Thought for the Day: Life is not a Journey (Alan Watts)

"But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played." -- Alan Watts

Sometimes as we strive for happiness, in the items we acquire, the money we make, the pleasures we seek, we forget that the purpose of life is "not to get but to receive."And again, not to receive stuff, but to receive experiences, interaction with others, "to be or not to be" in the moment. To wonder at the experience of life, and whatever it brings.

For me, it's nature and space that grounds me. To be in awe of the painting book of colors in a sunset, to marvel at the view of a golden sunrise over a volcano, to wonder at the burst of light from a star 92 million miles away, to look up at the sky at night and realize you are on a piece of rock hurtling and spinning through space, and to watch the time-lapse photography of the Milky Way as our Starship Earth travels through the Cosmos. That's when I realize that our time alive is a miracle, precious and fantastical. That is a moment of awareness, of being awake to your existence and not asleep the in the daily grind of living and dying, the journey between the nursery and the crematorium.

I remember being amused at the concept of saving the planet, as the planet has been here for billions of years and will be here for billions more. It's actually more about saving ourselves. If we destroy the biosphere that supports us (and many other life forms), it will be us that perishes, and not the planet. And the amazing thing about life is that it finds a way, and life will continue on this planet as it has done after other mass extinct events, and will return perhaps without the humans that destroyed things the last time around. Life exists even in our biosphere in very inhospitable areas where we cannot.

On a cosmic level, our species has existed but for the blink of an eye. We cannot do anything but be in the now. For us as individuals, it is all about the experience!

Thought for the Day: What does your Spiritual Journey look like?

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” -- George Moore

This week, I went to my first Toastmasters meeting in a while. It was at a small group, located at a private club called The University Club, in downtown Portland. I enjoyed a very good Keynote Speech on "Fear." The speaker's closing, "take away" message? "Fear is your Friend." So when it came time for Table Topics, a section of short speeches generated by volunteers from a question on a card pulled randomly from a deck, I embraced my fear and stood up...

My question? "If you were to take yourself on a spiritual journey, where would you go?" This threw me a little as my spiritualism is an area I have recently been wrestling with, and I have by no means a cogent answer or speech prepared.

I have been on a spiritual inquiry since 2011 when I had a wakening experience. It was after an intense weekend workshop designed to bust up the human nature that we have all been indoctrinated with. I became aware of how close minded I had become. I don't think it matters how you think or others think your brain is wired, but I had grown up a very analytical, science-loving kid enjoying math and computers, and not being good at literature and art. Of course our education system loves to reinforce stereotypes and I went all the way, attaining a PhD in Biophysics. Not a lot of room for spiritualism in that space. 

I was born in England, baptized within the Church of England (CofE). So basically I grew up as a Christian under the Protestant Anglican denomination, whose head of church resides in England.  Some of you may know this was due to a falling out with the Catholic Church around the time of Henry VIII (I won't digress!) I attended CofE schools and the King's School was located in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral, where the aforementioned head of the CofE had a residence. I went through basic religious classes and was confirmed at thirteen. I always enjoyed my religious studies mainly because it was a comparative class where we learned about all faiths and spiritualism not just Christianity. I also remember reviewing the highly fragmented nature of Christianity with Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Evangelical, Southern Baptist, etc. From one perspective, a wonderful diverse interpretation of a teacher's message of love and compassion. From the other, a myriad of reasons to ostracize, marginalize, persecute, commit genocide and wage war. The irony and hypocrisy of this was not lost on me. I grew up with IRA terrorism in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants and IRA bombings that even reached London.

I have not stayed a practicing Christian. I basically grew out of it's limiting world view as my education continued. Blind beliefs don't sit well with scientists, who insist on data and evidence to back up any hypotheses or theories. I went on to study Chemistry at Oxford University. I remember having Christian friends with whom we would have philosophical debates until the small hours of the morning. One of the extra-curricula activities and experiences that you don't see in the prospectus. Whatever subject you study at university, it affords you the opportunity of conversing with your peers on "the meaning of life, the universe and everything," (Douglas Adams, RIP). And some of your friends might well be studying philosophy or modern religion, or even just blindly following it. Of course those conversations increasingly frustrated me. It's hard to debate with people cannot see beyond a book or dogma, and who don't seem to question or want to inquire what they think or believe.

