I was brought up...
Originally posted to Facebook 8th May 2014. This is part one of a two part series. The second part is: Pursuing Faith . I was brought up as an evangelical Christian and had many spiritual experiences, experiences of God, as I was growing up. When I got to university my faith became a social impediment and I determined to become an atheist. And I succeeded. However, I still wanted to be spiritual and to explain the spiritual experiences of my youth. At Cambridge university I was surrounded by many wealthy, and as I saw it at the time, self-interested people. I fell in with a bunch of local hippies, whose lives were in stark contrast to the people around me. (Assuredly I judged those around me too harshly, they were young and ambitious and merely trying to find their own way as you do at that age. But still.) The hippies had no interest in money, and shared their lives and homes with each other. At the same time I was friends with members of the FWBO (Friends of the Western Buddhis