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[make-eye-contact-and-smile]

Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality - taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be - by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.I always thought that when we accepted things they overpowered us in some way or other. This turns out not to be true at all, and it is only by accepting them that one can assume and attitude towards them. So now I intend to play the game of life, being receptive to whatever comes to me, good and bad, sun and shadow forever alternating, and, in this way, also accepting my own nature with its positive and negative sides. Thus everything becomes more alive to me. What a fool I was! How I tried to force everything to go according to way I thought it ought to. - An ex patient of C. G. Jung (Alchemical Studies, page 47)

I feel that this; "Taking things as they are, not as I wanted them to be... accepting my own nature” This articulates the great exhale of my life. Accepting reality. Not wishing for magic [god]. Accepting mortality. Not wishing for eternal life [heaven]) These two enlightenments have been the great relief of my life. Living is no longer a desperate clinging to what I think I "need” to be true in order to survive. Living is pure joy. I have a genuine, ardent fascination with what is known and unknown. I feel love, without rhyme or reason. --- As a child you don't know about social queues, you care less about what people think and you're more impulsive. You're most likely to act instinctively. When I was young one of the many classes my parents enrolled me in was Ballet, a prerequisite of which was to dress in a pink leotard with a pink tutu etc. pink, pink, pink because, we're girls right? My 4-6 year old self refused, and I proudly wore a blue tutu for the entirely of my ballet career, which may have only been a year. 

Somewhere along the road to adulthood I learned about society, I was told what the rules were, I learned how to be self-conscious, try to fit in, to hide my body and it’s potential particularities. I learned about caring what other people think of me, in short - I became well versed in social anxiety and low self esteem and lost my individual spirit and carefree nature. 

I have spent the past two years discovering all the ways in which this has manifested in my life, and working consciously to free myself from them one by one. That blue tutu is a proclamation of the rebel inside of me (inside each of us - we are all weird and different) and a reminder to my adult self to be more like that un-coordinated little girl in blue, twirling amidst a sea of pink. But who taught me how to manage my thoughts? Who taught me to differentiate between healthy, helpful thinking styles & unhealthy, unhelpful ones? Who taught my parents this? Why was this vital contributor to human flourishing left out of out societal construct? Education and modern society didn't fail, because they never even made the attempt. Out of fear I found religion and in religion I found fear, and this was a cycle I got myself stuck in for about 15 years. I had always considered myself to be a very ordinary girl. Aside from divorced parents and a mild emetophobia (for everyone who doesn’t know, that means fear of vomiting), I felt like I had been hit by the lucky stick in life - I was too young to remember my parents divorce, I was without a doubt spoilt by them both as a child - and spoilt and well liked by every other significant adult in my life.My parents always got along, in front of me anyway, and I ended up with four incredible parents as I see it.I’ve been positively showered with love from my immediate family, with the added bonus of, to this day, having five sets of living grandparents.

I never complained, I was your a-typical “good child”, I never talked back, I never took drugs, I never played up in school. This was partly because I never felt I had anything to complain about, but also because throughout my life I developed a strong desire to never be a burden to other people.

This desire was distinctly solidified when I was 16 going on 17, and my baby brother (six years old at the time) was diagnosed with a terminal illness called Muscular Dystrophy. I had never heard of such a thing. That was when the panic attacks started. In true “good child” fashion, my immediate reaction was to internalise, I did not want to cause any additional pain to my parents, so I tried to suppress my mental and physical reactions to this. I didn’t want to demand any more of their time or ever risk causing any additional worry to them. I remember the bouts of nausea accompanied by a pounding heart that I thought you must be able to see through my school blazer. I can remember concerned faces, but I don’t think they knew any better than me that it could be rooted in anxiety.

Christianity had been a vague, happy, social factor in my life for about 6 years at this point. I was intrigued by the magical ideas it represented and the friendly people it seemed to attract, whom I felt safe and loved around.My friends all went to church, I went socially - it fit my meek demeanour.

With the discovery of what Muscular Dystrophy was though, and the reality of it in my life, three major thoughts formed in my mind; GUILT / FEAR / WEAKNESS: (and/or helplessness) Why did this not happen to me instead of him? I remember feeling terribly constrained by my limiting human-ness, if I were a super-hero and could choose a super power, I could pull it out of you and put it into me (if the wretched thing MUST go somewhere). Why aren’t I smarter!? Why had I studied ART, of all the stupid, useless things, why hadn’t I been interested in science, why wasn’t I a better person - stronger/smarter.  I wish I was brainy so that I could go out there and find a cure and fix the problem that had devastated my family.I created a very external mindset for myself at this crucial time of my life. I felt weak, in-capable and out of control.Bad things had happened to me and my family and I had absolutely no answers, no power to solve it and knew no ways to deal with these emotions.

