Atheism ↔ Religion

The dis­tinc­tion between atheism and reli­gion lies not so much in whether one or the other believes or does not believe in one or the other spe­cific god or set of gods. It is ulti­mately about whether a soul sub­mits fully to a higher power/being — or not: If I live for myself, for my ful­fil­ment, my aggran­dize­ment, my legacy – yes more con­tro­ver­sially even my right­eous­ness, my good works, my phil­an­thropy — then I serve myself as my highest being ＝ I am my own god. 

If ¡ serve a greater pur­pose, and my main aim is to annul myself, to lose myself in the ben­efit of the greater scheme, then ¡ have started believing. Grad­u­ally, ¡ become more and more con­tent with being a tool in my Maker’s hand: a hol­lowed-out vessel, pipe or horn that can hold and dis­tribute His blessing to the world around, that is con­duc­tive and transmissive. 

Of course, athe­ists can also, and often do, submit to a higher pur­pose and ded­i­cate their lives to pur­suing noble aims. How­ever, they do so from their own per­spec­tive, with them­selves as the per­ceived origin. The impetus is per­ceived as orig­i­nating from within, and the reward is claimed inter­nally also. 

Believers yearn for nothing more than to lose them­selves in the higher power that directs every­thing, and ulti­mately already com­prises everything: 

אין עוד מלבדו
(Ein Od Milvado). 

All dis­tinc­tion, dual­i­ties, sep­a­ra­tion are illu­sions — ulti­mately, all will resolve back onto the ONE. Any worry about whether my dis­tinc­tive­ness, my mem­o­ries, my con­scious­ness are pre­served, be it after my death or at the end of the world, is a sign that my ego is not yet fully annulled. The default mode net­work, the brain region respon­sible for my sense of self, is just a flap of gooey beige tissue. Being a human is, or at least can and should, be some­thing dif­ferent alto­gether: instead of fos­tering a sense of unique indi­vid­u­ality sep­a­rating me from all other souls, my sur­round­ings and all other aspects of cre­ation, ¡ can start real­izing that the spirit within me is a spark of my Maker, an ele­ment of Him, and thus ¡ am His sounding board, receiver and trans­mitter of His signals. 

The more ¡ yearn to under­stand in how far my exis­tence is utterly depen­dent on my Maker for every breath, every neuron’s elec­trical impulse, every quantum state, the more the per­cep­tion of the real, true cre­ation estab­lishes: a world of which this flimsy per­ceived «¡» is a tiny, yet inte­gral part, and which is yet so much more than a col­lec­tive of indi­vidual units, but rather a com­plete whole sin­gu­larity, with sparks only scat­tered into strands of dif­ferent color like light in a prism. 

Being at ease with being (a) nothing can ini­tially make the heart sink, but also break bar­riers. An ego that con­siders itself a mere reflec­tion of a greater light cannot be so easily humil­i­ated or offended. If there is no ego to serve, there is no ego to (be) hurt either. 

Even without ever having con­sumed psilo­cybin or other psy­chotic drugs, ¡ can claim that losing myself in a greater con­text is the best way to gen­erate a sense of meaning and pur­pose. Sub­stances may help bring about real­iza­tions, but they are not required, as the truth of our reality is already present and can be accessed freely and con­stantly through learning, med­i­ta­tion, reading mys­tical texts or poetry, or var­ious art forms. → The gate to unity and faith has been foun­da­tional for me. 

Now, of course, ¡ still have desires, hopes, drives, inertia, brain fog, des­per­a­tions, anger, resilience, pas­sions, loy­al­ties — only that ¡ increas­ingly observe them as through a mirror: rever­ber­a­tions of a calling and web­bing that extends far beyond me. The lie that the default mode net­work con­stantly incul­cates becomes more obvious: self-aggran­dize­ment is a kind of self-preser­va­tion, a self-rein­forcing proof that the ego is present and strong. 

I am far from immune to out­bursts of ego. How­ever, it helps to per­ceive myself as an avatar, a screen, a hollow shell or coil. Our only hope is to be gripped by the loving, pow­erful hand of the One who made us. May He have mercy on us all, for His Own sake. 

In the spir­i­tual realm, there is no spa­tial expanse (dis­tance) nor time; hence, prox­imity (drawing close) is mea­sured by like­ness. If we annul our­selves, we become more sim­ilar to our Maker, who, after all, chose to make a world, not out of any own need, but to allow us to exist, enjoy, and refine. HaShem is thus the ulti­mate paragon of self­less­ness. Extending our minds to focus out­ward, onto the huge fil­a­men­tous net­work of our sin­gu­larity may be the realest way of con­necting to the One­ness – and in this con­nec­tion, to become our true selves.