WillSpirit!

My therapist reviewed the personal essay about my stepmother that has been on my site for months now, as a work-in-progress. At my request he offered suggestions, since I may send it off for publication before long. He already knows the story of my upbringing, but had this to say after reading (for the second time) what I wrote:

In terms of content – I am so sorry that this was your experience growing up. I hope that you can continue to make a rich and meaningful life out of the material that you were given.

His note came at a propitious time, as I seem to have undergone some kind of inward metamorphosis in just the past few days. I spent a bit of time trying to tell him about what’s happened. The following is an excerpted and edited version of what I emailed in response:

I do, in fact, continue to work on making my life ‘rich and meaningful.’ About five nights ago, while awake sleepless at 3 am, my mind started worrying. It’s an old habit that started early, when I feared my stepmother would come for me in my bed. Nowadays I fret about money, illness, and loss. The worry alternates with regret about the choices I’ve made, so many of which have led to ruin. A few years ago these nighttime sessions kept me trapped in a kind of hell, a crucible of fear and guilt. Thankfully, I no longer permit myself the masochistic luxury of driving myself insane with thought. Even so, on the night in question I could not imagine anything but physical pain and social isolation as my ultimate fate. My flight of grandiosity, with its vision of a future selling books on lecture tours, had faded into the realization that I am unlikely to ‘make it’ as a writer in any financial sense. The money worries that followed piled on top of my chronic shame and grief about what has happened to my body. In turn, those anxieties climbed aboard a sinking feeling that with few friends and no children, I will someday be frail and alone. In the end, I comforted myself with the thought of suicide. It reassured me to know I could always escape if the pain became too much, but that is a thin reed to cling to in the darkness.

But then, at almost the same time that I grabbed hold of my suicidal safety net, an important ‘truth’ hit me. I flashed on a childhood memory, and in a spark of clarity understood that it was OK to ‘lose’ in this ‘game’ of life. When I was little (4 or 5) we actually played a game called ‘Life.’ Maybe you remember it: players spun a wheel in the middle of the board, and moved pieces around the surface, which was textured with little hills (for no obvious reason.) They earned money based on the occupation they captured. The most valuable prize was the job of ‘doctor,’ which earned $20,000 per year (this was about 1963.) As a kid, I absolutely loved that game, and played it wholeheartedly. It killed me to lose, and flooded me with excitement when I won. I remember my family laughing at my competitiveness. (Note: while looking for an image to include with this post, I found out that ‘Life’ remains popular as a board game. Probably everyone knew this but me. For me, it’s just a distant memory.)

Anyway, five nights ago the memory of that game popped into my head, and it occurred to me I never stopped playing it. In my twenties and early thirties, I competed in ‘Life’ by trying to be the ‘best,’ working to prove my intelligence, aiming for excellent grades, getting accepted to elite programs. I even became a doctor. In those days, I also counted on having kids. I don’t think my desire for a family came from any love of children, but more from the belief that a successful person produces offspring. Biologist to the core, I understood that reproduction was the ultimate goal of living, and I could see that society looks askance at those without children. So I worked to build a future that would include the high-powered career, the big and impressive house, the wife and kids.

That rosy future came partway into my grasp, but then it slipped away. I kept playing the game, but began losing instead of winning. The first blow came when I realized that offspring would probably never come, for reasons having to do with my choices and personality. I weathered that small setback by putting the whole question off; maybe I’d have children some day far in the future. But then the big problems began, and I lost my work and identity as a surgeon, gave up the beautiful San Francisco house, and woke up to the fact that my body had been damaged by the career that I’d chosen more out of desire for success than out of love of medicine. My mental health crumbled in short order, and I soon found myself in the decade I’ve written of ad nauseum in this blog. Everything went to hell.

I kept playing the game, only now I felt worthless and ashamed because of how badly I was being beaten.

