Day 40: This sort of angst is embarrassing when you're over 25

Day 40 of the Atheist Prayer Experiment was yesterday, on Friday 26th.

After two weeks of more of the same, I decided to give the last day a special effort.  I got on my knees in front of an armchair, with my face in the cat's blanket.  (The blanket bit wasn't planned - it just happened to be there.)

I'm nervous about sharing what I prayed after the request for revelation, as it's personal and talking about it makes me feel vulnerable.  It also makes me feel foolish.

Me and food.  We have a love-hate relationship.  I was bulimic in my twenties and occasionally it comes back.  I think about food, eating and calories far more than is healthy.  It's also really bloody boring. 

Having found the "Be thankful" advice helpful, I thought I'd ask the wise-voice-who-I-think-is-me-but-you-might-think-is-God to help me with this.  Wise-voice-[etc] said:

"What do you want, above all?"

I thought about it.  "I want to have a normal relationship with food.  But I also really want to be thin."

I hate writing this.  At size 8 (UK), I'm not exactly fat, but that's beside the point.  The fact is, I'm super-annoyed with myself for being so in thrall to stupid societal expectations of what women should look like.

The voice came back: "Why don't you meditate on that?"

I've been in therapy so, on an intellectual level, I know what's going on here.  Control issues, fear of letting go, fear that I can't trust myself and, underneath it all, the belief that I have to be a certain way in order to be acceptable.  Or lovable.

I felt tearful down there in front of the cat's blanket.  It's frustrating still to have these issues in middle age.  Nonetheless, I'll take the advice on board.  I've been tightening this knot for most of my life and it's not going to dissolve if I keep ignoring it.  I'm just aware that it may take a long time to work loose.

Atheist Prayer Experiment: four weeks in

I haven't blogged for a few days because I haven't noticed anything new.  I still haven't received anything that I'd call a divine revelation; I'm still discovering the benefits of meditation and contemplation.

Having said that, the "be thankful" thought that came into my head early in the experiment has been a great reminder and has been part of my reintroduction to the amazing world outside my head (and that big, scary place they call "Offline").  So if you think that came from God, he gave me good advice and it's helping.  Whatever or whoever it was, I'm grateful for it.

The other consequence of raising my awareness through gratitude and meditation is that I'm now conscious of personal issues that I need to deal with.  Well, not "need" to deal with, but that it would be a bad idea to ignore.  It's like I've been driving along with the radio blasting and, now that I've turned it off, I can hear some troubling engine noises.  Better get the toolkit out and, if necessary, visit a mechanic before I rev up again and hit the radio switch.

I'll see the experiment through to the end, but - to be honest - it's the meditation that I'd like to explore further.  I found a photo with a W B Yeats quote the other day that summed up my feelings so far. 

Days 20-23: Getting a feel for what's happening

As part of my prayer time, I've given God permission to change me, if that's what's needed for me to see him.  As far as I can tell, he's still a no show.

I have noticed two things though.

First, like anything in life, the more time and effort I put into my morning sessions, the more I get out of them.  Hardly a surprise.

Secondly, the prayer for revelation feels like the most pointless part of the session.  I say it as sincerely as I can, but it's the meditation afterwards that calms my mind for the day.  It's thinking about the good things in my life that brings home to me how lucky I am.  It is these earth-focused activities that anchor me in reality and seem to benefit me in my daily life.

I'm not committing to continue daily meditation once the 40 days are up: if I do that, it'll feel like a duty and a drudge - I know what I'm like!  Nevertheless, I like to think I won't immediately drop this habit.

Days 17-19: Down to earth

I've completed two big pieces of work and I gave my talk yesterday.  Oddly enough, my anxiety levels have fallen!  I still have a 2.5 hour talk to give in a week and a half, but that's a talk I do every year and just needs tweaking, so it isn't a worry.

I found it very hard to settle in prayer on days 17 and 18.  I was preoccupied with work and didn't want to reawaken the anger etc that I wrote about in my last post.

This morning, I prayed in Starbucks, over a soy cappuccino.  After praying, I looked out of the window.  The voice in my head said, "I am in the earth".

This unleashed a whole load of thoughts and memories: the time that voice told me to "love things for what they are instead of resenting them for what they're not"; the sense of peace I get from watching the world go by in its ultimately meaningless busyness; a story in which the Buddha agrees to bring a woman's son back to life if she can bring him a mustard seed from a house that has never known death.  She can't, of course, but she learns acceptance through the experience.

I don't believe I will find fulfilment by looking to something beyond this world.  I believe I will find it by living fully in this world, by appreciating and accepting it for what it is.  I don't want to denigrate it by thinking of it as some pale, corrupted imitation of the "real" world to come.  Our universe is awesome.  If all we are is stardust, that is more than majestic enough for me.

