I also wanted to comment more generally on all the prior posts in the thread, all of which had something good and right and true to say about each poster's thoughts and experiences. Thank you ALL for sharing and making this such an enjoyable thread
I wanted to share my thoughts on how, IMO, a belief in something (whether one's experiences, and/or a tradition or philosopy, etc) and also a belief in nothing or in not-something are equally all beliefs. No one is more factual or freeing than the other, nor are any of these mutually exclusive in their totality, IMO. In other words, they are all good, and where we each are is a product of our own journey and our own individual ways of being.
I myself prefer the term resonance, as in I resonate with this or that experience, belief, or philosophy BASED ON a combination of both experience and awareness, in my case each equally being a blend of heart and mind (in service to heart) -- I cannot separate these ways of knowing without doing damage to my spiritual integrity.
As I see it, what is true very generally for me in this sense is largely very generally true for all or most others. Meaning, everyone has a different way of knowing or apprehending What Is, which comprises their own blend or flavour of all of the above. But IMO it doesn't make one way of knowing more or less factual or more or less liberating than any other, per se. It is IMO more that there are many paths to God/Source/Centre, and (
a main point for me is) that when we are each ready to assume the mantle of ownership and responsibility for our own journey, then we will do so. Which gets at least in part to what Gem and many others have touched on, each coming from different places and understandings relating to where each of us are on our journeys.
Put another way, IMO, the foundational reason for being is for each in his/her/its own way to realise the interbeing of all that is, which equally means to realise all that we are individually, at centre. So...we could say karma is What Is, as is authentic love and presence (be here now), as is (for us) individuated consciousness with periodic incarnation, and so forth. Each of these illuminates the fullness of What Is in a different way. Or, we should say, as we understand it, these things appear to us to reflect or touch on different aspects of What Is.
Peace & blessings all
7L