"I have to believe in a better world." - Giles, BtVS

RO asks a very good question in my last post, and my answer got so long, I decided to make it a post.

Why is it that when you or I have to grow up and be responsible, it's a spiritual quest with Super Spiritual ramifications? Is it just that we have a spiritual scapegoat? Or is it that we have a Helper, a "Supernatural Assistant" to guide us through what comes to most people anyway?

Well, I lean towards agnosticism even bordering on athesim on dark days which is another reason I'd make a bad godslave because in the back of my head I'm always like, hmmmm, how do I know this is You or that this is real?

So here is the my hand to gods truthful answer as to why I feel that way - I honestly don't know to the cockles of my heart if I am led by the gods or if it's just a chaotic universe that works out often enough.

On a good day, I can tell you because I feel it, I feel it when certain things happen and when the threads in the tapestry move around and that there are signs everywhere if I know to look for them. Also, I honestly don't claim trials all that often. I may have alledgedly been married to someone who thought every other day was a trial, but to me, I've only had trials during major life shifts - getting diagnosed with fibro, transitioning from maiden to mother, my divorce, etc. And it doesn't necessarily need to be called a trial, it could just be called a life shift. But as a shaman, that's how it's identified especially if you get some kind of confirmation from your totem who generally acts as a "Supernatural Assistant" anyway.

Here's the thing, we live in an incredibly uncertain world and I know in my heart I have no answers except there's a lot of mysteries. Having no answer, it's human nature to want to fill in the blanks. I fill in the blanks with what makes the most sense to the way I see the world - I want there to be one soul, I want there to be a guidence counselor at the end of my life to go over what I did right and wrong and to place me, I want to see certain people in my next life, I want there to be a next life here on earth because I love being a hamster on the wheel, I want suffering to mean something, I want to believe that when I "visit" my gods in meditation and They speak to me, They're speaking to me. All of these things don't cause anyone else harm, no spirit has told me to kill my family and wear cotton candy for clothes and the advice given, whether it's gods given or subconscious given is generally good, like in EPL, Go to bed, Liz. So I believe in them because honestly at the end of the day, no one can concretely tell me otherwise. Do I have doubts about all of this? Um, for sure.

What's neat about the "fill in the blank" system for me is that it can be extended into psych issues too (as per my friend with a Masters in Psych!). My life sometimes has illogical emotionally charged issues presented to me by people I am not on good terms with. And . . .I search for reason. Why would they do these things? Once I knew them and loved them, I try to guess at their motives by outdated information I once had and I chase and gnaw at my tail until it's a bloody thing and I'm exhausted. It's a function of my anxiety disorder to do this. Since I will never really know their motives (and honestly, at the end of the day, if you really want your ant farm shaken up we don't *really* know anyone else's motives but people we love generally follow reasonably predictable patterns unless they have drug/unassisted mental health problems and when they don't, we can talk to them about it) and it's not like I'm going to talk to these people I'm no longer speaking to about it though they may be doing shady things to disrupt my life, I may as well assign a motive to them that seems reasonably logical to my brain from what I know about them and move on. Even if it's Y person is doing X because Y is a bag of dicks, it's a reason and then my brain can move on to worrying about something more pressing or settle the hell down.