Bad Religion

I was married a million years ago. My ex husband was cheating on me and I put him out the day I found out. The entire process sent me into depression and I had insomnia. After a month I was delerious and desperate for sleep. One of my best friends suggested I get a meditation tape and listen to it to help me sleep. I got it and the very first time I listened to it I fell asleep. I was hooked. I listened to it every chance I could because when I was asleep that was the only time I wasn't feeling the pain of hurt and betrayal. After a month or so I ventured out and got another meditation cassette tape and started to feel better and better every day.

Curious about meditation and how it worked I started buying books on meditation to get a better understanding. Back in the 90s, I had never heard the term metaphysical before and it felt threatening to my Christianity so I embarked on a mission to learn all about world religions so that I could shore up my arguments that Christianity was the only true and right religion.

I took classes on Judaism and the Kabbalah and spent hours in the library reading everything I could. Six months later I declared myself a Jew. I came to the realization that there was truth in Judaism and I might as well read up on Islam to be able to debate intelligently if someone dare challenge me. I few months later I was pretty convinced I was Muslim.

I still had nagging, lingering questions that no religion seemed to answer but at the time I had been trained/brainwashed not to ask difficult or complex questions because I was pretty sure God would punish me to hell for not believing every word of whatever religion I was practicing. I kept on. Buddhism seemed most truthful of everything I had studied thus far but I was self-aware enough to recognize the pattern. I went back to identifying as Christian but with a comprehensive grasp of all sorts of religions.

It was around that time that I started studying Christanity. Not studying the bible but studying how Christianity came to be, trying to find evidence in history that could prove Christianity was the one true, right religion. What I learned rocked me to my core. I learned that Christianity was an invetion by white men to control the masses, to gain power, to hide real spiritual truths. It started to make sense why the concept of learning about other religions, about questioning God was considered heresy. Interestingly enough it was around this time I started to question everything I had grown to understand about sex and sexuality but that will have to wait for me to explain.

Fast forward to moving to Atl in the late 90s. I was meditating daily, with a group that became my family, and also alone. I started asking the Universe/God for clarity. I put a piece of paper up on my bathroom mirror that said, "I am open and receptive to thy loving spirit of truth." I would say it aloud every time I went into the bathroom. I was also in grad school in the African and African American studies dept. at the time so I could easily put the pieces together of how whites beat Christianity into us as a tool of control, how damaging that was to us psychologically as a people, and I had a greater understanding of the beauty of African religions by that time as well.

Growing up, my mother was a mistress, not in the BDSM sense of the word but in the adulterous whore context. She never went to church because she knew her life was foul. My grandparents and aunts and uncles were the ones to expose me to church. I remember in daily vacation bible school asking why. Why would God damn people to hell for not believing in Jesus if they had never even heard his name before? Why is God so petty that he did so many things to hurt so many people? If God is God, why does he care if you learn about other religions? Why is God a man?

I started to get the answers to those questions through my meditation. The answers didn't come the way I expected them to and they were way more scientific than religious. I just kept saying that I was open and receptive to thy loving spirit of truth.

On May 5th, 2000 the planets aligned. It was supposed to be the first time since Christ was born that they had all formed a straight line. I invited my meditation family over to my apartment and we had a group meditation.

Two days later I had a revelation, a grand epiphany. The truth of the Universe was revealed to me in a flash of a second. It was a sensatoon I will never forget because I was at work and three very distinct explanations of the Universe/God showed themselves to me at the exact same time in a fraction of a second.

In that moment, everything made sense. I understood everything, all my questions were answered. I understood why no religion was valid, how we are all connected. From that moment on I could no longer identify as Christian. I've continued to meditate and study all sorts of metaphysical things, physics, chemistry, and I studied consciousness in grad school to understand my revelations. I've had more revelations and they are all greater understandings of those initial three revelations.

It would be many years before I would ever tell anyone about my revelations. While I can discuss them openly now, I have no desire or inclination to convince anyone of what I believe, I don't need to prove my beliefs to anyone and I certainly don't want or need to debate anyone about religion.

My only requirement today is that in finding and meeting a partner, I require him not to practice a relgion. I want him to believe in something larger than us but I can't be comfortable with someone who practices and believes in the lies of man, of men whose intentions were to use religion to control and oppress people, and to monetize it to line their own pockets. Me dating someone who believes the world was created in 7 days or in an ark that can fit two of every animal on the earth would be akin to me dating someone who thinks Trump is a great president.

I am comfortable identifying myself as a practicing Scottieist, a religion of one.