A skeptic turned believer

Probably the most fundamental question in my life is, and has always been, what is it all about?

Raised "Christian", not of a specific denomination but under the belief that there is one God and that he sent his only son to die for our sins, I became "Atheist" in my teen years - Atheist in title only as I couldn't believe there could be a God who was so cruel as to allow me to continue to live my miserable life but still praying to that God, just in case - and admitting, after becoming a mother, that there had to be something more out there. I have only in the past two or three years, found faith that I can identify with. Still, not with any specific religion, but more in line with Eastern thoughts and practices and thus identifying myself as "Buddhish", if it must be labeled.

I believe in life after death. I believe that we have "souls". Why? Because we are conscious. Consciousness is probably the most fascinating aspect of life to me. Where does it come from? How are we aware? Where does it go after death? In death, does consciousness cease, or is it just moving from our physical bodies to somewhere else? A friend of mine once said that he believes consciousness continues for the sole reason that he can't comprehend it not being anymore. To me, that's as easy an excuse as saying that consciousness ceases because you can't conceive of it continuing without the body. Easy excuses don't work for me. If they did, I'd probably still consider myself "Christian", because it's easier to believe what your parents tell you to, than to make up your own mind about it.

I believe in reincarnation. It actually took me a long time to come to that belief, considering that I desperately wanted to believe in reincarnation as a teenager, but could find no basis for that. So what basis do I have now? The easiest explanation is that I agree with the things that make the most sense to me, but the truth is I need to have some kind of proof. I'm not talking about cold, hard scientific facts, because I don't think we are capable of finding 100% scientific proof of an afterlife, but the kind of proof where my experiences, intuition, and certain scientific studies lend credence to the belief.

What studies am I referring to? I think the most illuminating insight we have into the afterlife comes from those who have approached the brink of death, and lived to tell about it. There are numerous accounts of near death experiences- people who have clinically died, whose brains ceased to function, but came back to report experiencing consciousness during that period, and with fascinating descriptions of being out of their bodies, life reviews and analysis, and of deciding what to do next.

But even that doesn't lend enough to the idea of having multiple lives in various physical bodies. Furthering the prospect of reincarnation are the accounts of people who somehow manage to remember past lives, and are able to correlate their knowledge with the written history of those lives, and even by the surviving members of those families.

I've learned recently to give credence to my intuition, which is a very hard thing to do for someone who grew up believing that logic and scientific method should rule belief. But in learning to embrace my intuition, I have found amazing personal proof of how the soul travels past the physical world. While I can't prove anything to anyone else, I know the truth for myself, at least the small amount of truth that doesn't even compare with everything there is to know about the unknown.