Hi Michalea, I can understand your desire for some connection with other people, it's actually very closely related to religion itself. I did a quick search for the etymology of the word religion and found this:
The word Religion and the word Rely both come from the same Latin word, Religare, meaning to bind or tie, which is similar to joining two oxen together with a YOKE, which comes from the same Sanskrit word as YOGA, which means, UNION, which is related to COMMUNION....
The interesting thing here is most religions is something that divides rather than bring together, so although it is in the name of what's sacred and divine there's bound to be a bit of crazy making when you have practices like the disfellowshipping from the JWs. The problem is that religion is all about belief now, and beliefs basically divide - even if you are close as a group you are separating yourself from others who do not share your view, there is only unity in a relative sense but not so in the big picture when it extends beyond the confines of a particular church or whatever. This is why I say all belief based spirituality is not spirituality at all, because it is simply a fixated identification with a particular thought pattern as being true. For the true believer you not only have to separate yourself from non-believers, but you end up creating a division within your own mind between what you supposedly believe to be true and false - not only would this be the opposite of the meaning of religion as described above, but it is also not a picture of mental health.
You can separate yourself whether you are religious or not religious, just as you can be close to people regardless of your world view or differences (or even lack) thereof. So yes, there is a longing for intimacy that is associated with religion, but this is certainly not the focus of most of them today. I think it's clear that in the sense described in the above quote, religion is supposed to be about love - but in the common sense of a belief system, it's really just confusion. I should note, however, that an aversion to religion in the sense of belief is not that different than the behavior of the believer, because more than likely that is just another form of belief in the guise of denying what it itself is doing. (i.e. I believe religion (or belief) is bad) If you don't believe something you just don't buy it, it is marked by an absence rather than a resistance of belief. To me, love itself is big enough to accept belief for what it is, but love itself does not really have any need for beliefs. So if you must look for some community, I say just look for the love - just don't confuse love with a belief in love, lip service about it or even loving people - love itself is independent of all of those things and is bigger in a sense.
For me, I wasn't even looking, but I ended up finding that love in a community because I was interested in what's true, (not in beliefs) it just so happens there's true love when you have the two together. This may not make much sense to you, but it's also not that important that you have many close personal relationships and have people you socialize with, love does not necessarily take that form. The thing is, love flows through people even if they are not conscious of it, so in a way if you focus too much on the form it takes such as having friends to do things with, it's easy to miss love itself. Ultimately it's like love recognizes itself both here and there, it is not a good feeling which may arise as a secondary byproduct so to speak - because that comes and goes. There is no feeling of lack when the feeling is not there, although like anyone else I certainly enjoy feeling good when it happens. So in a nutshell, I suppose you can say that my religion is love - but even that's really redundant, because in this sense religion is love. You don't have to do noble and holy things, or even the right thing to 'get' love, but those things actually come about as a result of love.
