I have never been a religious person. I would say that I have some spirituality in my life, but none of it is directed toward an organized religion. In contrast, I have spent the vast majority of my life vehemently anti-religious. Specifically towards Christianity. This is largely because my mother was a devout Christian, and despite this faith and devotion to her god, she was stricken with an absolutely god-awful disease. Despite her years of devotion and, I can only imagine, a multitude of prayers, she still withered away into nothing and died a slow and absolutely miserable death, after years of living in misery. Growing up with this constant reminder of the crappier side of life, made it next to impossible for my young mind to accept concepts like an “all knowing, all loving father.” I saw none of the purported love, and therefore couldn’t find the faith that others around me seemed to find so easily. Instead of faith, I found anger. Whether she was angry or not I don’t know, but I was mad at my mother’s god both for her and for me. Any god that would allow suffering like that in the world, was no god of mine. Therefore, I had no god.
In all honesty, I found much more sense in the Greek and the Roman gods. They were selfish, spiteful and vengeful. This behavior fit my life experiences much better than a Christian god. Even so, I was much too pragmatic to accept that canon. I was steadfastly non-religious and I wore my non-religiosity like a badge of honor. The faithful would try to convert me, so I would argue with the faithful and try to convert them to my way of thinking. I took great pride in shaking their faith. I know for a fact that I sent a couple of devotees to their priests for ecclesiastical clarification and reassurance. I quickly lost track of how many times I was told that someone was, “going to pray for me.” I am no longer proud of these actions, realizing that they were simply desperate attempts to release some of the boiling anger I had inside. It never worked.
I’m sure that at this point, some of you are expecting me to announce that I have had some miraculous change of heart and have found god. Nope. That has not happened. In fact, when I first started seeing my current therapist she asked me if I wanted to address the obvious issues that I have with religion. I let her know that under no uncertain terms was I interested in doing that. Apparently that particular fire is what keeps me warm at night and I can’t address it without fear of freezing in the dark. She acknowledged my wishes and we moved on to other topics. After all, I was suffering from PTSD at the time, we had PLENTY of other things to deal with. However, once we got that in hand, she questioned my spirituality, and how I maintained that if I didn’t have a god or larger entity of any sort. No judgement, just curiosity. This conversation ended in her recommending a book to me – Autobiography of a Yogi.
I think she wanted to expose me to a non-Christian faith, and journey to find faith. I have finally gotten around to reading this book, and in all honesty, my bullshit meter has been going off a lot! Especially all of the instances where he talks about his guru divinely healing someone, or meditating to find a cure to an ailment. I’m sorry, I don’t care how long I meditate, or who puts their hands on me and wishes me well, if I eat a bunch of bread I’m going to wind up in the hospital. No amount of wishing or believing is going to change that, just like no amount of wishing or believing could change my mother’s life. Until I see it with my own eyes, I will never be able to accept that tenet regardless of what religion you’re talking about. I can’t take that leap of faith. I don’t have it in me.
I did not find this surprising. Either the presence of healing stories within the book, or my inability to accept them as true. What did surprise me, is that early on in the book the Yogi, on more than one occasion, refers to a Christ-like disciple. At first, my hackles went up. What was Christ doing in my Hindu book?!? I kept going. The next thing I know, the book is discussing Genesis and Adam and Eve in both the Christian sense and the Hindu sense. I have actually lost track of all of the Biblical references in this book about a Yogi. Color me flabbergasted! Not only did this Yogi read the Bible, he was encouraged to study and learn from it by his guru. He obviously was not encouraged to become a Christian, but that didn’t stop him from studying what they had to say. The next thing that I knew, I was following along and I was interested. For the first time that I can remember, I was thinking about Christianity and I wasn’t mad. Huh? I still don’t believe in god, and I still have absolutely no faith in divine healing, but for the first time I can feel some of that anger slipping away. Who knows, maybe that is divine healing?