Pantheism Explained

I'm pantheist. I typically don't use labels to describe my spiritual beliefs, but if I had to define my beliefs in one simple word, pantheist sums it up quite nicely.

I'm not Christian, I'm not Muslim, I'm not Jewish, and most importantly I'm not theist. Theism is the belief that a separate god or gods exist. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are examples of theism. I was raised Catholic, but was an atheist at heart probably since the age of eleven. I did try every last ditch effort to make Catholicism work for me, but I abandoned it completely in my early twenties when I realized I couldn't reconcile my beliefs of an ultimate reality with what I believe is an artificial dichotomy Western religions create between life and death. It wasn't until the last few years that I abandoned atheism in favor of pantheism realizing that there was a much better way to define my beliefs, for which atheism simply couldn't account.

As a pantheist, I believe god and the universe are the same. I don't believe in a personal god or separate creator, I literally believe "all is god." I believe in an interconnected essence of all things, living and nonliving, in the Universe/multiverse, and I can't imagine my existence devoid of mental recognition of the unity I feel with nature and the Universe.

I can conceive of an afterlife that does not necessitate that our universe is the result of a separate creator, and I speculate the existence of this "afterlife" is also dependent upon our current physical universe. I also don't believe that we completely retain memories of our present lives after we die or even the essence of who we are on Earth--our consciousness. We join the infinite upon our departure.