The day I became a rebel against God

So, here’s this story. In the period between 1990 and 1991 I spent nine months in Australia, learning about human psychology and getting trained as a psychotherapist. During that time yoga and yogic meditation was my method of personal growth, and it was a big thing in my life. At the same time an acquaintance of mine from my home town was in New Zealand, staying with a rather radical Christian community. And so we were exchanging letters back and forth, about what was going on in our lives etc. Yes, this was the pre-internet era, good old pencils were still in use back then. But we did have electricity already…

Anyway, in one of the letters I mentioned my yoga practice and this information sort of freaked him out, as it seems. Soon I got a really looooong letter from him, warning me about this non-Godly practice of mine. He told me that God Almighty was really unhappy with people doing yoga, Zen, Buddhism, actually anything but the only right spiritual practice (which was, by sheer coincidence, the one he was using). He informed me that all the other spiritual practices, philosophies and religions were the work of Devil and that with them God was testing our faith. He warned me that God always severely punishes every soul that dares to follow other practices. This was supposed to be a sign of his divine love for us (frankly, I really struggled with this one). At the end he told me I should really be careful about my choices, choose God’s way and save my soul, otherwise I was going to be doomed forever.

This was some heavy stuff to read, as you can imagine.

But, since at that time I was discovering amazing things about the human mind, I knew that the mind was a very tricky matter and utterly blurring our perception of ourselves, others and life. Therefore I knew that I actually did not know anything at all, so I decided to not throw away anything as crap, but to ponder it, take it as a possibility and see how it influenced my life.

So for a couple of days or so I was actually trying to open my mind up to the possibility that the universe actually was the way my acquaintance was describing – ruled by a merciless God, who was willing to tolerate only perfect followers, and throwing everybody with any sort of a free thinking mind into an eternal fire. Forever. Out of love!

Now, during this time I was being trained as a psychotherapist, remember?, and so the more I thought about this universal possibility, the more I thought that this guy, I mean God, could use some help. Some psychotherapy. You know, to learn to accept and respect diversity, to learn to respect other individuals, to not behave so aggressively, to learn to express love in a way that would be acceptable to receivers as well, to deflate his Ego a bit…

But there was also something else that became very clear to me, a strong feeling from within, connected to my core values, right from the backbone of my soul, of myself. A feeling that was far more alive than any sort of fears could ever be.

You see, it became totally clear to me that I would rather burn in hell than obey such a narcissistic, aggressive, brutal, manipulative, non-respectful, full of hatred, non-empathetic, cruel control freak. Not only that, I felt I was ready to fight this monster because this was not the universe I would want to support.

It was a liberating feeling. I did not care about anything, I felt I regained my identity and I was happy, peaceful, loving. And just to make sure this was clear to anybody who might had been witnessing, while standing in the meadow I turned my face toward the sky (don’t know why, it just somehow felt as the right direction) and said it all out loud. That I did not approve of this tyranny and that I was going to rebel against it. Forever.

So, my friends, I guess I am doomed.