Days 14-16: Oh look, my latent anger is being all un-latent

The last few days have been difficult.  I continue to feel under the weather but have a shed-load of work to do, so I've been working from home when I'm not being sick or sleeping.  Mrs McGingersnap is wonderful when she's here but, alas, she works full-time and has yet to master the art of bi-location.  As a result, I've been feeling rather isolated.  I've also felt anxious: it's hard to work with a brain like ether-drenched cotton wool.  And I have to deliver a 2-hour talk on Thursday morning.  Yay!

I think the praying is stirring up old feelings too, mostly about evangelical Christian teaching on homosexuality.  That old chestnut "Hate the sin, love the sinner"?  To a young gay person, that sounds like "We'll love you even though you're repulsive - aren't we gracious?!"  If you tell a young person (a) that their love is perverted and disgusting and (b) that you can tell a tree by its fruits, it doesn't take much skill in deductive logic for that kid to work out that, hey, they're disgusting!  Cue: self-esteem in negative equity.

Churn out all the hair-splitting distinctions you want: there's a reason why so many LGBT youth from conservative religious backgrounds come to believe that they're worthless.

Do I believe I'm worthless?  No, but that's thanks to the love of a good woman and - let's be honest - one heck of a lot of therapy.  Furthermore, that doesn't mean I'm completely free of the consequences of my upbringing. 

While I've been praying these last few days, I've felt uneasy.  How much of that is because of what's happening in my life and how much because praying is associated with some painful memories and destructive beliefs, I don't know.  But that's what's been going on.  I'll probably have a good old word-dump in my personal diary to get this out of my system, but I'm not convinced that revisiting those feelings at this stage will have any therapeutic value.  It's just running electricity down neural pathways that need to dry up for good.
 

Days 12 & 13: Is that a bug or a feature?

Day 12 was another perfunctory affair.

Today, I waited until I was a little more awake.  I find it easier to concentrate if I'm not on the verge of losing consciousness!

I began with the usual: thanks and a prayer for revelation.

On the Facebook page for the Atheist Prayer Experiment, a number of Christians have suggested that the participating atheists try repenting, or at least asking God to help them with personal problems.

I've resisted the repentance aspect, because it is so tied in with a particular brand of theism, whereas my aim in this experiment is to invite anything that thinks it fits the word "god" to show itself to me.  Also, there are bad habits that I'm quite attached to.  I'm not proud of being attached to them, but I am.  Even worse, I'm attached to being attached to them.  I don't even want to want to change.

That said, there are of course parts of my life I'd like to change.

While I was on my knees, I thought of several things.  The main thing I'd like to change is my energy levels.  I work two days a week and struggle even to do that.  I often end up working from home because I'm ill, run down or otherwise exhausted.  As I prayed, a part of me wondered if I sometimes use this as an excuse.  Then another part of me piped up: "Stop giving yourself such a hard time - you're on immunosuppressant medication and your body has been through a lot".  Then a third part said, "Would you stop over-analysing and get your head out of your arse?"  - which is probably what you're thinking, dear reader.

This links back to my last autobiographical post about hoping to change things which, frankly, it would be wiser for me to accept and accommodate.  There's that old prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

That third part is a bugger.

I don't know how to handle my lack of energy.  I don't know whether or not it's something I can change.  I'd like whatever it is I'm talking to - be it God, a wise part of me, whatever - to help me with that.

Days 9-11: Something not very nice

Days 9 and 10 were uneventful.

This morning, I said the usual prayer and spent time in thanks.  Then I thought, "Let's read Joshua 8."  Having decided to go along with these thoughts, I went to the bookshelf and picked up the well-thumbed Bible I got as a reward at Sunday School for memorising the order of all the books in the Old Testament.

Given the subject matter of Joshua, I suspected I wouldn't like what I read.  I didn't.

Chapter 8 is about the Hebrews taking the town of Ai.  All credit to Joshua's military acumen, but essentially it's a massacre.  The Hebrews slaughter everyone in Ai and burn the town to the ground.  This is framed as a glorious victory given by God to his people.

My first thought was that this story is vile; my second was that it fits well with my atheism.  If the story were in the annals of any other bronze-age tribe, I suspect most Christians would interpret it as the narrative of a primitive, warlike group attributing its victory to its (non-existent) deity.  That's how Joshua 8 reads to me.

