It was one of those late nights when I, who usually would fall asleep in a snap, was overcome with a rare insomnia. I would pace around the house restlessly, not knowing for sure what I wanted to do at the moment. I settled down and tried to focus on watching some YouTube videos. None of the usual stuff grabbed my attention, so I drifted to videos about psychology and philosophy. As I went through them, a lightbulb in my head started to flicker. This is the result of that uneasy night — a short treatise on religion and spirituality from my perspective.
At the risk of sounding like a new age hippie who sits in the middle of a circle of power crystals and sipping essential oils by the gallon, I write this blog post on religion as a manifesto of how I understand religion and theism as of 2025 at 39 years of age. It may change in the future as my life and understanding evolve over time, but this is what makes sense to me as of now.
Take note that I’m not that well read in philosophical texts, so I’m not sure if someone else already came up with it. I appreciate any reference to materials on this topic. I admit that it seems to be an easy enough idea to arrive at with enough musing, so I assume that someone at some time in the past had already come to the same line of thought and put it into writing.
While this sat in my Google Docs for a couple of years after I got stuck in the middle of writing, events that occurred in my life from early October 2023 until mid June 2025 compelled me to finish it. I needed catharsis as my own demons threatened to overcome me as it did over a decade ago during my worst depression. Having gone through storms and droughts, and then coming out of them, I’ve since learned what to do this time around.
This is still a work in progress and I’m well aware that I may change my mind later on. I have to be careful since it’s a take on religion, a topic that people throughout the world still feel strongly about in the 21st century. But don’t worry, this is neither a bible-thumping tirade nor a fedora-wearing atheist rant. This is my attempt at bridging the gap between religion and secularism.
Recognizing the Enemy — the Ego
When Ryan Holiday titled his best-selling book Ego is the Enemy, he knew that he had to put a face on the enemy in three chapters. When Steven Pressfield talked about ‘resistance’ in his book The War of Art, he was describing an enemy that’s clever, devious, and relentless.
The film Revolver, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Jason Statham with a wig on, was inspired by Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. It turns out that the Jews had something similar to Zen Buddhism going on, like a Hebrew version of it. Kabbalah tackled the same themes and challenges, but with a different cultural context.
It turns out that understanding who the enemy had been a field of study through the eons, which then became esoteric schools of thought that often gets categorized as spirituality and mysticism, whatever they were supposed to mean.
Unfortunately, that stuff has devolved to Himalayan salt lamps, anti-5G bracelets, pointing one’s anus towards the sun to absorb its energy, and whatever Gwyneth Paltrow is selling.
But the aim of these schools of thought is simple, which is to identify the common enemy and figure out the best ways to fight and vanquish it. That resulted in various practices that focused on taking one’s mental state to different levels of consciousness, such as meditation, taking psychedelics and other substances, and even that spinning thing in Sufism.
That then gets interpreted as ‘getting closer to God’. In a way, that phrase sums up what those practices are supposed to accomplish, which is to force the mind to break away from our material reality and take it to a different plane of existence, or at least get a sneak peek of it while we still reside in this mortal coil.
As the famous adage goes, “The greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing the world he does not exist.”
Revolver took this further with, “The greatest trick that he ever pulled was making you believe that he is you.”
The film talks about the enemy — the off-screen character Sam Gold — through that film. It’s a cinematic allegory on recognizing who the enemy is and defeating it through self-reflection, learning how to play and overcome the game, and attaining self-actualization. He was never shown in the flesh, only alluded to as the king in the chess game, but he turned out to be a powerless cipher.
In a way, Sam Gold was indeed shown as the force that compels the main characters to overextend themselves out of greed, envy, or rage.
Whenever that voice in your head tells you something contrary to what you know is best for you, that’s the enemy talking.
When that voice tells you everyone is watching, it is making you afraid to take action because it wants you to stay comfortable.
When that voice tells you that you’re being screwed over by things that ultimately don’t matter, it’s making you anxious and paranoid.
Naming the Enemy
However, it’s a nigh insurmountable challenge to make most regular folk reject and dispose of their ego. Many feel it’s like rejecting their own character and personality. It takes tremendous effort and even a sacrifice of themselves to do so. Therefore, the ego had to be represented differently to make the process seem simpler and less self-sacrificial.
They othered the ego by making it represent a grand adversary and gave it a name.
They made him the Devil; they named him Satan.
When the Devil tempts you to stray from your straight and narrow ways, it’s the ego telling you to choose what is comfortable or selfish. Each of the cardinal sins — pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth — is a function of the ego to either boost one’s short-term confidence despite social cost or preserve the self from the difficult and risky.
