I lost my faith after the passing of my biological mother. I should say I gave up on attempting to believe in something that made no sense to me. A violent rupturing of a spiritual connection between two people will do that to you, bring you to a place you did not know was there. Despair. I was lost in a void of grief that would determine my actions, unbeknownst to me, for years to come.
I remember I was attending Quisqueya Christian School a the time and I remember telling one of the staff about my loss of Christianity and this woman told me I was going to hell, according to her belief. But, such statements had no effect on me. I was grieving. I was lost. I was deep in wrath at how the woman who had brought me into this world had suffered. For all of her faith and ritual. She was a mere shadow of what she had been when she Crossed the Waters.
A fraction of a human being. That is what I saw the day before she died. A fraction that tore into me, wrecking havoc on my assumptions of reality. It was a crack in the sky, the moment she died. I wanted no light and found solace in shadow. I wrapped my pain around myself, a cloak to hide the little boy who so desperately screamed for his mother.
But that is quite alright, as the subsequent years of my life would teach me valuable lessons and hone my talents and skills. Not without a price, of course. For all things have a price. Knowledge and wisdom carry a heavy price. For the experience necessary to gain the wisdom to apply the knowledge may very well break you. You cannot know to what depths the events of your life will take you until it happens. When the very foundation of your reality is blasted into sand, sinking into nothing, surprised to find yourself still alive, a little weathered.
During my years in the military, I was in a
The sum of all things and the product of all sums are divided within back to One. Everything is connected. There is no separate part. As we hurtle through Existence, revolving around each other and other entities, the nature of this life presents itself to us in All That Is. One must be willing to see, to listen, and to feel. Clear the seven gates and the definitions the we so fearfully cling to will slip away, insignificant in the Light of the Infinite One. There I found my comfort: that I was connected to everything and that all things occur for reasons we cannot yet comprehend. Although, that is where the comfort ends, for with greater understanding comes greater responsibility and the road ahead is obscure and dangerous.
When I could not embrace nothingness any longer, I researched religion. I was in search of ritual to bring some semblance of order to my life. What I discovered was that all genuine spiritual systems speak the same Truth. Most importantly, I developed the sneaking suspicion that atheism was part of an Occidental dichotomy with Christianity. Or, to be more inclusive, Abrahamic
I am of the opinion that although some leave these congregations and fall into the frigid bosom of rationality and logic, they are still bound by the mental and emotional structures of those ideas they so fervently rail against. For example, those Ayisyen that leave the Catholic church – or any Christian church for that matter – because of a logical conclusion of atheism, but still believe that Vodou is devil worship. It’s like wanting to fight against and destroy the Matrix, but unwilling to leave the safety of the fetal pod. To grow and expand the mind requires redefinition of terms and redefinition of self. It can be scary, moving away from the comfort of
For myself, I think that the Universe is immense, infinite, and beyond our current understanding. Yet, religion is our way to honour that and live our lives in accordance with the Celestial. Religion is simply a set of rituals within a context of cultural relevance. So I went towards the one that resonated with the deep rhythm of my soul. I honour my Ancestors that reside beyond the Waters in Ginen, and I struggle everyday to live in accordance with Ginen. To be better than those that came before me, to be better than I am. I refuse to be bound by dusty ideas and constricting notions merely because I do not have the discipline to commit myself to something beyond myself, and yet of myself. Do not give in to despair and do not believe ideas that were forced upon you by others. Deep within is the answer. Deep in your mind, your emotions. Deep within your flesh lies your Ancestral memory that reverberates to the beating of the Cosmic Rhythm.
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