Lost and Found: Religion and G-d
Lost and Found: Religion and G-d
Reflections on being brought to my knees whilst trying to figure out the unfigureoutable
“And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles.” - Kahlil Gibran
Being Brought Back to My Knees
Life has a strange way of humbling us. My moment of humbling came with the end of a significant relationship. The exchanges in the unfolding of the break-up were shattering, and profoundly challenged my sense of self-worth and belonging.
Most of us have an inner critic—that voice that tells us we're not good enough, or that we're fundamentally unlovable. My worst moments in life have been when that inner voice is validated by someone whose opinion I deeply value. The night things ended, her words went straight to my core.
It was sudden and painful. Left alone and, in my own eyes, unworthy, I felt a psychic trapdoor open beneath me as I fell into a void of depression. At my lowest point nearly three months later, pacing my room on a late April morning whilst toying with the thought of checking myself into an institution, I sank to my knees in prayer.
Why was this so humbling?
In my late teens and early twenties I had been a devoted Christian. But since leaving Christianity and spirituality more broadly behind in 2016, I had dismissed prayer as pointless—a crutch for those who couldn't face the inherent meaninglessness of life. I would quietly scoff at the mention of prayer, judging those who clung to the idea of a benevolent higher power.
My Christian beliefs started to unravel in October 2015. I had just returned from a month-long missionary trip teaching courses on the Bible in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I had then gone travelling with a friend in Barcelona. On a night out, we met a young Jewish woman who worked in one of the hostels. As we walked her home across town, she started asking probing questions about my beliefs. I went into full Christian-apologist mode, confidently giving her the answers that had become so ingrained in my mind as a well-trained defender of the faith.
That night, I lay awake deep into the morning hours. Something about my answers had felt hollow. The words were rehearsed, the arguments familiar. But they no longer felt like they belonged to me. The Jewish woman hadn't challenged my responses, but internally, I was acutely aware of the cracks emerging in my conviction.
But how does one let go of a belief system that has become an integral part of one's identity? The prospect of abandoning this was existentially terrifying. I had once said to an atheist friend in another apologist-styled debate, “If you don't believe in God, why don't you just kill yourself? What's the point of all the suffering?” The latent fear of eternal damnation, ingrained from years of attending fundamentalist churches, also swirled in my mind, intensifying the internal conflict. As the foundations I stood on started to crumble, my theology and questioning mind were turning their fangs back on me.
Confronting Reality As It Is
Life is inherently uncertain. At some point, we all find ourselves confronted with aspects of reality that are difficult to make sense of: chronic pain, emotional suffering, and encounters with death. These experiences bring us into close contact with our own lack of control, and the void of the unknown. It’s at the edge of this void where we confront the timeless questions of meaning and suffering, unless we’re one of a blissfully ignorant few.
There are broadly three approaches for dealing with these deep existential questions:
Simply do your best to avoid them altogether. Modern society is exceptionally good at providing multiple means to distract ourselves in the busyness of our lives, as we “tranquillise ourselves with the trivial”, as Ernest Becker so eloquently says in The Denial of Death. Consumer culture, entertainment, and the pursuit of social status, allow us to avoid encountering our existential dread.
Leverage existing systems of explanation that provide safety nets of certainty. Religion and secular philosophy are examples of these nets, creating a meaning structure that supports us in our day-to-day lives.
Cultivate a mindset that integrates uncertainty as a natural, inherently enriching part of life.
This essay is my attempt at reconciling my experiences of grappling with uncertainty and moving towards the third approach. Clarifying my thoughts in writing has revealed my negative biases towards the unknown, evident in the framing of ‘safety nets’. It has also shone a light on more pervasive issues with my depressive mindset.
By most external measures, I've led a privileged, comfortable life. Yet internally, I've been waging a constant battle. In a recent consultation to review my ADHD medication, the psychiatrist noted that the persistent mood patterns I described throughout my adult life align with a diagnosis of dysthymia, a milder yet more chronic form of depression. This has led me to historically focus on all the negatives in situations, and has resulted in me consistently operating from a place of fear and defensiveness.
My coping mechanisms for dealing with this negativity have been to look for certainty in ‘the other’: external systems, leaders, relationships. The failed relationship had been one such quest for certainty, and the fallout pointed me to a deeper, unhealed wound in my faith journey.
Christianity had been my first safety net. There are very clear dos and don’ts, and if you stick to the script, there is the promise of redemption and eternal reward that makes the suffering of life worth it. But unfortunately the threads of the net had frayed for me. Core beliefs—the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, fundamentalist views of the afterlife, and Jesus as the exclusive path to salvation—no longer held true, and my doubt and fear gave way to anger and resentment.
