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Notes -
Some thoughts.
Over the past year, I've trained my brain to be Christian after two decades of hard materialism since age 14 or so. Miracles didn't play a role. Rather, I decided there was at least a plausible chance personal theism was true — this came from meditating on why I'm not a p-zombie, and why I have powerful aesthetic preferences which seem unmoored from selection pressures. Suspending my materialist assumptions, with great effort, I moved through life with the constant idea that (a) something was actively providing my existence, and (b) it was actively observing me.
Have I brainwashed myself? Possibly. But it feels increasingly obvious that that something is there, and it has been speaking to me for a long time.
After this 'religious revival' came the task of seeking the most plausible source of divine revelation. IMO the evidence for the legitimizing claim of Christianity is an order of magnitude above any other candidate, and its actual theology (try Mere Christianity and Problem of Pain by CS Lewis) matches what "something" was steering me towards as an atheist.
Perhaps these online anons larping "Christ is king" and parents pursuing churches for their kids will brainwash themselves to real religion, too.
I had good luck with my local Catholic parish. From what I can tell, female ordination, accepting divorce, and gay marriage initiates the pozzing death spiral in any Christian denomination, so watch out for those. Or perhaps it's that only pozzed churches can reconcile those with the scriptural evidence.
Unregulated thoughts do indeed lead to hell. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Hateful, lustful, or prideful thoughts reinforce themselves in a vicious cycle towards a mind consumed by hate, lust, and/or pride — this is the death of the psuche (psyche, 'soul-life') against which God mercifully cuts short bios life to prevent a descent into infinite depravity.
Yes, it is a hard teaching, and not one for four-year-olds. No, you will not find a "non pussy" church that doesn't take the wide gate leading to hell extremely seriously.
Are you able to expand on how you achieved that? Particularly how you got from suspending materialism to (a) and (b)?
Asking as someone curious who took two months out this year for a walking pilgrimage meditating on similar themes. I didn't have much struggle suspending my materialistic worldview (after all it's a model of reality, not reality itself, and as you say there are salient aspects of experience that it doesn't currently explain), and I'm about as sure as I can be that I was genuinely open to a religious or spiritual experience. While it was extremely beneficial and enriching, if anything I felt the absence of the something you describe.
Sure!
I didn't know the word at the time, but the technique is something Catholics call "active recollection". Periodically throughout the day, I would perform a kind of rapid partial body scan, thinking 'Where does this there-ness in my hand come from?' or similar. And then I would close my eyes and ignore everything external, and "push" my mind's watchfulness inward, looking for someone looking back.
According to a prayer manual I read later, this is one method of 'putting yourself in the presence of God', which is precondition to mental prayer. Unfortunately, according to prayer theory, God initiates contact and you merely respond, so I can't promise this technique will work for anyone reading this.
I performed this mental ritual especially in the morning when waking up. The awareness, or perhaps the fear, of God continued for ten, twenty minutes, an hour afterward, and eventually started riding with me as a constant companion, like a depersonalized super-superego perched on my shoulder.
What does God feel like? It is changing as my prayer life develops, and it changes within prayer as I go deeper. God (the Father) feels like an ocean: he does not seemingly come to greet you, but you descend into Him, where it is cold and dark and you fear for your safety. And then there is what Christians call the holy spirit, which is like rain, and it washes you towards the ocean. Depending on what it wants from your prayer, it can fall on you as tears, reconciliation, and immense catharsis (this is what most people want from religion); other times it is intellectual, and ideas will arrive fully formed in your mind, accompanied with a "gentle breath" of overpowering peacefulness, often at odds with the content of its ideas. (A few months ago, the holy spirit pacifically informed me that heaven is somewhat like being tortured to death.)
Come to think of it, here's something else.
When I was age 12, I learned to masturbate. I started creating a "wall" around my mind. I would imagine a small point in the center of my mind and "push" everything out, to a 5 foot radius around me. I would put my force field up whenever I was doing the deed or having sexual thoughts. To anyone observing me, I would say they weren't allowed, they weren't allowed.
I forgot I even used to do this until a few months ago. The universe felt dead and my thoughts "alone" for twenty-odd years between then and now.
In retrospect, my early meditations were unconsciously about breaking "the wall", and allowing for things "beneath", "between", or at any rate very intimate with my thoughts. (Psalm 139 relevant: "If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.") Before, I had unconsciously felt there was some "private room" I could withdraw to and consider the world freely, from an spectator's remove. Ironically, I even assumed this when meta-contemplating my own thoughts and desires from a materialist perspective. Of course, whether one accepts the framework of materialism or theism, no such room can exist.
Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate it. I'll have a look into active recollection.
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