The other night I awoke to the fact that it doesn’t matter whether I ‘win’ or ‘lose’ unless I let it. As I’ve written before, I recognized that my life is actually pretty nice. I share a home with a woman who I know loves me and wants to help me be happy. We take care of two really delightful dogs. Money is coming in sufficiently at the moment for us to meet our expenses. If I don’t look at things with a broader lens than that, everything seems fine. So much of my misery comes from my expectations that I should possess all the trappings of success.

Maybe no one in my readership can relate. I know that many people, like my wife, find the hyper-competitive thing mystifying. They just live. But for me that stupid wheel in the middle of the board kept going round and round from age five to fifty. I got hoodwinked by an adolescence spent in an upscale suburb, in a culture bombarded by ads for expensive things held by gorgeous women, in front of screens flickering with countless Hollywood movies. Everything around me hammered home the conviction that unless you have money and beauty you just don’t count.

For some reason, five nights ago I let go of that soulless value structure. It suddenly hit me that life is not a game, and there is no winning and losing. Life is just existence, a brief time on a tiny globe in an unimaginably vast universe. You can hate it, or enjoy it, own everything or nothing, but you still have only a short time to learn, love, and live.

In ten years our dogs will be elderly and frail if they are even still with us; My wife and I will be older and perhaps one or both of us will have gotten seriously ill. Inflation will have eaten into our income to the point that we will have been forced to downsize in a big way. In twenty years things will be even worse: we’ll be elderly and childless with dwindling resources. These are the realities we face if we are fortunate enough to survive that long.

But for the first time, rather than dreading what’s coming, I see how I could enjoy the next five (hopefully ten) years. It may even be that next decade will be my last chance for satisfaction in this life. If I let go of my regret about what I’ve lost or never had, and quit judging myself on that basis, then I feel free to immerse myself in this time. I have not been blessed with many epochs where both my surroundings and my attitude were up to the challenge of contentment. But I am here now.

It’s been five days since I felt any huge dose of despair. I suppose it’s a bit tragic that that’s actually an enormous accomplishment. Just a few years ago five satisfied days running would have been unthinkable. Not since before I lost my career have I gone this long without feeling a thousand tons of regret, shame, and dread hit me like a train running over a dog.

This message does not sound very positive, and yet it is. I feel good right now, and all the better because I know it won’t last. I finally see that life could always have been led on this basis. Many years have passed where I was too immersed in psychic pain to enjoy my blessings. I may not have a great deal of time left before things start to fall apart again, but I have some. And I ‘get it’ that this is how life is lived in later years. Some people enjoy more social support: the majority of people have children, and often the kids can help ease the stress of growing old. Many people have more money and security, although even more have less. Regardless, everyone must eventually wake up to the inevitability of loss. The trick is to awaken to transience and still cherish what remains.

One reason I know that success as a writer and speaker will likely elude me is that it took me this long to figure out what so many people seem to have known all along. Any spiritual guide worth hir (his or her) salt would not have required five decades to learn such basic truths.

This has been a breakthrough, even if my predictions about my future sound dismal. I am thrilled to know I stand a pretty good chance of five to ten years of comfort. I want to make the most of this brief time. It helps that I am certain my future emotional pain will never exceed what I’ve already felt. No matter how bad things eventually get, I will never feel despair that exceeds what I’ve endured in the past. I know depression and every other type of painful mood will come again, which really sucks. But I also know that my past anguish has been so great that there is nothing worse left to feel. The character and circumstances may change, but not the intensity. I feel like a survivor of emotional burns: I have experienced absolutely dreadful pain, and remain heavily scarred, but at least I now know I can endure more of it if I need to. So there is really nothing to fear. All I need to do is let go of my expectations.

I went on to thank my therapist for his role in getting me to this point. As I’ve gone through this piece in second draft, I see that he will likely notice too many references to comfort and contentment. From the ACT perspective, the point of life is to live all the emotions fully, whether they feel ‘good’ or not. But for someone who has spent so much time in psychic distress, it is nice to hold on to the realization that I have a few years that I could really enjoy, if I just let go of my misguided fixation on ‘success.’

