Where Is Your Personal God?

I have looked myself for the possibilty of some kind of deity. My family has a fair amount of religion, my grandfather being a Southern Baptist preacher(or minister? Maybe reverend? I never know which denomination calls them which title) and every member of the generation prior to me were all deeply involved with every aspect of running a church and being model fundamentalists. I came along and the indoctrination started from birth, practically. I thought the stories were fun, but never believed that any of the tales could be remotely true. I asked why God wanted to do such terrible things to us if He loved us, which never wound up with a satisfactory explanation. I decided that if there were no logical reasons for it, then I didn't need it in my life. I spent the first decade of my memorable life trying to understand the people who were supposed to be my family, knowing that alienation was soon going to cause me to move in with other relatives, searching for the feeling they called God, and never finding it in the places that others claimed to experience it.

As I grew older, I read more and more, studying the human condition as best I could in a poorly funded public library with books 35 years out of date. Eventually I stumbled upon hallucinogens, and found the feeling that so eluded me during my youth. The only difference was that I didn't find God or have any religious experience while tripping, and was fully conscious of the fact that I was hallucinating throughout that entire experience. It was the final proof I needed to temper my resolve in non-belief, I never wasted my time looking for something that isn't there again. I had found a way to feel the same mind-blowing awe that others felt by "communing with God," and I could control it, learning what it must be like to live with such heavy mental and emotional castration tainting every aspect of life in believers.

I am glad that I can at least put myself in the shoes of someone with untreated schizophrenia that is capable of living among hordes of similar patients. It worries me, however, because I remember the horrible things these ill people are capable of in order to maintain the illusion that they're disease is saving them from their inevitable, and hopefully sudden, end.

The quest to find my personal God led me down the path of actual understanding and wisdom. I didn't find any deity, I found the chemistry that makes people think a deity is there.

http://skl.sh/ZOpqwR