Religious experience and hallucinations

I grew up in a house with a bible-thumping dad. He was also literally crazy, schizophrenic. He thought Jesus was talking directly to him. He thought that the CIA had his entire life bugged and that the surveillance footage was being broadcast to every American household. Whenever he visited somewhere new, he would scroll through the cable channels, hoping to catch a glimpse of himself. The fact that he couldn't was used as further evidence that it was happening. Needless to say life was trying at times. His strange logical jumps had me supplying rationalizations, missing bits of logic to get from A to B, but to him, I think it was just obvious that lack of evidence was actually evidence.

I considered myself devoutly religious, spurred by the ethos of my church, I preached to some students in 9th grade lunch. I mainly found religious girls attractive, and when I say religious, I mean Christian. Like probably even on the fundie side. I decided to read the bible all the way through, and after hearing about all the things that are unclean in Leviticus, I said, nope, that's not the inspired word of the lord. I continued thinking of myself as Christian for a while, but in the end I became an atheist.

I drank too much though, went to AA, and they said "you need religion." I said, "well, will Buddhism do?" They looked at each other uneasily and said, "we'll let it pass for now, but one day, boy, Jesus gonna knock you upside the head." Various others worried I might burn in hell. They were drunkards.

I began Buddhism on the philopsophical side, got drawn into the spiritual and magical. My dad was schizophrenic, so maybe it's not surprising that I can come up with my own sanctioned hallucinations, grade A approved by the rest of the sangha. I fit in. I felt special. Meditation helped me out. But my guru raped a woman. Supposedly he was divine. That didn't sit right. I tried a different guru, but in the end, my conclusion is that magic is all bunk. We humans are programmed to think this way, at least some of us are, and it is remarkable how easy it is to fall into it.

I was once falling asleep, subject to an increasing litany of doubts, when my guru appeared in my dream, knocked loudly on the outside glass, and I shot up in bed, startled. My doubts all dissipated immediately. Now I look back and think, wow, my mind was really intent on a certain path. It had set me on the path earlier, when I had a vision, or really more of a somatic experience. Before I met my guru, on my way to his talk, I prayed that he have happiness and its causes. Immediately I felt a surge of euphoric energy in my heart, the phrase "returned as wisdom blessings, the light is reabsorbed" rang through my head, and the energy shot up through the top ofvmy head. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. It was my own road to damascus story. Some aspect of my own mind set me on a path, and attempted to keep me there. Weird, right? 

Other apparent miracles are literally the appearance of rainbows in the sky on auspicious occasions. Let's just say that this is less than convincing. Rainbows are a natural phenomenon. I expect we see them more when we want to see them, because then we are paying more attention. Also, on days when a group is cremating a lama, everyone is outside, people are there for hours at a time. It's not so unexpected that rainbows appear somewhere in that window. 

So now, I see that a lot of the supernatural, well all of it, is completely bunk. Just my mind plugging into a collective mythology, cocreated my humans over millenia. It's a little sad because just praying to an entity is kind of easy. And if they have the power to bless you, wow,  you've got it made in the shade! Actually looking at my own life and deliberately acting in ways that I choose, that's hard. Also, people die. They die forever. Every one of them. That's not an easy biscuit to swallow either. 

So to recap, I was raised by a schizophrenic, fundy father. Then I became an atheist. Then a committed Buddhist. Then an atheist again. Where to from here? Hopefully a path with further clarity of thought and purpose.