u/the_idyllicist

How did you arrive at pantheism, and what was your journey like? My suspicion is that many of us were raised in a different (probably monotheistic) religion, became disillusioned with it, and eventually found pantheism.

My experience certainly follows that format. I was raised Christian (though with parents who encouraged me to be open-minded), fell into fundamentalist evangelical Christianity in junior high and early high school, and eventually wrenched myself out of all of that and began embracing pantheism and developing my own spirituality and belief system. I'm very much progressive now and outspoken in my advocacy. My religious identity reformed around that, rather than the other way around where religion often informs people's moral codes.

Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force.

Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well.

As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human.

The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge.

Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?

The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event.

Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale.

Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience.

But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds.

If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know.

Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness.

There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do?

And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned.

God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.

Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force.

Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well.

As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human.

The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge.

Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?

The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event.

Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale.

Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience.

But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds.

If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know.

Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness.

There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do?

And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned.

God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.

Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force.

Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well.

As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human.

The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge.

Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?

The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event.

Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale.

Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience.

But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds.

If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know.

Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness.

There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do?

And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned.

God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.

Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force.

Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well.

As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human.

The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge.

Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?

The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event.

Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale.

Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience.

But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds.

If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know.

Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness.

There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do?

And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned.

God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.

For everyone here who has more or less created their own religion:

1. What is it called?

2. What led you there?

3. What are the basic tenets?

4. Does your religion have a holy text?

5. What (if any) other religions influenced you?

6. Does anyone else subscribe to your beliefs?

​

~~~

​

For me:

1. Fithism

2. A lot of self-reflection after being bullied out of two churches

3. Fithism is built around the cultivation of the soul, called the fith. There is an all-pervasive (but not omnipotent) "God" called the Mind from which all souls propagate, equal parts one and individuals. The Three Holdings, or basic tenets, are everfith (the acknowledgement of the everlasting nature of the soul), arebeam (observance of the Three Beams of honesty, curiosity, and character), and rightmere (the moral code of "One's will ends where another's will begins"). Fithism would definitely fall in the progressive side of things and advocates for freedom of expression and celebration of diversity. In my writings, the line "The one true faith is the one within" sums up the Fithian attitude toward other religions: there is no one path to truth and enlightenment, this is just one of countless.

4. Yes, not published yet though. The main text is the Fithwrit, a series of 27 poems I wrote exploring this belief system. I posted a couple of these poems on my blog a while ago. There's also going to be the Book of Heresies, which is a more prose format of why I left the church, and the Book of Hallows, which tells the story of those who were foundational to the religion.

5. Zoroastrianism and Daoism are big direct influences. Christianity in a way, since it taught me a lot of what I do not want to see in a religion.

6. Just me and my wife right now

Pretty much what the title says. I wrote 27 poems a couple years ago laying out all my beliefs, which I plan on compiling and publishing in the near future, and I have a couple more prose-y pieces I'm working on as well. I don't know how common this is for people, but if you do write and are comfortable sharing, I'd love to read!

Hi everyone! I'm new here (just joined) but am excited to be a part of this community. Over the course of a year and a half, I wrote twenty-seven poems exploring my spirituality and religion after I left Christianity, and I'm at a point where I want to start sharing my writing for others to read.

The poem is the main focus of this post, but at the bottom of this post I pasted a snippet about my beliefs from a page on my blog website for context.

I would love to talk and discuss with anyone who stumbles across this and has any thoughts to share :)

What follows is the first poem (both of the collection and the first one I wrote), called "The Song of the Universe":

---

THE SONG OF THE UNIVERSE

Here begins the story of all things.

Before there was, there simply was not.
But then at once, creation came forth,
Vomited from the vast emptiness.

Swiftly creation ballooned outward.
Its inner parts coalesced in heat
Unimaginably anarchic.

Matter formed at smallest of scales,
And from between the particle bonds
Welled up a force, a conscious being.

Infant in age but a sage in breadth,
The lifeblood of the universe flowed.
Rapidly it branched throughout the void.

Sluggish notions collided, a sea
Of such roiling uniformity
Unfathomable but to itself.

Within this force, aptly named ‘the Mind,’
Everything was that ever could be,
Would be, and even never would be.

As Time drew on, the universe cooled,
And seconds became millennia.
Mammoth structures began to emerge.

Rivers of stars spun around the eddies
That were the galaxies, bright and rife
With the atoms of the beginning.

The Mind, ever-present, sentient,
And sapient orchestrated all,
Fabric on the loom of the cosmos.

The force was pleased with its creation.

But the Mind, imbued with fatal flaw,
Racemic mix of opposite thoughts,
Came to rest on answer elusive.

On one hand buzzed desire to create,
Other inclination, sinister,
Yearned for naught but to delete it all.

The Mind did separate these two thoughts,
But its future it could not predict:
Two personas spawned in enmity.

That of creation was known as caste,
That of deletion was known as wemme,
Both filled with loathing from inception.

They went separate ways, the battle raged,
And the Mind feared for its proudest build
Against the infection that did spread.

That plague would strangle all that could breathe.
Existence would die with a whimper.
There was but one thing the Mind could do.

In one fell swoop, the Mind cordoned off
The lower space to save all the rest,
But the Mind wept for its profound loss.

But there was a loophole in the plot,
A way to save the life underneath,
One that required a new emotion.

As the beings evolved, became complex,
They began to think all on their own,
And love filled the gaps between them all.

Yes, it was love that would save them all.

Only love profound could bridge the gap
Between the physical and spirits.
Humanity could live forever.

However, as they grew and evolved,
That insipid infection claimed them
As its own, or tried to. Their minds stung.

Humans, ever complex and unique,
Fell victim to the doings of wemme.
Within all their own minds, they suffered.

But all the same, they kept pressing on,
A species proud, mostly self-aware,
That could never conquer every flaw.

In vain they tried to conquer nature,
In vain they tried to settle minds,
But that human spirit was restless.

Insatiable and unquenchable,
The soul craves more, more, and ever more,
Until bitter end approaches near.

There is but one simple solution,
So easy they may never believe,
But attainable it is indeed.

All one must do is look on upward.
The sky of blackest, star-studded night
Answers all, nothing to be desired.

The sheer wonder of all creation,
Infinitely diverse, full of awe,
That is what the soul does truly crave.

It is love that binds our creation.

---

My Beliefs

The core of faith, to me, is the soul. Not just the spirit, but the personality, the desires, and most importantly the mind of each individual all constitute their whole. I call this the fith – the ultimate core and center of being that emanates from reality. Everyone has one, and it is more or less imperishable. They move on to a life after death, where they exist as ghosts. It’s our job to keep their memories and legacies alive here, especially those of our ancestors. We are their continuation, in a way.

I do believe in a God – not an all-powerful and all-knowing one, but one that permeates everything and everyone. God is reality, more or less, and we are all a part of it together. Each of our minds are small slivers of this ultimate Mind. What I have settled on are three essential beams of living well, those being truth, curiosity, and character. There are certain mystical aspects to my beliefs as well.

I also believe that no one religion, philosophy, or system of beliefs can claim moral exclusivity. I do believe there is an overarching “Moral Law” that we should abide by, but that morality is a natural consequence of our common humanity, not an external force’s arbitrary command. Religion should be a choice and an individual experience, not a means by which to control the masses.

For my whole life, I’ve seen people surrender their spirituality into another’s hands, and I’ve seen the unabashedly cruel side of the most outwardly pious individuals. Thinking critically about one’s faith and truly internalizing it as your own, rather than someone else’s, should be the norm. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving up your faith – it means experiencing the raw truth of spirituality without the dogma of religion. That path looks different for everyone, because if you’re doing it right, it should be deeply individual and unique to you.

Link to my last post, "The Song of the Universe"

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wrote a series of 27 poems exploring and capturing my belief system as it evolved into what it is today. This, "The Song of the Soul", was the second of those poems -- this one specifically about the soul or "fith" that gives my beliefs their name. I'd love to discuss and get thoughts on this. Hope you enjoy!

---

The Song of the Soul

Here begins the story of the fith.

It is said that all in space and time
Have at their core an essence unique,
An energy of a different realm.

It is the spark that lights the fire,
The kernel within the hailstone,