I resented myself: “How could I have been so naive?” and “I've wasted my youth.” I resented the church leaders who had attempted to manipulate me with phrases like, “Dario, you can't trust your own judgement”, or “If you just believed, you would be happy”. I was left with a bitter aftertaste.
Beyond the spiritual crisis, I had also lost a major metastructure that provided community in my life. The unspoken rule of the flavour of Christianity that I was part of was that you are only fully welcome if you have the same beliefs, and I was reeling in isolation.
You Can't Think Your Way Out of a Hole
Carl Jung once wrote in an exchange with a theologian colleague that “people walked off the steeple of the church into the complex of the self”. My experience over the past eight years resonates with that statement. For the first three years, I took the route of distraction, chasing my own tail in a daze, working ridiculously long hours in an environment that was clearly the wrong fit for me.
But the void kept calling me back. The last five years have been a time of intense questioning and searching for answers in many places. I've participated in several multi-day meditation retreats and explored the shadows of my psyche with a variety of plant medicines. Most recently, I've gravitated towards philosophy, thinking that I could build a safety net of reason.
But ultimately this desire for certainty reduces to a game of mental gymnastics. The endless attempt to rationalise things beyond my power of understanding found me stuck in recursive loops. There is an inherent asymptote that we reach with our thinking, a ‘what-if’ gap that we have to close if we try and reason our way out of the abyss. It cannot be explained away. C.S. Lewis captures this lucidly in The Abolition of Man:
“But you cannot go on 'explaining away' forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”
The safety net of reason was fraying without me even realising it. I had misguided notions that I had somehow transcended what I considered to be intellectually dishonest positions, or was immune from the endless cycles of spiritual bypassing that I had seen others fall prey to.
But when crisis hit, there was nothing to hold onto. I was lost in emotional and physical pain, and it felt like I was falling into the abyss, a sort of psychological vacuum. The act of falling to my knees was an act of surrender; a letting go of the idea that I could figure things out on my own, and my letting go of the need to be right.
Praying to a God That I Don't Believe In
Picking myself up off my knees that April morning, I was immediately struck by the question “to whom did I surrender?” Upon further reflection, I realised that whom might be the incorrect word. The very idea of surrendering to someone implies a distinct, personified entity—a conception which no longer resonated with me.
Christian art through the ages leaves us with an image of God as a powerful, wise old man—essentially a holier, more muscular Santa Claus of sorts. Students of the Bible might argue “that we are made in His image”, and a literal interpretation of the Bible might well lead to this conclusion.
But this line of reasoning betrays the flaws of human language patterns. We try to abstract nuanced realities into words, and then in the re-interpretation of these words, we get lost in the literal. The Greeks had two words to describe different ways of knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos represents a narrative-based understanding of the world, often conveyed through myths and stories, while logos represents analytical thinking and logical reasoning, based on evidence and structured argumentation. When we take the mythos and make it logos, much of the deeper meaning can be lost.
In the case of the Bible, experiential knowledge and era-specific cultural content get coded into language and abstracted as a set of rules. It becomes a textbook, rather than a composition of stories, history, and mythological literature. Verses like “made in His image” take on different meanings than perhaps originally intended. But if we allow ourselves to embrace the mythos without trying to control its interpretation, we need not conclude that this verse implies a deity physically resembling us.
How else might we conceptualise God, then? I fully acknowledge the irony and potential risk of trying to make sense of that which is beyond understanding and make it logos. However, one approach might be to look beyond personification to the fundamental nature of existence itself. Consider the natural laws that govern space and time, controlling the relationships between all things in our universe. These laws, in their consistency and universality, might be seen as a manifestation of the divine. As our lives play out in accordance with these same laws, might we not be reflecting the image of God in a more abstract sense?
17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza proposed that existence consists of one substance and its modifications—absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He termed this all-encompassing substance ‘God’ or ‘Nature’, effectively equating the divine with the fundamental fabric of reality itself.
This concept of God as fundamental to the nature of existence echoes in various philosophical and mystical traditions. In Kabbalistic theology, we find the idea of Tzimtzum. God—or more accurately, G-d, to avoid personification and indicate respect—is conceived of as the infinite, unknowable mystery. Tzimtzum, which means contraction in Hebrew, describes how this infinite, genderless G-d created space for human existence by essentially ‘breathing in’ or contracting, limiting the divine infinite presence to make room for creation.
