Generally looking for help and advice

Hi feathers!

I know you were kind of asking for practical, hands-on advice bit I'm just going to share my thoughts instead, hopefully you might find them useful.

I grew up in Catholic Ireland where the belief in God was (still is) "drummed into" children from a young age by Church-controlled schools. I never bought into it though. I was a quite content atheist until I found out about Buddhism. Now I'm an even more content atheist lol ;D I also have a statue of the Buddha in my bedroom, along with a little prayer-wheel actually, which I have no problems with either. That's something I always wonder about lol. I think it just shows my comfortability (is that even a word hahaha?!?!) with Buddhism.

Buddhist philosophy on "how things are," particularly the "Middle Path" madyamaka philosophy is what attracts me. As I think someone already mentioned in earlier in the thread, the Dalai Lama said something along the lines of "Don't use what you learn from Buddhism to become a better Buddhist, just use whatever you find helpful to become a better whatever-you-already-are." I love this refreshing "check it out for yourself" talk as opposed to the "believe what we tell you to" dogma I had grown up with.

For me, it doesn't matter if I believe in God, or even if I'm a Buddhist or not. What does matter to me are the Buddhist explanations of emptiness, impermanence, craving/attachment, suffering and its causes and solutions. This definitely does require meditation though, and a lot more (and better structured) than what I'm doing at the minute, too.

But I'm fine with all that. I'm still learning, still getting a little wiser and I'm still a very content atheist I believe things happen when they are ready to happen.

Peace and metta