When I returned from my Thanksgiving retreat, my spirits flew high. So much positive feedback had come my way during that weekend, it seemed to confirm my suspicion that my past has given me an outlook I should broadcast to the world. That grandiose intuition first ignited during my religious ‘visions’ ten years ago, and has waxed and waned ever since. Soon after the retreat I dove into a heartfelt poem, followed by a string of rambling essays about spirituality. In the throes of feeling ‘called’ to speak out, I envisioned myself becoming a bit of a celebrity, offering wisdom to the world. I did not see this coming notoriety as something my efforts had earned, or my ego devised, but as something handed to me by fate. Or ‘God’ if you want to look at things that way.

Would anyone be surprised to learn that the response to my spirituality posts has been underwhelming? Or that my rosy optimism has been replaced by a more jaded perspective?

The cold waters of reality have doused the flames of grandiosity. For one thing, I read the book ‘How to Write a Book Proposal’ by Michael Larsen. Browsing in the library, I wanted input about how to deliver my message to a large audience. The book offered lots of advice in that regard. Problem is, much of it sounds like it’s beyond my grasp. If one wants to be a messenger in today’s world, it takes more than sitting at a computer and writing. You start by joining Toastmasters, work to build your presentation skills, scramble for every opportunity to speak, network widely, join societies, offer workshops, etc. I have a friend who is doing all these things, and has done so for years. It is finally paying off, but it has been a mammoth effort, and in my most sober moments I have to admit it does not look like something I could accomplish.

To start, the basic necessity of hard work daunts me. Back when I slogged through medical school and residency, strenuous labor and long hours were second nature. But that was long ago. Nowadays a productive day sees me writing for four hours. Even that can’t be done all at once, or my neck pain builds to breathtaking extremes. If I manage four such days in one week, I am doing well. I’m just being honest here. I know it’s whining to complain of my inability to work. At least I have the luxury of living without a job, thanks to a good disability policy that kicked in as soon as I lost a surgeon’s earning potential. I am fortunate that my physical limitations and psychological vulnerability have not driven me into poverty. With that acknowledged, it is also true that becoming a person people flock to for insight requires a level of effort that I have not achieved in a very long time. Not to mention the professional socializing and cold introductions I’d have to master. I’m an introvert both by innate personality and as a result of an upbringing that taught me the safest approach to life is to hide under a bush.

The spiritual series will continue, though today is a break from all that. What I’m setting aside is the dream of widely dispersing my method for moderns to feel spiritual. Instead, this project will bolster my sense that life means something, but will only provide a bit of amusement for a few others. I hope to intrigue those who find my blog and are persistent enough to wend their way through my prose. But I fear that will be the extent of my voice. Not that this would be insignificant. I believe it to be a worthy pursuit, but it will not improve many lives. I have not completely discarded the ambition of building a larger audience, but right now that seems unlikely.

This dose of reality leaves me free to ask what it is I most enjoy writing. Is it memoir? Is it philosophy? Is it ranting against pharmaceutical malfeasance? If the audience will remain small no matter what I choose to say, then why not say what gives my heart wings? And that, of course, is what I’ve done with this site all along.

Did my bout of grandiosity rise to the level of clinical mania? My sleep suffered, and I’d have gotten almost none without Ambien. The pace of my speech accelerated. My grip on the reality of my limitations relaxed. I opened to others in unprecedented ways, and if I had not been married might have pursued a fling. On the other hand, I did nothing impulsive. Did not spend unwisely, did not have an affair, did not gamble, did not drink. My behavior remained more or less acceptable, though I displayed more emotion at the retreat than normal for a fifty-year-old man. But isn’t that one of the points of retreats, to open up?

Why am I tempted to make a mood swing into an illness? Probably because it would make me feel less uncertain of ‘me.’ If I could ascribe my recent excitement to a disease separate from my core person, I would not be left asking what’s wrong with me. I would not have to puzzle over who this person is that can be silent, withdrawn, and discouraged one day, and voluble, intimate, and excited the next. But cutting myself off from the loopy side of my personality would be a copout. Better to embrace my occasional quirky behavior and soaring ambitions. Even if I fail to rescue the world from its rigidity and insistence on limiting the human mind, I can at least be me. I can be a person with turbulent emotions, passionate dreams, and creative visions. I can continue my efforts to combine logic with lyricism. It may be that others will see me as odd. Or maybe it’s only me that does. Either way, I can love myself, be happy I differ from the norm, and speak up. Isn’t that one of the goals of life, after all? To be ourselves, to be proud, and to give voice to our most heartfelt values?

