Part 2 of probably 3 (you don't need to read this if you just wanted the TL;DR version) :
I got to talking with the Orthodox priests at my mission, and they recommended to me
The Orthodox Church and
The Orthodox Way. I devoured those two.
And I felt the tensions in my spiritual life between the Byzantine spirituality and tradition that so nourished my soul and helped my walk with Christ, and the Roman Catholic dogmas just confused me and were hard to accept or agree with. As I served the altar at my Byzantine Catholic parish over the course of about a year and a half (another wonderful blessing, by the way), sometimes doubts about these Catholic dogmas popped into my head. Somewhere along the way, I began reading the actual text of the seven ecumenical councils and some writings of the Fathers, and started really trying to figure out these differences. I was able to reconcile the Catholic and Orthodox positions on the Filioque clause, original sin, and the Immaculate conception. I met with my priest after I told him I was considering becoming Orthodox, and he gave me some clarity on things like the Immaculate Conception and the role of the Pope, which helped for a while.
As a side note, while this all was going on, I was helping out as a teacher's aide for middle schoolers' confirmation class. One time we went in for an evening Mass or something of that nature, and I just felt like a stranger in a strange land. I was completely alienated from the Roman Catholic Mas. Everything felt strange and distant to me, and I seriously wondered what I was doing there. Not that this had any impact on my performance as a teacher's aide, of course--it remained a private observation.
Further, I couldn't justify the role of the Pope being made a dogma. I didn't think the Pope had a right to be viewed as any more infallible than any bishop or even a layman, and I certainly didn't see the supremacy and universal jurisdiction of the Church borne out in history. I even began doubting the validity of Roman Catholic communion on occasion. But I was an altar server at a Byzantine Catholic parish. And if we were in communion with the Roman Catholics, and I was doubting their communion, then what about ours? I was serving the altar, for God's sake! I couldn't be dishonest with myself. So, I prayed intensely for three days, chanted the entire Psalter, and prayed for guidance, wisdom, insight, discernment, courage, you name it, I prayed for it.
And the realization I came to was, I was Orthodox. It wasn't just a determination that I had to become Orthodox, or an acknowledgement that I intellectually agreed with Orthodoxy. It's that, in my heart, in my inward being, in my life, thoughts and actions, I was Orthodox. I told my priest, my deacon and those I served the altar with about my decision, and they accepted it, telling me that I was always welcome back, and if I showed up in the back door, put on a cassock and asked for a blessing over my vestment, I would get it and be allowed to serve again. Making the decision to leave was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life; the folks at the Byzantine Catholic parish had become family to me, and I had grown so much in my walk with Christ there. To this day, I am truly grateful that I was able to spend the time that I did with them. I still visit once in a while.
Going to my Orthodox mission, I felt free. I could just live the spiritual life I'd grown so fond of, without having to have any cognitive dissonance or tension. It didn't matter what the Roman Catholic Church had to say about this or that dogma, and I didn't have to do mental gymnastics to reconcile those dogmas to the spiritual life I was leading. I could just be at peace, not have to worry about how I fit into the Roman Catholic scheme of things.
Over the course of the summer, while I'm an inquirer into Orthodoxy, I started to run the gambit of every religion that could possibly be attractive to me. I rushed into Catholicism without exploring the alternatives, and I was not about to make the same mistake with Orthodoxy. I began running into Buddhism, which made so much sense to me. The idea of rebirth was hard for me to wrap my head around, but nonetheless, I did consider myself a Buddhist for a hot minute. Eventually though, I saw that everything that appealed to me about Buddhism was already present in the Orthodox monastic tradition of hesychasm.
Sometimes I would have my agnostic moments, and I started from the ground up in assessing Christianity and the existence of God. I got curious about paganism, and even considered Christo-paganism for a bit, but decided against that, too. Then I started assessing Islam. I read a bit from the Qur'an, learned about Islamic prayer and the Sunnah, and I even doubted Christianity's claims about Jesus for a bit. Not to mention that Qur'anic recitation is otherworldly. Heck, I used to use a bit of Qur'anic Arabic in my prayers, calling God "Allah", and I was even uncomfortable praying to Jesus for a bit. I still remember how to chant "Bismillah al-Rahman, ar-Rahim".
