Curious about people's boundaries/views of ritual...

[purplerabbit]

[Poll #1270079]

If you click more than one box, it would be especially nice to leave a comment as to what circumstances change the answer.

Comments

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I wanted to comment rather than fill in the poll, because my feelings on this are a little complicated. I am not religious, but I am fascinated by religion
-- I'm not a proselytizing atheist, agnostic isn't entirely right either. I'll be happy to explain more to people face to face, but I tend not to write about this kind of thing online.

I am typically fascinated by ritual, and am generally happy to participate in it, assuming of course that obvious safety/common sense boundaries exist. I typically neither believe or disbelieve any particular religious belief system, though I am sensitive to the energy associated with many rituals (for some difficult to define value of the word energy). In general, I'm extremely empathic, to a level that can be difficult for me to cope with sometimes, so I tend to pick up on the effect of ritual on its participants very strongly.

It has happened before that this has been overwhelming for me, so my reaction might be misinterpreted as disapproval, where more accurately it has really been something along the lines of, 'aargh, eek, this is really powerful, aargh, help, can't cope, it feels like something is trying to push its way inside my head,' and I've actually been struggling to get that under control.