r/pantheism

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.

Title says it all. I recently came to pantheism and want to learn more and more. So, I am wondering what books/writings I could possibly read to gain more knowledge. Do you know if there are any on Kindle? I'm loving this group, so thank you all in advance.

I'm interested in learning more about pantheism as it's completely new to me, I am not a religious person and never have been really, until I heard of this faith.

Is there such things as groups or meetings? Like Sunday mass in Christianity?

Christian preacher got me down in the dumps at pride today. I’m a strong pantheist and Nothing could waver my faith, but how is morality justified like murder and stuff?

Hey everyone! Apologies in advance, as this will be a bit rambly. I'm kind of processing my thoughts as I go here. I'll bold some headlines to hopefully make it more digestible.

To start, a little context:

I was raised Catholic and have long struggled with the rigidity as well as the arbitrary benchmarks of what is deemed holy versus what is deemed sinful. E.g.: prayer vs. sex.

Enter, pantheism:

As a result, I've made the intentional decision to explore beliefs that feel more inherent and true to me. This is where pantheism comes up. I've been interested in the concept of pantheism for several months. I told a friend just yesterday, as I was standing under a waterfall, "I don't know what my religion is, but waterfalls have something to do with it."

So I don't know what kind of pantheist I am, but I'm trying to allow myself the space and time not to have to give it a title or category. Though I will admit that I'm having a difficult time doing so.

My struggle with a lack of structure:

I'm having a complicated relationship with the lack of structure in pantheism, despite resonating with pantheistic beliefs. I know it feels true to me because there has never been something about it that I had to fight. Whereas with Catholicism, on the other hand, I tried to force myself to believe that confessing my sins to a priest made sense, or that being queer was wrong.

With pantheism, I feel a sense of freedom in the lack of structure, because it's so far removed from the doctrine that only ever made me feel inherently wrong. Conversely, I also don't know what to do with such a lack of structure.

In part, I miss Catholic masses and the way I could go to a Catholic mass anywhere in the world and would always hear the same service, just in different accents or languages. That kind of familiarity feels comforting and like home to me.

I'm also autistic, so I know that's playing a role in my appreciation of predictability.

Looking for guidance:

That said, I'm looking for ways to give Pantheism more of a structure. Nothing oppressive - I don't want to make pantheism something it's not - I just kind of want active ways to help it feel more intentional, directional, or something along those lines.

What are some ways you guys practice pantheism? Do you have shrines, prayers, rituals? Observances?

Any mindset shifts that act as a guide for you?

Mindset shift examples I've heard:

• For example, I heard someone refer to a bird as their relative.
• Or someone said, in reference to trees in a forest, "I know these people really well."
• I've also seen people capitalize names of animals and plants, using proper noun capitalization rules to underline their significance. E.g., "Look at this Moss I saw on my walk today."

I thought these were so beautiful and resonated deeply with them.

Final thoughts:

I know that it's a personal journey, and in time, I'll find things that make sense to me. But in the meantime, I'd love to hear if any of you have ways of making pantheism feel like a way of life and not just a loose concept or vague belief.

Additionally, if you have any suggestions on further embracing the open-endedness of this belief system, I'd appreciate it! I think pantheism/Nature has a lot to teach me in way of seeing fluidity as a strength rather than something to squelch out.

I love reading the interesting questions and responses circulating on this subreddit and look forward to hearing what you guys have to say! TIA <3

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.

God created us, He Created the galaxies, the galaxies created the stars, the stars created the planets, and our planet created us. It was all accomplished through what we would call the laws of physics. There is no Will but God's, and since God's Will is Love, it allows itself to be free, giving every individual the choice between distorting that Will into division/hate, or leaving it undistorted as Unity/Love.

The Truth is all that exists, and the Truth is Love/God. You are Love. Any belief that says otherwise is claiming that you are not the Truth, which is all that exists. What is not true has no reality to it. You are Love. The beliefs that claim otherwise serve to dismantle the basis of happiness. Examine those beliefs very closely.

I’m normally a very optimistic, silver linings kind of person. I find all the little things to be grateful for. I show kindness to people even if I don’t know them.

I know it’s not a transactional faith, but I feel like every time I turn around something in the house breaks, or a dog needs to go to the vet, you name it.

Is there something I should be doing to ask the Universe for some balance?