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

I’m going to bullet-point the principles upon which I believe a realistic faith in ‘God’ can be constructed. Future posts will dissect the items one by one, so that they will make sense individually. Then I’ll put the whole list together in a final entry or two.

In a way, I need to apologize for this project. It serves me at least as much as anyone else. My entire being craves faith. My life has spun into directions I never anticipated or wanted. Who’d have ‘thunk’ that I would find myself at age fifty-one with no career? With damage to my body I can barely accept? With a string of psychiatric diagnoses, and perpetual severe mood swings? Life does not make sense to me right now, and I feel very far away from everyone around me, all those people I see working and living normal lives. If only there were some universal spirit that connected me to the rest of the human race. My material connections and my interpersonal contacts do not suffice to make me feel a part of things. I need something like ‘God.’

So the list below runs through my thinking out of necessity. Before working to build a more effective belief system, I had to ask whether the ‘higher power’ Alcoholics Anonymous directs everyone toward stands any chance of being real. Or is it just a comforting fantasy? I have spent too much of my life studying biology and physics to just toss all reason aside and embrace nonsense. Add to that all the suffering in the world. It intrudes in my own life, has devastated my family, wrecked the peace of many of my former patients, and floods the news. If there is a ‘God,’ it has to be one that takes the long view. It evidently sees individual humans as passing creatures who may be miraculous, but who must fend for themselves.

In order to build a belief in a higher power, I have focused on the truths below. It takes a bit of finesse, but with the proper perspective one can use these statements to bolster one’s search for a consciousness that connects us all. One can feel safe that one’s quest for a universal mind is neither deluded nor doomed. At the end of my string of discussions of the elements of my list, I’ll spend some time looking at the constraints science and reality put on this putative consciousness. I’ve already mentioned one: this entity leaves us mostly on our own in our struggle to survive. We may find moral support, but we cannot hope to discover a divine hand that moves hardship and tragedy out of our path.

The following facts act as keys that open my mind to faith, despite my materialist upbringing and skeptical nature:

• Faith works. Quite possibly, when people pray or ‘turn their lives over’ to a higher power they are really just setting their ego aside. The act of faith (and faith must be active to be effective) allows instinct, intuition, and deep parts of the mind to step into the fray. They are often more competent when it comes to making choices than the narrow, materialistic ego. But I also believe it is possible that these deeper strains of thought reach further, and connect with some kind of universal consciousness. More on that later.
• The experience of God is real. Even if there is nothing on earth besides matter and physical energy, people throughout history have seen, felt, and heard things that convinced them God exists. It is undeniably possible that these are just neurological phenomena, but they do occur. And they change lives. For instance, such ‘visions’ set me on a ten year quest that currently manifests as this series of blog entries that aim to open faith to resistant minds. (Note I am not trying to open minds to faith; that’s up to you.
• Serendipity happens. Anyone who is the slightest bit open to the possibility of significant coincidences knows this. Perhaps at some point I will list some of my own experiences. It would be even better if readers would leave theirs. I’d love to build a page out of the odd alignments of circumstances that so often arise at just the right moment. Of course, there is a pretty good possibility they mean nothing. One can take the stance that there is no spiritual force underlying these events, and they just happen out of pure and unaided chance. But it would be inaccurate to argue they do not occur.
• Consciousness has effects beyond the brain. This truth manifests at truly tiny scales, i.e., in the realm of quantum mechanics. But physical theory implicates conscious observation as having effects on matter/energy. Although the conclusion that this opens a door for mysticism is vehemently debated by materialists, the burden of proof lies with them. The theory itself does nothing to help atheists prove the absence of spiritual influences.
• All things are connected. The experimentally proven principle of ‘entanglement’ shows that particles that were once in close contact with one another continue to behave as if connected under certain circumstances. The influences are exerted instantaneously, and do not depend on transfer of energy. Since the entire universe arose from an entity much smaller than an atomic nucleus, this means everything is connected. Note how this sounds a lot like a basic tenet of many spiritual philosophies.
• Knowledge has limits. On small scales, there are limits to how accurately ‘reality’ can be seen. Beyond a certain precision, what is ‘real’ becomes fuzzy. Uncertainty forms the roots of the universe. Rigid beliefs are misguided, whether it is dogmatic faith or convinced atheism.
• Reality is stranger than we think. As just one example, time behaves strangely when things move fast, and our day-to-day experience of it is deceiving. Only our ego’s arrogance permits belief that we really understand our surroundings. The humble stance is to remain open to mystery.
• Life is a miracle. Some religions stand on miracles. These institutions turn to miracles for legitimacy. If miracles can support faith, then the fact that life exists may suffice. I do not suggest evolution was not driven by random events, nor do I postulate a conscious creator-God. But if we open our hearts to the vast mystery of creation, we are halfway to a spiritual sensibility.

