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Aaron A. Reno was born in 1975 just outside of San Francisco, California to a Jewish mother and a Baptist father. For many years as a child, Aaron attended Jewish Sunday school classes where he learned the basics of the Old Testament. Because his parents were of different religious beliefs, Aaron was advised by his parents to uncover and value the moral of each Biblical story and then to decide what he would believe based on his own conclusions. Because of this atypical religious upbringing, Aaron learned not to judge others for their religious views, but rather to try and understand the common thread that ran through both family religions. In this way, Aaron’s religious studies got off to a rather unique start in contrast from those children who were instructed to memorize by rote and hold their particular text(s) as absolute truth.
While this juxtaposition of two religions was slightly confusing for Aaron as a young child, he understood even then that he was being taught this particular brand of open-mindedness for a purpose. He realized only years later, that had he been compelled to choose and practice only one religion, he would have been forced to acknowledge that one parent was right and the other wrong. To Aaron, this notion of choosing a religion was ludicrous and akin to choosing which parent he loved best.
Instead of making a choice, Aaron became decidedly unreligious. If he could not choose a religion without hurting his family, then it only made sense that he could not believe in God whatsoever. Throughout his teenage years and early twenties, he decided that all life was simply a byproduct of chance, mutation and survival of the fittest. Aaron did not have disdain for religion. Rather, he simply wondered how any relatively educated person could even begin to believe in something other than what their physical senses could tell them. “It is ludicrous,” he thought, “to imagine more than what can be seen by our eyes or felt with our hands.”
However, as the years went by, this “science-only” theory of his did not sit quite right. Aaron began asking himself, “If we are a product of evolution, what created the original material (energy) allowing evolution to occur?” While science had much to teach about the theory of how energy reacts and interacts once it is created, science said nothing of where this original energy originated. He asked himself, “What/who created energy and what existed before the Big Bang?”
After many years of diligent studying via religious texts, spiritual books and “self-help” audio CDs, Aaron had a breakthrough. He came to the understanding that religion and spirituality need not be one and the same. Instead, he mentally confined religion to its dictionary definition: “The set of rules and practices by which one person must adhere in order to be accepted as part of an organized group of believers.” With religious beliefs set aside, spirituality was then left open as fair game without Aaron having to choose sides (without choosing between parents). Aaron was immediately set free to establish his own relationship with an awareness greater than himself - if it was there to be found. Now, he was finally ready to find his own faith in something greater than he had previously thought to exist. Call it God, call it universal intelligence, or call it faith, opportunity came knocking and Aaron was ready to answer with open arms.
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