I was born into a Catholic family. However, beside praying before and after our meals and the occasional Easter and Christmas church service, we didn't really practice Catholicism.

My serious religious involvement didn't happen until I went to college. There I was recruited into a Christian, evangelical campus organization. I started attending a local Baptist church on a weekly basis. Although I read the Bible each and every morning, I was feeling uneasy about being involved with the organization. The organization wasn't all bad. It gave me many opportunities to learn how to do public speaking. I was pretty shy, and that was quite a hurdle to overcome. And, yes, for a while I was one of those annoying individuals who tries to convert you in the local mall! I did eventually get out of the organization. A feeling of being in a cult was definitely in the air, so to say.

When I was in my late thirties I started questioning a lot of the "religious" things I had learned. I started doing a lot of research. However, I wasn't interested in learning about another religion. I started viewing all religions as being ways of indoctrinating people, no matter which book or prophet they follow or worship. I eventually came to the conclusion that a religion is there to control people. It is a simple case of a few powerful people trying to control and manipulate a large group of people. The Catholic Church is probably the best (or worst-) case example of this. These organizations are no different than national governments where a few power-hungry individuals try to control and manipulate the lives of the "masses".

It took me a while to separate "God" from religion. For a long time I had been taught that priests, ministers, church elders, and religious leaders know what God's will is and how that applies to you (i.e. "me"). Their preaching is supposed to convince you to do what they think is God's will for you.

Like I said, it took me a long time to wane myself from that philosophy. I now believe that that is total bull crap. Pardon my French!

What started me on my current path of spirituality was that I could tell what people were feeling. This is described as "empathy". Not to come across as a sci-fi nerd, but the term is "empath". Looking back, I have had this "gift" all of my life. I didn't learn how to discern where the emotions were coming from until I was in my late thirties. It got me into trouble a few times, because a lot of times I intuitively knew what people were feeling/thinking without them expressing that (or even consciously being aware of it). Before I was aware of this ability, I would react to what they were feeling, or radiating, not to what they were saying. I used to always be accused of being "too sensitive", but what it really was was that I was picking up what other people were feeling and responding to that. I later learned that sometimes the people themselves aren't aware of what they are feeling or radiating. This can make for awkward situations.

Now that I am aware of this ability, I am able to quickly discern whether a certain emotion comes from me (i.e. I am happy, sad, angry, etc.) or if the emotion is coming from the person I am interacting with. I have always been "afraid" of telephones. The reason why I didn't realize until just a few years ago. The issue is that I heavily rely on being able to sense what the other person is feeling. I don't have that sensation when a person is physically far away. In other words, on the phone I could only respond to what the person was saying, not what they were really feeling.

The exciting thing about being spiritual is that you are always growing and improving yourself. I have become able to sense what people are feeling even if they are not physically near me. It tends to be most pronounced with individuals that I deeply love. I will suddenly be overcome with an emotion. After some meditation, I can usually discern from whom I am picking up the emotions, the reason behind those emotions, and what I might be able to do to help them. The whole reason behind this "gift" is to be able to help others.

In addition to being able to sense what some people are feeling, I can also pick up on what animals are feeling. Their emotional states and their intentions when they "speak" are so clear and obvious to me. This tends to get to me sometimes since we have three very vocal animals in our house (we used to have 5!).

So, how is "spirituality" different from "being religious". Being religious means you follow a strict doctrine, apply and live by the religion's principles, and follow their rituals. Spirituality transcends all of that. You can still be a Baptist, a Catholic, or a Buddhist and be spiritual. You can even, like me, not belong or subscribe to any religion. I think there are a lot of people who are religious but not spiritual at all, and also there are lots of people who are spiritual and not religious at all. Being spiritual means that you are more in touch with yourself, your higher self, and with others.

The ability to sense what other people are really feeling is not something unique or special. I believe anyone open to it can experience it. I believe that fundamentally all people are tuned into this, and many other abilities; it is just that they turn it off. Children are a good example of people being open to all sorts of "abilities". As we grow and mature in this more materialistically-oriented world, we tend to turn off or ignore the natural abilities we have. Haven't you ever had that intuitive little voice tell you to do ABC and you did XYZ and you were sorry later? That's really what it is.

