Lately I've been thinking a lot about my respect of religious places, items, ritual, and the like; my lack of desire to see them defiled, and my disgust when they are. I'm not a religious person. I do not believe in God. Yet, when it comes to what others do or believe, I try not to encroach on it. In fact, I like to investigate it. I'm curious about it. It fascinates me.

My lack of belief in God is a little difficult to define. It's not the same sort of vehement anti-Godism that you get from most people who claim to be Atheists. For me, it's more a lack of need to believe. For me, it's a need to focus on the self as the centre of existence - for it is with the self that one most constantly has to deal. In my own theology, theosophy, philosophy, whatever you wish to call it, if I do a thing, it is I who have done that thing - not another person, not a nebulous being in some other ether. I thank myself for what good I do, and thank others for the good they do towards me. It also means that when I harm, I am the bearer of blame for that harm. I have done it, not some nebulous devil being. I bear the blame, and it is I who must make amends. By doing this, by the acceptance into myself of the good and bad, I become more whole.

I think the Buddhists have it right in the sense that they believe that Buddha is in each of us; the Buddha nature, rather. Buddha was not a god, he was just a wise man. It is the brand of wisdom he possessed that is inside a person, not a god-being, not a spirit. Wisdom. Goodness. Knowledge. Understanding. Faith. Rightness. Fitness. Connectedness. They are all in the self and of the self. It matters not from whence a thing comes if a person cannot intake that thing and therefore understand it. All the prayer, dogma, and ritual in the world mean nothing if the person fails to comprehend it, fails to internalise it somehow. Otherwise it's lipservice, and I don't think there's a single faith on earth that appreciates lipservice.

So, if it's all in the self, why not start with the self, and dispense with externalising your spirituality, your holiness, your faith, or whatever it is you wish to term it. If I externalise something, it's no longer a part of me. I am, in a sense, throwing away or cutting off parts of myself. I stop being whole. I stop being able to have power over myself, because I'm giving away what gives personal power to something else.