Helplessness, victim mentality, and totally void of a bigger perspective, I turned to Christianity. Jesus offered everything that I yearned for; Peace, Joy, Freedom, but above all - HEALING. I threw myself into belief head first, clinging for dear life to the idea that “God can heal”, and, like a race-horse, put on blinders to anything that would threaten the truth of this idea. Vague questions would come to me throughout this time, “The Bible says that Homosexuality is wrong… but I don’t agree with that?”, “No.” I would tell myself, “Don’t even go there, you can’t risk acknowledging that the bible is wrong about that because if it’s wrong about that then, what else might it be wrong about? It could be wrong about healing.” So don’t think about it. I NEEDED this to be true, I NEEDED healing to be possible/true/attainable in order to go on with my life. It was my coping mechanism, and I suppose one day I might be grateful for it getting me through what it got me through at the time, however all I can see from my current perspective is how detrimental Christianity was to my self-esteem, to my strength as a person and to my mental health. Apart from this, religion offered consolation and comfort. togetherness, community, and after the existential crisis I undertook when Muscular Dystrophy entered my life, Christianity satisfied my yearning to understand why we exist, and why bad things happen. Throughout my 10-15 years as a Christian, I developed a dependancy on something other than myself.Christianity taught me that I was nothing and Jesus was everything, under the masquerade of “humility”, it undermined my self-sufficiency until it was virtually non-existent.Religious thinking made me a fearful, weak, distrustful, scared, external, unworthy version of myself. I actually found that in enabled me to be unforgiving, to hold grudges, to be unmotivated and to feel powerless.Waiting for Jesus to act is a great excuse to do nothing and still feel like you’re always right. I tithed, I prayed, I fasted and wished for healing of my brother, for personal protection from any sickness and pain and from death.In short, I spent years BROODING on fears of sickness, pain and death, which I deemed unbearable.Mortality was downright terrifying and I NEEDED God to save me from it. This fostered my fear and victim mentality, propelling my emetophobia to dangerous heights. This is a common phenomena when someone deals poorly with trauma, they feel out of control and so they desperately try to gain control over something. Sometimes this outworks itself as fear of heights or obessive compulsive disorder, for me, I guess I chose Emetophobia. They, and by they I mean the scientist and psychologists, describe Emetophiobia as an acute state of anxiety because you desire and strive to attain absolute control, but as intellectual beings who are subject to disease, we do know, deep down, that vomiting is not a thing that you can ever be totally in control of, and we therefore spiral ourselves into tighter and tighter knots. I wasn’t just controlling what I said, I was controlling what I thought “take captive everything thought and make it obedient to god” - I didn’t even let myself swear in my mind for a while there. It wasn’t until the day came that I actually became physically sick, and my phobia was pushed over the edge and I simply couldn’t get better by any medical or spiritual means, that started learning about mental health, that I realised just how much damage I had done to myself. I began to very practically work on ways to develop my self-esteem, to decrease my social anxiety and to nurture my internal sense of capability - and I tangibly saw and felt the positive impact of these -godless- things in my life. This was the beginning of a very difficult and painful battle in my brain. As I worked on my own personal resilience, and fostered my capabilities, the NEED that I had for a miraculous healing diminished. The need that I had, to feel protected from any form of sickness or pain, to be rescued from my mortality, started to evaporate.Once I stopped fetishising the idea of healing, suddenly every red flag that I had ever squashed like a whack-a-gator arcade game became something that I actually gave brain time to; God coming before human relationships, homosexuality being a sin, the innumerable biblical contradictions, the whole dinosaur thing (paleontology having been my first career dream, quashed by the unreconcilable differences between it and intelligent design, also by the deeply flawed education system, but that’s another can of worms altogether), the general ignorance of it all and the lack of intellect it fostered.The reason I had always pushed my curiosity under the rug is to do with fear, fear of facing my own awareness, laziness, feeling ill equipped, think someone is better for the job than you, not being smart enough, etc etc. either way it's a poor excuse. I’d finally acknowledged all the doubt and it was my duty to address it. It was a long year and a half process of addressing the red flags, trying to reconcile them with my world view, being afraid of how they challenged my worldview and how they would change life as I knew it, things like; I feel that faith should be an educated decision, not a blind one, but how can it be? How does one know that they have the right answer? How do you know that another theism (or atheism) doesn't have it right? The Son or the God? Some say they are definitely separate (Jesus is Son, offspring), some say they are one and the same (Col 2:9, the trinity) The Bible is a VERY subjective book. Every faith, every church in that faith, every person in that church can create their own interpretation. Who was Jesus? I have a problem with dogmatism, how can a human like me claim to have the absolute truth? What about the people who believe the opposite to you and also claim to have the absolute truth, are you claiming they’re less intelligent than you? What about people like Appeloneus of Tiana (a Greek philosopher who's claimed he had the powers to heal, raise dead and other miracles. Was persecuted by the Romans and was crucified like Jesus. Died on the cross, ascended to heaven and came back, appearing to his followers. He is said to have lived at the exact same time as Jesus. But with far less popularity.) Which is better, Medical treatment or prayer? If you think that prayer is only about praising god, then we can’t compare the two, but we can compare medical treatment with claimed of intercessory prayer (this type of prayer works at about the rate of chance - 50/50) if it only works at the rate of chance, then that’s not really a method... There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of telling my own brain to “shhh”,  a lot of internal turmoil and a whole new array of fears and doubts. My world view was changing, my belief was evaporating and I couldn’t ignore it anymore - more over, I didn’t WANT to ignore it anymore. It took me a long time to work up the courage to tell my significant other what was going on inside my head, because I knew what Christianity says about Christians dating non-Christians, it’s a no-no. The old phrase “unequally yolked” popped up many times, it had been drilled into us, “God comes first, God comes before human relationships."As I had feared, I was told that if I wasn’t going to believe in god, then we couldn’t be together.To tell someone you love, who says they love you “Here I am, this is me” and be rejected because of that is no small thing - after all, I was still the same person, with the same personality, the same humour, taste in movies, love for coffee, books, baking, the same love for them.Yet I suddenly I had a fatal flaw, disbelief. This reaction definitely added to my assertion that the Christian laws of love are questionable to say the least. If you can choose to cause yourself pain by separating yourself from the person you love, then there is something deeply wrong and deeply/plainly religious about that. Either that or, his love for me simply wasn’t strong enough, and this was an easy way out, which I honestly lean towards.Now I just suppose that I became someone who he didn’t like, and there’s no blame in that. We just became incompatible. I’ve very glad, honestly, relieved to have become the person that I have, and I can’t wait to continue growing and changing and improving. So, there I was, rejected, my world view turned up on it’s head, not sure what I thought or who I was, and two days away from trip to America with three friends. All of whom were no-doubt felt slightly dejected by the idea of nursing a heartbroken girl in the middle of an existential crisis while on holiday in California. It was a blue and tearful first few days, and I boarded the plane alone at the crack of dawn, seated next to the very large mother of a very large family who couldn’t contain her very large arm inside her own seat/personal space. It took all my will power not to loop both my arms around her sizeable left bicep and nestle my head into her shoulder, but I didn’t. I took a sleeping pill and watched film after film after film and didn’t sleep a single wink. I can’t remember most of those 14 long hours, but I landed in LA feeling rough but exceptionally glad to be far away from home. As I stood waiting in the LAX pick-up zone, my face split into the first smile for days as Tess, Sharee and Amanda came careering into view, their mouths open wide in excitement and all their arms flailing out the windows of the white Land Rover in greeting.Beneath all the “You’re here!!! We’re all together!!! On Holiday!! In LA!!” Laughter and hugs, I knew there was an extra tightness in all their embraces, an extra decibel in all their excitement that said “We’re going to take care of you”, and I only loved them all the more for it. We drove straight to a hotel that we had been eyeing off from across the pacific, and ordered all manor of eggs, avocado, bacon, toast, hash browns and that bad black American coffee - the experience was complete.