Putting all these together, and also a few minor corollaries, gives me a sense that belief in a universal consciousness is not silly and misguided. It may be mistaken, but there are reasons to hope it is not. I’ll work my way through these reasons as I continue this theme in coming days.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

Whoops. I forgot that many people out there don’t need language to find ‘God.’ They feel its presence in their heart. I just returned from a Friends (Quaker) meeting, where several people reminded me of this basic truth. When in the company of someone who is spiritually centered, you don’t know it because they spin a good argument, you simply feel their love, acceptance, wisdom, and serenity: LAWS. Those are qualities to embrace. It humbled me, once again, to realize that my words are only words. They will not bring anyone to ‘God.’ My only hope is that my writing will help others knock down the barriers in their path toward peace.

A person at the meeting opened me to an interesting way to view ‘God.’ She told me someone once likened it to music: perhaps humans elaborate God much like they create melodies. Before people evolved, the potential for music existed, but the music itself did not. Songs and symphonies were beauty the universe contained in its future, but had not yet actualized. Before humans, it may well be that universal consciousness did not exist to the same extent as it does now. In that view, the availability of electrically responsive cells in highly structured matrices (i.e., brains) gave the spirit of the universe the tools it needed to achieve awareness. Before, there was presence. Now that presence may be aware, through us.

It’s just one way of looking at things, and I may be carrying the analogy beyond its original intent. But it strikes me as an interesting viewpoint.

Last night, in bed, I thought that our way of using cognition to understand ‘God’ is a bit like sailing. We are on a boat and feel the strong winds of reason. They seem to blow in only one direction, away from anything mystical. There appears to be only one compass point toward which to travel. However, with skill we can use the sails, keel, ballast, and rudder to make progress toward the source of the wind. We cannot move directly into it, but we can approach it obliquely. Reason can help us attain essential truths in just that way.

On the other hand, the heart can swim in the waters below the level of logical thought. Rather like a dolphin, it can reach the source in a more direct way.

If we use words, we are restricted to analogies. If we use feelings, we can get to ‘God’ without as much fuss. But the ego/rational mind balks at things it doesn’t understand. It tends to dismiss possibilities it either can’t see or can’t explain. I write to gently coax the ‘left brain’ into allowing the ‘right brain’ to do its thing. Perhaps if we persuade the rational mind that spirituality could be more than an illusion, it will allow the nonverbal mind greater freedom. Maybe it will step out of the way, and let us enjoy faith.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is one in a string of essays about spirituality. It may make sense to start with the first entry in the series.

After an online friend told me an early draft of what I planned to post today sounded like Greek, it became clear that my goal of opening spirituality to skeptics is a bit grandiose. My skills may not be up to the task. The job might even be undoable. But I made a promise, and I will follow through. I will try to keep things as clear as possible, but as I wrote recently, that’s a challenge for me. Even so, someone needs to do this work, and although my audience is small it seems important that I step in. I will do my best, and hope it helps at least one person.

