Saturday, June 21, 2008

Agnostic?

The other day, I asked myself if I believed in God. I thought I was sure about the answer. I was shocked when I started fumbling.

I have become so much of a story teller that I could buy my own stories. I could decide one day to endorse a certain idea and then ramble on about it pretending to be convinced and manage to fool not only others but myself. All of the confusion related to whether I agreed to the concept of God began when one fine day, this friend of mine whom I consider genuinely nice, declared she was agnostic. We went on with the discussion for a couple of hours, each one talking about what they thought about the very commonly talked about supernatural powers, religion and related rituals. At the end of the conversation, I started wondering if I was a non-believer in the disguise of a believer. And right there, like a good story teller, I let my imagination loose. Soon I was sure I was only pretending to believe.

Then I told myself that it didn’t really matter whether I was agnostic or a believer as long as I was being good. But I couldn’t carry on with this idea. I had to know exactly what I was, where my beliefs stood. Some flash back and I knew what I was.

It might sound silly but I am certain I’ve seen miracles. They might look like absolutely insignificant events to an outsider who heard the stories, but they meant a lot to me and came by just at the right times. I believe I’ve always been led to making the right choices. Whenever there were two ways to go about things and confusion reigned, all I had to do was sit by myself, do a bit of self talk and mysteriously the answer would become clear. Maybe there is an explanation to it, but no explanation I can think of convinces me enough that it was just me that made it this easy. The happy-go-lucky person that I have been, I am sure I couldn’t have managed it by myself. There was always the companion who would take over when I gave up. To the world it looked like I never gave up.

The last few years haven’t been the best of my years so far. Having lived with grand plans, misery was just waiting to happen. There would have to be some time when I would not be able to live up to my own expectations. And that’s exactly what happened. But all of that didn’t bog me down. Maybe the blessings in life counted up to much more. So I can’t really say the reason my faith thinned was because things weren’t going my way. I had learnt to make the new way, my way. I thought things happened for a reason. I was happy with the reasons given.

Then came along something I had sought for long. I prayed for signs to know I was right. They showed up, the signs. All the time I asked for them, they were right there. It was blissful. I didn’t imagine that the tempest that would attempt to destroy my faith and put me to test was up next. I was caught unawares. Totally. To say I failed would be exaggerating what happened. But I was on the verge of it. I didn’t fall. I made it past the storm. For once, I didn’t have answers to the question I posed to the powers that rule. Yet I knew I wasn’t wrong in my beliefs all this while. I will know my answers when I need to. I was back to being where I was in my equation with God.

I may be completely wrong with how I explained my fumbling, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know what I am. I would simply not be able to deny Him. I definitely believe.

9 comments:

mathew said...

I have gone through exactly the same though process...the inital blind faith..then the questioning..then a anit-agnostic stand...and then 'I am doing good so doest matter'...and then finally I have realised deep down there is someone out there taking care of me..As you said very difficult to put in words..but there is a realisation..and that is not fake!!!

freespirit said...

Absolutely :)

Preeti Sharma said...

Lovely post. Thoughtful and introspective.

Anonymous said...

Good for you :-)
Its always great to be in full touch with your self. I hate it when someone asks me something and I cant fix my mind on what I really feel about it.

I am an agnostic. But I respect each individual's belief and never question it.
Good luck!

nb.. said...

amazingly thoughtful :-)

freespirit said...

@preeti, thank you !

@ms cris, yes it really is an uneasy feeling to not know what your take is, at least for me. And like some one said, 'let your faith save u', let mine save me :)

@nikita, thanks babe !

Pooja Nair said...

It is an amazing phenomenon how believers reconcile between science, the real world and the concept/world of God.

To be a believer you also have to be a hypocrite.

The truth is that there is no Force/God or anythign super natural out there...

Had there been it would have struck me wiht lightening long ago!

Instead i only have reason to believe that this force is particularly fond of me inspite of my open disbelief in it! :)

We use God to explain all the unexplained things but then God Him/Her self is unexplained! :)

Not agnostic. Aethist. :)

Well, thats where my similar thought process led me.

Super post! love the honesty! :)

Hari said...

Hm! Everyone has his rendezvous with God. I'm staunchly religious and I firmly believe in the existence of a supreme authority that leads our lives through as-yet-untrod paths without our knowledge! True, circumstances and rational thinking might veer us to think about his existence being a facade, but eventually we realize the truth!

Couldn't have been portrayed in a better manner! Nice prose! :D

freespirit said...

@Pooja, I agree with you, hypocrisy is unavoidable :). I don't shy away from it, but then who on earth is not a hypocrite? I was in fact gonna write a post titled , 'I the hypocrite' :).

And yeah, its always good to know where your beliefs stand and even though your conclusions are a world away from mine, I applaud it coz its more important to be able to arrive at a conclusion :)

@Hari, yeah for me too its very difficult to deny the presence of God and although I am hardly religious, I am a believer in God :).