As I spiral down I try to make sense of everything. The big questions, the ones you only have time to ponder once all your immediate needs are met. You’re sheltered, you have food, you’re not under attack. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?
I look for answers everywhere, the whole world and everybody in it is my teacher. Great minds have grappled these questions over the millennia, and it gets me down that we still don’t have any true answers.
I’d love to switch off from it . . . well I do, I have manic highs where I rush around all busy, surfing through society working, building, exploring, travelling, partying . . . but I inevitably crash back down to earth in a pile, with a giant question mark bouncing repeatedly off my head. Why?
I met a wise theology scholar who told me that it is good to question the big things. I’m ad-libbing but the message I tuck away from our conversation was that although we will never have the answers to all these questions, we can still take something away from asking and apply our findings to our life.
In retrospect it may not have been the best advice for me, as I obsess over most things I turn my mind to. As I go deeper down the rabbit hole, the smaller I seem and the more unanswered questions arise.
At University I specialised in Genetics and Human Health, in which my favourite areas of study where the origin of life and evolution. The speculations of how the building blocks of life formed in the prebiotic soup gripped me. I loved exploring how evolution by natural selection acted up on the most primitive forms of life to give the array of species we see on the planet today. It fascinates me that this process could chip away over the years to produce human level consciousness that can then pounder how it all happened in the first place. I find it mind boggling that there is a possibility this could have happened on other planets. It had to have happened at least once as we are here to ponder it.
But I am getting carried away with myself, or maybe I should allow myself ramble on so you can see how my mind works, going round in loops, tying itself up in knots.
During my degree studies I specialised in niche topics, narrowly focusing on the mechanisms of certain biological systems. What my mind craves now is a more all-encompassing truth. The secret of the entire universe. One overriding law or rule that answers everything.
As a devout atheist at University I couldn’t t see how my first year tutor could juggle his biological knowledge with his Christian faith. I like to think that I never say never and have always kept an open mind.
I now find it hard to say in black and white that I am an atheist, as over the last few years I have had a stirring that there is something more at work. Maybe the term spiritual atheist describes me at the moment, or is that a contradiction?
Eighteen year old me would think I was crazy (well I guess I am) for writing that. Spiritualist conjures up images of crystals and Mystic Meg in my head. I’d like to think he would give me the podium to explain . . . and so I will.
I started to get feelings that there is something greater at work as I walked through the woods and hills around Wilmslow in Cheshire. There was something about breaking away from the hamster wheel of routine and just reflecting in nature. Of late I have had this feeling while backpacking through European cities, where I am not staying and laying down roots. I feel like the proverbial fly on the wall, watching life as it passes by. Detaching myself from the system and merely observing everyone else wiz around on the scalextric tracks.
I really value my time volunteering in the kitchens of an Adventist Christian camp each year at Whit, and my days spent there have really helped coax me out of my spiritual shell. I would love to believe in the Bible word for word but I just can’t [to clear this up, I believe there was a great preacher called Jesus, but I can’t accept he is the literal Son of God]. To me there is some underlying rule that governs energy and matter in the universe and it is that underlying connectivity that I would call God.
I continued my spiritual quest online, reading up on Buddhism, in which I relate and find great comfort in there ideologies (although, I fall at the hurdle of reincarnation). Their use of meditation / mindfulness is the funky new buzz word in psychology helping people with OCD and Anxiety disorders remain calm through the hustle and bustle of life (but that is a completely different story altogether).
Recently my thirst for knowledge has turned to Philosophy. Upon finding this field, with its translation from Greek to lover of wisdom, I can’t believe it has taken me so long to discover. My first steps into the world of philosophy began with Socrates, who in contrast to me, never wrote a thing down.
Socrates was on a mission to work out how to live the best life conceivable. I can associate with that as I cast my thoughts back to the mind-maps that have scattered my walls over the years, the stacks of self-help books I have devoured, and the organization of the sections of my life on my computer.
Socrates believed that theorizing is but one way of living a good life philosophically. He is widely recognized and allied with the phrase “know thyself”. It has been recorded that he once said “I am still unable to know myself; and it really seems to me ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that”. This passage really resonates with me as like Socrates I have recently shifted my attention to discovering more about myself with analytical introspection.
I take nothing at face value anymore and question everything. How does a specific thing make me feel? What automatic thoughts creep into my mind when I think about that topic? I think deeply into everything in this process of understanding myself and the world better.
I have to pull myself back out of this self-observation and soul searching as I don’t want to end up like Socrates where it consumes my life, with the search for wisdom becoming an obsession. The longer he struggled to know himself, the more puzzled he became.
