A new beginning (?)

[Silverfangs]

My three weeks absence period affected me more than I expected. During that period, while digging and during my free times, my belief system just colapsed on itself and my feelings just become mixed up or forever lost.

For some time now I realized that I do not believe in God or Gods. I mean... I still believe that there is "something" but, as always, I transfer all the divinity to all that surrounds me. Yet I am now trying to face things for their own visible nature and not trying to achieve a spiritual compreension of things. For me a tree is now beautiful for just beeing a tree and for the role that she plays in the Cosmos.

I think I entered a state where living Life itself is what matters for me, not thinking about the spiritual possibilities in everything.

So, I think after three weeks I discovered that I am destinated to be an agnostic pantheist and nothing more.



I wonder if someone else ever went throught something similar.

[Windsmith]

So, I think after three weeks I discovered that I am destinated to be an agnostic pantheist and nothing more.

I wonder if someone else ever went throught something similar.:uhhuhuh: I went through pretty much exactly what you're describing, Silverfangs. I went from a standard-issue Witch to an Animist to a Naturalistic Pantheist.

Letting go of old ideas about the world is incredibly difficult. Especially when the old view saw everything as "magical," filled with spirits and intentions and possibilities just beyond our view, accessible to us if we studied and developed new ways of thinking and seeing. Right at first, the world devoid of gods and spirits seemed a bleak and barren place to me.

The key was discovering that by making that change in perception, I had developed the new ways of thinking and seeing that I'd been searching for. There is magic in the tree; she is full of cells and organelles and processes we can describe, and see under certain conditions, but never experience. She is home and food for birds and insects and animals; she breathes the carbon dioxide we exhale and exhales the oxygen we breathe. I view that as a kind of magic, a kind of "spirit." No, I don't believe in gods and goddesses anymore, but what I believe in now is every bit as sacred.

[airmist]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Silverfangs. I learn from others' spiritual work.

I have never felt the absence of divinity, so I am clearly not agnostic. (That being someone who denies the ability to know or not know god; they are actually neutral, one might say.) My belief as to what that divinity is has evolved over many years from the traditional christian monotheistic god to a more unaffiliated monotheistic nature based something, to a divinity which is immanent in all and not separate, hence, pantheistic.

That worked for me for a long time and then I digressed into an exploration of polytheism, but that never really worked. I found myself realizing I was trying to force a growing belief in spirits into some definition of divinity, polytheism, and I really didn't feel or believe it. When I admitted that to myself, I found myself back immediately comfortable with my pantheistic understanding of the divine.

I still need to explore why I feel so connected to a spirit world. It does seem very close to animism, but I am not very familiar with that and I do not attribute any divinity to the spirits.

All of this evolution has taken at least the last 25-30 years and still continues. So I applaud you, and all of us here really, for the willingness to change if it seems right and hope you continue to be willing to question everything, particularly that which you know to be true.

[Windsmith]

I still need to explore why I feel so connected to a spirit world. It does seem very close to animism, but I am not very familiar with that and I do not attribute any divinity to the spirits.airmist,

There is, at this very instant, a class on Animism (http://mysticwicks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=387) going on in the Circle of Teaching. It just started. That might be a good jumping-in place for you.

[airmist]

Windsmith, thanks very much. I really appreciate the lead and I'll go check it out.

[Silverfangs]

Thank you all for sharing your toughts. It seems from what I read, that many of us try to go a polytheistic path, like forcing it to be our own, and then we realize it is not what we believe in.

I wonder why most of us are always pushed to a polytheistic view of the world... is it to mark a distance from the current most know religions?


peace! :)