From Dante’s Divine Comedy
This post swam in my head for a while, even before I started this blog. I originally envisioned entitling it “Motherhood and My Third-of-Life Spiritual Crisis.” It would chronicle my religiously-unaffiliated upbringing, my strident atheism as a teenager and young adult, and then describe how allofasudden, I got slammed with a desire for connection, meaning, that-which-is-greater-than-us-all, and spirituality after becoming a mother in my thirties.
But I understand now that my search wasn’t new, it wasn’t something that just hit me; it had been slowly evolving in me over several decades.
An Atheist’s Spiritual Journey
In high school, I took a World Humanities course that introduced me to Hinduism, Buddhism, and eastern philosophies that embraced the one-ness of the universe. The class inspired me to read books about spirituality and religion as a teenager. In college, my intellectual fascination with eastern religions deepened as a History major with a concentration area in the history of India. I loved the ideas in these religions… but actually meditate? ponder a Zen koan? believe in karma? Too “woo-woo” and SO-not-rational. And would atheists even do those things? I thought not. So instead of taking the spiritual journey myself, I read and admired the travel guides, and told myself it was pretty much the same thing.
As the demands of beginning a career in teaching seemed to overtake my life in my twenties, I didn’t think much about religion. Eventually, I got married, and I had two beautiful children. New motherhood was amazing, profound, and moving, but also frightening, overwhelming, and sometimes paralyzing. I felt isolated and incompetent in ways I had never encountered before. Though I didn’t recognize it at the time, I was suffering from postpartum depression and anxiety; all I knew then was that it felt like I would never be myself again. Though I wasn’t quite yet “midway upon the journey of [my] life,” I found myself in that “forest dark,” with the “straightforward pathway” no longer serving my deepest needs.
I had always approached my life through knowledge ~ read this book to understand that problem ~ but now I needed wisdom. I couldn’t think myself out of depression, I had no textbook to chart the path to contented motherhood, and {to my immense Type-A frustration} I couldn’t simply create a binder to organize the many roles I was attempting to balance ~ wife, mother, teacher, me.
So I started on a new journey.
I started attending a Unitarian Universalist church. Even a UU service felt too church-y for me, but I loved the sermons about living with intention, and the calls to mindfulness and compassion. My interest in Buddhism was reignited. I tried meditation. I even joined a small discussion group at the church and taught Sunday School. {And, most importantly, I sought professional help for my depression.}
As someone who had so strongly identified as an atheist {though I often preferred the term secular humanist}, I was embarrassed to acknowledge my new journey. I didn’t tell my family about my church attendance ~ one Sunday morning my mom called and my husband informed her I was at church. Her response was laughter, followed by, “No, seriously, where is she?”
What I have now come to realize is this new journey wasn’t an out-of-the-blue “third-of-life spiritual crisis.” These ideas about religion and meaning and wisdom have been percolating in me for years. For the first time in my life, the word atheist just doesn’t seem right. Nor do any of the other words next to the “religious affiliation” checkboxes. Technically, I am one of the “nones.” But who wants to be a “none”?
I may be one of the religiously unaffiliated, but I don’t believe in “nothing.” Tweet
So where am I on “the journey of [my] life”? I see my beliefs and my practice as they’ve been emerging in the last few years as a turning point in a decades-long intellectual fascination with religion. I am becoming a more mindful parent and person through deepening my meditation and yoga practices. Becoming a mother has made me more aware of the deep connections among us all in a way that no book ever could. I’m emerging out of that “forest dark” with a more secure sense of myself.
I’m doing all of this by not only thinking about the world’s religious traditions as ideas that I find interesting, but by applying them as sources of wisdom as I live my life. I’m reading the words of Buddhist monks and Hindu sages and Christian mystics and contemporary astrophysicists and research neurologists and nineteenth-century transcendentalists and modern-day religious scholars. I’m realizing that my need to engage my mind with science and reason is not incompatible with my desire to live a life in which I also revel in numinous awe.
I’m discovering that there are times when I need words and knowledge, and there are times when I need silence. There are times when I need to think. And there are times when I need to give up thinking {as much as it pains me!}
The new “pathway” I am on is the entire point of Left Brain Buddha ~ to explore how we can be active, rational, “left-brain,” and analytical, AND mindful, reverent, connected, and whole. It is a journey to live the questions and to create a life that is, in a totally pre-1980’s usage of the word, “awesome” {as in, inspiring awe and wonder}!
I’ve even written my not-quite-a-manifesto “This I Believe” that you can read here.
But, as I think all of ours are, it’s still a work in progress…
*****
A version of this post first appeared on this blog on May 8, 2013, when approximately 19 people were reading it. Updating these words to reflect a year of writing and reading and thinking and meditating has been a profound experience, especially as I near the true “midway” of my journey. Thank you for reading and sharing with me on the journey!
top photo credit: LingHK via photopin cc
middle photo credit: margot.trudell via photopin cc
bottom photo credit: AlicePopkorn via photopin cc
- A Mindful Approach to New Year’s Resolutions - January 13, 2020
- Just This Next Step - December 16, 2019
- WAIT: A Mindfulness Practice for Waiting in Line - December 9, 2019