Pandora’s box has been opened. Welcome to the downward whorl. I wave you into my OCD World.
I look for answers everywhere, the whole world and everybody in it is my teacher. Great minds have grappled these questions over the millennia, and it gets me down that we still don’t have any true answers.
I’d love to switch off from it . . . well I do, I have manic highs where I rush around all busy, surfing through society working, building, exploring, travelling, partying . . . but I inevitably crash back down to earth in a pile, with a giant question mark bouncing repeatedly off my head. Why?
I met a wise theology scholar who told me that it is good to question the big things. I’m ad-libbing but the message I tuck away from our conversation was that although we will never have the answers to all these questions, we can still take something away from asking and apply our findings to our life.
In retrospect it may not have been the best advice for me, as I obsess over most things I turn my mind to. As I go deeper down the rabbit hole, the smaller I seem and the more unanswered questions arise.
At University I specialised in Genetics and Human Health, in which my favourite areas of study where the origin of life and evolution. The speculations of how the building blocks of life formed in the prebiotic soup gripped me. I loved exploring how evolution by natural selection acted up on the most primitive forms of life to give the array of species we see on the planet today. It fascinates me that this process could chip away over the years to produce human level consciousness that can then pounder how it all happened in the first place. I find it mind boggling that there is a possibility this could have happened on other planets. It had to have happened at least once as we are here to ponder it.
But I am getting carried away with myself, or maybe I should allow myself ramble on so you can see how my mind works, going round in loops, tying itself up in knots.
During my degree studies I specialised in niche topics, narrowly focusing on the mechanisms of certain biological systems. What my mind craves now is a more all-encompassing truth. The secret of the entire universe. One overriding law or rule that answers everything.
As a devout atheist at University I couldn’t t see how my first year tutor could juggle his biological knowledge with his Christian faith. I like to think that I never say never and have always kept an open mind.
I now find it hard to say in black and white that I am an atheist, as over the last few years I have had a stirring that there is something more at work. Maybe the term spiritual atheist describes me at the moment, or is that a contradiction?
Eighteen year old me would think I was crazy (well I guess I am) for writing that. Spiritualist conjures up images of crystals and Mystic Meg in my head. I’d like to think he would give me the podium to explain . . . and so I will.
I started to get feelings that there is something greater at work as I walked through the woods and hills around Wilmslow in Cheshire. There was something about breaking away from the hamster wheel of routine and just reflecting in nature. Of late I have had this feeling while backpacking through European cities, where I am not staying and laying down roots. I feel like the proverbial fly on the wall, watching life as it passes by. Detaching myself from the system and merely observing everyone else wiz around on the scalextric tracks.
I really value my time volunteering in the kitchens of an Adventist Christian camp each year at Whit, and my days spent there have really helped coax me out of my spiritual shell. I would love to believe in the Bible word for word but I just can’t [to clear this up, I believe there was a great preacher called Jesus, but I can’t accept he is the literal Son of God]. To me there is some underlying rule that governs energy and matter in the universe and it is that underlying connectivity that I would call God.
I continued my spiritual quest online, reading up on Buddhism, in which I relate and find great comfort in there ideologies (although, I fall at the hurdle of reincarnation). Their use of meditation / mindfulness is the funky new buzz word in psychology helping people with OCD and Anxiety disorders remain calm through the hustle and bustle of life (but that is a completely different story altogether).
Recently my thirst for knowledge has turned to Philosophy. Upon finding this field, with its translation from Greek to lover of wisdom, I can’t believe it has taken me so long to discover. My first steps into the world of philosophy began with Socrates, who in contrast to me, never wrote a thing down.
Socrates was on a mission to work out how to live the best life conceivable. I can associate with that as I cast my thoughts back to the mind-maps that have scattered my walls over the years, the stacks of self-help books I have devoured, and the organization of the sections of my life on my computer.
Socrates believed that theorizing is but one way of living a good life philosophically. He is widely recognized and allied with the phrase “know thyself”. It has been recorded that he once said “I am still unable to know myself; and it really seems to me ridiculous to look into other things before I have understood that”. This passage really resonates with me as like Socrates I have recently shifted my attention to discovering more about myself with analytical introspection.
I take nothing at face value anymore and question everything. How does a specific thing make me feel? What automatic thoughts creep into my mind when I think about that topic? I think deeply into everything in this process of understanding myself and the world better.
I have to pull myself back out of this self-observation and soul searching as I don’t want to end up like Socrates where it consumes my life, with the search for wisdom becoming an obsession. The longer he struggled to know himself, the more puzzled he became.
Pandora’s box has been opened. Welcome to the downward whorl. I wave you into my OCD World.
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