So, what do I believe? First, I believe that there is a "God", a Supreme Being, who created literally everything. I believe God created us for us to be able to experience different things. These experiences meld into the larger Whole. I don't see God as a separate being in the sense that all religions seem to profess. God is omnipotent, which means God is every where. All that we see and experience is God. We are not separate from God. It is this separation that leads to man's dissatisfaction with life; this desire to always have more and to hord, and to deny others the best life has to offer. Once you start absorbing the fact that God and you are the same, your whole viewpoint changes. It may take a long time to get to that, but it is true.

I also believe there is a physical world and a spiritual side. The spiritual side helps guide the physical world, and the things learned and observed in the physical world affect the spiritual side. This, I believe, is the reason for why children being born now are able to work with a computer effortlessly, while older people are struggling. As we as a people embrace the computer, the knowledge gained about this technology becomes the new "standard" for future people being born. This is why centuries ago slavery was considered a perfectly acceptable practice. It wasn't until some people started to question it that things changed. Slowly, over many generations people were being born who fundamentally believed that slavery was wrong. After a while the practice was abolished, and it is no longer tolerated of those who still attempt to practice that. There are always going to be people who are so (spiritually) backwards that they cause conflicts (today's radical Muslim practices are a prime example; stoning people, women as property, an eye-for-an-eye type of punishments, etc.). The western world left those practices behind in the Middle Ages, but today's Muslims are still stuck in that groove.

I truly believe we have freewill. We are free to do as we please. It is this individual freedom that allows us to be unique and different and to generate different events in our lives. I do believe that we can ask "God" for guidance, but we are perfectly free to accept the guidance or to ignore it. There is no judgment and no punishment. There are consequences to be sure, but that is part of learning and experiencing. Shakespeare had it right when he said that life's a stage and we are merely players. We are born, do our little song-and-dance on the stage of life, and exit "stage, right".

I don't believe in such things as "sin", "hell", "the devil", etc. These things simply don't exist. Religious texts have created these concepts to threaten and control people, but they aren't real. They are the fundamental cause of a lot of people's guilt. Guilt is a useless and very destructive emotion. It is best to get rid of it from your life altogether.

What about people like Hitler? Aren't they punished in the Afterlife? Yes and no. The soul that played Hitler in this incarnation caused a lot of negativity. I do believe in karma and so I believe that soul will have a lot of amending to do in future lives. How that plays out is up to the soul. He could come back as a persecuted Jew, for example. Or he could come back to experience what it is like living under an oppressive regime. He may have to spend many thousands of lifetimes helping those souls he hurt. From what I understand, the negativity you created in a lifetime in the physical world will have to be resolved in a future lifetime in the physical world. I don't think someone like Hitler can just say "Oops, sorry about killing you so brutally" and then move on as if nothing happened. I believe they have to come back (i.e. be re-incarnated) and make restitution somehow. Sometimes this may involve helping a person you hurt in a future lifetime. Sometimes it may simply be a "clearing of the soul", where issues are researched, forgiven, and resolved. I have done a lot of clearing of souls in this lifetime, including my own.

So, what happened before we were born and what happens after we die? The fundamental concept is that we are eternal beings. God created us (our souls, if you will) at some point in time and we live on forever. Some percentage of us have decided to experience what it is like being born, live in a physical world, and then "die". Some souls decide never to incarnate (i.e. the act of being born, living, and then physically dying). It is my understanding that those who incarnate are able to grow faster. What this growing means is entirely up to the individual. Some people incarnate once and say "this is too hard, I won't ever do that again". Some incarnate literally thousands of times. I have incarnated several thousand times. I do believe I am at or near the end of the incarnation cycle, though. There is a great respect in "heaven" for those who incarnate, because it is extremely difficult.

Incarnation. "Did you know, I was such-and-so in a past lifetime!" You'll get that sometimes when you visit a psychic. I do believe most of the time that information is correct, but it is such a small part of your overall soul that was involved in that lifetime. It is not like you are such-and-so, it is more like you played such-and-so in that lifetime. I "played" one of Jesus' disciples, for example. The reason for me finding out about that wasn't because it would boost my ego in that I was "famous", but it actually had to do with a big part of my soul's healing, because I had blocked God's love for me because I was so upset about Jesus dying on the cross. Sometimes an event in a lifetime can so profoundly affect your soul that you carry that (and the subsequent consequences) into many future lifetimes... until your soul finally realizes it needs to deal with the issue.

