Not Faith, Exactly
On spiritual experiences
I’m agnostic.
I don’t believe in any religion, sadly. I grew up Catholic, and my mother is still a devout believer. She always said the only condition is that you have faith. That’s all that matters. I’m afraid I don’t have faith. I can’t suspend my beliefs about our material world. Yet the older I get, the more I’m softening my stance. I’m more open, more attuned to how I feel, what I sense, what can’t be explained rationally. Not full-on faith perhaps, but belief in the power of our minds, in synchronicity, in the patterns that emerge when we’re paying attention.
I approach all religions with curiosity. They have been our primary way of making sense of existence. Religion and spirituality offer solace, community, humbleness, hope. Above all, they offer meaning to a world that can feel too big and too indifferent.
Throughout my trip to Bhutan a few months back, I noted small moments. I don’t know what to call them. Epiphanies feels too grandiose, coincidences too small. But each one made me sense a larger realm, more beautiful and more meaningful, dwelling within us. Waiting to be accessed.
During a chant in a temple, a married couple in front of me held hands and for a second they squeezed stronger as if communicating a shared truth or feeling. It was so touching to witness the depth of a relationship distilled in a single gesture.
On another visit to a monastery, a monk who couldn’t have been older than ten turned back mid-chant and smiled at me, I smiled back. He did it two more times, each one holding it for longer, smiling wider. It felt like a recognition of each other. A certain understanding, complicity even. I don’t know who you are or what your life has been but there are certain universal truths to our experience on this planet. I see you and you see me and we both get it.
In Thimphu, while battling with anxiety, I walked all over the city, went down to the river, and found a park. I sat on a bench that overlooked a children’s playground. A boy and a girl (siblings I assumed) came over, waved, and insisted with signs I watch them go down the slide over and over. Their mom and grandma sat on the other side of the park and waved at me. They kept looking back at me to check if I was still watching them. These children—who will grow up and live their lives in Bhutan and have families of their own—will never remember that moment at the playground, but I will. What better way to ground you when your mind is unraveling than watching children play joyously, without a care in the world, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, listening to the river below?
These fleeting moments felt like spiritual experiences. They happen when you connect with people at a level that transcends logic, that doesn’t make rational sense but makes felt sense. Our spiritual guide, Dorji, told us about Nagarjuna’s concept of emptiness in Buddhism. He considered emptiness not as void but as interconnectedness.
Interconnectedness is exactly what I felt in these moments: connected to people I’ll never see again, yet bonded through a shared experience. I felt less alone. More grateful. Awed that my body could produce this warm feeling, that I could feel love toward strangers, toward a moment, toward the very act of connection.
If this is what faith offers people—this feeling—then I get it. If more people who feel lonely and suffocated by dread could tap into this collective warmth, this energy, this love that asks nothing of us but to notice it, we would be alright.
Maybe all we want are places where connection is easier to feel. Places to slow down. To remember we’re not alone. To reframe emptiness as its opposite: everything and everyone, connected.
postscript 📮
Happy last day of 2025! Thank you for reading, for subscribing and for giving me your most precious asset: your attention.
I published 40 essays this year. It was an absolute thrill. Here’s to 56 in 2026!
I’m doing my annual review and I have really good questions for you to reflect on:
What is trying to emerge in me that I keep interrupting?
What am I experiencing that I have no language for?
What thought did I dismiss because it seemed too simple or too mine?
What am I grieving that isn’t a death?
What small thing do I love that the world considers unimportant?
This warmed my heart, as your words so often do ❤️ I’ve always found it faith-giving to connect with strangers in particular, like there’s this whole invisible network of connection waiting for us at any given moment. It reminds me a bit of an Ocean Vuong poem that says “even loneliness is time spent with the world.”
I loved your reflections and your awareness, this feelings were inside you always, maybe the solitude, the beauty of nature, the warmth you expirienced in people you don’t even met…Maybe it is a path that you’ll have to walk in seeking ansewrs for your concerns ❤️