A Skeptic's Path to Awakening

[Greg]

Hi everyone!

My story of awakening is pretty long. I recently wrote an autobiography about the entire transition and posted it at we-are-1.net.

Here is the summary: A year ago I was a hardcore atheist in complete denial of anything metaphysical. I was religious as a child, but my search for unbiased truth led me to abandon Christianity at a fairly young age. I spent about 16 years debating against religion at every opportunity, trying to get people to wake up to the reality that God does not exist.

There were a few catalysts over the past year that triggered the first cracks in this worldview. First came my experimentation with psychedelics, then I started studying crop circles. I wasn't sure what I believed during this period, but my mind was starting to open up to the possibility that there was more to our reality than what we commonly accept in our day-to-day lives.

My wife discovered The Law of One through Wikipedia a few months ago, and to be honest I thought the whole thing was pretty silly at first. I am a skeptic, but I am also an information-seeking skeptic, so I decided to dig into The Law of One before dismissing it outright.

The more I studied The Law of One, the more it started to sink in that it was not a hoax. My mind was blown, and yet, it fit together with everything else I knew to be true -- cosmology, quantum physics, near-death experiences, the holographic universe theory, and my own personal experiences with psychedelics. All this stuff just clicked together when I viewed it through the framework of The Law of One.
Hilariously enough, this whole process happened while I was finishing writing an atheism-themed interactive fiction Flash game titled "God's Assassin" -- it was loosely based on a novel I'd been writing since I was 13 years old. You can play the beta at we-are-1.net/CYOA_1.swf if you want.

When The Law of One really clicked for me, I couldn't stop laughing about how my entire life had been leading up to that one enormous moment of irony. I had been writing the story for about 16 years, and it had turned into an atheist soap box. While editing the final draft, I came to understand that God was real -- maybe not a personal/anthropomorphic god, but an infinite consciousness that was the source of all of creation.

In that moment of realization, I decided to write the full autobiography of how such an enormous shift in worldview occurred. I made a donation to L/L Research, and I asked the team to fact-check my summary of the material (thanks Austin!) before posting it online. I'm now planning to include a link to this autobiography in my interactive fiction Flash game once it launches. The ultimate goal is to promote the message that all is one, and promoting the Ra material is a major part of this endeavor.

Like many people here, I can see in hindsight that everything in my life happened exactly as it needed to happen in order for me to awaken. My difficulties in childhood yielded invaluable life lessons, the people I've met contributed enormously to opening my mind (even if I didn't realize it at the time!), and my insatiable search for truth ultimately led me to conclude that we are all experiencing fragments of the same infinite consciousness.

I also created a Kiva charity team at kiva.org/team/we_are_1 to spread the message that all is one -- if you already use Kiva, consider joining my team!

Anyway, I know this post is glossing over a lot of details in my story, but everything is explained at we-are-1.net. I would love to hear anyone's reaction to the text, and I would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks for reading!

[reeay]

Welcome Greg!

I was wondering what happened to your 'skeptic'? Is it satisfied with the notion of infinite consciousness - the source of all creation as supposed to the other type? While reading about you reading the Ra material, I saw this image of your neurons jumping up and around in joy, connecting and just having a blast lol.

Really great story... enjoyed it very much, thank you!

[Guardian]

Similar story here. Thanks for sharing.

[isis]

thanks for sharing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hindsight is better than 20/10, for me.

"Well, ego death certainly happened. I forgot who I was, where I was, what was happening, everything." i've felt this...it's the sh!t.

i skimmed your story...didn't read much at all yet but read enough to know i'll definitely be reading/enjoying the entire thing soon. happened to read this line when skimming: "There’s no eternal heaven or hell. There’s just repeating your Groundhog Day life scenario or moving on to the next step."

HAPPY GROUNDHOG'S DAY!!!

"In each present moment there lies infinity, and each present moment is eternal."

[kycahi]

Welcome, Greg. Your story bears a lot of commonality with many/most of us who are students of the LOO and life with it in mind. You have a lot of new best friends here.

[Melissa]

Greg, is that you? Just kidding, I was told there's a guide who goes by that name. Welcome aboard, you're indeed not the only skeptic. I hope you'll enjoy the forums.

[Greg]

Thanks for the responses, everyone!

And yeah, Groundhog Day does have a new layer of meaning now...

[Namaste]

Welcome brother! :¬)

[Bring4th_Austin]

Hi Greg, welcome to the forums

I really enjoyed the Law of One section of your autobiography. My own story contains very similar themes. I hope that the release of your video game goes smoothly.

