My thoughts on religion are... unconventional at best, but don't mistake that for me being a non-believer. No, I believe in a higher power. I believe there are mysteries that science cannot account for right now. I believe there is a Maker who set the wheels in motion from birth, though I do think this Maker wanted us to think for ourselves, to forge our own paths, and to leave this world better than how we entered it. I don't think that our existence is marked by a definitive beginning or end. Sure, we live and we eventually die, but death is not the end of anything, but rather a most intriguing mystery. Don't think this is me saying I am in a rush to solve said mystery, but it is intriguing nonetheless.
As I said before, there are some things the physical sciences simply cannot explain right now (or perhaps ever).
Among those inexplicable phenomena is what happens to us after we pass on to the next journey. Forgive the over-generalizations to come, but most religions account for some kind of afterlife, and it's so often quite binary. For Christians, we are judged for what we have done as mortals and are sorted into two camps: heaven or hell. Islam is quite similar in its belief in the afterlife: Paradise or Hell. For Buddhists, we are reincarnated into something else, based upon what we have done in our previous life. Again, this is both an oversimplified explanation of these theological beliefs and certainly an inexhaustive list of religious doctrine, but they often have a common thread: our afterlife is based upon what we do while we are mortal. And this all seems pretty straightforward: be a good person and you will be rewarded accordingly or be a bad person and be punished, for lack of a better word, accordingly.
Now, some would argue that our existence is based on nothing more than social perceptions and chemical reactions in our brains. We live, we die, and that's it. Call me naive or idealogical, but I have to believe there is more to our being here than that. I have to believe that we are more than a bunch of chemical reactions in the brain. Having said that, I also have to think that our thoughts and actions merit a closer examination than the binary outcomes described in many religious texts, and this is, I suppose, the sentence that connects all of my philosophizing with the rest of this entry.
Some doctrines do account for other outcomes for the human soul, but do not subscribe to the either/or philosophy of good versus evil or desirable versus undesirable outcomes in the world that comes next. There are lots of ways to describe it, but many know it as one word: Purgatory. Sure, this is traditionally a largely Catholic belief - a place reserved for those who are not quite so bad as to go to hell, but not quite so good to go to heaven to purge their sins; a place for those who have crawled from the depths of hell to purge their sins; a place that is neither good nor bad...a place somewhere in between here and there. Ambiguous. Unknown...perhaps even more unknown than the rest of the afterlife. While there may be some truth to the Catholic interpretation of the in-between, Purgatory is, to me, more or less the latter. An in-between. A place for unfinished business. A place where we're not quite ready to move forward, but it is too late to go back. A place for those who are still wandering, but not quite lost.
For many, this is a frightening concept - Dante even depicted Purgatory as a mountain with seven rather large terraces or levels (to be climbed AFTER one manages to crawl their way out of hell, at times). But I don't see it this way. No, in many ways, Purgatory seems like it makes sense. It doesn't seem like all that bad of a place.
Fair warning, I told you it was going to get weird.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a difficult time subscribing to any specific religion. I would probably consider myself to hold mostly Christian ideals, but I'd be lying if I said those were the only ones that made sense to me. I was raised Catholic, but I found and still find many of these beliefs to be in direct contradiction with many of my own and, in many ways, those contradictions have not been reconcilable. Granted, Pope Francis is changing that image ever so slightly, but I still wouldn't label myself as a practicing Catholic. Despite all of that, the idea of Purgatory - an idea so grounded in Catholicism - is one that has resonated with me, and not because of the traditional depictions of it (don't worry: I haven't forgotten that this same doctrine says the souls of unbaptized babies reside in Purgatory forever). To me, Purgatory represents much more than purging sins. That might be part of it, but that seems so negatively connoted.
To me, Purgatory represents another plane or realm or dimension where our souls go to finish otherwise unfinished business or to find redemption. It's just another stopping point in the afterlife - a layover, if you will. It may not be Paradise, but it certainly isn't Hell. I'm not sure where that leaves us - and that's why I interpret it as somewhere in between. How is that any different than the life we are living right now, on this planet? I'm not so sure that it is much different than the mortal realm.
