The spiritual life of an atheist

Spiritual life is a complex subject, particularly taking into account that every person has their own experience and rightfully so, so trying to discuss points of view is, in many ways moot. I mentioned already some months ago that I was raised in the a loosely christian family, but in the meantime I have drifted away into a fervent atheism, which does not prevent me from having a somewhat spiritual life. However, the path to arrive at this point has been long and tortuous, it has taken me years and a lot of lucubration to reach a point where I can say I am satisfied with my spiritual life.

For many years I had little choice but to follow the rites and norms dictated at home: we would say grace before dinner and go to church on Sundays, but that was the extent of it. Furthermore, we were not even reminded of saying our prayers before going to bed or repent for our sins in everyday life, so compliance was rather easy. Furthermore, this tradition was mostly supported by my father, while my mother (already divorced) was investigating other religious trends and invited a "philosophical" approach to religion: if we did not have faith, at least we could take the time to reflect. Still, the moment I drove of to university the reaction was brutal, for months and years I did not give religion any additional thought other than the occasional Christmas Mass.

Photo: Ankur P

While I was finishing my Masters one day my mother mentioned that she had had an interesting conversation with a sufi, who pointed out that her search for transcendence in foreign religious traditions was pointless, because essentially all traditions are equivalent and it would be much easier for her to feel the belonging in a community that followed the ancestral local beliefs, than trying to find a newly-established group of followers of some far-off creed. So after many, many years and a trip over several flavors of East-Asian mysticism, she called once more on Christianity. That had me thinking.

In the end, there are essentially three kinds of prayers: thanksgiving for the blessings, asking for forgiveness for our weaknesses and asking for help for our future endeavors (optionally for someone else's too). The funny part is that all these thoughts could be re-told in a secular tone and still make perfect sense. It makes sense to feel fortunate for the things that have gone well, from your birthplace or your family to the near-miss in traffic this morning; happiness is a very fickle bird and can take flight anytime, so better take the chance to enjoy it while it is there. It makes sense to confront your mistakes and weaknesses, because that is the first step in the path to better yourself. And it makes sense to spell the challenges that lie ahead, acknowledge that they will be taxing and only with a conscious effort will you be able to overcome them. And it is good to have this kind of summary every now and then.

In the end, I reached the conclusion that it might be helpful to have a brief reflection with my kids at bedtime, so I started talking with them while I tucked them in: Think of one good thing that happened to you today, one thing that you regret of today and one challenge that you have for tomorrow. It worked really well for several years, from the moment they were able to perform this kind of reflections until they were too old to ask me to tuck them in. But I am quite happy with the result, because it gave me a chance to understand (at least to some extent) where they stood.

In recent years, following my eclectic trends, I have incorporated a small part of the Shinto mysticism, albeit only in a symbolic manner. The kami, the spirits of the things and the natural phenomena, are nothing but the representation of the hard nature of reality: things are what they are and not what we want them to do  (i.e. the spirits have their own agenda, not necessarily aligned to ours). Our plans reveal our intention to use things to achieve our goals, but things can go wrong (i.e. the spirits might decide not to play along and derail our projects). Finally, if we succeed it is not only our own doing, but also thanks to a generous contribution of luck (i.e. the gods in all things have supported us, but that was not a given, so they should also take credit for the success).

On Friday I forgot to mention my last experiment: cued by Ginny's remarks about self discovery and all her New-Age jargon I decided to give meditation a chance and signed up for a basic course in Headspace. For ten days in a row I have been devoting five minutes each day to focus on my breathing and then observe the wanderings of my mind. Ginny pointed out that she has such a busy head that she has a lot of trouble focusing at all, but I did not find it particularly difficult. One thing that I took out (or maybe four) is a brief summary of the whole mindfulness idea, which I have extracted from this article.:

• Openness: Be curious as to how you feel, do not be afraid of what you will find.
  
• Non-judgemental: Do not judge your thoughts and emotions in good and bad, they are whatever they are, just try to recognize them.
• Compassion: If you have a feeling, there must be a cause for it, do not fight it, just embrace it.
• Non-attachment: Feelings and ideas are bound to change with time, and that is good because like keeps moving, so when the time comes for a change, let it happen and do not entrench in ideas that are not your own anymore.

I leave you today with a lot of self-reflections, and I can only hope that you have found something useful for yourself. If that is the case, I am happy to have helped; if not, I might get lucky next time. Until then, please have a great week and stay safe.