From the very beginning of my own Life here on this planet, I have simply loved all Life. And not just human-life but all life and nature. I always felt very connected to nature and also had this kind of urge to take care of Life. Like spiders, worms, squirrels, you name it. I felt all forms of Life were precious and I wanted to take care of them. I was also always very upset when any creatures of Life were treated poorly. My mother found herself multiple times from situations where I was crying hysterically and questioning the motives of humans no matter if there was a cartoon where a mother bear was shot by a hunter, or if it was a protective net around a berry-bush that had caused a bird to get stuck and die. Also seeing starving children through news-casts or whatever cases where Life wasn't protected and taken care of made me quite overwhelmed by disbelief and also very very sad.
Also already at quite a young age I was pretty intrigued of where and how all Life had originated, so basically who or what was behind all Life. As a child I was told that God the father was behind all Life and at first I bought the tale I was told without much questioning. Especially because I was also told that God the father loved and cherished ALL of his creations equally in infinite measures without any conditions. This part definitely rang as the truth in my own, Life-loving, pure child’s heart.
I was quite keen to learn more about the party who was behind all Life and so I made myself familiar with our religious teachings and came to learn that God the father they were teaching about wasn't a REALLY loving father at all. On the contrary he was quite power-hungry, violent and vindictive, and if he showed some love or mercy towards his creations, it definitely wasn’t equal nor without any conditions.
And this wasn’t of course the only contradiction or illogical component in the religious teachings, but there were so many it was quite overwhelming. What was also overwhelming to learn was the amount of killing and destruction of Life that had been implemented in this world in the name of religions that worship this kind of very violent, vindictive and power-hungry God-figure, and still people were following and bowing to such religions and their dogmatic ways even though everyone knew what they were teaching combined with all the damage that had been done in their name. First as a child and then as an adolescent it was just quite unbelievable to witness that this was the state of our humanity and a world. I didn’t know about what is called “Stockholm syndrome” at the time, but that is of course pretty much the kind of dynamic that I saw already in my young years and it was so hard for me to understand.
At the age of fifteen the Lutheran christian confirmation school ended up being the final straw for me and I totally signed out from any kind of religious teachings in my mind and simultaneously from any sort of spirituality. I declared myself as an atheist who wouldn’t trust anything but science and logical, rational thought as the source that could define any sort of framework of truth for me about the nature of Life and reality. For me all the religious or spiritual teachings and their interpretations that I was aware of at the time were just way too Life-dishonoring, destructive and illogical.
However back then I wasn’t at all as thoughtful regarding the main ideas and teachings of science as I had been related to religious teachings. I was very naive regarding them and just simply assumed that all science with its theories were always created and conducted from a very comprehensive perspective, systematically with great intelligent and logical thought. This would of course have to be the case when it comes to the theories and ideas that were assumed to be true in our modern society about the nature of Life and reality and how they function, and also about the origins and evolution of Life and reality in general. Science was and pretty much still is so highly endorsed and trusted in our society and also its concrete achievements are visible and utilized successfully in so many areas of our lives so at the time I just swallowed all its main ideas without any conscious thought and scrutiny from my part.
What this meant in practice was that I had very much shut down my own inner, natural sense of self who was always so connected with Life and nature and who knew in her heart of hearts that the underlying intelligence of all Life and existence is love. Now I was an atheist who believed having her existence in a material partly random and partly deterministic Universe with no deeper interconnected intelligence within it. Human-society for me looked crazy and people seemed to disrespect, sabotage and destroy Life, but there wasn’t really anything that anyone could do about it. Me neither, although I felt a strong call within for that.
Pretty crazy and unintelligent belief-system when I look at it now, but at the time I was its prisoner without even realizing it. In its guidance together with other beliefs and norms of our society I was living a Life that felt quite terrible and hopeless. I got my first depression diagnosis around the age of 20. At that time I got my meds and got some therapy that made me “swallow” my believed destiny to be just a cosmic accident who can't do anything other than try to do its best in this society that seemed so crazy and unhealthy to me.
This "treatment" helped me at the time that much that I did end my meds soon and became more or less "normal human-being" according to our current, quite an unhealthy and unnatural society. So I tried my best for many many years to live according to basic “good, normal Life” principles of this world and looking from the outside in it did seem that I was doing pretty well. I had a successful career, I was married, beautiful and dear children, we had our own house at a great location, dear hobbies and friends... However I wasn't really happy. I wasn’t living my Life really according to my true nature and potential although it did have some beautiful and dear elements from that too.
As years went by the call from my true inner self beyond any conditioning became stronger. It was calling me to awaken to the fact that myself like the whole human-society was living Life against our true nature and that I was born to do something about it. Yet from the belief-setup by which my mind was operating and I was living my Life at the time such a call felt frightening and I tried to suffocate and run away from it. In a Universe and Life that was just a big, random accident with some deterministic twist there weren't any real Life-serving callings and purposes for anyone. Feeling something like that so strongly seemed more like a mental disorder than a legitimate, normal thing in the scheme of Life and nature. Like said already; Pretty crazy and unintelligent belief-system when I look at it now, but at the time I was its prisoner without even realizing it. In its guidance together with other beliefs and norms of our society I was living a Life that felt quite terrible and hopeless.
The catalyst event for me to start breaking free was a personal crisis that I ended up creating living this way which started as health-issues which led to total burnout and my second depression diagnosis. It was such a dark place for me. A dead-end-rock-bottom where I knew I simply couldn’t live my Life like I had anymore. I also knew from experience that what seemingly helped last time doesn’t really make any real difference. All that traditional therapy or meds can do is to try to make you somehow cope in a world with its ways that is set up in a way that makes everyone sick. That is not a REAL solution. That is not in any way intelligent. It’s actually stupidity and worse than that. Insanity. So this time I simply knew I couldn’t or wouldn’t conform to insanity anymore. I was already a mother at this point for Heavens’ sake! How could I do that and model and set such a path also for my children? No way I was going to do that! So I firmly decided I was going to make a total transformation in Life and that nothing could stop me.
Soon after this, something quite extraordinary happened. Or at least it was that for an atheist who was certain she was having her existence in a material, random universe without any deeper underlying intelligence and interconnectedness of consciousness and energy of Life and existence.