For your 1 year with Hinduism thread, could you write there about how you became interested in Hinduism and attracted to it,
Me: I was exploring faiths and I attempted to be a Baha'i follower. I realized that I had an interest in Krishna the most on their list of gods/people they believe were manifestations. I realized that the Baha'i faith wasn't that LGBT+ friendly, so I really just kind of branched off.
what practices and beliefs you adopted first and next and next from there,
Me: I like prayer and I believe I can communicate with the gods somewhat through it. Especially ones I try to be close too like Krishna and Shiva. In terms of personality, I see Krishna as a loving jokester, and Shiva as a person with a dramatic outward personality.
One belief that I found easy to adopt is believing in karma... and also reincarnation. It just made sense.
and what your practices have ended up becoming so far
and how soon each occurred from the start date, and then basically all about your
religious thoughts,
ideas,
practices,
what deity names you prefer or call upon or worship or
how you go about each, all that,
any struggles,
any tensions,
any doubts,
any disturbances based on your background or tensions from that,
family interactions and relations,
how you relate to new people
or make friends with the new religious outlook
or discuss it with people
and which you might hesitate to discuss it with,
what you read,
what you liked,
what you disliked,
the whole thing in detail if possible.
Me: One thing making my transition to Hinduism easy is the people on RF. There are really like 10 or so tremendous regulars who subscribe to the faith.
One interesting thing is I don't really display Hinduism outwardly to my conservative Christian family. They may have suspicions, but they'd still probably get upset about certain things.
One thing difficult is I still understand the Christian scriptures more than the Hindu scriptures, leading me to discuss them more -- just not real seriously.
I once met a faith healer with a lot of spiritual insight who was Hindu. She said "You remind me of one of the Hindu gods." I said "Let me guess. Krishna?" She said "No. Shiva."
I guess that doesn't really surprise me considering I was following Shiva more at the time.
Speaking of which, one thing I've struggled with is I was conditioned to think that faith healers, "psychics", etc, aren't real. But I've gotten certain insights from them that would really be difficult to get without knowing me.
It may not be of interest to others, I don't know, but it sure is of tremendous interest to me and I'd very much like to know everything I can about your experience with it.
How much of your day does it occupy
your practices,
your thoughts,
activities, everything like that,
studies,
interpretations of things you see, etc.
Me: I incorporate mainstream music now as part of my worship. I'll put on a good song and think about the gods while listening to it.
Usually I dedicate every other night now, when I can, to worship.
Do you feel like an outsider or accepted,
do you feel like people are skeptical of the claim to Hinduism
or think you're just a wannabe
or have you found a lot of welcoming types of interactions?
Me: My country the US, I feel is getting to be led spiritually by cash grabbing TV evangelists and becoming highly partisan, mixing Christianity and politics. Most don't understand Hinduism.
I don't think people see me as a Hindu wannabe due to at the very least, the impossibility of describing what Hinduism even is to begin with.
Also, what are the limits in your mind or dimensions of what Hinduism is and isn't,
encompasses and doesn't encompass or stops at,
what are the borders of it in a sense (in your perspective anyway)?
Do you have an easy way to tell if you are a Hindu or not a Hindu or if someone else is in your view a genuine Hindu or not,
and what they would have to do or think in order to qualify by your standards?
Me: I'm not really sure yet. Thanks for all the time writing out these questions.
You can copy paste all these questions there in the thread if you wish to answer them in public.
