Confessions of a None

Been having a hard time zeroing in on what I really believe, religiously.

I feel like my experience or sense of the divine is just too big for any one religion. I feel like any religious community will always let me down in comparison to what I’ve glimpsed.

I’ve spent two lifetimes trying to make sense of everything. Reading my notes from that earlier life it feels like the blind men and the elephant because my experience is not his experience.

If the same soul can experience the divine so differently across two lifetimes, what’s the point of trying to pin down a dogma? What’s the point of getting two, three, five, or ten people, let alone a whole religion, to experience the same thing? Pointless. Fruitless. God is abounding and complex and only our personal gnosis really matters.

Now among my generation the largest religious group is referred to as “nones.” While some have taken this to mean we are largely atheist this does not translate. Atheism is certainly a valid perspective among nones but there are definitely those of us who have a profound sense that there is a divinity that we simply don’t access through any organized channel. Some call us “spiritual but not religious” but I don’t like that description because it sounds like a copout and makes me think of glitter witches who talk about how their grandmother was 5/8 Cherokee, and burn endangered plants as incense, and take $5000 meditation retreats in Thailand to do yoga and talk about their “spirit animals.” That ain’t me. I’m eclectic for sure but I don’t mesh well with all that.

But well… what do I mesh with? I’m trying to sort that out. Part of being a None is realizing how much dross there is and trying to navigate around it. I’m no longer interested in building some perfect religion for others to follow though; I’m going my own way.