separate from pantheism.

Daily contact, asking to fulfill my part of "it all", asking for strength to deal with daily life, yes, my day, my life is better. And as Diotima said, it is not an intellectual exercise but an effort to interact with a very important part of what is. For me, it is a real spiritual experience of trying to live a life that honors life and all that is by following the spiritual principles (ethics) I try to use in living life.

I don't need a god to make me safe; I am safe by knowing I am where I should be-a part of all that is.

[airmist]

I regularly have people ask me why I would rather believe in pantheism, which they feel is impersonal and cold, instead of an all loving God. It appears to me that they choose their religion, to some degree, to appease some psychological need....


That comment led me to reflect on how I feel safe without an "all loving God" which led to the last line of my post.

airmist,

that last line of your post would make a terrific signature line!

Thanks for your comment. I'll try it as a signature. :)