Why did you you choose Bahai faith?
Why did you you choose Christianity?
Why did you choose Judaism?
Why did you choose sikhism?
Why did you choose wicca?
Why did you choose druidism?
Why did you you choose Hinduism?
Why did you choose spiritual but not religious?
Why did you choose Islam?
Why did you choose buddism?
Why did you choose paganism?
Why did you choose new age?
Why did you choose any other religions?
The biggest thing for me was experience. The nice thing about the dharmic traditions is that they invite you to test things out to see if they work. I started practicing Buddhism and it worked. I felt better and I generally felt like it made sense to me. I didn't think the Buddha was exactly divine and to this day I disagree with certain teachings of the Buddha but overall it worked.
What lead me to develop into Hinduism was the culmination of a lot of research and several mystical experiences. I felt a longing for devotion and found that Buddhism ( early buddhism in this case) just didn't deliver. Reading the Tao Te Ching again and the Bhagavad Gita around the same time had a massive impact. The Gita felt like it was putting my own thoughts and feelings into words. So I started to pray to Krishna. Not long after that I prayed to Kali and had a rather interesting result.
Since then I've continued to have rather deep and odd experiences. I learned more about Sikhism and Hinduism while trying out more and more of their practices. I started praying daily and offering everything I ate to Kali. I talked to Kali and found that my bhakti felt not only natural but it felt better than any practice ever had before then. Learning about tantra through obscure books and eventually learning about RamaKrishna.
RamaKrishna embodied something I had felt which was the plurality of religious experience and how multiple streams can start out separate but eventually merge back into one. These days I read Sufi texts, Vaishnava texts, Shiva texts, Buddhist texts, Christian mystic texts and have found that these all seem to be pointing in the same direction. At least that is how I perceive it.
This combined with the amount of people across numerous traditions who came to similar conclusions and felt like truth was beyond words just made sense to me. The Divine comes in many forms and it also seems clear to me that some paths are better for certain people but no one path is the only way forward. I may not engage in Jewish practice for instance but I can still appreciate Maimondes. I may not worship Christ but I can still see the beauty in the works of Meister Eckhart.
Part of the reason I use the word Hindu rather than something more specific is because of the word's origin. The word Hindu was a colonialist shorthand for pretty much any tradition or people in India that weren't Muslim. It's a drastic over simplification but it was later used by Indians themselves to describe their religious traditions. In a sense it brings together the different traditions of things like Vaishanava , Shaivism and numerous other branches. Since I end up taking practices from all over the board this works for me.
To be honest I don't really think we choose to believe what we believe. You can assert ideas and beliefs as much as you want but that won't always make you believe them internally. When I left Islam it wasn't because I suddenly chose to stop believing in it it was because at a certain point I just realized I didn't believe it.
