Grenada and thoughts on meaning and purpose
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2010
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114
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Trip End
Feb 27, 2011
St. George's, St. George, Grenada
Sunday, December 19, 2010
In India I had a number of insights into myself … I discovered the root cause and events that led up to the creation of an alternate reality in my mind … that has plagued me all my life since the age of 23 until this year … when I finally understood the root cause, and therefore was able to integrate and dissolve that reality into the reality of the world as I know it now.
Having, over many hours of meditation and introspection, and through the challenges of completely different world views, confronted myself, my realities, my rages, my regrets … and come to understand myself better, I have turned my attention to the topic of God …
I have always felt some form of spiritual awareness, some sort of connection to another level of consciousness … and have had a number of experiences that I am not able to fully explain in scientific terms … I am sure that most people have.
However, my logos (logic and reason) focused brain has always won out in the end, realities that I cannot see, touch, taste, hear, smell and feel are hard to explain, let alone define, and even more … are in my view unable to be ascribed a personality, will, intention and purpose.
Hence whilst I have explored, extensively, and at times believed in, the myriad of religions and belief systems of the world, none of these have stuck.
I have read the Bible (Christian), Bagavad Gita (Hindu), Quran (Muslim), various teachings of Buddha, Zen Buddhism, various other Eastern Mysticism beliefs, Astrology, Tarot, Kabbalah, all kinds of meditation systems and techniques, etc, etc … again, in the long term, none of these have stuck.
I conduct my life on a day to day basis mostly on what I believe is the right thing to do, and base my ethics and morality on my own internal system, which is of course informed and tempered by the current moral and ethical Zietgeist of the societies within which I have lived.
Like anyone else I have also stayed far from these ideals at times in my life, to my own shame and to the detriment of many others … regrets and rages that I have now come to terms with.
I have also spent many hours musing over the concept of Kamma, and again have failed to find a real ability to understand or connect with this in my day to day life.
Two books which I have recently read … The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and The Case for God by Karen Armstrong have also been huge and valuable insights into a wide range of issues related to this topic.
So where has this left me?
A key thing that I have only now just come to understand, and this should have been obvious all along, is that the words, thoughts, language and symbols of science and religion have nothing in common … and should not be mixed !!!
This has been the revelation that I have just come to …
For example, you don’t try to explain the concepts of nuclear physics by way of parables and legends … you use mathematics. So why try to explain mythos / religion in terms of science ?? !!!
I have always applied my scientific mind to religion, and hence easily dismissed it in my mind.
However I have always yearned to reach for the “sacred divine” and have at times experienced it … so why apply logic to this “ekstasis”, to this higher level of consciousness? … of course one should not.
So now I am on a completely different path to my search for the “ultimate reality” … to meaning and purpose … I am using feeling, emotion, empathy, compassion, understanding and other tools and techniques to reach out for that elusive meaning …
I now realise that I will never find meaning and purpose through science, because these are not in the domain of science … they are in the domain of the heart, not of the head.
So as yet I have no answer, but what I do have is a clear path ahead … just as I have now at my disposal the tools to lose weight and achieve the physical body I want, I now have the tools to find meaning and purpose …
And so what have I learnt from this journey … I have learnt that I don’t know much, my view of the world was nothing like it actually is … the world is a different place than anything that you imagine it to be … the people and places are not like you see on the TV or on documentaries … why … because how you see the world is subjective, like everything in life.
I feel tired and exhilarated at the same time, I know that I don’t know much … I am just a child in the journey for wisdom. Socrates dialogued with his students primarily to teach them that reality of the world is not what they think it is … it is a mystery, something that cannot be known, but can only be experienced … enjoyed … and leave you in a sense of awe.
Awe is what I feel now … I just watched the movie The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy again, and towards the end of the movie Arthur is asked if he would like to make any changes to the world, when it was recreated, and he said “no” … leave it as it is.
This is the conclusion I have come to … the world is an amazing place … I have now been through some 44 countries in a year, and my overall impression, the thing that sticks in my mind, is that the world is incredible, it is beautiful, and I would change nothing, even if I could … how can one improve on something so diverse, so incredible, so diverse, so challenging.
In a lifetime I will see but a small slice of this world, experience but a small sample of what there is to see and do … and yet that will fill me to the brim, challenge me in every way … and still leave me wondering what it is all about … it is time to pause and stop … too many questions and no answers.
There is no answer to the question “why am I here” … greater minds and people than I have asked this question and found no answers … so how will I.
So I am setting down this burden, as I have set down the burden of the quest for a partner, the woman I have been waiting for all my life … I will not find answers, and she will not come into my life by my seeking and searching … like meditation I need to “do nothing” … just be … and in that being find a place of completeness in myself … and by doing so attract that which is the same as me … draw it to me … and that process will yield the life I am searching for …
No more searching, no more questing … I just AM … my life will unfold as it will … new things will come and go every day … and who know where these things will lead me …
So I don my “snowboard” … look down at the contours of the slope below me, pick a path … and let go … enjoy the experience and the freedom of being in the moment … and living for the sake of being alive … becoming one with the mystery that is life.
I approach each coming moment with a sense of the great “unknown” … God cannot be understood only felt, my being and existence can only be lived and experienced, not analysed …
There is no answer, and there are only questions … time to stop asking questions to which there are no answers …