My next thought was that if this was the will of the God I'm praying to in the mornings, then I really don't like him.   I wouldn't want to worship a God who is as hemmed in by us-and-themism as humans and orders the extermination of entire communities.  I would want to follow as God whose "us" is so all-embracing that there is no "them".

In fact, that's the sort of person I'd like to be.  Not that I'm anywhere near it!  The closest I've been to it was when I was regularly practising metta meditation.  And that's a Buddhist practice.

Buddhism is atheistic.  Just don't ask me to believe in reincarnation.

Days 7 & 8: what I learned from the cat

Day 7 was another non-event day, though I did spend some time in gratitude, after day 6's thought/revelation/whatever it was.  On that score, I've decided that if that voice speaks to me again, I'll take on board what it says - as long as it sounds reasonable - without worrying too much about its origins.  (A commenter on my last post also suggested I do this.)

Today, I prayed downstairs, on my knees in the living room.  The cat was in the mood for morning affection and was winding round me, rubbing her face against me and rolling on her back for a tummy rub.  In the face of this furry temptation, I stood firm, steadfastly continuing with my prayer.  I asked God to reveal himself to me and spent some time being thankful for the good things in my life.  Including the furry temptation.

After the prayer, I tried to settle into a listening, meditative state, but the cat really wasn't having it.  She was working that cuteness to unignorable levels.  So I gave her a stroke and decided to direct my meditation towards her.

She came to me for a stroke, went over to her bowl to chow down a few biscuits, back to me, over to the window to look out on the garden, then back to me.  She was happy doing her thing completely unselfconsciously, without worrying about the meaning of her actions or her life.  (Or at least, if she was, it was not readily apparent.)

I can be so laden down with the significance of my life and my desire to make a difference.  Yet this little animal makes such a difference to my life without trying, simply by being herself.  I started laughing.  Within 70 years I'll be dead and the chances of anyone remembering me in 150 years are close to zero, and here I am worrying about my to-do list* and how to change the world.  I laughed some more.  Perhaps I make a difference just by being myself and should lighten the hell up.

I guess I got my lesson for today.

This is not to say that I think dealing with injustice is unimportant or that I should lie back and do nothing, because one day I'll die.  But sometimes it's good for me to zoom out and get a better perspective on my life.  As Bill Hicks said: "It's just a ride."

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*Currently written on five toilet rolls

Atheist Prayer Experiment: Days 5 & 6

To be honest, day 5 was a bit meh.  In terms of the praying, that is.  The day was alright.  The prayer time was difficult because my cat, who - like all cats - thinks she is God, was loudly demanding that I pay attention to her.  So I was unable to settle into it.

Today, I felt a lot of things.  For the first time, I got on my knees, in the hope that it would help me concentrate.  It kind of did.

I began with the usual prayer for revelation.  "God, you know me, you know I used to believe in you.  If you're there, please show yourself to me."

I felt fear.  What if God was there?  What if it was the God that I abandoned in my 20s - the God of the Bible?  A homophobic God who would demand that I dissolve my civil partnership (or at least never do anything more than hug my wife) and who thought, on balance, that it was better for me to go through three transplants than to heal me?  Not to mention a God who is happy to sit back and watch millions of people die of starvation, drown in floods, be crushed in earthquakes etc only to punish most of them for eternity for failing to believe something for which the evidence is pretty shoddy?  I really don't want that sod to be real.

Also, as a matter of personal pride, how bloody embarrassing would it be to discover I'd been wrong all these years?  How my atheist friends might mock me for so easily succumbing to auto-suggestion.  (I'm a suggestible person and I was aware, coming into this experiment, that I'd need to be wary of this.)

I also felt sad.  I have depression, which is treated but I've been ill this week and that often aggravates it.

A voice in my head seemed to speak.

"Would you like me to help your sadness?" 

"Yes please."

"Be thankful."

Was this God?  I'm pretty sure the Christians reading this will be thinking "Yes!"  Sorry, guys, I don't think it was.  I suppose it could have been, but I think it's far more probable that it was a part of me - a wise part to which I listen far too infrequently.  I used to spend more time in contemplation and often heard a wise voice.  Moreover, the idea that gratitude can help combat sadness is something I learned a long time ago, from friends.  I think the human brain is very good at digging up answers, given time to forage. 

My conclusion from the experiment so far is that while I am still an atheist, a few minutes' meditation at the start of each day is a worthwhile habit.


 

Days 3 & 4: Where should I be looking again?

Yesterday and today, I have experienced mild euphoria and a sense of peace and clarity.  Not while asking God to reveal himself to me, but when calming my mind for an answer.  Oddly enough, the euphoria comes when I close my eyes; the feelings are very similar to what used to happen when I was a Christian.  The peace and clarity come when I open my eyes, still my thoughts and focus on the world.  That said, I can also summon feelings of joy by concentrating on, say, the beauty of a plant; I can summon feelings of awe when I consider the way human ingenuity has harnessed natural forces and turned them into my laptop.  (Seriously!)

