intellectual shamanism and atheism

In my last post, I wrote about the sacred and what it means to me:

 Even if you are atheistic, you can be in awe of what it means to live and breathe and have existence -- life may be being squeezed out of you, but you are still here, to watch it and record it.   At this most reductive level, which is where Marechera takes you, right there is the quintessence of life itself.

A philosopher might describe it only slightly differently, as the miracle, the strangeness of consciousness and the fact that it exists at all.  It's not what consciousness "can do", but the fact that it "is".  "Be still and know that I am god."   One must get rid of the mental clutter, for the amazingly factual nature of consciousness to appear.

Consciousness is astounding and it should be sufficient for us as an object of religious worship.   Everything I've written about shamanism is just a statement in awe of consciousness.  When consciousness goes, we die.  Here it is today, and gone tomorrow.   All the meaning that the person had in them also goes -- but for a moment, they were shining very brightly.

There is nothing transcendent or clever about denying the importance of consciousness.  You are free to deny that your consciousness has any importance or value to you -- in which case, I'll agree that you seem to have little value.   It's better not to deny the essence of what one is and there is much wisdom in glorifying and embellishing what one is -- for, tomorrow, we die.

So far, I have described to you my atheistic philosophy, which is my religion.

I don't "believe" in a shamanism any more complex than this. I don't, for instance "have faith" in it, any more than I have faith in the imagination.

I do, however, have faith in the imagination.