Further parallels can be found in Eastern philosophies. Buddhism teaches of the Dharma—the truth or laws of the universe and cosmic order. In Daoist philosophy, the Tao, which translates to ‘the way’ or ‘path’, refers to the essential, unnameable process of the universe. It is understood as the natural order of things, a force that flows through all life. These perspectives offer ways to conceptualise G-d not as a distinct, anthropomorphic entity, but as an integral, all-encompassing aspect of existence itself.
“So what?” you might say. “Even if there is a something, a system, a primordial cosmic energy greater than us, why assume it takes a benevolent interest in us, or aligns with our human conceptions of intelligent design?” I believe there is value in reframing this question. Whatever the ultimate truth, we are undeniably a part of something greater than ourselves. To separate ourselves from this river of life and stand outside of it as objective observers in the name of reason and rationality feels unwise, as it may limit our appreciation of our place within the greater cosmic tapestry.
Perhaps this G-d is inherently disinterested, but only in the way that water flowing in a stream is disinterested in the rocks it passes over. Despite that, there is an energy in the flow, and the water and rocks are in an evolving relationship. We might decipher all the equations that govern the interactions, but if we do not participate in the flow ourselves, we are disconnected from an aspect of reality and cut off from its energy.
Martin Buber's philosophy of relating in the world offers further insight:
“In I and Thou, Buber contrasts man's two primary attitudes—the two ways in which he approaches existence. One of these is the 'I-Thou' relationship, the other the 'I-It.' The difference between these two relationships is not the nature of the object to which one relates, as is often thought... I-Thou is a relationship of openness, directness, mutuality, and presence... I-It, in contrast, is the typical subject-object relationship in which one knows and uses other persons or things without allowing them to exist for oneself in their uniqueness.”
I’m reminded of the famous lines from the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” There is a level of insight that evades containment in the minds of man. We cannot exist as a subject and know the object of G-d. When we are consumed in the Western ideal of trying to name and classify the divine, we attempt to control it. ‘God’ the name becomes an abstraction. I don't want anything to do with a G-d that can be understood by any man and packaged into a systematic theology.
Returning to my original question: to whom did I pray? Perhaps it was G-d, the Tao, the Universe, Spirit, Source, the Divine, or the Ground of Being. Does the name matter? Maybe these are all reflections pointing to a cosmic unity. Maybe G-d is simply the highest order of life, of which I am a part.
Contending With Prayer Itself
Having grappled with the ‘to whom’ of prayer, I found myself facing another question: what is the essence of the act of praying? This becomes especially relevant with a less human-centric conception of the divine: how do we interact with that which we cannot define?
I've come to realise that a large part of my judgements about prayer stemmed from a narrow view of the act itself. In the evangelical circles I was part of, prayer is primarily a petitionary system, where people call upon God in order to attain desired outcomes in their life. It reduces God, once again, to a celestial Santa Claus; the giver of good gifts and fulfiller of needs, in the most transactional, self-serving sense.
We ask God to help us do well in an exam, or for success in some business deal. Perhaps, if we’re feeling brave, we broaden our scope and ask for divine healing. In this petitionary context, we post-rationalise answered prayers as evidence of God's faithfulness, and come up with all sorts of rationalisations for the glaringly obvious unanswered ones.
One of the most violent genocides the world ever witnessed happened in Rwanda in 1994. In 100 days, between 800 000 and one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were brutally murdered in a systematic killing campaign carried out by extremist Hutu militia. Churches where people crowded for refuge became the scenes of massacres. In the churches of Nyamata, Ntarama and Kibeho, tens of thousands of people were slaughtered with machetes, machine gun fire or grenades thrown into the crowds.
I can only wonder, “Where was God when the people hiding in those churches were praying to survive? What makes you think your prayers to pass an exam are being answered by this God, who was absent in the face of such vast human suffering?” There are no doubt many theological defences that apologists can conjure up—how the will of God is unknowable, and how he uses all things to His glory, even that which seems horrific. Leaving the debates aside for now, my journey has necessitated an expansion of my understanding of prayer to go beyond this petitionary system.
Prayer as a spiritual practice is not about us exerting sway over outcomes. Rather, I’m starting to see prayer as an act of cultivating a relationship with the divine. It starts on the human plane, when I begin to perceive the divine spark in others, recognising relationships through the ‘I-Thou’ lens. This is the gateway to an intimate connection with our universal existence, transcending personal boundaries and material desires. I can envision a future where my life becomes a series of sacred encounters that build to a higher order of connection.