My goal is to make faith available to those who value clear thinking and open eyes. Spirituality is of questionable value if it requires us to blind ourselves to tragedy and common sense.

Faith Defined: Before we go further, what do I mean by ‘faith?’ If my goal is to make it more available to thinkers, I need to be clear about what is on offer. No one will slog their way through my writing without knowing what benefit they can expect. To me, ‘faith’ means the sense that the universe is a loving place that values me. So I am not simply talking about a vague sense of mystery. Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’ claims to respect the spirituality of ‘the physicists.’ Much of what he writes takes back even this concession to spiritualism, but I am talking about something more than the elevated awe expressed by Einstein as a proxy for ‘God.’ I recently read an essay by Walter Isaacson about Einstein’s spiritual views. Afterward, I remained unsure of the extent of Einstein’s belief in mystical underpinnings to the universe; my sense was he did not go very far in that direction. I plan to go further. Far enough to help others open their hearts to the kind of faith that makes one feel better about being alive. The sort of belief that convinces one s/he is an important part of something grand and pervasive. In the end, I hope to make others more comfortable with ‘letting go,’ and trusting that deeper influences will keep them on track.

I am not trying to invent a theology. I will not say what ‘God’ is, only that ‘God’ might exist. My goal is to show that science leaves the door open for mysticism. In particular, I aspire to reassure people in 12-step programs who are trying to build a sense of a ‘higher power.’ My hope is to show readers some stepping stones that will get them beyond fear and resistance, until they can open their hearts to mystery. With ‘divine’ assistance, my words will help others surrender to the deep, inspiring currents beneath the storms of day-to-day reality. I’ll admit these flows may simply be the veiled movements of the unconscious mind; but it is also possible that the unconscious extends its roots far into the heart of creation. It is up to you to decide. My goal is to argue against skepticism, and let others find their own versions of spirituality.

***The following paragraph can be skipped without losing the thread of my discussion. It only establishes my qualifications to write about science:
If I make assertions about quantum mechanics and evolution, both of which have to be encompassed by any modern spiritual sensibility, then there needs to be evidence that I understand this material. With a BA in zoology, an MA in biophysics, an MD, and a lifetime of studying life science and evolution, I feel very confident of my knowledge of biology, genetics, and evolution. As for physics, at UC Berkeley I took four years of college level mathematics, and three years of rigorous physics, physical chemistry, and electrical engineering courses. I also completed numerous courses in biophysics during my masters program in that field. I’ve gone on to read a large number of books relating physics to spirituality, and every few years I work my way through a calculus textbook so I don’t forget my math fundamentals. This modest exposure to physics does not compare to a PhD in something like astrophysics, the kind of credential some spiritual scientist-writers (e.g, Bernard Ross) have earned. But my background gives me a solid grasp of the basics, and that is all that’s necessary for my purposes. I don’t plan to rely on arcane and cutting edge theories. The movie ‘What the Bleep Do We Know?‘ enjoyed tremendous success (despite valid criticism of the way it distorts physical findings to support a new age mysticism,) and opened people’s eyes to quantal mysteries, but never ventured beyond what I suspect one learns these days in high school physics. I don’t plan to make claims anywhere near as sweeping as that movie, and I believe my grasp of the material is more than sufficient for my purposes.

My plan is to work through a series of statements that are not too controversial when taken in isolation. Some will be based on physics and/or biology, and others on widespread human experience. Some will be more speculative than the rest, but none will fly in the face of either science or logic. Taken together, even if one rejects a subset, they permit one to have the kind of faith I describe. They allow one to believe there could be mystery, order, omniscience, omnipresence, intervention, and other qualities usually associated with ‘God.’ I want to emphasize that my intent is not to prove that this ‘God’ entity exists, only that it still might. That science has not shut the door on it. That reasonable people can be comforted by a sense that the universe cares.

