A Guide Into Spirituality

Part 1 -Personal Experiences-

I never really thought i could ever become a spiritual person. My father whom i love dearly, had been telling me since i was a child that god does not exist, thus nothing spiritual and religious on this world can be real. He strongly supported every scientifically proven thing there is and he thought that proof is the solution to everything. I still admire the fact that he is based on pure logic and science. He spoke to me about the universe, we watched scientific series about space, planets and human history, and he has played a big role on who i am today.
My mom's side of the family are christians, however they never talked to me about those topics. My mother is very dedicated to her work as a tech teacher and is very focused on evolving her career. I believe that this is the reason why she was never too much into religion. She is a Christian, but she is more a woman of action. What used to confuse me is that she claims to be religious but i never saw her going to church, talking about god or even trying to persuade me to visit religious events. We did sometimes pray at night and she taught me the Christians' main prayer, but that was all. We did go to church sometimes, mostly some weeks before Easter, but that happened only for a year. And there i was, between two families whose beliefs differed greatly.
My parents had a divorce when i was five years old, and i have been living with my mom since. When i visited my dad on Christmas, Easter break and summer (when school was over for two weeks or so), he had the chance to talk to me about how the world was created (the Big Bang, the human evolution through other species etc.) and how religions are human made and in simple terms, a lie. I was so confused at that point, my eight year old brain was trying to process the two sides of the universe that were projected to me. On one hand, there was a God, to whom everyone prayed and sought help when things got tough. On the other hand, there was a world created by a large mass of rocks that slowly formed bodies of those same rocks, thus the creation of planets and stars.
I started thinking and slowly, at the age of eleven, i concluded that my dad was right. Believing to a god that i had never felt or seen was a pretty stupid idea to me. As i grew a couple years older, i observed kids my age talk about how their parents made them go to church, learn prayers and information about saints. I also had to read books in every grade since 3rd grade about christ, god, saints and miracles. It was so hard for me to learn anything from there since i could not agree on one single thing that the books said.
The part that i struggled most on was the look people gave me when i told them that i was an atheist. I do not blame them though, we lived on a small island and the people there were still holding onto a large amount of beliefs, and if someone was different, they would consider him as an "outsider" and even gossip about him. I firstly talked about my own opinion when i was in 6th grade, pretty young if you ask me. There were rumours about me saying that humans are monkeys and kids would come around asking me if i really said that. I really do not recall talking about it though. I guess that those kids mentioned about my atheism to their parents and they told them that i believe humans are monkeys, which is a cheap version of the evolution theory.
Its not a lie that i support the idea that says humans have evolved from a species whose DNA is very similar to that of a monkey. People have their own views, and thats alright. It has always been alright for me.
Moving on some years later, approximately at the age of fourteen, only my close friends and family knew about my atheism. Its funny how i talk about it like its some kind of decease. My friends never judged, i remember having some really nice people close to me at the time. My dad was proud that i took after his own way of thinking, and we made various conversations on the topic. However, it was different when i had to talk to my mom about it. Without much detail, she tried to know why i was thinking this way, and even asked me if she did something wrong that resulted to me being non religious. That question had deeply disappointed me, because even if i know that she can be open minded and subtle when discussing things like these, atheism is not something to be considered wrong. I also had the chance to come out to my grandparents as well (mom's side, since dad's side is not religious) and my grandma laughed and brushed it off at first. Apart from talking to me about god from time to time, she did not become stressing in any way.
  I have many close relationships with people who are not religious. It was surprising to see how teenagers from my social circle did not believe in god as well, since the place we lived in was small and thus, religious beliefs are more common there. It was delightful for me to agree with someone on the topic. I was not used to it for sure. Even if some of the adolescents i met were religious, they would treat my views in a more civilised way than that of people above their 40s.
Therefore nothing was too pressuring, i just had some complications here and there that helped me come to my own conclusions.