The last 6 months or so have been filled with inner conflict, the likes of which I haven't felt since I was 19 (my Goth phase my Mom nipped in the bud) or 26 (The Great Illness of 2007).

I now describe myself as "Atheist, but when things get too weird, I burn sage and pray to the Gods."

It's a rift between what I think and what I do. Or two sets of thoughts, one spiritual and one atheist. Cracks in my psyche began to appear, started by worry about death. That worry only deepened to the point of late-night anxiety attacks, often in the shower (which is usually soothing) as if the steam was suffocating me.

The thought stream accompanying that - Fuck! I'm losing hair, getting old! It was easy enough to believe I'm just an animal and this is all there is when I was young and healthy, but when all that is behind you and you have nothing to look forward to but slow decay... and when you die there is NOTHING. It's not fair. Why did this fucking Universe bring me into existence? I don't want to die... or I wish I wasn't self aware.

I was once at peace with this. Somehow. In the Fall of 2007.

It was a true inner peace, as an atheist. Knowing that there would be nothing after death. I wish I could get back there. I don't know how. I don't remember the exact words, or exact thoughts that Summer that led me there. (Was it simply that I was so happy to have survived the illness that Spring and experience the simple pleasures I was too sick to before?)

Over the course of Christmas and New Years, I managed to -barely- get back to feeling ok emotionally. But I don't know how.

Getting sick seemed to press the reset button on my heart. (Or perhaps going to bed early because of being sick started to reverse my years-long funk of tired-brained thoughts.) Having fun with family helped. Having some new video games helped. Actually, they made me come alive again so much it surprised me. (i've been so cool about things, I was beginning to think my emotions were dead, dying as i aged, and that maybe that's part of the dying process.)

...is it as simple as that? If I were just one of those working stiffs who has a little money for the latest games and sinks their free time into them, one at a time, would that feel so good? Be such a fulfilling life I wouldn't fear death anymore?

But I also -barely- logiced my way through a lot of skeptical issues, most of which have been on my mind a long time. I've been thinking over the last few days how the skeptical community I once so loved is itself fanatical, or rather, a subculture exaggerating negative aspects of Western culture to the point of leading me to an unhealthy lifestyle (and tying back into the Great Illness of 2007). Basically, this need to act like a reasonable, sane gentleman to distance oneself from the superstition and "woo-woo" of the religious, New Age, pagans and hippies... to the point of not getting enough Sunlight, fresh air, "earthing", and so on because atheists don't need anything spiritual?

...that IS in fact, why I started writing journals about my spiritual experiences. To fight back, in my own small way, this taboo we have about talking about anything that doesn't fit the agreed-upon reality that seems to be atheist by default. Out of fear of seeming "crazy". Is it really that "crazy" if everyone has experienced something weird at some point in our lives? More crazy to pretend none of us ever saw what we know we saw, I say.

I now have a dream of a sort of fusion between atheism and paganism, a hybrid lifestyle that says yes, i know none of this is real, but being close to nature and doing meditation and pagan ritual like some kind of hippie -as if the magic were real- makes me happy. And the human body and mind need those things... even if the evidence for it is from the "enemy", the lunatic fringe of hippies, New Age and pagans.

Fuck constantly acting "reasonable" to prove I have a healthy sense of skepticism, I'd rather have fun with the time I have.

That's the short version, at least.

To fully explain I want to first make a series of journals about my own skeptical explanations for everything spiritual that's ever happened to me. Ones I probably should have written a long time ago, but... I guess I just didn't want to contradict myself, even if I do it in my own thoughts all the time. To get to that payoff, I will do a seeming about-face and write journals as whole-heartedly about atheism as I did about spirituality...