Interesting to see some common themes here.

I, too, was raised Christian (southern baptist!) from birth, but never really... got into it. My family went to church every single Sunday that we were home, unless something catastrophic cropped up. Honestly, I kind of resented it. Sleeping in longer would have been my choice, but I wasn't given one. When the answer to every single question is "Jesus" or "The Bible", things get kind of redundant after awhile. As far back as I can remember, I never felt a damn thing. I wanted to, but no dice.

Eventually, I went off to college, where I didn't live in a place so subject to my parents' will. Despite their requests, I never "found a new church", and began studying physics. I knew how to use the internet, and my friend introduced me to erowid.org... you can see where this is going.

Mushrooms made me feel something, maybe not the first time I felt like I had some sense of "spirituality", but certainly the strongest. I tripped a few times on various psychedelics, even smoked DMT once. The emerging skeptic in me posited that consciousness, perception, spirituality, reality, etc. were chemical reactions, neurons firing... our brains working. That the universe streams in, and our brain is like a sieve, or a tennis racket. Taking psychedelics seemed to move some of the strings around, shifting perceptions, changing neural firing modes, perhaps catalyzing new thinking patterns. I still wonder if spirituality induced by psychedelics may be some relic of novel neurochemistry, and maybe Jesus freaks could placebo themselves into recreating this... via what exact mechanism, I have no idea.

The dreamer in me still wants to believe that we aren't just cosmic accidents, that spirituality isn't an illusion, a construct of the human mind. I think any leftover spirituality I harbor is largely based in those psychedelic moments, as they were just so... powerful. If monks are able to achieve states of mind similar to those produced by psychedelics, then what the hell am I doing living this stressful American lifestyle when I could be meditating and practicing yoga for huge intervals of time? I guess I'm afraid... afraid that spirituality is fake, that it's like an addiction, another illusion, and in the end, death is forever. Sure, maybe the DMT released into the brain at the moment of passing makes time dilate forever and we recede into our own personal heavens, but... is that "real"? No. Not in the objective sense of the term.

Still, I would say that to this day, I am mildly spiritual, and an agnostic. Studying physics has revealed to me that the universe is stranger than any work of fiction. There is still much room for the possibility of a "god", although I deplore referring to "it" using such verbiage. I doubt that we'll ever figure it all out, but maybe that's for the best.

Anyway, cheers for allowing me to summarize my thoughts, it's a healthy thing!