[KMcNay]

The video game sounds awesome. You said "maybe not a personal/anthropomorphic god" so a couple of things come to mind 1) it doesn't get any more personal than us all being a part of the one and 2) isn't the anthropormophisim of god is part of the assasination of God because the major religions didn't both to tell us the first part? I haven't seen your video game, but it sounds like you nailed it anyway.

I just arrived here and I can't wait to read this site!!

Hi everyone!

My story of awakening is pretty long. I recently wrote an autobiography about the entire transition and posted it at we-are-1.net.

Here is the summary: A year ago I was a hardcore atheist in complete denial of anything metaphysical. I was religious as a child, but my search for unbiased truth led me to abandon Christianity at a fairly young age. I spent about 16 years debating against religion at every opportunity, trying to get people to wake up to the reality that God does not exist.

There were a few catalysts over the past year that triggered the first cracks in this worldview. First came my experimentation with psychedelics, then I started studying crop circles. I wasn't sure what I believed during this period, but my mind was starting to open up to the possibility that there was more to our reality than what we commonly accept in our day-to-day lives.

My wife discovered The Law of One through Wikipedia a few months ago, and to be honest I thought the whole thing was pretty silly at first. I am a skeptic, but I am also an information-seeking skeptic, so I decided to dig into The Law of One before dismissing it outright.

The more I studied The Law of One, the more it started to sink in that it was not a hoax. My mind was blown, and yet, it fit together with everything else I knew to be true -- cosmology, quantum physics, near-death experiences, the holographic universe theory, and my own personal experiences with psychedelics. All this stuff just clicked together when I viewed it through the framework of The Law of One.
Hilariously enough, this whole process happened while I was finishing writing an atheism-themed interactive fiction Flash game titled "God's Assassin" -- it was loosely based on a novel I'd been writing since I was 13 years old. You can play the beta at we-are-1.net/CYOA_1.swf if you want.

When The Law of One really clicked for me, I couldn't stop laughing about how my entire life had been leading up to that one enormous moment of irony. I had been writing the story for about 16 years, and it had turned into an atheist soap box. While editing the final draft, I came to understand that God was real -- maybe not a personal/anthropomorphic god, but an infinite consciousness that was the source of all of creation.

In that moment of realization, I decided to write the full autobiography of how such an enormous shift in worldview occurred. I made a donation to L/L Research, and I asked the team to fact-check my summary of the material (thanks Austin!) before posting it online. I'm now planning to include a link to this autobiography in my interactive fiction Flash game once it launches. The ultimate goal is to promote the message that all is one, and promoting the Ra material is a major part of this endeavor.

Like many people here, I can see in hindsight that everything in my life happened exactly as it needed to happen in order for me to awaken. My difficulties in childhood yielded invaluable life lessons, the people I've met contributed enormously to opening my mind (even if I didn't realize it at the time!), and my insatiable search for truth ultimately led me to conclude that we are all experiencing fragments of the same infinite consciousness.

I also created a Kiva charity team at kiva.org/team/we_are_1 to spread the message that all is one -- if you already use Kiva, consider joining my team!

Anyway, I know this post is glossing over a lot of details in my story, but everything is explained at we-are-1.net. I would love to hear anyone's reaction to the text, and I would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks for reading!

[Greg]

In response to KMcNay:

"1) it doesn't get any more personal than us all being a part of the one"

Yes, that is a good point -- English language can be ambiguous, haha. I mean "personal god" in the sense that there is an entity separate from ourselves who created and rules over us, as most religions assert. Society in general seems to be moving away from this concept, probably because it's not a concept that holds up to much scrutiny. When various religions and individuals assert so strongly that God is something that it's not, I think this leads to a situation where people are driven away from spirituality entirely. That's how it happened for me personally.

"2) isn't the anthropormophisim of god is part of the assasination of God because the major religions didn't both to tell us the first part?"

I'm a little confused by this question, but you might be giving the philosophical weight of my fictional story a little too much credit! God is an anthropomorphized character in the story (he wears a fanny pack!), and true to his Old Testament nature, his motives mostly revolve around wiping out humanity by recruiting various individuals, including his own daughter (Jesus's evil twin sister), to do his dirty work. And various individuals attempt to assassinate him back, so the grammatically ambiguous title actually refers to about 5 or 6 different situations that the player can get into.

It's, uh, kind of a weird story...

[KMcNay]

No so weird a story. I was probably being a little too facetious with both questions. Once I decided that I didn't like what I heard at church, I sort of quit listening, so consequently I'm not very studied in this area.