What I did not realize was that I was starting down a path to create my own trap within the dogma of science, which of course has its own blind beliefs. Again, the scientific message is true. Hypothesis and experiment. However, scientists have a tendency to be stuck in their own limitations of current knowledge, which can constrain and limit the creative thinking needed for transformational theories and results. I have heard it explained in terms of dimensional constraints. Imagine a 2-dimensional being free to move around a 2-dimensional (x, y) space, and that sees no constraint on their world. Since they don't perceive a third dimension (z), they have no concept of it. As 3-dimensional beings, we can look down on a 2-dimensional world and see that those beings are limited in their perception of reality. But try explaining to a 2-dimensional being the concept of a third dimension in 2-dimensions. Furthermore, imagine how a 2-dimensional being who had theorized the concept of a third dimension would sound to others. Probably insane. Rather like Galileo and the theory that the earth revolved around the sun back in the 17th Century. In fact, over the course of human history people who have come up with transformational thinking and theories in science have been persecuted and vilified by the scientific community of their time. It often takes years, and generations (as old scientists die off), before thinking can shift. 

I became so closed minded in my "scientific" thinking, it almost cost me my marriage, and my family. My awesome wife and life partner became an irrational, flaky, non-sensical person, with kooky-sounding, non-scientific beliefs. My wife and daughter became a financial burden, trapping me in my dead-end, unfulfilling job. I was working hard bringing in the only income, and my family was working hard on spending it, leaving nothing for me to enjoy. What I discovered for myself in 2011 was how much I had created the world in which I was living. I made it fit my world view, where I was always right, and everyone else was always wrong, or to blame. What I paid for "being right" was the loss of love, affinity and relationships with people around me. It was time to separate fact from fiction, distinguish what happened from what I made it mean, be open to everyone and everything. Which got me thinking about what it means to be me!

After rambling about my spiritual experiences for over two minutes, and thus disqualifying myself from contention in the best Table Topics award (I was soooo disappointed ;-), I realized that rather than wondering where in the world I would go (to look without) on my spiritual journey, the true spiritual journey is to reflect on one's self (to look within).

Thought for the Day: Do what you love... (Mechthild of Magdeburg)

"A fish cannot drown in water A bird does not fall in air.
Each creature God made must live in its own true nature." -- Mechthild of Magdeburg 

A reminder that we must discover our own true nature or calling. It is not always obvious to us. A fish does not see the water, a bird does not think about what air is. It is about the true nature and vitality that lies deep within us. The joy in what we do as an expression of self.

I have always struggled with this one. What does it mean to do what you love, your calling, your song? After my awakening in August 2011, I call it my "Buddha moment," I became present to possibility. What do I mean by that? To think and believe that anything you want for yourself is possible. There are no limits on what you can do. And I don't mean real limits, e.g., that you can break the laws of physics. I mean imagined limits. A mental block that you developed, probably based on a negative experience, and you decided never to do that again, or that you could never be successful at that. I my case it was a culmination of years of science and logic. 

My awakening came about at the culmination of a 3 day workshop called the Landmark Forum. I had a transcendental, almost out of body experience in the waking moments of the following day. I realized the fish bowl that I was trapped in, what "the Matrix" is, and I became aware of how close minded I had become. My world had been spiraling in on itself, in a frenzy of self destruction. Not with drugs, though I certainly consumed my fair share of alcohol. But self destruction in my relationships, personal, professional and family. I had no close male friends, and I was blaming my crappy situation on my family, my wife and daughter. That they were filching off me, spending all my money and leaving nothing for me. Of course, I was in such a self- absorbed state, that no one would probably want to spend time with me. I was in effect creating the reality I perceived. I would only see the events that supported my position, and ignored anything else.

Once I was aware of all the ridiculous meaning I was making out of events and circumstances, and had the most open communication with my wife since we met 20+ years ago, we were able to reconnect with our passion for each other. I created a new life out of the workshop that included a passionate marriage, partnership with my wife around health and well being and financial freedom and independence. All these were now possible. Most of them have become reality, and continue to exist as possibilities. 

This blog is an exploration of meaning, the "meaning of meaning" if you will. A realization that science will never provide us answers to our meaning, our happiness and our lives. It's not that science is good or bad. We simply get so pre-occupied with the games we play, they can distract us, and even provide a mirage to the real possibility and opportunity we can avail ourselves of. I have no idea where this will go. Hopefully it will provide some questions, thoughts and insights into whatever you are dealing with, and allow you to break free, to think outside the box or "fish bowl." To see possibility where you thought there was none.