The family I raised by were what I call “nominal Anglicans”. When asked, they said they were Anglicans, but they weren’t church goers. I had been baptised, and was taken to Sunday School – and that was where things started to go off course. Before I get into how things went of course, I would like to say I consider children should be raised by their parents to be capable of making independent, informed decisions as adults – including about politics, and also religion. (They also should be properly informed about sexuality, so they can be fulfilled in that area of life whatever their sexual preference – or gender identity – is, but sexuality is more case of realising what one inherently is, rather than making a decision to be straight or otherwise. Similarly for gender identity – see _ if you don’t understand these terms.) Being able to attend Sunday School actually meant I was informed about this belief system, and thus was better placed to make a decision about it. I would like to see comparative religious studies in schools for exactly that reason: so these young people are at least partly informed and thus better able to make a decision about a key part of their life, whether that decision is to follow a particular faith (not necessarily Christian), be agnostic or be atheist. (I also have to say I consider advocates for atheism to be as religious in their zeal for their belief system as some historical religious zealots.)
To return to Sunday Schools. I began to lose my faith in Christianity (not just the Anglican sect of Christianity) when my teachers told me animals don’t have souls. I could relate to my family’s pet (usually a cat, although we also had budgies) as having as much personality as any human round the place – and could see that in the wild animals (mostly birds) about us as well (and not always a likeable personality, just as the humans didn’t necessarily have a likeable personality). I spent my preschool and primary school years in an eastern Melbourne suburb, then called Syndal and a few decades ago subsumed into Glen Waverley (although the railway station is still called Syndal). At the bottom of the hill we lived on was a State forest, long since gone for more houses. In that forest were all sorts of fascinating interactions with nature – even things like finding a shed snake skin. The world of nature was a fascinating place; to say it had no soul anywhere in it was a catastrophic blow to my faith. I should probably thank the Sunday School teacher who took such a hard line: that led to me doing some of my first major, independent thinking. The conclusions from this independent thinking were that Christianity was not such a wonderful thing after all.
I still maintained some contact with the church, largely at the urging of my parents, but I also had a natural drive towards rituals. To maintain the Christian theme, my final loss of faith with Christianity was over “Sunday Christians”: people who would attend Church on Sundays for mass, preach love and forgiveness then, and later stab you in the back or behave in a most unchristianlike fashion during the week (especially at work).
To have such hypocrites trying to play the self-appointed role of uncle or aunt to me was utterly offensive and unacceptable to me. It was like being religiously mauled by a slimeball (and I wish to make clear I have NOT suffered any physical abuse from any religious official). It was the final straw.
A few years before I reached that decision, as a young teenager, I had come into contact with Buddhism (through the VERY controversial author Lobsang Rampa, who has a few obvious flaws such as sexism, but was definitely responsible for changing the sort of person I am [I wrote to tell Rampa that, but unfortunately my letter reached his widow as he had died). The personal responsibility emphasised by that faith appealed to me very strongly after the double standards exhibited by the “Sunday Christians”, although the particular author I read actually encouraged people to live in the faith they were born into. Strengthened by my earlier thinking about the souls of animals (i.e., don’t take anything or anyone as – if you’ll pardon the pun – gospel: do your own thinking), I thought about living the faith I believed or the faith I was given by others, and quickly realised I was being far more honest if I was true to my own beliefs rather than living a devotional lie.
In the end, although I had been confirmed as an Anglican, it was an easy decision to make. I didn’t sing about it from the roof tops (apart from anything else, the abysmal quality of my singing would led to an earlier implementation of noise pollution legislation [not in force at that time] so I could be removed from the rooftops), but it was something those close to me knew about. I had made a fair dinkum go at being Christian – even going to confession (yes, that’s not only a Roman Catholic thing; I did find the presumption that I would be obsessed with or having problems with sex quite laughable), and it wasn’t me.
I would spend the next three decades, more or less, with Buddhism as my primary faith. I combined this with many other paths – Qabbalah, shamanism, spiritualism, New Age, etc. Then in 2003 I attended the National Queer Spirituality Conference in Adelaide, South Australia. While there, I came across the Goddess and Wicca in a way that I hadn’t previously. After around ten years of doing full moon circles, it felt like “home”.
I spent the next few years learning a great deal about Wicca (I was more interested in honouring the cycles of the seasons than spells, so I usually described myself as Wiccan rather than a witch). During the course of that learning, I came across Druidry (or Druidism, if you prefer). It wasn’t an instant sense of recognition, but I gradually came to realise it had a better “fit” for me than Wicca. I now identify as a “Druid in training” (a phrase suggested by Jeff Lilly at his excellent “Druid Journal” blog at http://druidjournal.net/).
My motivations for these changes have still been positive, but the negative behaviour of others has also had an influence, unfortunately. After attending the NQSC, I had the good fortune to be a part of a talented and dedicated group of people who organised a Victorian Queer Spirituality Conference; in the course of that, I came across people who made concrete my concerns about Buddhism in the West. Those concerns are people who apply Buddhism as a form of “head knowledge”, rather than applying it to change themself or their life. I wish to make it very clear that this does NOT apply to those who actually participated in the Conference, who included some brilliant, dedicated, genuine adherents of Buddhism. During this time, I also experienced an example of poor management of problems within a tradition by overseas leadership of a tradition, which was very discouraging to myself and to others.