I was surprised, as were they, to discover that, I was fine.I was more than fine, I was the life of the party. I couldn’t contain my laughter, I felt free and peaceful and joyful.The worst had happened, and now I could think what I wanted, learn what I wanted, be who I wanted, without fearing the loss of love, because I’d already lost it. There was no moment of “de-conversion”. It was a long process of de-constructing lots of small beliefs that I once held as sacred, and releasing the clutching grip of my need for them to be true. "Scared by compelled to follow my conscience and my reason where it would take me” Initially I felt like, even if god existed, god would understand my desire to search and go where my conscience led me. I didn’t want to be the type of christian who was scared of the monster int he corner, I wanted to confront it, I wanted to, as Paul says “Give a reason for the hope within”. As I reflected on my time as a Christian, I realised I had been selfish and narcissistic. I'd been 100% obsessed with protecting number one,  protecting myself from the things that I feared; illness, loss, pain, judgement, humiliation - to name few. In promising freedom from these things, oddly, Christianity perpetuated their sustainment. It colluded with me, or rather, it allowed me to collude with myself in this festering cycle of self blame, hate and then justification. It told me, it's okay to have these problems, you're just a weak human and it's out of your control - wait for God. I couldn't argue out of that because I didn't WANT to be in control, I didn't WANT to take responsibility. I was lazy and afraid and didn't want to think about other problems in the world because if I let myself feel those things, then I would feel a ravaging desire to do something about it - and I didn't think I was capable. I didn't want to let myself feel because I was too afraid that to act, to feel judged, incapable, but most of all challenged in my fears. Over time, my humanity grew like grass. Newly fearless - or headed down that road - I left my dehydrated humanity out on the plain of society, open wide to the worries of the world, and it caught fire quicker than lighter fluid. Loosing your faith, and deciding to leave religion isn’t an easy path to take. As David Hayward (The Naked Pastor) puts it, “We find ourselves with all this physical evidence that a lot of the stuff we have been taught isn’t true. This is when a Christian realises that they might be an Atheist, and that is scary as hell. Pun intended.” The threat of loosing your community, friendships, world view and significant other all in one foul swoop is incredibly intimidating. Not thinking for myself though, was no longer an option, so I left.