If we approach G-d as this highest order of connection and life itself, prayer is the antithesis of being an observer on the riverbank, attempting to understand life from the outside. Instead, it is a swan-dive into the very stream of existence. In this context, prayer transforms into a continuous act of surrender, placing us in relationship with the divine rather than merely a series of petitions. Our entire life becomes a prayer, with every moment offering an opportunity to draw closer to divine union.
In retrospect, this is what I believe my experience represented—a complete immersion in the flow of life, surrendering my will and my attempts to intellectually understand life.
The Journey of Spiritual Maturity
Reorienting my perspectives on G-d and prayer feel like necessary steps on my journey of spiritual maturity. But it's a risky business to talk about this, as one can easily fall prey to spiritual hierarchies, comparisons of modalities, or guru competitions. Deeper insights tend to resist dogma and absolutes, rather presenting as riddles, mythological stories and archetypal patterns. Despite this, mental models can still provide helpful anchoring structure in this ambiguous space.
I’ve found Ken Wilber's perspectives on spiritual maturity to be particularly useful. He offers a model of spiritual maturity in two dimensions, ‘waking up’ and ‘growing up’, which have helped me integrate various spiritual experiences from different phases of my journey.
‘Waking up’ involves transcending the ego and experiencing states of consciousness that are not bound by the usual limits of identity and personality. These can range from moments of awe and cosmic unity, to terrifying visions and physical manifestations. While such profound experiences may seem rare, they are available to all. Historical examples include Siddhartha Gautama attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, or Paul's vision of Jesus on the Damascus road. In modern times, we have the example of Eckhart Tolle who ‘blissed out’ for two years on park benches in Berlin following an intense dark night of the soul.
‘Growing up’, on the other hand, is about maturing into a broader spiritual perspective. It involves moving beyond a self-centered understanding of our lives to account for the greater systems in which we participate. We let go of dogmatic worldviews, and develop more sophisticated and compassionate ways of relating to the world around us.
My experiences in Christianity are a typical example of ‘waking up’ within a specific spiritual context before ‘growing up’, which presented much internal conflict. I anchored on the notion that spiritual power or transcendence was only available via my system of beliefs. But when that belief system started to crumble, I started to fundamentally doubt aspects of my own experiences and their authenticity.
Was what I experienced real, or did I succumb to some human fallibility of performative-behaviour in order to belong to a group? Am I actually a fraud, simply providing a potent illustration of my mind's capacity to deceive itself? As my understanding gradually expanded, I gratefully realised that the answer was ‘no’. These experiences, while genuine, weren't exclusive to Christianity.
For many former evangelicals like me, a common example of such an experience would be ‘speaking in tongues’. This is not unique to pentecostal churches, but is simply an example of a phenomenon known as glossolalia, where people speak words or utter sounds in a language unknown to them. Terence McKenna, known for his explorations of human consciousness and psychedelic experiences, refers to it as a “language-like activity in the absence of meaning”.
Glossolalia occurs in multiple cultures worldwide, especially those associated with shamanic practices. It is observed in aboriginal cultures in Australia, among the Inuit in Greenland, the Saami in Finland, and in Voodoo cultures in Haiti. The phenomenon is closely associated with trance states, which are altered states of consciousness characterised by focused attention, reduced awareness of external stimuli, and a loss of self-awareness.
These trance states are a form of dissociation from self, aligning with the dimension of Wilber's concept of ‘waking up’. They are used in spiritual practices across cultures as a means to connect with the divine, access deeper wisdom, or facilitate healing and transformation.
My exposure to mind-altering experiences outside of the Christian context, and the realisation that spiritual phenomena were real and not exclusive to Christianity, were critical turning points. I came to understand that my experiences weren't merely a foolish delusion or attempts to belong. Rather, they tapped into something more universal; a broader human capacity for transcendent states.
The concepts of ‘growing up’ and ‘waking up’ allowed me to honour and integrate my past experiences, while embracing a more expansive worldview. Most importantly, it has allowed me to release the harsh self-judgement I had been carrying. I've always strived to live authentically, seeking internal consistency between my actions and convictions. This drive for congruence led me to judge harshly when I perceived inconsistencies, both in others and in myself. This judgement turned viciously inwards when I left Christianity. Wilber’s work was an important bridge, allowing me to forgive myself.
Facing My Own Judgement Again
Looking back on the moment of my surrender in prayer, I realise that I had found myself in another inner conflict of self-judgement. I had worked hard to build a strong philosophical scaffolding. I wanted to have all the answers, so that no one could tell me that I was on the wrong path, or question my understanding of psycho-spiritual matters.
