No, I pretty much sound like an atheist. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in a diety. I have been one for a pretty long time and have invested some time in trying to figure out my spiritual leanings, so I am pretty sure I am just your garden variety atheist.
I am not Buddhist, though I have studied it. Buddhism has many interesting concepts and I can agree with a lot of it. I learned a lot from buddhism and appreciate the time I spent looking into it. But there is a denial of desire central to buddhism that I am either too venal or too American (is that the same thing?) to embrace wholeheartedly. I also find that whole "it is through the desire to be happy that the path to misery lies" doesn't resonate for me. I don't think I am a Jainist because I am not convinced that we are necessarily here to work toward enlightenment, though I agree with many of the tenets of that belief system. It comes very close to how I feel about things. But then there is all that pesky reincarnation.
I kind of think we are here and then we die and that's about it. I think that there is a unifying energy that threads through all of life. We may rejoin the energy, but ME as an entity with an conciousness is not preserved. It just doesn't make sense to me. I have heard all the stuff about past life regression and in fact have a couple of good friends who believe very firmly in their past lives and can tell you all about it. It just doesn't work for me. I believe in some combination of subjective and objective reality that is just the way we are equipped to deal with the universe. The unifying energy is like gravity, a facet of how the universe works. It is the same as what I keep saying about the LOA...it just 'is'.
I am redefining my spirituality all the time, but I feel like I have already moved through the phase where I need an organized religion or a god. Been there, done that. I don't *think* I will wind up there again.
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