In response to KMcNay:

"1) it doesn't get any more personal than us all being a part of the one"

Yes, that is a good point -- English language can be ambiguous, haha. I mean "personal god" in the sense that there is an entity separate from ourselves who created and rules over us, as most religions assert. Society in general seems to be moving away from this concept, probably because it's not a concept that holds up to much scrutiny. When various religions and individuals assert so strongly that God is something that it's not, I think this leads to a situation where people are driven away from spirituality entirely. That's how it happened for me personally.

"2) isn't the anthropormophisim of god is part of the assasination of God because the major religions didn't both to tell us the first part?"

I'm a little confused by this question, but you might be giving the philosophical weight of my fictional story a little too much credit! God is an anthropomorphized character in the story (he wears a fanny pack!), and true to his Old Testament nature, his motives mostly revolve around wiping out humanity by recruiting various individuals, including his own daughter (Jesus's evil twin sister), to do his dirty work. And various individuals attempt to assassinate him back, so the grammatically ambiguous title actually refers to about 5 or 6 different situations that the player can get into.

It's, uh, kind of a weird story...

[Parsons]

Bump. I find the we-are-1.net website to be extremely helpful in coherently bridging the gap between an argumentative atheist and someone who discovers the True Nature of Things.

[Parsons]

@the OP - I guess I never really commented on this before; but I actually found many similarities to my own path to awakening to yours.

My early life differed greatly:My mother was an outright atheist and my father did not share his beliefs at all growing up. I remember the exact moment I became an atheist. I was around 6 years old and decided to force myself to stay awake so I could catch the tooth fairy leaving a dollar under my pillow. I was laying there for what felt like an eternity barely keeping my eyes open. Finally, I saw the bedroom door open and the unmistakable outline of my mother coming into the room. Instantly, I made the conclusion "oh, the easter bunny, tooth fairly, santa claus, and... god are all made-up."

After the point you became an atheist, your thought processes / reasoning were nearly identical to my own. You even had the same general demeanor as me (what you describe as an "argumentative atheist"). I was SO sure there no god because there were just so many contradictions in religious texts. Incidentally, I also hated and still rarely will say I am 100% sure of something (or think that internally). I believe there are very few things that are 100% emphatically provable, although I've slackened up on that in the area of metaphysics/philosophy (since that's where science leaves off at some point).

I always saw things in terms of how large systems work. In the big picture, atheism was the only thing that made sense to me. The things that were inconsistent with that world view (such as telepathy, etc) I wrote off as nonsense or some undiscovered physical effect. When I had read (and reread) the material several times over, I had an equally impactful moment when I realized I believed it. The way you describe your own moment is nearly identical to how I felt verbatim:

“Once you know, you know.” I now believed the core tenets of The Law of One to be true with 99.9% certainty -- my 1% doubt in atheism had been replaced with a new doubt a tenth the size in something that I could have easily written off as too ridiculous to be true only a year earlier. And yet, once I knew, I knew.

But even more than all of this was the most important phrase of all: “we are one.” My brain was in overdrive mode focusing on those three words alone. That was the thread through everything that held our entire reality together. It’s a phrase I had heard so many times throughout my life, and I never stopped to think about what it really meant. But I knew it was true. It was just so obviously true now. Of course we were all one. Nothing else made any sense.

Thank you so much for putting your whole process of awakening out there. As mentioned in the previous post, it's very difficult for me to describe to an atheist how I went from being an atheist to believing what I believe now. You were able to articulate it much more clearly.

PS: Have you ever taken the MBTI personality test? I suspect you may have the same personality as me. (Discussion / poll here: http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=3990)

[BenevolentStudent]

Great Post Greg! Thanks for sharing. I've met many that've followed a similar path - from a perspective of belief to that of denial to that of searching, to that of "finding". Crazy how our most fundamental world views and personal philosophies can be molded and changed by the seemingly endless catalysts before us. Concrete belief is anything but. Such is life.

I was religious as a child, but my search for unbiased truth led me to abandon Christianity at a fairly young age.
...

You and many others! It's tough for thinking/questioning people to accept the teachings of Christianity (especially the Old Testament/Fire and Brimstone/God is an old man in the sky view) at face value. I think Atheism is the logical progression away from these teachings for many that truly search/think for themselves.

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Hebrews 5:14

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Galileo Galilei

For some, the Law of One just makes MUCH more sense than the Ancient Manuscripts do. But I've gotta admit I still try and hold on to

"Do unto others..." (for all are ONE! ...right?    )