A Glimpse of My Soul

Since I am calling this “My Beliefs” I guess I should probably cover a little bit about my idea of morality, but just be aware that is not really what this is about. I am sure there will be many post about that in the future, but this particular one is not. When it comes to morality in my own personal religion, practiced only by myself, there are five commandments.

1. DON’T kill people.
2. DON’T kill animals.
3. DON’T kill the planet.
4. DON’T be an asshole.
5. (in any situation not covered by the above commandments) DO whatever you feel is right.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s that simple. I’m sure most people don’t agree, but those are the rules by which I live my life.

So now to what this post is really about, my ideas about spirituality, religion, the meaning of life, blah blah blah. I don’t believe in “God”. I don’t know if there is/are some kind of entity/entities out there, but I am pretty sure that there is no “God” at least not one like the one portrayed in most religions. It just doesn’t make sense to me; there is too much conflicting information. He is all powerful, but he doesn’t stop terrible things from happening in the world. He created us all and loves us all, but will torture us for eternity if we don’t follow all of his rules. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I do however believe that we have souls, or at least something similar to them, (and by “we” I mean all beings, not just humans). I think there is just so much to us, we are all just so different, so complicated, so profound that there has to be more to us than our physical bodies. I have no idea what happens to that other part of us when we die, and I don’t really care, because I believe that our lives are what really matter. I think that what we do with our lives is all that really matters, because no matter what anyone says, no one really knows what happens after we die. Some people think they know, but no one really knows.

Because I believe that our lives are all that matters, I tend to believe that we all have a purpose in life, that we all have something that we are meant to do. I do not believe in fate or destiny, or that everything is predetermined, or that we are meant to do a certain thing because some deity wants us to. I believe that our souls (for lack of a better word) know what we are meant to do. Our souls know what it is we really want, and what is truly important to us, and what we would really be good at. I think our souls try to guide us, try to tell us what it is we should be doing, but that most of us just don’t want to listen or don’t know how to.

I apparently don’t know how. I have always tried to listen to what it is I am supposed to do, but I always seem to misunderstand. I know there is something I am meant to do, some goal I am supposed to accomplish.  I know there is some purpose for me out there somewhere (whether it is actually anything important or not, I don’t know, but I know there has to be something). I feel like I am missing out on what I should be doing. I keep thinking I have figured it out, that I finally know what I should do, but none of my plans ever seem to work out. I always either realize that it’s not something I enjoy doing, or it feels worthless to me, or it conflicts with other things that are important to me, or it’s just not feasible. One way or another, every time I think I’ve found my “calling” it turns out that I have not.

I am going to come back to the idea of fate for a moment. I have always felt sort of conflicted about this idea. I don’t like the idea of fate because to me it seems to make all of life seem pointless. If everything is going to work out the same way no matter what, then why should we ever try to do anything? Why even bother getting out of bed if your life is going to end up the same no matter what you do? At the same time, I always wanted to believe that something would guide me toward what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t want to have to rely entirely on myself to find my true purpose because, while I do believe that some part of me knows what I am supposed to do, the rest of me is always getting in the way. I have this incredible ability to fuck myself over. Somehow I always manage to make exactly the wrong decision at exactly the wrong time, and end up getting exactly the opposite of what I wanted.

A while back, I finally found an idea that I think addresses this issue quite nicely. Of course, the fact that it seems to solve my problem doesn’t make it any more true, but still thinking about it gives me a bit of hope. As stupid as it sounds, this idea came from a Stephen King book. In the Dark Tower series there is the concept of Ka. It seems to be sort of a combination of fate and free will. The idea (or at least what I got from it) is that everyone has a certain path that they are meant to follow, but that doesn’t mean that they have to follow it. Everyone still has the choice of what they want to do with their lives. They can do whatever they want, but if they choose to follow the path they are meant to follow everything will just start to fall into place for them. As long as they are trying to do what they are meant to do, things will work out the way they are supposed to.

I do have reasons for believing this might be true. I have seen this happen for other people, not often but I have seen it. Someone finally realizes what they really want out of life and all of a sudden everything just works out for them. Also, when I look back on my life and really think about how I got to where I am, it’s kind of amazing. There are some defining aspects of my life that I can track all the way to when I was a kid. I can follow the chain of events back to my childhood and say “if this particular event had happened a little differently, a big piece of my life today would not exist”. So it seems like it has to be leading somewhere, doesn’t it? There has to be some reason I went through so much shit just to become the person I am now, doesn’t there? So my question is, what is the next step? What is it that I have to do to cause everything to fall into place, so I can finally do something that will make me feel like my life is worth something?