I thought this thread got buried but, seeing as I could probably sue some spirtuality in my life right now, I kind of want to reply to this.

I actually didn't grow up super-religious, though my spiritual ans sexual anxieties might suggest otherwise. My parents were semi-lapsed cafeteria Catholics (though I've noticed my mom getting more religious as I get older), and I went to some not-very-strict parochial schools all my life. To this day I don't know what Catholic guilt is, for example.

The shame and mental blocks are secular, scientific. A matter of being seen by rational, intelligent, thinking people as a stupid, superstitious, backward idiot too weak to face the world without some supernatural lies to pacify them. I'm not in any formal intellectual circle but I hang out online with enough people who would take this kind of view to be wary. And I consider these people better than I am for other reasons, mainly that they're more intelligent and their skepticism is a byproduct of that. The sort whose only interest in spirituality is trying to figure out why people are so stupid as to believe that stuff, or who will only discuss it by debunking it.

Besides, what am I doing, really, by believing in something with no evidence.

I'm afraid of being stupid, of being even more inferior than I already am through a total inability to be logical or realistic.