The main idea remains the same, that the ego is not you. However, over the centuries, the Devil has since become so othered that the personification of the ego has since created the opposite of the intended effect — the Devil and the ego are no longer the same thing. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to passing down this tradition.
You now have religious people acting out of pride and wrath against those they deem as outsiders of their own faith, declaring them ripe for hellfire, despite themselves acting in ways that the Devil finds pleasing. They have so much confidence in their own faith that they forget the foundational tenets that are supposed to guide them.
But it’s not entirely their own fault because their denominations had taught them that it’s righteous and just to rebuke and condemn the sinners and the unclean for their transgressions. The Devil led them astray, so it’s right for them to yell at these heretics that they’re going to hell unless they change their ways. However, it is they who listen to the Devil — their own ego.
Therefore, we need a clearer and broader lens to view our actions with. Knowing the enemy is not enough because we also need to know where that enemy is coming from. This is something I’m working on as of this writing, and I hope to finish it before the end of 2025.
Dealing with the Enemy
Dealing with one’s ego is work that is never done. Just because you finally realized that your ego is indeed not actually you, it doesn’t mean you’re done with it. The epiphany is just the start of the real challenge, which is working on self-awareness at every waking moment.
Quoting the Italian writer and martial artist Daniele Bolelli, “Training is like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Everyday, we must sweep.”
The following is from my own learning and observation. Reader discretion is advised.
Prayer and meditation are the tools, and learning to use these tools properly is half the battle. Prayer is not just asking God for something, but also admitting to your faults and being thankful for every living moment because tomorrow is never guaranteed.
Meditation is not just stopping yourself from thinking, but also recentering one’s body and mind through breathing and relaxation. When things get stressful, panicking is never the answer. Too many people think fear and tension make them vigilant, but it’s the opposite that’s true.
My preferred way of prayer isn’t just bowing my head down and asking the Lord for whatever. Prayer is not merely communication with a higher power, but also with oneself. You verbalize your thanks, regrets, hopes, and dreams to manifest them in your subconscious, almost like self-hypnosis. Therefore, I think the more effective method is writing it down.
Journaling is praying. By writing down your prayer, you’re increasing the effectiveness of that verbalization. You also get to look back on previous entries and be reminded of what you were praying for in the past. I like to say that prayer is an ‘auto-humble’ mechanic, as long as the substance of the prayer remains true to that purpose.
How many people out there — even the most devout among us — remember what they prayed about on a random day picked from a calendar?
Meanwhile, meditation helps you reset your brainwaves and brings your heart rate down. For instance, praying the rosary is a form of meditation, as well as salat — the Islamic way of prayer. Any form of recentering that involves chanting or repetition that brings the mind to a relaxed, rhythmic state is a form of meditation. Breathing exercises are a simplified way to meditate, albeit abbreviated.
To pray is to humble thyself through acknowledging one’s need for a higher power. Every time one prostrates, they are surrendering their ego to the universe and accepting the fact that they’re just an individual — merely a tiny drop of water in the vast ocean.
To meditate is to remember that you need to stay in control without having to frantically grab and turn the steering wheel. While we live in this world within our physical vessels, we must maintain the harmony between the body and mind. Only then can they follow what’s true to your heart.
Mindfulness is crucial, and maintaining it has to become a daily ritual.
The Decay of Purpose and Meaning in Traditions
Unfortunately, much like training methods in traditional martial arts, religious practices have gradually ossified and lost their meaning. The advantage of tradition is the preservation of habits through ritual, but context of purpose and meaning fade away as generations pass. The habits themselves become seen as the Way in themselves and not as merely routes to the Way.
Rediscovering the Way means separating the traditions from the substance of the rituals. Deep-seated traditions tend to act as substitutes and even impediments for critical thinking, and using critical thinking to decode traditions can be met with resistance by those who may believe that doing so can violate the sanctity of those traditions.
While sentiment cannot be completely eliminated, the need for critical thinking to understand traditions becomes more and more paramount with the passage of time. Some may see that critique as blasphemous, while other more cynical individuals may see it as futile and pointless.
There are even those who would think that these old and dusty traditions have nothing substantial to contribute, so they should be rid of once and for all. Perhaps they’re right, or maybe they just need to shut up and pay closer attention.
However, most people just want to go about their own lives and deal with their own problems.
Lack of Conclusive Proof Means You Just Lack Faith?
What religion and politics have in common is that no matter how strongly you believe in something, whether it’s a religious faith or a political stance, you won’t be proven right or wrong soon enough. By the time you have proof of your belief, it’s either the world has moved on or everyone else is long dead and buried.
While you argue with friends and family about whether this or that politician is doing good for the nation or if wearing those clothes or not going to church on Sunday will send you to hell, we wouldn’t know who’s right or even if all the yelling was ever worth the stress until much later.