What I am getting at here is that despite my shortcomings on finding a religion that really personifies what I believe in, that doesn't mean I am a non-believer or not spiritual. I believe in a higher power, a Maker. I believe in some kind of Paradise, some kind of Hell, and some kind of Purgatory or, as I think of it, the In Between. I believe in saints (another part of the Catholic faith that has stayed with me), angels, demons, and, for lack of a better word, spirits. And I believe that spirits are what populate this In Between.
I've thought a lot about spirits. Honestly, it's been difficult to not think about them. In addition to pop culture's saturating focus on what are often construed as perhaps malevolent beings, spirits are something I've always believed in - beings that I have always sensed. No, I am not saying that I talk to spirits or have seen spirits, but there are times when being alone somehow does not feel alone. There's a heaviness and a coldness that is really inexplicable. It moves through you, it lingers beside you, it watches behind you. A presence that you can almost pinpoint to an exact location, even though when you look, apparently nothing is there at all.
People call these feelings superstition. People blame my fascination with horror stories. People call this fear of the unknown. People suggest that it's something with the wiring or the pipes in the house, which is always mildly insulting regardless of whether or not science backs it up. People suggest it's some kind of psychosis. But when you feel something, you feel it and - excuse my frankness - given that these particular feelings neither hurt nor benefit anyone else (it is personal), I am not sure it's anyone's business or concern to tell me whether that feeling is valid or not. It just is.
That was sassy. Perhaps unnecessarily confrontational. But I'm used to defending my experiences.
I have conceptualized these feelings as "sensitivity," and I think people vary in their ability to sense this In Between. I sound like a self help book for psychics or mediums, but I'm not trying to sound that way. Maybe I am. I don't know. All I know is this: I consider myself at a lower to middle end of that spectrum. I have lots of stories - from playing with an Ouiji board as a naive 13 year old to working in two haunted movie theaters to living with a expressive cat to...well, the list goes on. No, I'm not a ghost hunter. No, I do not suffer from delusions. But, yes, I do believe I have experienced some type of phenomena that science cannot understand, bot those are stories for another day.
Why am I going on like a weirdo about feeling spirits and Purgatory and my spiritual beliefs? Because it is this sensitivity that has always given me faith: faith in religion (even when I disagree with some of it), faith in the afterlife, faith that there is more to this life than existing and then...well, not existing. It's given me faith in my fellow humans: we are not just a bunch of chemical reactions. It has given me faith, even when the feelings I do get are not wholly positive and even at times frightening. Again, those are stories for other entries.
So what does any of this have to do with my search for a macguffin? Honestly, I'm not sure, but I've certainly written a lot at this point toward...rambling, I guess. Spirituality and religion are such vague concepts. Does anyone truly follow all of the ideals of any single religion anymore? Or did they ever? I think one would be hard pressed to find someone who does. And yet religion is so powerful that it has brought people together, divided people apart, brought about hope and miracles in times of crisis, and brought about wars based on what are often simple ideological disagreements or misunderstandings. There has to be something there, right? I know some of you will disagree, and that's fine. I respect your opinion. I probably have had that opinion at some point. But that's not my opinion anymore.
And maybe that's it. I've mostly established that most of my beliefs are grounded in the Catechism, and the ones I hold otherwise are not any that go against those beliefs - if anything, they seem to accentuate them. So I suppose my next macguffin is this - and it's a big one - figuring out where I belong fit spiritually. I don't want to use the word "belong" because I think that is the wrong thing to be looking for in this situation, but I think finding my fit is appropriate to say. And I think I need to stop being complacent in that effort. Making excuses for not going to church because "it doesn't always fit my beliefs." Okay, fine. It may not. But why not go and try to get something out of it? Why not go to different churches each week? Why not explain to people my definition of spirituality? Why not defend those beliefs just because they don't fit the established doctrine all the time.
Why not?
If you reword the idea of an after life it fits science perfectly, you see science states you can not destroy energy only transfere it. You can not see energy buy you can feel its power in many ways. it can be gathered, released and be organized and contained but never destroyed so if you believe that God is a force ( energy ) and that same force ( your spirit ) is within you then there is science that shows you could be right!
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