What Am I?

Someone recently asked me, "How I find the strength to go on? How faith helps me, was I an Atheist."

I'd better find out, I thought.

I googled Atheist: someone who does not believe in the presence of a God. Nope.

Free thinker seemed too broad and unfocused and Humanist seemed too focused on humans.

Then I found this other term; Agnostic (why does it sound like "caustic")

Agnostic: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly :  one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god

I guess, at least for me, that comes closest to my belief.

Since I do not follow any religion, where do I get the strength to go on for Vera?

I don't know, but these words from philosopher Krishnamurti, though rather deep, ring a bell for me.

J. Krishnamurti, “A New Consciousness” from This Light in Oneself—True Meditation

“One has to be a light to oneself; this light is the law. There is no other law. All the other laws are made by thought and so are fragmentary and contradictory. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable, logical, historical, and however convincing.

You cannot be a light to yourself if you are in the dark shadows of authority, of dogma, of conclusion. Morality is not put together by thought; it is not the outcome of environmental pressure, it is not of yesterday, of tradition.

Freedom is to be a light to oneself; then it not an abstraction, a thing conjured up by thought. Actual freedom is freedom from dependency, attachment, from the craving for experience. Freedom from the very structure of thought is to be a light to oneself. In this light, all action takes place and thus it is never contradictory. Contradiction exists only when the light is separate from the action.

The “ideal,” the “principle,” is the barren movement of thought, and it cannot coexist with this light; one denies the other. Where the observer is, this light, this love, is not. The structure of the observer is put together by thought, which is never new, never free. There is no “how,” no system, no practice. There is only the seeing that is the doing. You have to see, not through the eyes of another. This light, this law, is neither yours nor that of another. There is only light. This is love."