Exaltist Ethan
Bridging the Gap Between Believers and Skeptics
This thread was inspired by @DharmaCatLamp 's thread entitled "Interesting Experience and Thoughts about Interconnection". I believe that he had underwent a deep and personal epiphany that felt him feeling connected to the entire Universe, as enacted by the rituals he was undertaking.
Epiphanies can be short, fade away slowly, or, sometimes you can think about them for a long time and they become something more than that. When I was about 12 I had my first summer vacation without a day care center and I studied various religions that summer, with a lot of time to kill. After reading some Buddhist articles I had a very deep epiphany and the conclusion was, "there must be reincarnation." However, that was the only thing I remembered or could take away from it, although that epiphany held on for awhile and I would suggest to others that I do believe in reincarnation, I eventually found that idea escaping me as I couldn't fully justify that particular belief anymore.
A longer, deeper, more meaningful epiphany came when I was 14 and in eighth grade. I couldn't focus on my studies and had a long internal monologue about God, because I'd research all these religions online and they'd all say different things about God. At the time I considered myself true agnostic, but I never really felt that was the correct perception because humans should already know enough to also understand God. So, after an entire week or constant arguing in my head for various religions and religious principles I came to the conclusion that "anything is possible" and "because of this we are all becoming God." When this happened I literally whispered under my breath, "oh my God that's it."
After that realization hit me, I still called myself agnostic because I didn't know what my beliefs were called. But at the same time - I actually held a belief, a faith, of sorts. I remember being in my late teens and spending all night on Wikipedia studying various religions, and particularly growing fond of the Baha'i Faith, for being a progressive religion, and the Unitarian Universalists, for being so open and diverse in different beliefs. In my early twenties I involved myself in both religions. I joined my UU congregation in Milwaukee while I lived on the east side, while I lived a few blocks away from that church, and I've had numerous discussions, and disagreements, with various Baha'is about Baha'u'llah's scripture.
Ultimately what I found out is however the UUs don't like driving people to their church and visiting every week was not on my radar after I moved to a suburb of Milwaukee that was an hour away after reaching the nearest bus stop. So I stopped going to groups. There is only 500 Baha'is around Milwaukee County and only 50 or so actually partake in different events around the area. I didn't feel like I could make deep and thorough connections like I wanted with that religion and both religions had a sense of DIY-ness to them, forcing you to do everything yourself, when that wasn't my original idea I had when trying to get a sense of community that I had lost when I moved away from the east side.
In my thirties I decided that I wanted to go back to my roots and explore religions that had identified with the epiphany I had at age 14. I realized by then that there were a subset of modern NRMs called transhumanist spirituality or religious transhumanism. I connected with people like Guilio Prisco, the founder of the Turing Church, and although I always saw God as more than just technology, I started to build a reputation amongst the transhumanist community for being a deep thinker.
One time I did a simple search on Google for "transhumanist religions", came across a blog that talked briefly about the religion of Terasem. Terasem literally is a different way of saying Earthseed. I did more investigation into Terasem, became involved in that community, but once I discovered and realized that all these religions are essentially different ways of expressing the fictional religion of Earthseed, I decided to call myself that instead of any other label, including my own Exaltism religion I created for myself. And when I started understanding what syntheism was, not as a religion, but a theology, I started to understand that Earthseed and its accompanied religions fall somewhere in that category of thought.
So, something as simple as one epiphany, through years of self-discovery and revelations, led me to where I am today. Instead of belonging to a religion because of what I don't believe, like with Unitarian Universalism and Quakerism, I started to belong to a religion because of what I do believe instead. And since then I've reached out to people, both here and on godischange.org and I'm trying to build a small online community based on the teachings and understandings that other people learnt from Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, but I had happened to teach myself from the epiphany I had almost two decades ago.
It's been a long journey to come to my spiritual enlightenment and find out where I belong in this world and what my beliefs truly constitute as, but I've reached a point now that I am more self-aware than I ever had been, and for the first time when someone asks me what my beliefs are, I don't have to tell them what I don't believe, or tell them the religions I've practiced because of that. My epiphany has grown, developed and changed and now I am in a very real and literal way, always surrounded in that epiphanic sense now. Not to mention, the medications I am on now has reset my brain to before I developed severe mental illness, and before I developed psychosis or had mood issues I was around that age, when I had first developed the epiphany.
TL;DR - I have explained my story now and how my epiphanies relate to myself. If you read this whole thing, I thank you. I needed to say this at one point. But now I bring the discussion back to you. Tell us about your epiphanies and epiphanic behavior. Do you often have epiphanies yourself, coming to sudden realizations about yourself and your world around you? Has it changed your life in anyway? Did you come into the religion you now practice due to an epiphany, or did it develop slow and naturally?
