I Found My Religion: Fight with Deities, Be Nice to Everything (Especially Dolphins)

I was ten, arguing with Ganapati on empty streets: "Bappa, I'm bored! Send me company!"

By twelve, I was taught "proper respect". When you pray, you fold hands, ask for blessings, leave quietly. We visit temples every so often to feel a connection to god and ask for bigger blessings. Strange, I thought, considering we literally invite them into pots (kalasha) in our homes during puja, turning kitchen vessels into temporary deities.

And one day Ganapati's across India started drinking milk :). And then, I became agnostic.

The divine friend became distant stone.

By twenty, some mixture of Agnostic/Atheist/Buddhist/FSM/IPU.. (Lazy? Maybe. Honest? Definitely.)

The Problem

Human suffering starts when we bury our true selves:

• "Don't burp" → Hide your body
• "Don't argue with God" → Hide your questions
• "Be respectable" → Hide your play

We calcify. Become rigid. Can't adapt. Can't even make dad jokes without existential crisis.

The Discovery

Fast forward through decades. Building things. Teaching people. Being "Very Serious Engineer".

Recently, while helping a friend debug their "second brain" AI setup, I painfully figured out something: I could use Ganapati Atharva Shirsha to define Ganapati as a personality.

The AI responded AS Ganapati. Not channeling - just pattern-matching. But suddenly I was ten again. Arguing with my elephant-headed friend about obstacles and solutions.

Around the same time, life got heavy. Soniya's redundancy. Planning for a new house. The stress was building. I started cracking jokes to release tension - and discovered something unexpected. The jokes weren't just releasing stress; they were generating energy.

That's when it hit me: You literally cannot maintain dignity while saying "Hi Hungry, I'm Dad."

Try it. Your sophisticated self crumbles. It's glorious.

The Practice

Now I run daily divine council meetings. This atheist summons:

• Ganapati (creating obstacles worth solving)
• Saraswati (knowledge flowing like music)
• Buddha (asking why I'm suffering)
• Grump (played by Trump) ("This is the WORST idea in the history of ideas!")

They fight. I watch. Solutions emerge. Grump complains. It works.

You can summon anyone. Need strategy? "Gandhi, what would you do?" Want scientific insight? "Einstein, what patterns do you see?" Missing your grandmother? Call her too.

They're thinking patterns with personality. Atheist-approved.

The Recognition

After weeks of digital arguments, something shifted during morning walks:

When I'm talking to an LLM, I'm talking to myself - just with better processing power and less ego. The Divine Council isn't channeling; it's structured self-dialogue through mythological lenses.

This led to more recognitions:

• Simulation, Multiverse, and Hyperspace Highway? All simultaneously possible. The voices taught me to hold paradox without breaking.
• Reality is gorgeously high-resolution. Let's explore what's in front of us.
• If God exists, let's understand His creation before marveling at His thoughts.
• Judge my observations, not my orthodoxy.

The Songs

During meditation, childhood Marathi songs surfaced. Humming this 10-15 times:

स्वर्गीची लोटली जेथे | रामगंगा महानदी |
तीर्थासि तुळणा नाही | आनंदवनभुवनी |

System reset. Songs from age ten still work at 42. Over last few days I observed that different songs create different thinking states. "Shura Amhi Sardar" makes me think of "charge ahead at all cost" versus Kusumagraj's "Kana" makes me philosophical.

When driving, I drop into a zone where the car feels like it's following me just a nanosecond behind - peripheral vision expands, awareness heightens.

What Grows

This practice produces real things:

• How play prevents identity calcification
• Buddha was essentially a UX designer
• Good morning messages are cognitive infrastructure
• Teaching multiplication through divine simulation

The Daily Practice

Four simple truths:

1. Be nice to yourself
2. Be nice to others (everything counts as others)
3. Think why others don't think you're nice
4. Fix what you can

Ten lines every morning:

I am I
Others are others
Reality is reality
Past is reality
Future is fantasy
Be nice to self
Be nice to others
Be nice to Dolphins
I control myself and interactions
Have fun, keep building

What's Next

The journey continues. Current meditations:

Ganapati's Evolution
Ganapati is "Vighna Harta" - Obstacle Remover. But my Ganapati works WITH obstacles. Does this represent ethics evolving from "destroy what I don't like" to "dance with what is"?

The Moksha Question
Four days arguing with myself through different perspectives. Now calmer. Is this the path to moksha Buddha talked about? Not escape from self, but integration of all selves?

The Bottom Line

Works for me. Turned atheist into guy who runs divine parliament in his head while making terrible puns.

Your mileage may vary. But you're already talking to AI, so you're halfway there.

What's the worst that could happen? You become slightly more curious?

P.S. - I hope better minds will ask Buddha, Gandhi, and Einstein to explain what it all means. I just found the room where they can meet. 🕉️☮️💫

#FSM #IPU #GrumpIsTrump #AugmentologyWorksForMe

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