As a final caveat, we need to be clear that love does not imply rescue. There could well be all-encompassing adoration and concern for each and every one of us, with little or no protection from danger and folly. I find it difficult to support belief in a ‘God’ that answers detailed prayers, for instance. We may reach some deeper principle when we speak within our hearts, but I see little evidence in today’s world for a personal ‘God’ that steps in and provides more than moral support. There is simply too much suffering and hardship for such a ‘God’ to be likely. Propitious events do occur from time to time, as I will discuss. But they happen rarely and appear to me more like an aligning of circumstances than a deliberate intervention on the part of a personalized deity.

Science and reality do constrain the kind of ‘God’ that might exist. But they do not rule out the possibility of a conscious presence pervading space, time, matter, and biology. That is the thesis I intend to support in posts to follow.

I write about this material because in 2000 my mind opened to the presence of something that felt like ‘God.’ It may have just been a brain spasm, but it felt like revelation. That experience underlies all that I write about spirituality. It has taken a decade to sort out what I learned, but right from the start I felt ‘called’ to speak out about it. In subsequent posts, I will discuss my ‘visions’ a bit, to show the ground from which I started. Doing so will serve the same purpose that listing my education did above; it will show that my writing is informed by direct experience. Along the way I will also outline my personal opinions about ‘God.’ My goal will not be to convince anyone I am correct in my outlook. I only want to give an example of the kind of spiritualism I think science permits, and my life demands.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

This post is the first in a string of essays about spirituality. I apologize, but the early posts are long and hard to follow. They need revision. I hope to tune them up before long, and make the project more coherent and easy to follow.

After an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting today, when I heard people struggle with the concept of ‘God’ that underpins AA, I realized the time has come for me to insert a series of spiritual posts. I wrote some back when the blog first launched, seven months ago. They did not go over well. Partly, I suspect they were too much based on my personal experiences and beliefs. The minute one tries to verbally portray the broader influences that underly the universe, one gets caught in the trap of particularizing the universal. One can use allegory to allude to the larger ‘truth,’ but attempting to describe it directly is the same as trying to capture wind in a jar.* One can point to situations where something unusual seems to be at play, but the ‘mysterious’ as a noun cannot be encompassed with words.

Disclaimer: (*Note: when I included the ‘wind…jar’ cliche in the first draft of this post, I actually thought it was original. Only upon a later reading did I remember the words are part of the common lexicon: not my creation at all. This goes to show the possibility of mistaking a previously heard phrase or concept for one’s own. Also, even if an idea is thought up de novo, there is always the chance that others have already thought of it independently. This is a good time to insert the proviso that I will try to credit ideas that came to me from other sources, if I know them. But the only thing I can absolutely claim as my own is my specific way of writing and organizing these ideas. People have earned doctoral degrees and built careers around the subjects I am tackling; I am a rank amateur. I do not expect to break truly new ground from this starting point. I hope to spin things in a helpful way, and that is all.)

Any attempt to describe spiritual truths with prose is a bit like killing and stuffing a fox, and using it to explain all of biology. First, the fox has died, so the principle of ‘life’ itself can no longer be seen; spirituality is experiential, not something you can pick up secondhand. Second, by choosing a fox rather than a fig tree or a faun,selected aspects of biology (the carnivorous and cunning) get emphasized over countless equally important but vastly different qualities (e.g., photosynthesis, juvenile development, life as prey rather than predator.) ‘God,’ if it exists, must manifest in myriad ways, including many I can’t imagine. Finally, by choosing a single large mammal, one is pinpointing a certain size scale and temporal epoch. Life occurs across an enormous range of size and time scales. In terms of size, one could just as well choose a sugar molecule, a chromosome, a family of foxes, or the whole forest the fox lives in. Life is too expansive and complicated to be captured by a single stuffed fox. And so is ‘God,’ if I use the word to mean something that underlies and permeates everything. This ‘God’ entity would have been present in the big bang, and involved in some way with the evolution of matter, space, time, and life. It would be something that appears random and invisible under most circumstances, and yet connects everything and shapes our lives. If such a thing exists, then we can’t expect to do it justice it with a blog post. Or a bible, for that matter.