Let us know your thoughts on your epiphanies, and epiphanies in general, below.
Epiphanies can be short, fade away slowly, or, sometimes you can think about them for a long time and they become something more than that. When I was about 12 I had my first summer vacation without a day care center and I studied various religions that summer, with a lot of time to kill. After reading some Buddhist articles I had a very deep epiphany and the conclusion was, "there must be reincarnation." However, that was the only thing I remembered or could take away from it, although that epiphany held on for awhile and I would suggest to others that I do believe in reincarnation, I eventually found that idea escaping me as I couldn't fully justify that particular belief anymore.
A longer, deeper, more meaningful epiphany came when I was 14 and in eighth grade. I couldn't focus on my studies and had a long internal monologue about God, because I'd research all these religions online and they'd all say different things about God. At the time I considered myself true agnostic, but I never really felt that was the correct perception because humans should already know enough to also understand God. So, after an entire week or constant arguing in my head for various religions and religious principles I came to the conclusion that "anything is possible" and "because of this we are all becoming God." When this happened I literally whispered under my breath, "oh my God that's it."
After that realization hit me, I still called myself agnostic because I didn't know what my beliefs were called. But at the same time - I actually held a belief, a faith, of sorts. I remember being in my late teens and spending all night on Wikipedia studying various religions, and particularly growing fond of the Baha'i Faith, for being a progressive religion, and the Unitarian Universalists, for being so open and diverse in different beliefs. In my early twenties I involved myself in both religions. I joined my UU congregation in Milwaukee while I lived on the east side, while I lived a few blocks away from that church, and I've had numerous discussions, and disagreements, with various Baha'is about Baha'u'llah's scripture.
Ultimately what I found out is however the UUs don't like driving people to their church and visiting every week was not on my radar after I moved to a suburb of Milwaukee that was an hour away after reaching the nearest bus stop. So I stopped going to groups. There is only 500 Baha'is around Milwaukee County and only 50 or so actually partake in different events around the area. I didn't feel like I could make deep and thorough connections like I wanted with that religion and both religions had a sense of DIY-ness to them, forcing you to do everything yourself, when that wasn't my original idea I had when trying to get a sense of community that I had lost when I moved away from the east side.
In my thirties I decided that I wanted to go back to my roots and explore religions that had identified with the epiphany I had at age 14. I realized by then that there were a subset of modern NRMs called transhumanist spirituality or religious transhumanism. I connected with people like Guilio Prisco, the founder of the Turing Church, and although I always saw God as more than just technology, I started to build a reputation amongst the transhumanist community for being a deep thinker.
One time I did a simple search on Google for "transhumanist religions", came across a blog that talked briefly about the religion of Terasem. Terasem literally is a different way of saying Earthseed. I did more investigation into Terasem, became involved in that community, but once I discovered and realized that all these religions are essentially different ways of expressing the fictional religion of Earthseed, I decided to call myself that instead of any other label, including my own Exaltism religion I created for myself. And when I started understanding what syntheism was, not as a religion, but a theology, I started to understand that Earthseed and its accompanied religions fall somewhere in that category of thought.
So, something as simple as one epiphany, through years of self-discovery and revelations, led me to where I am today. Instead of belonging to a religion because of what I don't believe, like with Unitarian Universalism and Quakerism, I started to belong to a religion because of what I do believe instead. And since then I've reached out to people, both here and on godischange.org and I'm trying to build a small online community based on the teachings and understandings that other people learnt from Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, but I had happened to teach myself from the epiphany I had almost two decades ago.
It's been a long journey to come to my spiritual enlightenment and find out where I belong in this world and what my beliefs truly constitute as, but I've reached a point now that I am more self-aware than I ever had been, and for the first time when someone asks me what my beliefs are, I don't have to tell them what I don't believe, or tell them the religions I've practiced because of that. My epiphany has grown, developed and changed and now I am in a very real and literal way, always surrounded in that epiphanic sense now. Not to mention, the medications I am on now has reset my brain to before I developed severe mental illness, and before I developed psychosis or had mood issues I was around that age, when I had first developed the epiphany.
TL;DR - I have explained my story now and how my epiphanies relate to myself. If you read this whole thing, I thank you. I needed to say this at one point. But now I bring the discussion back to you. Tell us about your epiphanies and epiphanic behavior. Do you often have epiphanies yourself, coming to sudden realizations about yourself and your world around you? Has it changed your life in anyway? Did you come into the religion you now practice due to an epiphany, or did it develop slow and naturally?
Let us know your thoughts on your epiphanies, and epiphanies in general, below.
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