I’ve been thinking about what I said about godless people, how they lack any virtue and morality and will do absolutely anything if it means getting rid of someone or something that’s in their way, as they see it.

What I find interesting is that I met Catholics who tried to use that same argument on me. Basically, I am not a member of a Church. I don’t accept authority of the Pope, or any religious leader in general. I don’t necessarily accept the authority of scriptures. I question everything. What is to stop me from doing evil? I have no commandments to obey. I have no authority above me. What is there to stop me from doing any kind of evil or immoral things?

I thought about it, not in a sense that I myself wouldn’t know the answer, but I tried to formulate it in a way that would make sense to others.

You see, the expectation that absence of clear authority means that I can just do whatever is wrong. Sure, I don’t accept authority of scriptures or religious figures in that sense, but this absence of authority makes me extremely careful, because if I get something wrong, I have no obvious place to ask for help. I am aware that I have no mommy watching my back. If I get something wrong, I will suffer terrible consequences. I might disappoint good people who rely on my guidance and virtue. This alone is stronger reason for me to be extremely careful in my thoughts and actions than most people can imagine. For instance, my family expects me to be stoic, reasonable, sharp and understanding; they expect me to be someone who will solve problems, not cause them. They expect me to help those who show weakness and make mistakes. This expectation stems from long experience. If I started doing stupid, weak things, their confidence in me would be shattered, and it is not something I would wish to experience. I am expected to be the light in the darkness, someone who calms fears, offers good advice, gives understanding of what’s going on and how to approach situations. However, that’s only part of my motivation. The core of it is something else, much more private and personal; it’s my relationship with God. I don’t wish to speak about it in detail, because that would be both disrespectful and a breach of privacy, comparable to talking about sex with my wife to strangers. It’s just not done. You may ask yourselves why I don’t talk about God or my newer spiritual experiences, and that’s why. When I talked about those things before, it was a terrible sacrifice on my behalf, which I made because I wanted to open doors for spiritual experience, to create mantrically charged text that would enable initiation. However, whenever I open those experiences to others and talk about them, they are lost for me, forever. Their sanctity and privacy has been breached, and my memory of those experiences will forever be contaminated by the astral interference by people who read it. Losing the most sacred part of yourself is exactly as appealing as it sounds, and any normal person would prefer a bullet through the brain; and yet, I did that in order to give others the opportunity they would otherwise not get.

Those times have passed, however, and I am no longer willing to expose my personal spiritual experiences to external interference. That’s the reason why I don’t talk about them. However, I want you to understand their importance to me. If you can understand not wanting to break your family’s faith in you by acting from weakness or sin, imagine a motivation orders of magnitude more powerful – being in a position that something I do breaks my relationship with God. I would much rather die, and I don’t mean just physically, which is something I actually look forward to. No, I mean being completely destroyed as a spiritual being; I would prefer it to disappointing God.

Your Church, your Pope, your religious laws and scriptures, that’s all children’s play. You evade and work around those daily. I am much more honest than that, in a very raw way. Making God disappointed in you because you fucked up, that’s something I never want to experience, and that’s the reason why I’m so extremely careful in everything I do. You can’t even imagine how much. I also take holy scriptures very seriously, even when I end up disagreeing. I see it as a discussion with my wife. Even if I disagree with her, I will take her extremely seriously, think about it with everything I’ve got, and disagreement will never mean disrespect. I don’t treat things carelessly, and I am always aware of dangers and responsibilities. The fact that I am the one making the final call just means that I have nobody to shift responsibility to. When I make a call, I try to make it the best one I can make, using all my abilities, all my insights and powers, and advice from all sources I respect and acknowledge. However, the final call is always mine.

It’s not what the atheists do – “oh, there’s no authority above me, I can do whatever I want, that’s great”. No. Terrible things will happen if I fuck up. I can disappoint people I love, and beings of such high order that I don’t even know how to describe them with words. I can’t even begin to describe how bad that would be, or what kind of a discipline this awareness automatically creates. To me, none of that is abstract or intangible. It’s a treasure of immense value, loss of which would be the greatest personal tragedy. You just don’t fuck with that; you rather suffer whatever agony or inconvenience instead.

So, no, I don’t have the authority of Church, Bible or Pope to guide my actions, but that makes me ten times more careful, controlled and responsible than you can imagine. The religious people can understand that in some way, but the atheists, they are idiots and scum. I have no respect for them whatsoever, they are moral and intellectual garbage. They don’t even understand the problems, let alone the solutions.