Miakal

I'm not making this to debate God or any sort of spiritual existence. The point of this thread is to just recount how you grew up and how you lived with religion and spiritual stuff. So everyone let's not get all hostile about stuff.

Both of my parents are (were?) Catholic. My dad wasn't a strong Catholic at all, nor is he now, but for some reason took us to church every Sunday.

I went to Catholic school from k-6 and then again in 9th grade. We went to Church almost every weekday, sometimes if there was a funeral we wouldn't have mass. I enjoyed the longer masses, like that Stations of the Cross, because they were interesting and also took time off our classes during the day. hahahahha. For the most part I really enjoyed it.

I went to public school a couple years and then went to another Catholic school in 9th grade. I started to view things more critically in 9th grade, I'm not really sure why. I stopped viewing the bible as a literal document, I remember.

Towards the end of the year I started to read a lot of philosophy. With that I started to learn more about Eastern religions. At that point I just kind of let go of Christianity. It seemed like there was just so much else out there, just as good, and it deserved my interest and time as well.

I liked Buddhism a lot. It made perfect sense to me. In a lot of ways, it still does.

I studied Hinduism for a while. I read the Bhagavad Gita and was pretty much blown away by parts of it. Plus, it's written quite well.

But I could never believe in it. Buddhism either. The practices made sense to me and the outcome was amazing. I just couldn't get myself to join a Buddhist group for meditation and go along with all the dogma. Plus, I just don't agree with all of it.

After my mom died I tried Christianity again. I tried praying and really putting myself into it but I felt nothing.

I don't read any other religious stuff anymore, not too much. I like philosophy, especially philosophers who admit fault in themselves because I'm too cynically. But I no longer have that same craving for spirituality that I did when I was like 16-20.