Syncretic Me

One could fairly say my belief system is blandly syncretic. I mostly identify myself as Christian. Yet I believe in reincarnation, life on other planets, ghosts, nature spirits, psychic powers, and magic.

I once did, but no longer do, have Jesus Christ Superstar memorized verbatim from "My mind is clearer now" to "into your hands I commend my spirit." I admire the way JCS finds sympathetic angles on characters that are often demonized by the church. For that same reason, my least favorite part is Harod's song and dance.

My favorite translation of the bible is The Unvarnished New Testament. I appreciate it's humble humanity.

I believe in shades of grey, the power of myth, synchronicity, galactic conspiracies, multiple subjective realities, and in objective truths that we cannot easily put our hands upon. I'm certainly not agnostic or atheist, yet I don't really practice what that one could call religion. I have beliefs both concrete and abstract. But I'm not much fond of worship or supplication.

I think the ancient peoples of the world had a lot of things right, but also a lot of things wrong. I suspect that contradiction is part of being human. Most of what are identified as "Gods" or "Demons", I would categorize by the more neutral term "Spirits". Such things deserve respect, but in the same and varied ways that your dearest friend, or an aloof and rarely-spoken-with neighbor, or a heat-packin' mafioso deserve respect.

I have a few specific memories of another life, though I tend to be very tight-lipped about them. They are very detailed first-person recollections, and unlikely to be mere hallucinations. I've never done psychedelics, so I suppose I don't have a frame of reference to say what a hallucination feels like. But I do know what a memory of a defining moment in your lifetime feels like, and that's how these feel. Lessons learned at an age when I did not yet have the worldly experience to pick them up in this body. They have served as bulwarks to me in the stormy seasons of my life.

I think the Dalai Lama more-than-likely is the reborn bodhisattva his supporters claim him to be, though they may have muddied certain details in the ritual systemization of it all. In the unlikely event he turns out not to be the genuine article, he's still pretty fuckin' cool.

Though I understand a good deal of the math behind probability, I do not actually believe in chance. There are, however, forces beyond our control.

This is more than I have said publicly about my beliefs in a great many years.