Lent 2026: day eight – the power of gratitude

"Thank God for that!" Even the most avowed atheist might catch themselves saying that, when faced with positive outcome from a situation that could have gone horribly wrong but ended up just fine. Illness, financial matters, a legal tussle, a near-miss in the car. A sigh of relief, and a deep sense of gratitude. 

Illustrations: Google Gemini (left) and Chat GPT (right)

But be grateful to whom? It was just a random happening! It was a stroke of luck, pure chance that things turned out well, when they could have ended up as a catastrophe!

"There but for the grace of God, go I." 

"You don't even believe in God!"

"It's just a saying."

But was that positive outcome random, or was it somehow meant to be – or did we will that good outcome into existence? That would suggest magic thinking – magic being a physical effect without a physical cause.

Being thankful is powerful, more powerful than asking. Who receives more from his master over the long term – the grateful person or the supplicant? 

Gratitude's evil mirror is complacency. Taking good fortune for granted. Like being born rich, clever, energetic, driven talented and beautiful and not feeling the slightest sense of gratitude for those gifts. "Accident of birth, eh?"

Wake up in the morning without aches and pain. Feel grateful for that. No financial worries. Again, be thankful. Be grateful that all is as well as it could be.

Gratitude is proof that you are aligned with the Flow, of being at one with the Purpose. "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you" – Rashi. But receive with thanks everything good that happens to you.

Don't take it for granted; the sense of entitlement ('mnie się należy') is a bad feeling to experience. Pride comes before the fall. So every time something goes right for you, when it could equally have gone wrong, take the time to experience gratitude, to really feel grateful. To be aware that you are grateful. It is a more powerful habit than asking Providence for something.

Lent 2025: Day eight
On Consciousness (Pt II)

Lent 2024: Day eight
Spirituality for our (New) Age (Pt III)

Lent 2023: Day eight
A Universe into which life fits exactly

Lent 2022: Day eight
Body and Soul

Lent 2021: Day eight
Guilty of feeling guilty

Lent 2020: Day eight
Salvation - or peace of mind?

Lent 2026: day seven – the old question; how much spirituality do we need?

A question I return to time and time again, throughout the year, and over many years. 

We are consciousnesses temporarily housed in biological bodies, with a finite lifespan, destined never to know the true nature of our reality. We may inch towards that knowledge, one life at a time. We all have diverse levels of intellectual curiosity; the curious will want to educate themselves, either as specialists or as generalists. Now, intellect and spirituality do not necessarily overlap; many militant atheists are highly intelligent human beings, whilst those of modest intellectual capacity are not excluded from the spiritual journey. Intuition trumps intellect. A picture of reality that you honestly feel to be right.

But curiosity – especially when it comes to the Big Questions in philosophy and theology – is fundamental. Is there a God, if so, what's the nature of God? Is there life after death? If so what is it like? What is our purpose? What is life for, what is the Universe for, and why is there something rather than nothing?

We can take guesses, educated ones or wild ones, but ultimately we die not knowing. The epistemic underpinnings of what we know are ever-more sophisticated, as we progress from animism to particle physics as language to explain reality. Even so, we can but intuit. We can have a feeling, not certainty. This is faith. That intuition is internal, it comes from a personal conviction rather than from teaching or learning. 

Moments of awe, of wonder, of contemplation of the numinous, being lost in the ineffable – this often triggers such feelings. Many people report such moments when looking up at the stars in a cloudless night sky far from urban light pollution, or gazing into the eyes of a newborn infant.

Image: ChatGPT

So how much spirituality do I need? Enough to remove the doubts cast by physicalism that consciousness is but an illusion and all is matter. Enough to keep me connected to and aligned with the Flow, the non-local Big 'C' consciousness that connects the Cosmos. 

Is the answer qualitative or quantitative? Religions like to prescribe times of holiness; holy days of the week, holy days throughout the year, times of day allocated to prayer. And Lent is certainly a part of that! But is that enough – or too much? Or does each individual feel for themselves how much of their lives should be given over to whatever form of spiritual practice, be it meditative or ritual in nature.

