Well OK then, I'll tell you a story.
I was raised a Christian. Not in the American sense, you understand, but in the British. This means that everyone is just assumed to believe in God, and the teachings of Christ, and the only services you might attend are various rites of passage (usually just funerals to be honest). Nobody has any doctrinal knowledge or really an opinion on these matters. It might be more accurate to say that a lot of British Christians are really just theists with a Christian cultural baggage.
So in my late teens and early twenties, I became an atheist, purely based upon the materialistic and scientific worldview. Richard Dawkins' 'new atheism' was really getting going then. God just didn't exist.
Then in my mid twenties, I had two very serious existential crises. I became obsessed with a singular question: 'why does anything exist?'
It was an oppressive question, forcing its way into my mind when I least desired it. It caused terror and real dread. I could feel the emptiness of the void closing in and enveloping me a lot of the time; nothing felt real, existence was absurd.
Then I experienced my darkest moment. I was on a leave of absense from university to investigate my sleep issues (this was when I was finally diagnosed with DSPD), so I was spending a lot of time in the house (essentially nocturnal) playing video games. One night, after a build up of existential dread each previous night, I 'met the void' or 'went into the void' - that's the only way I can describe it.
So it's night, and 'the question' is pressing in on me as I'm trying to play the game. I've been avoiding it, so this time, I decide to focus on it, to think on it. I switch off the PlayStation and sit in bed. I'm terrified.
The void closes in and I feel like I'm being confronted with absolute reality - the nothingness of existence, the void, the abyss. I cannot comprehend it. I perceived the room (it would be more accurate to say, I remember) the room darkening and the lights flickering, as I was physically enveloped by the cold darkness of nothingness. I am fucking bricking it.
I'm crying, I can't bear it. Then, at a certain point, I completely give in and say 'God, help me'. At precisely that moment, I feel like I am enveloped by the most comforting warmth imaginable. The darkness is banished, the room returns to normal, and all I feel is an overwhelming sense of love.
Still in tears, I go downstairs and tell my mum everything. She doesn't understand, but I explain to her the 'revelation' I had, about the divine preciousness of other individuals. I perceived others as burning with a bright, divine light. I felt that each person, everyone, was God, and was therefore worthy of unlimited tolerance and love.
Now, I'm a rationalist, so the next day, I knew what the probable cause was biochemically. I started to take vitamin D supplements, and the dread vanished. I started to go to the gym, and I sold my PlayStation. I was still afraid of experiencing the dread. I had one other crisis a year later, when Star Wars Episode VII came out, but nothing since, as I think I've fully integrated what happened, and am no longer vulnerable to existential dread.
So, I had an incredibly vivid religious experience, 'felt God's love' and received a 'revelation', so am I a believer? No.
I know the biochemical rationale of what happened, but equally I just cannot conceive of why anything exists at all. Infinity is sometimes a satisfying answer, but if course I don't know.
This is the truth: we don't know if God exists, and I am an agnostic.
I think my body saved me from the crisis by releasing a load of DMT or something like that - it was a survival mechanism. Humans capable of thinking themselves into an existential stupor must have evolved a response to deal with it fir the survival of the species (religion).
This is why I mentioned the various, mysterious 'higher gods' in my above post. Some people view agnosticism as a kind of equivocating, unsure, 'ooh I don't know' middle road between theism and atheism.
This is not my agnosticism. I am comfortable with the mystery. You could say, 'the mystery is my religion'. I don't know, and that's great!
I feel incredibly human and integrated. I can honestly speak to anyone about their religious belief with an open heart, just as I can speak to those with no belief with the same openness.
My God is humanity. I have a warm, calm, benevolent feeling knowing that we are all bound together as part of this wonderful mystery called life. I am happy to experience it without dread, but with a childlike curiosity.
Agnosticism to me is solid, it's real, it's the choice. It isn't in between two 'proper choices', it stands alone, wise, benevolent and honest.
That's my perspective. Now, I'm not suggesting that you have to go through an existential crisis! However, you may have to reorient your experience of the divine.
For me it's oriented towards people - a full and unfettered experience of agape.
P.S. I mean 'divine' as in something like, 'a thing of cosmic importance and value'. It might have something to do with a God, but it doesn't matter.
