Interlude: When We Are Afraid of Our Own Blogs
If you look at the date on the previous post, or if you have this blog in your feed reader, you’ll notice I haven’t written here in quite a while. Here is what a block feels like: “I just have nothing to say…”. But underneath that silence is a whole lot of stuff. Feelings and beliefs, mostly. And just recently, it’s beginning to unfold.
Here is one thing: I want to write about God.
Not the white-haired-dude-in-the-sky, of course. Rather, the interconnectedness underneath everything, and how to access it and why it matters and what it means, and how a misunderstanding of it leads to crappiness.
All fine and good, but I grew up in a very intellectual home, and “believing in God” just seemed sort of low class. Intelligent, sophisticated people just don’t talk about that sort of thing. If you wanted to do that in the privacy of your own home, fine, but keep it to yourself.
So essentially, I am afraid. I am afraid smart, interesting people will think I am stupid, delusional, need some kind of crutch to get through life, etc. Because that is exactly what I grew up thinking about people who believed in anything.
And when I run across people like this - intelligent, interesting atheists - I feel anxious and want to “convert” them. (I realized this recently, to my chagrin - how crass!) I feel the urge to tell them how I used to think like them, and I was wrong, and I was so close-minded, and I just didn’t understand before, and they are not hearing what I really mean.
And you can imagine how seriously un-fun that conversation would be.
But what I’m realizing is that underneath that anxious desire to convince them that I’m right, I just want validation. I want someone to say “OK, I see why you think that, that makes sense to me”. Because whatever my connection to Spirit was as a kid, it was never, ever validated. Whatever I believed in was squashed, repeatedly and definitively.
For example, when I was very young I believed in Care Bears for awhile — imaginary helpful teddy bears that live in the coulds. And when my brothers went on a trip, they took pictures out of the airplane windows of the clouds to prove me wrong. This was the atmosphere I grew up in. So I want people who are skeptical to believe me so I feel like I’m not crazy. Which I often did, as a kid. So I project a little bit of my family dynamics onto these unwitting strangers, and then try to make the past come out different. And/or, I live in fear of them judging me.
Which, on the whole, is not a great energy with which to approach teaching or writing.
What this points to of course is just another internal area that needs healing, and that’s fine. But I just wanted to come out with it: sometimes this blog scares me shitless and pushes all my buttons.
I feel constantly afraid of being ridiculed, although that has never happened here. I will have recurring thought trains that I ought to be able to justify my thoughts on God with logic and proofs and arguments based on new physics.
But I can’t — I don’t actually know that much about physics, and my connection to the Divine is not logical, it’s intuitive. I can describe the sense it makes to me, but I can’t lead someone from atheism to spiritual connection in a logical argument. And if I could, it would miss the fundamental point: God only matters if you feel that inner connection, and that is between you and whatever you feel is at the heart of things. I don’t know what your path is — it’s yours, and it has to unfold for you.
It’s very hard, when you find a path that leads you to liberation, to not decide it’s the best path for everyone. And this urge is compounded if you have a fear that you are crazy if people don’t agree with you.
For the most part, I’m fine, but devout atheists punch a particular button having to do with my childhood, and that’s what I fear–that someone will come along and trigger the painful feelings of being invalidated so often as a kid, about something that later turned out to be a huge part of who I am and the work I want to do in the world.
So, there it is. Now I can work with it. Hello, fear. =)
We can all be vibrantly alive and happy. Here I discuss the ideas and tools that will get us there.
Here via Twitter and @Brampitoyo. I think you make absolutely valid points. Not only that, you have me considering the ways in which our family dynamic is similar to yours in your childhood, and whether I am doing all that I can as a parent to encourage my kids to find their *own* spiritual path. (I am an atheist. It makes sense to me, but it is not my place to encourage atheism in my kids. I think they should be allowed to find their own answers.)
As to thinking you are crazy, worthy of ridicule, or are ‘leaning on a crutch to get through life,’ well, hell. That isn’t my place to determine, AT ALL. Each person must find the answers to their own spiritual quest, and no one, NO ONE, has the right to say someone else’s answer is the wrong one.
Bad News: I’m one of those scary atheists.
Good News: It makes sense to me.
Bad News: I can’t explain it either.