But Islam's view of God seemed too harsh, too distant, too merciless, and the mechanical nature of prayer and ablution and what direction you're supposed to pray sounded too legalistic and not spiritual or transformative enough. Plus, I never saw any evidence to deny the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. And if Jesus died and rose from the dead, then Islam is wrong. Plus, in the Qur'an, which is supposedly handed down word for word by God Himself, the doctrine of the Trinity is grossly misrepresented, as is the belief of the Jews (they never said Ezra is the Son of God!). I also saw what seemed to be contradictory statements as to the fate of the People of the Book, and it seemed as if Allah forced us to be unbelievers, therefore it is Allah who dooms us to Hell, not ourselves. So, I abandoned Islam.
And then, cue Gnosticism. This fascinated me. And since my mother's family has Gnostic influences, I decided it would be beneficial to research it. I got the Nag Hammadi Scriptures and read through the so-called Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Truth and parts of the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocalypse of Peter. I also began researching what the Gnostics believed, and ran into Manichaeanism, Valentinism, Sethian Gnosticism, Ecclesia Gnostica, and others.
Then I realized--what the History Channel says about Gnosticism isn't at all what the Gnostics themselves believed, and my family believed in History Channel Gnosticism. I considered being a Gnostic, but like with Buddhism, everything I agreed with about Gnosticism had an Orthodox counterpart, if not the same teaching. The cosmology of Gnosticism didn't seem to agree with the New Testament or physical resurrection of the dead, and I wasn't about to abandon that. So I abandoned Gnosticism instead.
At my home university, I did participate in a non-denominational campus Bible study, and I have good friends from there. I plan on rejoining them when I get back--at least until I can help get an Orthodox Christian Fellowship established. So then I thought, what about non-denominationalism again? After all, I did have fond memories, and I could keep my Orthodox beliefs. But trying to live an Orthodox life in a non-Orthodox church would only make me feel like a fish out of water. So I decided I should rather become Orthodox, and maybe be involved in fellowships of other denominations as a side ecumenical thing.
Lutheranism crossed my mind, and I did check into that; after all, I'd researched the ever-living crap out of Catholicism, but I didn't really give Lutheranism the same treatment. I thought, this was the church I was baptized in, so you could say that it's my original home, even if I only have a few scant memories of it from when I was little. Maybe after all my searching, after everything I'd learned, I might still have a home in Lutheranism. My original plan before I ran into Catholicism was to study Lutheranism while at the non-denom church and get confirmed as a Lutheran in college anyway. And I even brought myself to agree with the Lutheranism of consubstantiation--which is hilarious, because the debate between Lutheran consubstantiation and Catholic transubstantiation is what got me started on this crazy journey in the first place!
But the same legalistic, "humans are depraved", "Jesus died as our scapegoat to take God's wrath" stuff that I had come to disagree with so much was the lifeblood of Lutheranism. Lutherans did try to unite to the Orthodox, but that was a case of the Lutherans hoping the Orthodox were Lutheran, not the Lutherans hoping they were in line with the ancient Church. Luther had some good points, but he went a little too far. Besides, Lutherans didn't have Apostolic Succession. So yet again, Orthodoxy won out.
So, it was back to Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I did reconsider Catholicism, and basically repeated the mental processes I've already discussed: There are differences, but maybe these can be bridged. Oh hey, they can be bridged. Oh hey, I can accept basically everything about the Pope if it's understood the right way. Maybe I can become Catholic again! But wait, the role of the Pope is a dogma, and a dogma is something that has been believed by all people in all times and all places... And the role of the Pope as understood in Catholicism has not been believed by all people in all times and all places. Through this process I would re-enter contact with Catholics, maybe even dialogue with a priest. There was one time in particular that was particularly strong, and that time was December 2013.