I’ve been asked if I left because I was offended, or because I didn’t get healed of my illness, or freed from my fears, and I can’t express enough that this just isn’t how it played out.I left because I found answers elsewhere, that the church had never given me in 15 years of searching.I left because it didn’t encourage freedom of thought, and because of all the things it did discourage; equality, individuality, curiosity, self-esteem, self-reliance. When I first set out, I wanted to have the strongest faith that one could have.I reasoned that the only faith worth having, is one that can stand up against all other knowledge I could possibly attain. I didn’t want to be an ignorant Christian, I wanted to be one who had taken the time to investigate everything and decided that this god was the one true god. I thought also that if god is out there, surely this is the only kind of faith he would want, not blind faith. I started to question what Christianity said it was, if the bible is a reliable source of wisdom, I didn't know if there was a god. And what I found was that the Christian god didn’t hold up to my scrutiny, and I discovered that atheists are among the happiest, most loving, least prejudiced, most inclusive, most productive, inspiring, interesting, interested and enamoured people. I stumbled upon the term ‘Religious Moderate” and was appalled to realise that I had been the definition. “The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism. We cannot say that fundamentalists are crazy, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief; we cannot even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don't like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. This is not a new form of faith, or even a new species of scriptural exegesis; it is simply a capitulation to a variety of all-too-human interests that have nothing, in principle, to do with God.” - Sam Harris I am seriously interested and will spend the rest of my life reading, listening and learning about the universe. But my identity is no longer affected by the answer. I feel so comfortable in my own skin for the first time. I feel so certain of what I believe. So at ease, there is no mental battle over fighting belief or unbelief. Most of all I don’t feel ashamed of what I believe. As a Christian it was always quoted at me “Don’t be ashamed of the gospel you live for” but I was always ashamed. I never wanted to share it. Now I can see that that was simply my cognitive dissonance saying “You’re being told you should feel this way, but you don’t because, deep down you don’t believe that it’s true.”But now, I feel certain, and proud, and I want to share it with anyone who wants to hear it.Peace of mind - the deafening silence that comes when the battle between what you’ve been told you “should” or “need to” think and what you actually think is true, ceases. If the great exhale of my life was accepting things for the way they are, not the way I “want” or “need” them to be, then my first breath of life was I finally feeling sure of what I believe. And this is the third step, being public about it, not fearing the that presuppositions others held of me. The knots of my preverbial stomach loosening with each breath. I am finally free to be myself. To think what I want when I want and to change my mind at any point, my prerogative. So here it is; I am an Atheist. I simply don't believe that god exists. I don’t believe in Atheism, I accept that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that intelligent design was not the culprit for the world around us. I make the assumption that the supernatural realm is not real, based upon the recognition that the existence of god has not been demonstrated, so I’m not going to rely upon god as a conclusion. I think the bible was written by stone-age fisherman who were trying to figure out the world, I think it was their first attempt at philosophy, psychology, education, government and controlling the masses. I see the Bible is a unique historic attempt at that, which is commendable, but that is all. I would now describe myself as a Secular Humanist, the goal of which is is human flourishing. “Finding out what is in humanity's best interests based of the facts of reality, and what methods are most likely to lead us to the best understanding of what is in our best interests.“We recognise that there are things that we have learned thought the entirety of human civilisation about what works and what doesn’t, about advancing ideas of individual autonomy, fairness, equality, opportunity, tolerance, liberty, peace and co-operation. All goals discovered over the course of human experience and they seem, by all measures, to increase human flourishing.” Or, to use Matt Dillahunty’s simplified definition; “Let’s strive to find better ways to do better. We seem to be stuck here on this rock in space interacting with each other, in a world where we need to make decisions, and while there are plenty of people that say their god is giving them the answer, we don’t have any good reason to think that’s the case. So let’s set those gods aside until they’re demonstrated, and try to work things out for ourselves.”

Congratulations for making it to the end.