I believe the decision to be born on Earth is not taken lightly. A committee of spiritual counselors is assembled and the soul's purpose for incarnating are discussed. The soul wants to experience certain things and so a location, time, and life-situation is chosen to facilitate the soul's desired experiences. On the spiritual side there is no such thing as space and time. Space and time were created because of the limitations of our physical brain to comprehend the lack of space and time and desire to experience things in an ordered manner. It is therefore possible to be incarnated at any time along Earth's timeline. The "you" that you consciously experience while you are here is only a small fragment of your soul. Your soul remains on the spiritual side. There is always this tether between you and your soul. I, therefore, believe that a lot of times what people refer to as "God" is really just their soul. Comments such as "God is leading me to do this-n-that" in all likelihood is just that person's soul (or higher self) providing guidance. The soul provides guidance and helps events to be triggered so that "you" can experience the things "you" set out to experience. Since you have freewill (even from your soul), if you don't do as you intended to do, "oh well", you'll just try to do it in another lifetime. No big deal!

Now on to some controversial topics.

I don't believe the Bible is "the word of God". I believe it was a document written by several religious people. It has probably been changed and massaged over the centuries. I do believe Jesus existed, but I don't believe he intended that a whole religion be based on his teachings. I think he was trying to help the human race grow spiritually. For example, I don't believe that Easter was some mystical, special event. It was simply Jesus expressing in physical form that we don't just dissolve into nothingness when we die physically; we live on spiritually. This is a concept that the people back then didn't believe in or understand. Also, the Christian concept of him dying on the cross for our sins is silly. There is no need for anyone to die for anyone's sins, because there is no such thing as "sin". We just experience things, cause things to happen, and move on. There is no judgment. There is a period of review after you die to see if you accomplished what you set out to do when you were born here. Your life's experiences are added to the overall experience of the human consciousness. There is no punishment awaiting us after we die (nor, as the Muslims seem to think, hordes of virgins to do with as we please!). However, there is karma that needs to be resolved in future lifetimes, if we created negativity while we were here.

The closest thing to what I would consider a "Bible" is a book by Ramon Stevens called "Conscious Life: Creating Your Reality". If you enjoy the technical side of things, this book explains how the physical world works (you can skip that part if you want, though). It then brings all these advanced concepts together to help you figure out how to create the life that you really want, and why you have been experiencing the things you have experienced, both "good" and "bad". He has written several other books that are also enlightening. For me, reading his books wasn't like a brain-washing experience, but more of a "Oh yeah, that's right!" kind of experience. I already believed a lot of these things intuitively; it was more that his books put it more succinctly.

Abortions. Although I am a conservative Republican and I don't support abortions, I understand what actually happens. A soul decides to be born. It has also chosen its parents. Sometimes the "parents" and the "child" make an agreement before the parents incarnate. If, however, the birth mother has any thoughts about having an abortion, the soul simply doesn't inhabit the fetus' body. It is not until the mother decides to proceed with the birth that the soul inhabits the child's body. If there is the slightest doubt, it simply won't happen. Some souls don't enter the body until the body is exiting out of the birth canal! Some enter the fetus shortly after conception! If the mother is going to have an abortion, the soul simply doesn't get born. It will either try again the next time the woman is pregnant, or it will choose a different birth mother. So, an abortion is nothing for anyone to feel guilty about. So, why don't I support abortions? Because I believe our society hasn't evolved enough yet to fully appreciate life. In our current society if we freely allowed abortions and considered it to be a normal activity, too many people would be too complacent about the value of life. "If it is OK to kill an unborn, it is OK to perform euthanasia". "If it is OK to perform euthanasia, it is OK to kill someone I don't like". It is that downward spiral that is too easy to fall into with where we are as the human race. At least spiritually. Once the human race starts accepting that life is precious, difficult, and that there is a spiritual reason for us to be born here, we can make abortions and euthanasia perfectly acceptable practices. Until then, I vote "no".

Marriage & divorce. The concept of marrying one person and remaining married to that person until the day one of the two die is OK, but kind of antiquated. It is based on religious teachings and it was developed to be able to build a stable society. I am all for marriage and I am all for divorce. I am also OK with two people living together and never getting married. It is their own free will. I don't think people should stay in a bad relationship. Sometimes as people grow older, they change. I have been with couples that seemed happy, but I had the intuitive feeling that they would divorce because one of the two was growing and the other wasn't. They later on did indeed divorce. If a marriage isn't helping both people grow and become better people (and to help accomplish the things they were supposed to do in this lifetime), I think a divorce is in order. Unless, of course, it is your desire to suffer!

I have more thoughts that I will publish here later.