I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian (Southern Baptist) family and adhered to it closely for many years. I carried a New Testament in my front shirt pocket and "led people to the Lord." However, I began to doubt my faith when I was in high school. After taking many science classes in college (1975-1979), I became an atheist. In retrospect, I had a belief very similar to those in Buddhism: that we are just a bunch of chemical reactions that occur according to the laws of the universe as energy from the sun rolls down the entropy pathway. In other words, the self is an illusion.

In 1982, my first wife convinced me to take a class in Transcendental Meditation, which is Hindu-based. I practiced this regularly for a year and then off and on until 2020. It taught how to use a mantra to meditate, but there was no code of ethics or guidance on how to live.

In 2009, I became an atheist activist similar to Doug Smith, attending meetings and protests. By 2013, I began to think I was too anger oriented and judgemental in my atheist activities because I found myself looking down on religious people and being angry at them. It was during this time that I met some practicing Buddhists who were atheist. Although I was surprised at this, I did not explore Buddhism at that time.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic happened. I was a high school history teacher at that time and our school put on classes for teachers to learn how to meditate. Since I had more time on my hands during the pandemic since we were teaching on Zoom, I had time to explore meditation more. I began following the teachings of SN Goenka who does Vipassana meditation using body scans. I was disillusioned about talk of rebirths and other unproven concepts, but I kept meditating at least an hour per day.

Now I am a member of a sangha of East Bay Meditation Center who holds weekly meditation and dharma talks. I like that they do not talk about supernatural ideas. I retired from teaching in June of this year and I have had time to do more exploration. I recently began binge watching videos in Doug's Dharma and found secularbhudism.org. I would like to spend more time studying secular Buddhism and avoiding any talk of the supernatural, which is why I joined this community.