In reality, I was only building a tower to fall from. As before, the harsh judge waiting to scrutinise my inconsistencies on the other side of the fall, was looking at me in the mirror. What lies behind this judgemental, hyper-vigilant way of engaging with the world?
At its core, judgement is a protection mechanism, a shield for my insecurity and fear. There’s a part of me that is deeply anxious and has long lived with narratives of unworthiness, a profound fear of abandonment, and being a burden on others. This manifests in me endlessly trying to make sure that I'm at the top of some hierarchy, either real or imagined, in an attempt to feel safe through superiority. It stems from a younger version of myself, one who fervently believed that love was conditional upon performance, and being the best.
While it once served a purpose in my life, this belief system has now outgrown its utility. I've come to recognise that as ingrained as it might seem, this was never, and will never be my reality. Now that I’ve acknowledged it for what it was, I’m in the process of consciously letting it go.
Another important lesson, which I'm continually reminded of, is that judgement is recursive. Our beliefs about others are more often than not projections of our own internal beliefs, revealing more about the judge than the judged. Paul articulates this eloquently in the Christian context in Romans 2:1-3, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.”
As we learn to release self-judgement, we naturally become less inclined to judge others. I have noticed a potent shift in myself since this moment of prayer. I've realised how much judgement I had for people in my life who are still involved in Christian communities, including my family and close friends. Letting go of that has changed my relationships for the better. I no longer enter these contexts with an air of superiority. Instead, I humble myself as someone who cannot possibly know all the answers, and needs others in order to live meaningfully.
Through this process, I've come to understand that there's a profound freedom in not needing to be right, or needing to have an answer for every question. I’ve allowed myself to surrender the intellectual gamesmanship and embrace a more open, accepting approach to both myself and others. It remains a constant practice to live in this way.
What is Knowable and Unknowable
I used to be terrified by the idea that I might be wrong—that there is some answer out there that I'm missing, that will fill me with regret when I eventually find it. Now I’m inclined to believe that whilst there may be answers, they are complex and beyond human knowledge. We can only evolve our understanding in an honest participation with life. It seems that we don’t find answers, we only outgrow our questions.
The human condition is filled with paradoxes. If we stray too far to the egoic side, we get selfish and protective—it becomes all about 'me-my-mine'. Yet if we lean too far on the other side of universal connectedness, we might sell all our possessions and neglect our worldly responsibilities, only to become a burden on those around us. Though we may glimpse truth and encounter the divine, integrating these experiences amidst life's complexity remains an ongoing endeavour.
We will inevitably make mistakes. In exploring the edges, being willing to be wrong is a gift. I wonder if letting go of the fallacy that we can know and control everything might allow us to fall into the warm embrace of love? Maybe that's the ultimate definition of grace—the assurance that it will all be okay; that even amidst suffering and hardship, divine connection underlies everything. Perhaps true transcendence is beyond all thinking, and exists in the realm of embodied experience and relationship? Perhaps if I continue to practise moving from my heart rather than my rational mind, things may actually work out in the ways that I so desire?
Beyond ultimate unknowable answers, and looking at what is in front of me, there are some things I feel that I can know. When I move with openness rather than judgement, the world around me becomes a better place to be in. When I operate in courage rather than fear, I feel more whole. When I find opportunities for gratitude rather than contempt, my sense of being feels lighter. When I let go of control and accept the arising and passing circumstances and sensations, I have more peace. When I try to find joy, instead of seeing all the ways in which there is despair and brokenness, I am a better person to be around.
And if at the end of this life, if I somehow discover that there is no Divine, no G-d and it all means nothing, I would have lost nothing, and I would have at least enjoyed the ride a lot more. That seems like a pretty good outcome to me.
postscript
“A song is never finished only abandoned” - aKing.
This essay is the result of many long hours of writing over the last three months. At some point, one has to put perfectionism and fear of public rebuke aside and push the publish button. Now it stands as a snapshot in time. I trust that my questions and understanding will continue to evolve, and that my writing will improve in step. But for now, this is good enough.
I hope you enjoyed reading this and found some value. My egoic self still needs a stroke of validation every now and again, and if this in any way resonated, I'd love to hear from you.
Thanks to James, George and Leigh who provided valuable direction and comments at various stages of the writing process. Your contributions have greatly improved the final product.
Thanks to Deryn, Adrio and Whitney for reading early versions and providing encouragement.
Another special thanks to James for reading at least three full drafts, and for the phone calls which have refined my thinking and contributed to my own language. I ask again, “why aren’t you writing?”