Giving Away Our Power

I decided to walk away from traditional organized religion over a decade ago. The reasons were many. It was not because I was no longer spiritual. I could no longer live with the contradictions anymore. Unknowingly at that time, I had also started on the path of reclaiming a sovereignty I didn’t even know I had lost. I felt I needed to start fresh. To tear down my existing belief systems and rebuild them from a new foundation. The foundation I chose was simple: I know I exist and have an experience. I also kept two premises: there is a God, and life is about service to others. I held onto those last two for a long time, clinging to old ideas of what it meant that there “is a God” and what “service to others” was. Eventually, I was left with only “I know I have an experience.” From there, experience became my teacher. I wrote constantly about both mundane and mystical experiences. I looked back, found patterns of behavior, and questioned why I acted the way I did. When a belief showed…