The beating heart within our bodies.

This essence is a gift from the Mind,
To all of its diverse creations.
This most special notion is called ‘fith.’

The fith may be better known as ‘soul,’
But definitions do ensnare it,
For it is far more fundamental.

The fith is one’s blood and whole being,
Personality, inclinations,
Thoughts, desires, and all of their wants.

The fith is within all living things,
Each unique in itself, for the Mind
Employs infinite diversity.

The fith may be understood as two:
The self, which one can easily control,
And the lesser mind, which can control.

In the self is personality,
A unique pattern of desires
Wherein rests one’s own identity.

The mind is incomprehensible,
And though it resides within the brain,
It has agency of its own will.

Alas, from where does the fith herald?

The Mind is like a beautiful tree,
Branching inside and out of itself
Forever in every direction.

The Mind inhabits all dimensions,
Unfathomable to its offspring
For all its profound complexity.

The Mind can not be visualized
By any one human brain in full,
For all things ever reside within.

These branches weave amongst each other,
Coming together at farthest points,
All while diverging within themselves.

These branches follow family lines,
Personality types, interests,
Desires, wants, needs — a tapestry.

Each fith, each soul, is but a thin slice
Of one of these infinite branches.
Each is connected to the other.

This beautiful embroidery is
You, your family, your friends, your pets,
Your neighbors, even your enemies.

All are knit from the same endless cloth,
Everyone a unique point in space,
In Time, and in our society.

Just as one can peer into the depths
Of the dark night sky, so can one peer
Into the depths of their existence.

The fith is an eternal being.

Energy cannot be created,
Nor can it be so wholly destroyed.
The universe itself condemns this.

Thus, even when the body passes,
The fith will ever remain in full
To live the eternity it earned.

One’s actions and decisions follow
From the crib all the way to the crypt.
It is said that you reap what you sow.

And although the fith may not enter
Another material body,
Nature encodes the soul’s attributes.

From parent to child they migrate,
Moving down the branches of the Mind
With each next generation of life.

In this way may the living preserve
The breath of the dead all around them,
Their forebears, neighbors in existence.

We are the offspring of existence,
The progeny of reality,
So let us tend to our family.

The Thieving One steals naught but from himself.
The hateful detest their own brethren.
The liars rather deceive themselves.

The calling of the fith is to work
To better the flawed world around
For the sake of all life, everywhere.

The fith has the most noble calling.

Hi everyone! I'm new here (just joined) but am excited to be a part of this community. Over the course of a year and a half, I wrote twenty-seven poems exploring my spirituality and religion after I left Christianity, and I'm at a point where I want to start sharing my writing for others to read.

The poem is the main focus of this post, but at the bottom of this post I pasted a snippet about my beliefs from a page on my blog website for context.

What follows is the first poem (both of the collection and the first one I wrote), called "The Song of the Universe":

---

THE SONG OF THE UNIVERSE

Here begins the story of all things.

Before there was, there simply was not.
But then at once, creation came forth,
Vomited from the vast emptiness.

Swiftly creation ballooned outward.
Its inner parts coalesced in heat
Unimaginably anarchic.

Matter formed at smallest of scales,
And from between the particle bonds
Welled up a force, a conscious being.

Infant in age but a sage in breadth,
The lifeblood of the universe flowed.
Rapidly it branched throughout the void.

Sluggish notions collided, a sea
Of such roiling uniformity
Unfathomable but to itself.

Within this force, aptly named ‘the Mind,’
Everything was that ever could be,
Would be, and even never would be.

As Time drew on, the universe cooled,
And seconds became millennia.
Mammoth structures began to emerge.

Rivers of stars spun around the eddies
That were the galaxies, bright and rife
With the atoms of the beginning.

The Mind, ever-present, sentient,
And sapient orchestrated all,
Fabric on the loom of the cosmos.

The force was pleased with its creation.

But the Mind, imbued with fatal flaw,
Racemic mix of opposite thoughts,
Came to rest on answer elusive.

On one hand buzzed desire to create,
Other inclination, sinister,
Yearned for naught but to delete it all.

The Mind did separate these two thoughts,
But its future it could not predict:
Two personas spawned in enmity.

That of creation was known as caste,
That of deletion was known as wemme,
Both filled with loathing from inception.

They went separate ways, the battle raged,
And the Mind feared for its proudest build
Against the infection that did spread.

That plague would strangle all that could breathe.
Existence would die with a whimper.
There was but one thing the Mind could do.

In one fell swoop, the Mind cordoned off
The lower space to save all the rest,
But the Mind wept for its profound loss.

But there was a loophole in the plot,
A way to save the life underneath,
One that required a new emotion.

As the beings evolved, became complex,
They began to think all on their own,
And love filled the gaps between them all.

Yes, it was love that would save them all.

Only love profound could bridge the gap
Between the physical and spirits.
Humanity could live forever.

However, as they grew and evolved,
That insipid infection claimed them
As its own, or tried to. Their minds stung.

Humans, ever complex and unique,
Fell victim to the doings of wemme.
Within all their own minds, they suffered.

But all the same, they kept pressing on,
A species proud, mostly self-aware,
That could never conquer every flaw.

In vain they tried to conquer nature,
In vain they tried to settle minds,
But that human spirit was restless.

Insatiable and unquenchable,
The soul craves more, more, and ever more,
Until bitter end approaches near.

There is but one simple solution,
So easy they may never believe,
But attainable it is indeed.

All one must do is look on upward.
The sky of blackest, star-studded night
Answers all, nothing to be desired.

The sheer wonder of all creation,
Infinitely diverse, full of awe,
That is what the soul does truly crave.

It is love that binds our creation.

---

My Beliefs

The core of faith, to me, is the soul. Not just the spirit, but the personality, the desires, and most importantly the mind of each individual all constitute their whole. I call this the fith – the ultimate core and center of being that emanates from reality. Everyone has one, and it is more or less imperishable. They move on to a life after death, where they exist as ghosts. It’s our job to keep their memories and legacies alive here, especially those of our ancestors. We are their continuation, in a way.

I do believe in a God – not an all-powerful and all-knowing one, but one that permeates everything and everyone. God is reality, more or less, and we are all a part of it together. Each of our minds are small slivers of this ultimate Mind. What I have settled on are three essential beams of living well, those being truth, curiosity, and character. There are certain mystical aspects to my beliefs as well.

I also believe that no one religion, philosophy, or system of beliefs can claim moral exclusivity. I do believe there is an overarching “Moral Law” that we should abide by, but that morality is a natural consequence of our common humanity, not an external force’s arbitrary command. Religion should be a choice and an individual experience, not a means by which to control the masses.

For my whole life, I’ve seen people surrender their spirituality into another’s hands, and I’ve seen the unabashedly cruel side of the most outwardly pious individuals. Thinking critically about one’s faith and truly internalizing it as your own, rather than someone else’s, should be the norm. It doesn’t necessarily mean giving up your faith – it means experiencing the raw truth of spirituality without the dogma of religion. That path looks different for everyone, because if you’re doing it right, it should be deeply individual and unique to you.