Hi guys,

I've been an Atheist my entire life, with my father being an open atheist.

I have however dabbled in religious rituals and the occult, I strongly relate to the concerns Sam Harris makes in his new book "waking up". I've also taken part in many large Buddhist rituals.

Learning about eastern philosophy opened me up to a something more important than whether or not a god exists, that being the concept of dualism, which although I was an atheist I realized I had been indoctrinated into the concept of duelist thinking.

Dualism, is the idea that the individual self exists separately, the concept of a soul or spirit, although some people maintain dualist thinking and attitudes although they are atheists.

Non-Dualism implies that people who commit crimes (for example) do so as a result of a physiological problem, even if that problem was brought about through environmental causes as opposed to biological ones, and I think non-dualism gives us a reason to be compassionate to murderers and other sorts of ill people, because we understand their actions are the result of environmental or biological causes and that the decisions of the self are illusions.

Many atheists I have found take an "everything is bullshit" attitude to spirituality, especially people who recently came out as atheists.

For me I see Atheism as the beginning of spirituality and not the end, after all, only atheists (and perhaps pantheists) really have the stomach to harbor the ability to discriminate between fairy tale non-sense and spiritual concepts worth investigating.

I've been trying to write about this subject for a while and every-time I do I feel like I get mental blocks obstructing my ability to articulate this subject, so I'd love to hear about other people and if non-dualism was a kind of second great realization for them after atheism.