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[Mar. 20th, 2011|08:14 pm] |
Been doing a lot of thinking lately, the same topics tend to pop up all the time and I still really don't have answers for them, which gets frustrating after a while. This may be rambly and sort of nonsensical and I apologize.
Religion is one of those things that's always sort of evaded me. I'm not AGAINST it, but I've just never found something that clicked, you know? I know very well that I'm not any flavor of Christian, the whole system just feels rather off to me and I've never been one for the 'single omnipotent being' thing. I know it's all a matter of belief but that's the problem, figuring out WHAT exactly I believe and what, if anything, matches up with it.
I don't know or particularly care what happens after death- I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, and if there's some sort of bonus for being a halfway decent person while I've been here, then awesome. As far as forces beyond our control, sight, and/or reckoning, sure, I think there's something. That's the frustrating bit. I believe there's something there but I have no idea what it might be. I've run into enough strange and potentially supernatural things in my life that I can't write all of it off. I like logic but there are things that logic doesn't touch, I've felt some of them. Luck has always sort of been a thing for me, I have a relationship with coincidence and timing that's fickle but consistently strong. I've got a tendency to be exactly where I needed to be, whether I was aware I needed to be there or not, and a lot of 'coincidental' things just aren't, for me. I have a tarot deck, I worked with that for a while, and no matter how well I shuffle it I have always drawn The Tower. Readings other people have done for me include it too. The first time I ever tried a three-card draw for myself, I made note of the cards, reshuffled as well as I could, and drew again. Exact same three. Shuffled again. Same three. Sure, it's within the realm of possibility and total luck, but come on.
I have a lot of really weird dreams that sometimes just resonate in a sort of way that feels like they're maybe supposed to mean something, but fuck if I know WHAT. Most of them are weird in the "hey, that was a pretty odd dream" sort of way but some of them- I don't know. The other night I had one that left me feeling more disturbed than any of them have left me before. In this dream I was somehow pregnant with a bunch of fish- don't ask how, hell if I know- and trapped in some sort of old, abandoned building. It was all completely blank, absolutely no life to it, and I was worried because I had no aquarium for my fish to be put into. The majority of the dream was just a lot of tension and fear, I knew it was soon and was just waiting, and was for some reason very ashamed of those fish being there in the first place. Eventually, just before I woke up, we located a small aquarium for them, and finally they came out- but they were all already dead, their eyes were all glazed over and they were cold. I couldn't get back to sleep after that one, it just- bothered me way, way too much.
I half-wonder if some of my problems finding something that works for me is due to how I was raised. Just about my whole family is Christian of some flavor, I went to church occasionally, but God was never a comforting idea. It scared the FUCK out of me. "God is always watching you," to my five-year-old self, was a terrifying idea- something was always watching me? ALWAYS? Even in the bathroom? They told me yes, he was watching then, too. I guess they thought it was a comforting idea, that he was always looking after me, but I just wanted to pee in solitude and was horrified that God couldn't leave me alone for five minutes to go. They taught me that God was something that knew everything, saw everything, controlled everything- I asked my grandma once where babies came from and was told, "When God decides it's time for a woman to have a baby, he makes her pregnant." I went to my room and cried, and immediately prayed to ask him to please never make me have a baby, because I didn't want to. This is the sort of thing that's stuck with me ever since I was a small child, because everything Christianity ever taught me about God freaked me right the fuck out.
When I was older and realized I didn't HAVE to be Christian, as I had thought for years, I eventually got up the courage to try experimenting and made the mistake of bringing this up to my mom and stepdad, who had just gotten back into Christianity in a big way. Mom blamed herself for my lack of faith, for not being very religious herself and not taking me to church or anything. I was told that experimentation was fine- within various sects of Christianity. If I wanted to try, say, Buddhism? I was told they'd do everything possible to stop me from going anywhere that would encourage that- take my car away, not let me leave the house, all of that.
So that's my issue. |
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