It was not a mistake. It was just the remnants of past conditioning. We all have been conditioned so heavily since early childhood that it can take a lifetime of releasing to even make a dent.

I was raised a Catholic, too. And I was a good Catholic for a while. I wanted to believe so badly. I wanted to find my way to ‘God.’ I’m not sure where this very strong desire came from but it was over-powering.

Then one Sunday when I was fourteen and a half years old I came out of Mass and looked up into the sky and I made a promise to God. I promised God that I would never ever step foot inside a church again as long as I live. So far, a hundred years later, I have kept that promise. Back then, I decided that my relationship with God would be strictly personal; strictly between myself and God. No middle man!

All religions are middle men. You can’t talk to God except through us! You can’t have a relationship with God except through us. You can’t get to heaven except through us. You can’t be a good person unless you worship with us and never, ever, ever question anything we say.

No, I wanted a personal one-on-one relationship with God. From then on I questioned EVERYTHING I was ever told, everything I ever read, every rule and every proclamation by any church. In the many decades after that Sunday in my youth I have studied most the or the world’s spiritual traditions and I have learned a lot but I never believed anything implicitly without questioning it. Any religion that insists that you never question anything they say only wants to control you. Anything we fail to question owns us.

Now, so many, many decades later I am still searching for God. I am still looking for the personal relationship. It has been said by many that to find God one must look within. I have looked within yet I still question what I find. It’s as if I stop questioning then I stop looking. If I stop looking then I am giving up. We can spend lifetimes searching and looking. It is that search that propels us forward. It is that search that is called life. It is our beliefs that slow down that search and relegate life to a state of stasis that prevents our eventual enlightenment. We stop moving forward and we settle for a perceived state of comfort. We settle for beliefs rather than pushing the envelope of what shields us from that one-on-one relationship — which is our beliefs.

I try to never, ever stop questioning. How else will I ever find the ultimate answer? How will I ever find God?