The thing that most concerned me at the start of the
semester was how being an atheist might affect my ability to truly engage
myself in the material this class would cover. I have never in my life believed
in god, in fact I have been an atheist since before I knew what the world
meant, so whenever I take a class that has heavy religious/godly themes a
potential issue always presides. Fortunately over the course of the class I
found out that it would hinder my ability to complete my work, and in some
situations I managed to completely relate to the concepts being taught.
Spiritual journeys actually really struck home to me.
Although at first I thought that I would be unable to relate to them as they
involved a higher power, I quickly adapted the definition to my own beliefs. I
focused on the healing aspects, the mindset of being one with nature and truly leaving
the village behind, and threw myself into getting as close to achieving a
spiritual journey in my own style as possible in the circumstances provided to
me. My chances to achieve a spiritual journey were both on the nature
excursions I took, once with the class on the Nolan Trail and once at home over
Thanksgiving break in my backyard. On the Nolan Trail I tried hard to isolate
myself from village and embrace nature once the class ended and we were free to
roam as we pleased, but I was too close to other students and the rest of
humanity that I could not manage to get anywhere near the zone I wanted to be
in. Regardless, I actually did pretty well on my own solo excursion in the
woods behind my house, fading into the semi-wilderness and zoning into
contemplative transformative thought for a brief period of time. This was closer
than I thought I would ever end up getting to a true spiritual experience and I
was very satisfied with my results given the short time period of both nature
trips.
The concept that I just could not integrate into my own
worldview in any way was the aspect of prayer. This was just too foreign to me,
as I was the kid who did not even say the pledge of allegiance in elementary
school because I thought it was too weird. Most of the other ideas that we went
over at least partially matched up or could be slightly tweaked to fit into my
beliefs but prayer was something I just could not wrap my head around.
No comments:
Post a Comment