In the case of politics, it takes at least five to ten years, after which you may have forgotten what you may have argued about with that former friend or your parents who have since been cut off.
In the case of religion, the ultimate proof would be what’s on the other side of death — the afterlife. Unless we’re able to see the other side for ourselves without having to die first, then it’s all up in the aether. Does Jesus truly save or were the Jews right all along?
While that Jehovah’s Witness or Seventh Day Adventist or Scientologist looks silly to most people, they think you’re out of your mind to not believe in what they believe.
Perhaps that’s why cults work — their rituals and practices are still shiny and new compared to the twiddling that old people do. There’s also the emotional manipulation and coercive tactics they use to keep their members in check, but don’t let a bit of gaslighting and psychological abuse distract you from the benefits of being a part of a big, wonderful family.
At least with science, there’s empirical evidence. With politics, the best you can do is with statistics gathered through likely dubious methods. With religion, aside from near-death experiences — which likely comes from neural activity while unconscious — we don’t have much else to go with other than keeping with the faith.
The Way of Life Is in Death
Various cultures have moral codes and disciplines that focus on the acceptance of death as merely a part of life that one must either not obsess over too much or prepare for appropriately. The most obvious ones are warrior cultures since death is their main job hazard. However, it wasn’t just the samurai of Japan or the knights of Europe that thought of death in this way.
For instance, the ancient Greeks saw death as liberation.
“Because of all these things, we have no leisure for philosophy. But the worst of all is that if we do get a bit of leisure and turn to philosophy, the body is constantly breaking in upon our studies and disturbing us with noise and confusion, so that it prevents our beholding the truth, and in fact we perceive that, if we are ever to know anything absolutely, we must be free from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the soul alone.” — Phaedo by Plato, 66d-e
In Christianity, Jesus Christ represents the inevitability of death and our absolution through it. His death on the cross holds such significance in the religion that the very instrument of his physical demise became the symbol of the religion itself. One of the most inhumane forms of capital punishment known in human history was turned into a reminder of the Messiah’s grace.
While detractors may scoff at using the morbid symbology of two intersecting pieces of wood meant for delivering maximum pain and suffering upon a convicted criminal, perhaps that’s indeed the point. Every time a Christian gazes upon a cross or wears it around their neck, they’re reminded of the pain and suffering their own savior had to go through for their sake.
Even if you don’t believe in what Jesus Christ did, or whether he rose from the dead after three days, you cannot say for sure that his preaching of his message against the will of the Pharisees was a selfish act. It may be seen as a foolish act if you really don’t like or believe in Christianity, but the intention of dying for others is far from selfish.
He willingly let himself be charged guilty of a crime he likely did not commit in order to be put to death so he may pull off his ultimate miracle. Yes, it sounds wacky from the outside. However, if you’re Christian, it’s the most important thing that ever happened, and it’s still being sold as “The Good News” for a damn good reason. Christianity proliferated as a result of that marketing.
The Gospel is a form of moral marketing, if you want to describe it in cynical language.
And now, with Christianity having spread throughout the world over centuries, that seemingly peculiar act of martyrdom has become the very basis of a whole religion. The reason why that story works so well in converting people throughout history, even making people endure persecution for the sake of salvation, is because self-sacrifice is the ultimate expression of love.
The way of life is in love, and its greatest expression is in death. The Way of Christ is in death.
I use the Christian story here as an example since it’s the one I’m most familiar with, having been told it countless times in school as a child. Many other stories of self-sacrifice for the sake of others exist in other religions and cultures, told in either song, folk tales, or in the annals of their histories. They all have something in common — death is not to be feared.
My Experience and Current View on Religion
As I stand now, I’m an agnostic. I grew up influenced by Buddhism and Chinese folk religion through my family and by Christianity through my school. As I grew up, I was then influenced by the usual atheist thought and media you’d expect a rebellious teenager to partake in. I was certainly an atheist after the Ondoy floods of 2009.
However, as I entered my late 20s, both myself and my life situation had begun to mellow out and my view on religion and theism softened as I became less acerbic towards more religious folk, especially when they shared their faith with me. Instead of being completely adversarial to them talking about their religion with me, I’m now more able to see eye to eye with them without being completely submissive to their proselytism.
My current view on religion is one of agnosticism towards the existence of a god, but skepticism towards the idea of humans knowing who that god is and how best to worship them, or if they’re even conducive to worship in the first place. I now view closed-minded atheism as foolish and boring while learning about every religion is fascinating and engaging.
There’s a danger in trying to assimilate everything. The thin line on the sand between true knowledge and pretentiousness lies in the ego, either you’re learning simply because you’re curious or to look smart in front of others. This blog post is no different — either I wrote some insightful things here or I’m looking like a pompous twat right now.
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