So my upcoming ‘spiritual’ riff will shy away from attempts to pin down metaphysical concepts. I will restrict myself to laying down principles that are more or less unarguable. The product, I hope, will open the door for others to recognize that faith, transcendent feelings, and belief in mysterious influences are not closed to those who adhere to modern science. I am convinced one can retain a rational stance, reject dogma and silly portrayals of divine forces, and still enjoy the benefits of faith. Make no mistake, although strict atheists see faith as a childish and outdated tendency without value, it has power to enhance one’s experience of life, offers meaning and purpose, and provides a measure of comfort in this difficult world. Why should it be unavailable to those who value critical thought? Even if science had proven that there is absolutely no basis for belief in forces beyond those we can immediately sense, there might still be reasons to reach for faith. However, nothing in modern empiricism has ruled out the possibility that influences we cannot measure play a role in our world.

I do not expect anyone to accept this viewpoint without justification. The series of posts to come will outline why I believe science can accommodate the possibility of a mystical aspect to the universe. In fact, some scientific findings point to the conclusion that the world is rife with mystifying influences. If you will keep an open (but still rational) mind, I think the following posts will justify views of creation that move beyond daily reality and open our hearts to depth, significance, and love. In service of full disclosure, it must be admitted that in order to achieve transcendence, we must at some point release our death-grip on rationality. But that does not mean it is necessary to contradict what we know to be true, or accept what common sense says is impossible. It only requires humility, and the understanding that ‘we’ (meaning humanity) can’t figure out everything.

These paragraphs set the stage for a series of posts that will, I hope, fulfill my promise to remove the roadblocks to spirituality set up by dogmatic atheism. Rational thought works. Logic possesses tremendous predictive power. But that does not mean that irrational influences and unsettling paradoxes do not exist. The ultimate nature of reality has not been settled by science. Few people, deep down, want to believe the world is bereft of mystery, or that transcendence is a silly dream. Strict atheists have a hypothesis about the universe, and shape their conclusions on the basis of incomplete evidence, just like the rest of us. I maintain my right to call myself rational, while holding my heart open for something that could be called ‘God,’ for lack of a less tainted word. In the posts that follow, I hope to show the rational soundness of accepting a higher power. Those who value reason, recognize the role of randomness in nature, and keep human tragedy in view can build faith without compromise.

***Click here for the next entry in this series.

I just wrote an awful post. So I’m not going to put it on the site. As I reviewed the essay, it seemed so wordy, dense, and dry, that I felt like writing it had been a waste of time. I don’t want ‘dry.’ I would rather find my writing to be ‘organic,’ ‘warm,’ ‘vital,’ and ‘passionate.’ Sometimes, however, the muse takes a break. My analytical machinery is in control today, and my little heart, with its moist and throbbing voice, sits quietly. The post I spent thirty minutes on, the one I’m not posting, talked about why doctors overmedicate psychiatry ‘patients.’ After several paragraphs of drivel, the conclusion was: they don’t encourage conversation. Case closed.

My vision for a book becomes more clear each passing day. I am reading a text about ‘how to write a book proposal’ (that’s actually the title.) It helps me see what might work commercially, versus what might just be an exercise in writing without broader appeal. Naturally, I want my book to be read. One key to that success, however, will be to minimize dry analysis. Others write with concise clarity, and can give factual information in an engaging way. To date, my own analytical writing sounds too dense to appeal to a broad audience. My better writing, the kind that spurs the most engaged commentary, possesses more fire. The trick will be to write something filled with feeling that also gets across some important information. My project will probably use memoir vignettes to introduce points I will follow-up with more clinically-based discussion. But even the writing based on objective data needs to sound heartfelt, or people will get bored.

My time is up. I set aside 60-90 minutes, from about 5:00 to 6:30 am (PST,) to write my posts. I spent much of today’s time on the essay I’m discarding. So all that’s left is this musing on what works in my writing, and what doesn’t. This blog gives me a chance to try out different directions, and I appreciate that some take time to read my posts in their busy days. There are so many excellent web journals out there, it humbles me to think anyone would stop and read mine.