![stone-gac99eb906_1280.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmZjA5tW613iVwSqoKe3Te12wrPsPRrFoDWERHg3BdLuvZ/stone-gac99eb906_1280.jpg)

As a young kid, my parents were evangelical Christians of the sort that spoke in tongues and believed the apocalypse was imminent. When I grew old enough to know better, I turned away from this faith to old Earth-based religions. My parents eventually stopped going to church, and for many years my family's marriage and death rituals have been a synchretic combination of Christianity and European paganism. While I participate in these rituals and observe the eight holidays of the yearly calendar, I don't consider myself religious at all these days.

There was a time when I categorized myself as spiritual but not religious. Eventually, I came to see this classification as largely meaningless. In fact, the whole language of spirituality stopped making sense to me. It seemed predicated on the idea that the spiritual was somehow separable from experiences of being in the world. And it often seemed as if those claiming to be spiritual were merely naming a particular brand of materialism spirituality.

So I don't believe in God as some kind of person with a personality. Nor do I believe in the gods except conceptually. I do, however, believe in a conscious universe. And not in some vague sense. I believe that everything is literally made of consciousness, and that each of us is participating in this consciousness continually, for important reasons that we may or may not be aware of.

There is an idea in New Age philosophy that each of us chose, at some level, to incarnate into these particular lives for important spiritual reasons. That all of our experiences, good and bad, are things that our individual souls chose to experience when we signed up for Earth duty. I don't believe this because cluster headaches are a living nightmare that no soul would ever willingly volunteer for. But I do think there's a grain of truth in the idea.

I do believe that we all chose to incarnate here and now, yet I doubt the metaphysics of it are so individualistic. According to the [Seth material](https://nowdictation.com/q/soul+group/), our individual selves may be pieces of larger souls. My experience is that we all have people we go through the world with. Family, friends, business associates. It's not difficult to imagine these groups as souls, come to Earth with purpose, for they act with purpose, each one rich with its own dramas.

It also seems psychologically useful to own our experiences. [Bashar](https://www.bashar.org/) talks about the metaphor of permission slips. The idea is that we have great potential, but sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to access this potential, so we create a virtual permission slip. By believing that they voluntarily chose to have an experience, some people may be giving themselves permission to relate with the experience in a better way.

I'm a big fan of this idea of permission slips. It gives rise to funny ideas like cell phones and computers as permission slips for widespread telepathy. But it also provides a useful lens for looking at motivations. How much of what we do is done merely to give ourselves permission to be more authentic?

In my conscious universe, earthly death means individuated consciousness goes elsewhere, perhaps to a place where other members of its group soul reside. I've had a series of dreams about this process over the years, and believing in them has made it easier to accept the loss of loved ones. Whether my metaphysics are technically accurate or not, they put my mind at ease. Maybe that's spiritual. I don't know.

(Feature image [from Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/photos/stone-rock-stone-drawing-relief-52540/))   

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**Read my novels:**
- **Small Gods of Time Travel** is available as a [web book on IPFS](https://rstory.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmVt9kp8CJKwUm2cvD1mhMVtswsdFh3iEH8AFGEUxnrMu1/). 
- **The Paradise Anomaly** is available in [print via Blurb](https://www.blurb.com/b/10994168-the-paradise-anomaly) and [for Kindle on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NLB95NZ).
- **Psychic Avalanche** is available in [print via Blurb](https://www.blurb.com/b/10891426-psychic-avalanche) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JS6CV9X).
- **One Man Embassy** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9876573-one-man-embassy) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/One-Man-Embassy-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B0836SRC8K).
- **Flying Saucer Shenanigans** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/10002213-flying-saucer-shenanigans) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Flying-Saucer-Shenanigans-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B0863FRJN2).
- **Rainbow Lullaby** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9330918-rainbow-lullaby) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Rainbow-Lullaby-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B07P4MYTGT).
- **The Ostermann Method** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9660167-the-ostermann-method) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Ostermann-Method-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B07Y6RDTJF).
- **Blue Dragon Mississippi** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/10192086-blue-dragon-mississippi) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Blue-Dragon-Mississippi-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B08C54F99R).

**See my NFTs:**
- **Small Gods of Time Travel** is a 41 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1TJEWFRDcudZYwPVfm2j1HAANen3TL7fof) that goes with my book by the same name.
- **History and the Machine** is a 20 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1KmnSSXykx4SA6pdVVh9PweSqK5tkDRsLX) based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- **Artifacts of Mind Control** is a 15 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1Fc7naXm8XApN1EHoJXkC1Tggv2jK9eeZK) based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.