Good News: I can explain how I found it.
Bad News: People won’t listen if they don’t want to know the truth.
Good News: It doesn’t matter if other people don’t listen.
Bad News: This comment sucks.
I was/am the ardent atheist/skeptic in the family (the rest just aren’t interested in talking about it really). However, for me there’s a big difference between choosing to believe in something because you’ve had doctrine drilled into your head, or because accepting someone else’s answers are easier than coming up with your own (which is where the angry ranting about people believing in God because they’re lazy/stupid/weak comes from, and yes I confess to my fair share of that ranting) and people accepting their experiences for what they are and talking about them in ways that make sense to them and enable the best communication possible (which leads to paragraphs like “Not the white-haired-dude-in-the-sky, of course. Rather, the interconnectedness underneath everything, and how to access it and why it matters and what it means, and how a misunderstanding of it leads to crappiness.” - assuming I’m reading it correctly).
My path recently has included starting to open up more and more to what others would define as spirituality, the soul, God and other words that, due to a rather boring story, make me think of stuff that isn’t so fun and gets in the way of the conversation.
A large part of that has come through two things which I am still in the middle of working with. One is The Work by Byron Katie, and the other is Core Transformation by Connirae and Tamara Andreas.
Both are process with nice crisp delineated steps (which my poor math riddled brain can cope with and see as secure), both follow logical progressions and have clear approaches that do not require belief, faith or anything else that might cause me to pull away. Both can result in profound emotional experiences that shift your understanding of the world, and can release/remove/heal pain and suffering.
Both, when taken further, following the same logic/thinking, come to a point where thinking becomes irrelevant or unhelpful and the experience that is left is one which starts to resemble spiritual teachings.
I’m not in a position to claim they solve the issue of a logic route to belief, and I could only claim this for my personal experience anyway, but they’ve certainly allowed me to experience things that I would usually put in the domain of spirituality as opposed to logic.
I’m still against abuse of religion, for power, control, manipulation, but this is as true as my being against abuse of media, abuse of politics and abuse of statistics (to name but a few) that are for the same ends.
Suffice to say, I’m an atheist as far as my understanding of what others will understand by the word goes (is this getting way to wordy and obtuse now?), but when people say they believe in god I’m not jumping to conclusions any more.
I’ve talked to people to want to see what the truth of their reality is, and people who want to defend their view of reality as it stands, the latter will never be open to thinking about things differently, no matter how you present it. Fortunately, though we can’t make others change, we can change ourself and find a way to accept them as they are. Or so I’ve read - I’m still working on that last part.
Good to read you again, Emma.
James
Whew, I am actually feeling a lot of relief. I guess naming your fear of your blog, out loud on your blog, is pretty therapeutic. And then having people comment who are your worst-fear-but-not-really-because-they-are-nice is great. =)
I guess there is a difference between close-minded atheists and open-minded ones, just like there is a difference between close-minded Christians and open-minded ones, etc. I mean, I don’t get any further with hardcore Christians on these topics than I do with atheists.
The issue of words is a tricky one. If I use the word God, I get a lot of inherited meaning that has power and is useful, and a lot of inherited meaning that is painful and confusing and that is not useful. But it gives me a starting place at reframing it, and that’s part of what I want to do for people, who are interested. And yes, accept the people who aren’t and not stress about it.
Well, heck, Emma. (I)An-ok sent me a link, and I read this and I still think it’s amazing, and we’re sisters.
Makes perfect sense to me, for what it’s worth. And wow, familiar. That fear: “I am afraid smart, interesting people will think I am stupid, delusional, need some kind of crutch to get through life, etc.”
And, for me, also a loneliness. I want so much to be able to find a way to explain it that will make sense to them. And I think you’re right, that it’s their path, and we can’t “explain” God. (Thanks for that. It helped me to hear it.)
Peace to you, love,
Angela
hi emma,
guess what: i am a stranger from hong kong, who chanced upon your blog when googling the words “god is bottom up”. i liked your post of the same title, and some others too.
just wanna share with you this article on ‘god’ that makes a lot of sense to me - and fun to read too:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/looking-for-loki-in-all-the-wrong-places-20080619-2t7e.html
would like to hear your thoughts on it too.
good day,
fai