So far, I've not found God, but I'm starting to appreciate reality and reconnect with my emotions.  Which has to be a good thing, right?

Day 2: Letting go

I managed to focus a little longer this morning.  I also spent some time reminiscing about my time as a Christian.

I was what is known as a charismatic Christian.  I spoke in tongues, I often trembled or cried when people prayed with me.  I would sometimes feel a surge of joy, love and wellbeing as I prayed.

Now here's a thing.

I haven't had people pray with me for a long time, but I can still speak in tongues and can usually still summon up the feelings of love etc, if I try.  I don't believe that my "tongues" is a genuine language, and I believe the emotions I experience are internally generated, rather than caused by interacting with God.  Nevertheless, the feelings leave me contented, with a sense of peace and connectedness.  Yet I very rarely try to summon them.  This morning, I asked myself why.

The answer is multifaceted and I'm far from unravelling this, but I believe it essentially comes down to a fear of losing control, of letting go of thought and surrendering myself to emotion.  It's similar, in some respects, to the way I have felt during vipassana meditation.  For perhaps even less than a second, I would reach the point where my thoughts stopped and I experienced reality directly, rather than through the prism of my conceptualisations.  Those moments were both exhilarating and terrifying.  (It's all about the death of the ego, baby!)

Yet my reluctance to conjure the feelings I experienced during prayer is also to do with the fact that I don't want to go back to a belief system that I believe to be false, and that caused me a lot of distress.  Not even as a "let's make believe for the sake of the outcome" exercise.  If I can separate the ability to feel connectedness from the belief system with which it was associated - and my experiences with meditation lead me to believe that I can - then I'll be fine.  Well, apart from my crippling fear of immersing myself in the moment...

What has all this got to do with the prayer experiment?  Not a lot, really.  That said, I've often heard theists claim that what they experience during prayer and worship is evidence for God's existence.  It isn't.  A correlation between prayer/worship and temporary good feelings (or even a lasting change in perspective) may require explanation, but "it's because God has changed me" is far from the most parsimonious explanation.  (As I recall, a study of devotees of various spiritual traditions showed that, in terms of neural activity, they all experienced the same thing when they reported spiritual ecstasy.)

Perhaps I need to let go of the fear that allowing myself to experience my emotions will lead me to believe things that are untrue.  I can observe and move myself, a puppeteer whose marionette is me; maybe it'd do me good to drop the strings more often and step inside the marionette.  I can always take up the strings again afterwards.

Just some rambling thoughts for anyone trotting by.



  

Prayer Experiment: Day 1

"Hello God, if you do exist I realise you're probably a little busy right now, what with half the world going round setting fire to things, but I wonder if you could possibly take some time out to reveal yourself to me."

This is how I felt, praying this morning.  Prayer can be pretty self-important and presumptuous, it seems to me.

I found it hard to concentrate.  This is partly because my mind is always a bit like a butterfly on cocaine, but my struggle to focus was exacerbated by the fact that I don't believe there is anyone or anything on which to focus during prayer.

No major revelations, though when I went out for coffee, a busker was outside Starbucks playing the tune to what used to be one of my favourite hymns.  I'm not persuaded that was God waving at me, but it did lift my spirits.

 

The Atheist Prayer Experiment

Starting tomorrow, I will be spending a few minutes every day, for 40 days, asking God to reveal himself to me.  I'm doing this as part of a project run by Premier Christian Radio, called - well, see the title.  The idea is that participating atheists will share their thoughts via Facebook, blogs etc and, by the end of it, God will have resurrected Freddie Mercury, Jimi Hendrix and all the dead Beatles, thereby incontrovertibly proving his existence to us erstwhile unbelievers.  Or something like that.

I'll be writing here and on the Atheist Prayer Experiment Facebook page.

I was brought up in an evangelical Christian home and was a pretty fervent Christian until my mid-20s. I'm also gay and was diagnosed with chronic renal failure when I was ten. Despite many people praying for God to heal my kidneys, I ended up having three (count 'em!) transplants.  Attempts to de-gay me were similarly unsuccessful, but you can imagine what I was taught about homosexuality.

So yeah, I got religious baggage.

I'm typing this on an iPad, so I'm not going to go into details on my past here, but it may come up in the next forty days. I'm not expecting God to turn up. If he does, though, he'd better have a bloody good excuse for giving me my mum's depression instead of her cheekbones