The Belief Shift

I turned 40 in 2016, after I achieved most of the wishes I had in my bucket list 20 years before.  I had my PhD and got promoted to Senior Lecturer at age 38.  I raised a daughter on my own for almost a decade.  I owned a house and sufficient income.  I guess I've lived well.  Except for one - my belief.

This may sound disturbing, but I guess this is part of the mid-life journey that we have to go through.  The matter of the mind, the heart, and the action we make.  In the aspect of the mind, I've covered enough grounds with my qualification, and life has thrown me into an experience of becoming a matured woman.

In terms of the heart, I've loved and lived for love for 2 decades and yet I was left alone.  But thanks to my beautiful mini-Me, my life at heart is fulfilled.  However, it's not yet over - there's a matter of belief in religion.

Every time I was about to turn to a "big zero", I would be having some change in cognitive, heart, and behavior for at least a year.  Hence, when I was 39, I started being restless.  A lot of things in my mind that I felt I needed to achieve.  A lot of incidents happened within my environment that called for my attention and awakening.  A lot of tingles I felt in this little heart of mine on the truth about the world, about the people I met and knew, about everything that's happening around me.  Restless, that's the word.

I admit, my hormones were playing games with me too.  I met new acquaintances until I fixed to one for a year; then the ghosting happened and I was left without any news, hence the so-called 'break up'.  The cycle began again - finding new beau, be loyal to only one until again I was left behind, hanging without any closure.  Again and again.

Yes, you may say that I'm an idiot for not realizing the red flag and learnt from the lessons, instead of going through the same cycle again and again.  Oh well, that's just me, I guess.  I gave up only to mourn the loss, then I pulled myself up again and put some hope that's left in my heart to the next acquaintance, and the next, and the next.

Oh, this blog is about the belief shift.  Let me drag you back to the topic.

So, one of the interesting encounters I had was with this one senior guy.  He's about 20 years older than me (I know, I always got this range of aged guys since my daughter's father) and he was the "chillax" kind of person.  Always jovial when we met, and very chatty in the midst of his stutters. He stuttered a lot when he spoke. 

He was open minded too, a free thinker I daresay, just like my dad. (OK, now you see the pattern? Attraction of a daughter is always with a man that has similar traits as her father? Aha!)  Through him, I received new revelation of the truth behind my religion, particular the Book that our religion follows.

I'm not writing here to say what is right or wrong; I'm just here to tell my experience in my belief shift.

Through this acquaintance (which also did not stay longer than a year), I received a doctrine that I believed to be the one that my dad believed since teenager until the day he passed away.  Through this acquaintance, I received the first true translation of the Book, the original copy of that translation.  There were only 4 copies in the country, if I'm not mistaken, and I was given one.  Of course, I didn't have the time to open up that worn-out old manuscript and flip through one by one page and read the faded and possibly unclear texts.  Although the translation copy was hard-cover bound, the content was still very fragile.

Nevertheless, I spent a lot of my free time searching for information online about my religion, the truth about the Book that my religion enforced us to read and memorize, the teachings, the Prophet, everything.  Since my curiosity started with the Book, my search for truth began with my search on the Book itself.

No, my belief shift did not start from the book, but from the observation I have made throughout my life.  The continuous stupid cycle of relationship with men - the cycle that I've thrown my idiot self into again and again - has given me the ultimate doubt of my religion.  I always said to myself after each break up that I should not blindly trust a man from my race and religion, because they kept on disappointing me.

Not just with men, but also with women from my religion.  They seemed to forget to be humble and to choose the right words to say instead of mocking and be suspicious of others as if every free-willed people are scoundrels.  Just because you constantly pray and say the words of God in every breath you take, doesn't mean you have the rights to be arrogant!  I could not accept this kind of mentality coming from religious women. (There are more to this, but let me just stop here.)

I always believed that the religion has taught every man to behave appropriately, to be good to people, to be nice and humble, to respect others, to have peaceful heart, to be honest and never be a scoundrel, and the list goes on.  Yet, what I saw and got in front of me were full of disrespectful mischief and lies.  Men who only wanted one thing - fulfilling their lust - and then be gone.  They only chose so-called 'innocent girls' to be their lawful wedded wives, but even that didn't satisfy them.  So what if the religion allows polygamy, if you can't afford money, time, energy and psychology to have more than one wife, why even try?

OK, I got drifted again from the main topic.  So back to the belief...

First, it was the behavior of the pious people that made me doubtful.  Second, it was the Book, and this made me studied plenty of resources to confirm my doubts.  I pushed aside the verbal teachings because they were obviously illogical and ambiguous in many ways, often misaligned with each other and definitely branched off from the teachings in the Book.  With all these doubts, although I still believed that God exists, I went back to my normal self before I got my PhD - open-minded, "free" woman without attachment of religious practices.

But..., it was a huge sin to declare that you don't believe in the religion anymore, according to the religion my family was born into.  That's when I learnt of the words "agnostic" and "atheist".  But I still believe there's God.  Just that the "standard of procedure" or religious practices and belief that comes with the Book that made me doubt the whole system.

I thought I was the only one who was stuck in this situation of neither in the religion nor out of religion.  It was a surprise to know that there were many of us out there, even in my own country, the country that holds on to "the religion" amidst the diverse culture and other religions we have on the ground.  Like it or not, we have to blend in, hold our tongue, and just provide opinion when the line is clear.

I hate being a hypocrite, but if being one helped me save my daughter's and my lives, then I had to.  Yet, slowly I showed my true self as and when I felt comfortable doing so, in front of people whom I perceived could accept my true self.

My belief shifted from rebellious towards religious practices, to closely following the religious teachings, and finally to... hmm... firstly atheist, then agnostic, but I still believed in God's existence, so I turned into... a nontheist? (I just looked up to this word as I write this.)

I'm not quite sure the right word to describe my current belief, but it sure aligned with what my subconscious mind and internal signs kept telling me since I was 4 years old.  Hence my belief shift upon embarking my 4-series of life.

-Shazz@40s