Transcendence
I once believed in God. Surrounded by people who shared, affirmed, and enforced the belief, my faith became almost unquestionable.
Religion gave me a glimpse of something. Not in the prescribed prayers, but in the moments spent searching my soul. Not through its practices, but by giving in to the magnificence of the world. Not through the words of scripture, but by contemplating infinity.
I remember sitting at the edge of my bed, peering into the rain and becoming mesmerised by the spectacle. Emotion overwhelmed me, tears ran down my face, and I felt deeply connected to every raindrop falling from the sky, and every leaf that they touched. I knew what caused rain, but my conceptual understanding of reality was swept away by the intricacy of subjective experience. I wept in awe and gratitude. It was one of the most profound moments in my life.
I went through a phase where I searched for insights in holy scripture. But what I found there destroyed my faith. It was a myopic text, full of threats, hate, and outdated ethics. There was nothing in there that I could call divine.
As I lost my religion, I also began to distrust my experience of the numinous. Reason and objective reality supplanted faith, and for more than a decade I lost sight of spirituality. There was awe in science, fulfilment in effort, bliss in the love of another.
But life is a subjective experience, and those inspired moments from my youth were a unique state of mind. As I aged and my thoughts turned inwards again, those indelible memories called me back.
I discovered non-dual mindfulness, and soon I could turn on the tap again. This time there were no assumptions about objective reality, and no claims about the supernatural. There was only a subjective state of mind that felt incredible compared to ordinary thoughts and experience.
Yesterday the exploration of this landscape brought me to a familiar place. My face buried in my palms, eyes tightly shut, my small self reached out for something timeless in a return to “prayer”.
I felt something in me that is not my sense of self. It is a vast continuum that hosts my thoughts and memories and is aware of every moment of my life. It is the source of emotion and calm. It is an awe inspiring vastness that invokes immense gratitude for existence. It is a reflection of the true nature of mind.
Atheism does not negate spiritual experiences. It just cleanses us of superfluous ideas so that we can look inwards again with an open mind.
Can you imagine yourself as trillions of cells working in concert? Can you imagine a 100 billion intricate components generating your experience of life? Our mind is complex beyond imagination. By acknowledging its deep mystery and letting our ego diminish in awe, we can step out of our sense of self and into something more spacious.
Religion gave me a glimpse of something. Not in the prescribed prayers, but in the moments spent searching my soul. Not through its practices, but by giving in to the magnificence of the world. Not through the words of scripture, but by contemplating infinity.
I remember sitting at the edge of my bed, peering into the rain and becoming mesmerised by the spectacle. Emotion overwhelmed me, tears ran down my face, and I felt deeply connected to every raindrop falling from the sky, and every leaf that they touched. I knew what caused rain, but my conceptual understanding of reality was swept away by the intricacy of subjective experience. I wept in awe and gratitude. It was one of the most profound moments in my life.
I went through a phase where I searched for insights in holy scripture. But what I found there destroyed my faith. It was a myopic text, full of threats, hate, and outdated ethics. There was nothing in there that I could call divine.
As I lost my religion, I also began to distrust my experience of the numinous. Reason and objective reality supplanted faith, and for more than a decade I lost sight of spirituality. There was awe in science, fulfilment in effort, bliss in the love of another.
But life is a subjective experience, and those inspired moments from my youth were a unique state of mind. As I aged and my thoughts turned inwards again, those indelible memories called me back.
I discovered non-dual mindfulness, and soon I could turn on the tap again. This time there were no assumptions about objective reality, and no claims about the supernatural. There was only a subjective state of mind that felt incredible compared to ordinary thoughts and experience.
Yesterday the exploration of this landscape brought me to a familiar place. My face buried in my palms, eyes tightly shut, my small self reached out for something timeless in a return to “prayer”.
I felt something in me that is not my sense of self. It is a vast continuum that hosts my thoughts and memories and is aware of every moment of my life. It is the source of emotion and calm. It is an awe inspiring vastness that invokes immense gratitude for existence. It is a reflection of the true nature of mind.
Atheism does not negate spiritual experiences. It just cleanses us of superfluous ideas so that we can look inwards again with an open mind.
Can you imagine yourself as trillions of cells working in concert? Can you imagine a 100 billion intricate components generating your experience of life? Our mind is complex beyond imagination. By acknowledging its deep mystery and letting our ego diminish in awe, we can step out of our sense of self and into something more spacious.
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