“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).
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).
