There comes a time in a lot of people's lives when they look back on where they've come from and what they've believed in, and reexamine things with a more critical eye. For exmormons, this process can be particularly rough since we're taught to believe in a very literal, all-or-nothing, worldview. After the deconstruction takes place, the resulting disillusionment can be positively heartbreaking.
It was while I was in the midst of that deconstruction, that I stumbled upon a handful of insights. You might even say they settled upon my mind like the dews from heaven. I was examining not only my own faith tradition, but the faith traditions of others. I attempted to examine religion from a psychological standpoint, in the hopes that it would put me in a more rational mindset. I drew some conclusions about how the human mind works, and about human creative endeavors.
1st) Everything we do is a reflection of the human psyche.
2nd) We communicate in symbols.
3rd) Narcissism is part of the human survival package.
4th) Everything humans do is weird.
I'll elaborate a bit on these:
More on #1: Everything we do is a reflection of the human psyche. This isn't a particularly profound statement. When an artist decides to make a painting, an idea of how that painting will look is envisioned in their mind before being (imperfectly) realized on canvas. Religions are very similar. I heard religion described as a snapshot of the human psyche that has been externalized at a given point in time. Often, these ideas are captured in a holy book of some sort so that others can share the vision.
More on #2: We communicate in symbols. In fact, we don't just communicate in symbols, we perceive in symbols. At a certain level, we recognize that our senses do not perceive reality, but just a model of it. (Dogs perceive things with their ears & nose that are outside our range of our perception.) We don't actually have the capacity to see the world as it is, or to express it as it is. Languages are arbitrary: We choose certain sounds and ideographs to represent concepts that are transmitted imperfectly from one mind to another. The fables we come up with employ symbols & metaphors to communicate deeper truths that we can't adequately express directly due to the limitations of our language.
More on #3: Narcissism is part of the human survival package. We think that our language, our culture, our religion, our lifestyle is worth preserving. If that wasn't hardwired into us, the human race wouldn't feel the need to expand and pass on the ideas that have sustained us. This narcissism finds expression in a variety of forms, from conquistadors that want to convert the world to Christianity, to skeptics who ask "Why is your way better?"
More on #4: Everything humans do is weird. For every group of humans who thinks they're doing something worthwhile or sacred, there's some other group of humans who thinks that what the first group is doing is totally absurd. For me, the process of deconstruction included stepping outside myself, putting myself in some other guy's shoes, looking at what I'd believed and saying "Hey, that's pretty ridiculous." One man's sacred cow is another man's hamburger. It's not unlike the little game you play as a child where you say a word over and over, and start laughing at how silly it sounds. Similarly, if you examine even the most mundane action, you'll find yourself laughing at just how comically ridiculous it is. This is why all religions are weird; weird is the only game in town.
So, here's how it all comes together: As we project our psyches outward, our narcissism kicks in, and we create these weird, exaggerated, symbolic representations of the contents of our mind. Some examples:
It isn't fun going through a faith crisis. It isn't fun seeing your worldview deconstructed and watching your cherished beliefs disappear before your eyes. ...But I will say this: taking this journey of exploration into the human mind has been a little disillusioning, but it's also been rather... fascinating. And it really makes me wonder about the depths, and the color, and the flavor of the human minds that have been on this earth.
I heard it said once that a book is a most amazing contraption, in that it lets you crawl into an author's mind and spend some time there. So I wonder, if some of the great or influential minds externalized their psyches into book form, what would those books look like?
When I was a kid, I saw video of space shuttles flying out into the stars, and I wondered what was "out there". This was fueled by my religious beliefs of an actual star called "Kolob" that was near the planet where God lived. But now that I'm older, I'm turning my attention inward. This is fueled by my post-religious beliefs about the complexities of the human mind, and the thought that every God we've imagined actually lives in there, somewhere. And in a very meaningful sort of way I feel like I'm closing one chapter, and starting a new one.