As a final point in this blog, I would like to say that the Buddhist saying “being yourself the example, do only good” is relevant to a lot of things we do in life. Others will learn from what you do in your paths: be mindful of that.
To return to Sunday Schools. I began to lose my faith in Christianity (not just the Anglican sect of Christianity) when my teachers told me animals don’t have souls. I could relate to my family’s pet (usually a cat, although we also had budgies) as having as much personality as any human round the place – and could see that in the wild animals (mostly birds) about us as well (and not always a likeable personality, just as the humans didn’t necessarily have a likeable personality). I spent my preschool and primary school years in an eastern Melbourne suburb, then called Syndal and a few decades ago subsumed into Glen Waverley (although the railway station is still called Syndal). At the bottom of the hill we lived on was a State forest, long since gone for more houses. In that forest were all sorts of fascinating interactions with nature – even things like finding a shed snake skin. The world of nature was a fascinating place; to say it had no soul anywhere in it was a catastrophic blow to my faith. I should probably thank the Sunday School teacher who took such a hard line: that led to me doing some of my first major, independent thinking. The conclusions from this independent thinking were that Christianity was not such a wonderful thing after all.
I still maintained some contact with the church, largely at the urging of my parents, but I also had a natural drive towards rituals. To maintain the Christian theme, my final loss of faith with Christianity was over “Sunday Christians”: people who would attend Church on Sundays for mass, preach love and forgiveness then, and later stab you in the back or behave in a most unchristianlike fashion during the week (especially at work).
To have such hypocrites trying to play the self-appointed role of uncle or aunt to me was utterly offensive and unacceptable to me. It was like being religiously mauled by a slimeball (and I wish to make clear I have NOT suffered any physical abuse from any religious official). It was the final straw.
A few years before I reached that decision, as a young teenager, I had come into contact with Buddhism (through the VERY controversial author Lobsang Rampa, who has a few obvious flaws such as sexism, but was definitely responsible for changing the sort of person I am [I wrote to tell Rampa that, but unfortunately my letter reached his widow as he had died). The personal responsibility emphasised by that faith appealed to me very strongly after the double standards exhibited by the “Sunday Christians”, although the particular author I read actually encouraged people to live in the faith they were born into. Strengthened by my earlier thinking about the souls of animals (i.e., don’t take anything or anyone as – if you’ll pardon the pun – gospel: do your own thinking), I thought about living the faith I believed or the faith I was given by others, and quickly realised I was being far more honest if I was true to my own beliefs rather than living a devotional lie.
In the end, although I had been confirmed as an Anglican, it was an easy decision to make. I didn’t sing about it from the roof tops (apart from anything else, the abysmal quality of my singing would led to an earlier implementation of noise pollution legislation [not in force at that time] so I could be removed from the rooftops), but it was something those close to me knew about. I had made a fair dinkum go at being Christian – even going to confession (yes, that’s not only a Roman Catholic thing; I did find the presumption that I would be obsessed with or having problems with sex quite laughable), and it wasn’t me.
I would spend the next three decades, more or less, with Buddhism as my primary faith. I combined this with many other paths – Qabbalah, shamanism, spiritualism, New Age, etc. Then in 2003 I attended the National Queer Spirituality Conference in Adelaide, South Australia. While there, I came across the Goddess and Wicca in a way that I hadn’t previously. After around ten years of doing full moon circles, it felt like “home”.
I spent the next few years learning a great deal about Wicca (I was more interested in honouring the cycles of the seasons than spells, so I usually described myself as Wiccan rather than a witch). During the course of that learning, I came across Druidry (or Druidism, if you prefer). It wasn’t an instant sense of recognition, but I gradually came to realise it had a better “fit” for me than Wicca. I now identify as a “Druid in training” (a phrase suggested by Jeff Lilly at his excellent “Druid Journal” blog at http://druidjournal.net/).
My motivations for these changes have still been positive, but the negative behaviour of others has also had an influence, unfortunately. After attending the NQSC, I had the good fortune to be a part of a talented and dedicated group of people who organised a Victorian Queer Spirituality Conference; in the course of that, I came across people who made concrete my concerns about Buddhism in the West. Those concerns are people who apply Buddhism as a form of “head knowledge”, rather than applying it to change themself or their life. I wish to make it very clear that this does NOT apply to those who actually participated in the Conference, who included some brilliant, dedicated, genuine adherents of Buddhism. During this time, I also experienced an example of poor management of problems within a tradition by overseas leadership of a tradition, which was very discouraging to myself and to others.
As a final point in this blog, I would like to say that the Buddhist saying “being yourself the example, do only good” is relevant to a lot of things we do in life. Others will learn from what you do in your paths: be mindful of that.
This post's photo is on Westernport Bay, Victoria, taken during the seven years I lived on a small yacht.
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
Love, light, hugs and blessings
Gnwmythr
Tags: Buddhism, Druid, energy work, New Age, past lives, Qabbalah, regression, rituals, shamanism, spiritualism
First published: 30th June, 2007
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