This is a topic that comes up frequently on the forum, and I also notice its influence in the attitudes and reactions that many have to different issues. I myself have noticed several people around me that have changed the faith they grew up in, but don't seem to completely be able to go on happily. I am trying to sort out why this is. Certainly, your world view floods through every aspect of life from moral decisions, to career choices, familial relationship, beliefs and attitudes about your origins, the way you live from day to day and the attitudes you have towards other people and yourself.
Rather than derailing by getting into the details of the problems you had with your specific former faith, these are the things I am curious to know:
1. What prompted you to make such a drastic change and how old were you?
2. Do you think that if your faith had been presented in a different manner by your family or your church/synagogue/political system/science/etc it would have prevented you from choosing to leave? If you didn't buy it yourself, why do you think it didn't "take"? Was how you were treated a factor?
3. How do you feel about it now? Are there any regrets? What have you gained?
4. How did it affect your relationship to your family and also impact the social circle you had?
5. Has anything replaced your old faith?
If this is too broad, you are free to only answer one or two points.
I could probably go on for a VERY long time but for now I will keep it short.
Hmmmm. I don't say that I have a "faith" in fact I really detest the word. I say that "I practice things/___" or that "___ resonates with me". Fwiw, I practice 3 major world religions, or subsets of them. There is an idea called the "perennial philosophy" which I tend to generally agree. I see "religions" as particular vehicles/paths/practice methods. To a vast extent, that has nothing to do with "faith" and vice versa. I think of spiritual/contemplative/meditative traditions as systems that have practices that expand one's level of awareness/consciousness. Others may call that "religion". Also, I take reincarnation VERY seriously, and feel that that does, or at least can trump, where your born and various things that you are born into.
5) Well, like I said, I practice 3 major world religions/meditative traditions, or some subset of them. Taoism, Buddhism [Mahayana, zen/chan], and Hinduism [nondual vedanta, yoga]. I've practiced other things as well. I understand in the langauge of any of those three, I can speak in the language of any of those three, and if needed I could potentially teach any of those three. To me, any of those three, and more feel very "at home". The religion/denominations of my childhood never provided any of that kind of feel, ever. Fwiw, I've been told that I was a monk in Asia in numerous of my past lives, and others I just live din Asia.
4) Like my mom says "I know nothing about Buddhism." I don't know how my family feels about it. We generally let each other do their thing without too many questions or nagging. I think if you go up to my grandparents it would be even harder for them to understand. I think one of my Aunt's is semi-similar in her beliefs to my own. I moved from HS to college, and then from there to Colorado, plus several other moving before and during those times. I was a military brat as well. In short, I've moved quite a bit, but not nearly as much as some other military brats. Many of my friends actually find what I do VERY interesting. I've almost never had bad experiences sharing it with people, but I've also taken my time and been selective in who I've talked too. Other people have been much more nosy about asking, but I think even there they've been forced to respect my convictions and the depth that i hold for them.
1) I'm not sure I've ever had "faith." Hmmm, I was always very serious about things and very contemplative. Religion meant things to me when I was younger, I just don't think "faith" is a good word for that. I was around a lot of SJ's who took religion very seriously. I don't like knocking on what is important to other people. "Religion" never did much for me, but I kept wanting it to, and kept thinking that maybe around the next corner is when someone will part some big curtain and show/explain it all to me and I'd have my "aha" moment. Like when you turn 16 or 18 or whatever they come sit you down and share all the "secrets" or something. When we lived on AF bases and attended military churches, there was always a very strong sense of community and purpose, I respected that. I'd then go to whatever civilian churches, including one's my parents grew up in, and it always just paled and I wanted to tell these people "have community like our military churches do! and quit babbling about your personal takes on whatever, you know stuff is standardized and you have a non-standard answer right?" My parents made me take confirmation when I was about 16. You had to stand in front of the church and say "I believe" as part of that. I kept feeling like there was something more people just weren't telling me, that curtain hiding all the secrets I mentioned earlier, but they never opened the curtain and I just couldnt go through with it. I was the only one in the group who didn't. Telling our pastor and my parents "No I can't do this" was the hardest thing I had ever done up until then in my life! I was pissed at them for not opening the curtain and showing all the secrets, I think they thought I had no faith and was hiding it. Actually, they thought I "believed" but wasn't willing to get in front of a crowd and say so. I remember my parents buying us bibles when I was like in 3rd grade. I was all pumped to finally have one and get to read it as much as I wanted and "soak up the wisdom" and "see the essence of this faith." In my eagerness I read the first 30 pages or more, and kept waiting for the page that just said all the important stuff instead of all this "storytelling" and blah blah blah. I was very disappointed! I think most people around me took it all [the passages] very literally. Too me it seemed short and incredibly lacking in detail. Very much like a kids storybook actually!
I started studying martial arts around high school. Some schools emphasize the connection to Buddhism or eastern philosophy, though IME most don't. Some of my instructors were military people who were religious fundamentalists. I remember them handing out like 10 page booklets of the bible "refuting" buddhism and hinduism and taoism. That impacted me TREMENDOUSLY, and to this day I have never fully gotten over it. At the same time, I'd hear or read eastern philosophy or "kung fu wisdom" and it made total sense to me. Buddhism was introduced to me as "trying to be a better person." That made total sense to me and I couldn't falt it in any way. People told me you can be Christian and Buddhist, the Buddhism is fine with that, the Christianity may not be.
In college, my exposure to eastern philosophy went into high gear. My college was Catholic, my parents are both Protestant. I never "looked down" on religion, or thought of it as childish or "for controlling the masses" until being around those Catholics. Note: I grew up around some LDS, there were often hushed discussions about that, is it a cult? are they Christian? etc. Anyways, my exposure to eastern philosophy skyrocketed in college. Throw in some personal experiences and whatever else, and well I'm EXTREMELY eastern in my "orientation" towards "religion". It was meant to be, or as I'd say "karmically propelled".
2) Not really. Its funny, I might have felt more "connected" if I'd been around more NF's, or if I hadnt felt like our NF pastor's were pretty different from me. For other questions see discussion in 1).
3) I feel like "I've come home." If I went to India I'd very likely never come back. I own a book full of stories of Westerners who did exactly that. Many of them were Canadians btw. Regrets, hmmm. I feel like finally someone opened the curtain and told me all the "secrets". I'm home. I return to what I have done many many many times before. In college I wanted to put all religions "on trial" and ask each person to look into their hearts and see if what stood before them had value. I left things that I thought had meaning but no one was ever able to show it to me, I now stand in what I value.
I was at a talk/book singing this last weekend. The author mentioned how when he was like 19 he "found" the Tao te ching [Taoist book], zen books, etc. Those pointed him to entirely new vast possibilities of human potential and existence. As he said "When I was reading that I wasn't happy about what I found, no, I was PISSED!!!!!!! no one had ever told me those things before!" I can 100% relate to that. The idea that "religion"/meditative traditions are vehicles that assert higher existence and then show you how YOU can get there yourself, that is a RADICAL departure from how many in the West see religion. I think William James is the one who said "I don't need faith, I have experience."
Did I answer your questions? I don't want to say helpful, but were my responses informative? Guess I gave a longer answer than I had originally planned, but if you have any more questions feel free to ask. I'm pretty open about answering these sorts of things and others.