For some, the act of communal worship is the high point of their spiritual week. For some, the 'religious, but not spiritual', it's a tradition, you turn up, see people, and go home, no great sense of communing with the Eternal and Infinite having been achieved. 

The mind does turn away from matter to consider the metaphysical, the numinous, the ineffable. And as I have written previously, it does so with increased frequency once material comfort has been achieved and social striving can be switched off, or a least dialed down.

Many esoteric traditions purposefully do not engage with the young. Step into spiritual pursuits once you have done all your biology and your society expects of you. Youth needs guidance, instruction; organised religion brings that framework and sense of certainty. Organised religion works alongside material striving in a way that more gnostic approaches to spirituality don't need to.

My daily walks, averaging about two hours in duration, provide me with ample opportunity to ponder the Big Questions. But am I doing enough? I carry with me a notebook at all times, but often feel I'm not having enough of those deep insights profound enough to jot down. I do pray (petition) to be 'in the Flow', to connect, to have those significant dreams – but not often enough. The discipline of daily blog posting is helpful here; but that discipline is underpinned to a degree by the Ego; seeking the external validation of getting to Easter Sunday with another run of unbroken Lenten posts. 

{{ Share, don't boast. }} 

OK, I get it!

Lent 2025: day seven
On consciousness: Pt I

Lent 2024: Day seven
Spirituality for Our (New) Age (Pt II)

Lent 2023, Day seven
A Universe hand-crafted for us all

Lent 2022, Day seven
Monism, dualism and non-dualism

Lent 2021, Day seven
How much spirituality do we need in our lives?

Lent 2020, Day seven
Build your own Religion – the Trappings of Faith

Lent 2026: day six – the Meaning of the Cross

The world's most recognisable religious symbol, the Cross of Christianity, may represent more than the means of Christ's execution. Here's a metaphorical interpretation, based upon a idea from the Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff...

The vertical beam represents spiritual ascent, the journey from Zero to One, from small 'c' consciousness to the Big 'C' Consciousness that is unity with God.

The horizontal beam represents the material world, the ego, animal instincts and desires. It stands a barrier to the spiritual ascent, cutting across it at 90 degrees.

Traditionally, the horizontal beam is two-thirds of the way up the vertical beam.

If we take the biblical lifespan of 70 years, the ascent from Zero up to beyond the horizontal beam takes two-thirds of a human life, that is a little over 46 years.

By the age of 46 years, we should have overcome our egos, made and feathered our nests, begotten our offspring, and have moved onto a state where – having overcome the challenges of the material world – we can concentrate on the spiritual, from a position of comfort and wisdom based on lived experience.

When I say '46 years', this is not meant to be taken literally; our lifespans have lengthened since biblical times. So, the age at which we reach and overcome the material/ego barrier is proportionately higher. Sixty six and two-thirds if you're aiming to live to a hundred?

Having said that, the barrier of Ego, which clouds, dilutes and distracts from the spiritual journey does not suddenly pop up in middle age; it begins forming with a child's socialisation. "Child is born /With a heart of gold/Way of the world/Makes his heart so cold [That's the Way of the World, Earth, Wind and Fire, 1975] Within the first few years of primary school, building up to a crescendo of hormone-fuelled stupidity that eases off with entry into adulthood, when a more deliberative ego emerges. From the horizontal beam hangs a drape, which doesn't quite touch the ground...

Emerging above the horizontal beam, seeing with clarity, on the final stages of the human body's journey through life, untroubled by the fripperies of material desires.

Having said that, some humans are destined never to cross that barrier whatever their age; trapped by their egotistical instincts. Never content, always seeking external validation. A certain orange-coloured president springs to mind.

Lent 2025: day six
Defining the nature of reality 

Lent 2024: Day six
Spirituality for our (New) Age Pt I

Lent 2023 Day Six
The role of consciousness in human spirituality

Lent 2022: Day six
Do you believe in life after death?

Lent 2021: Day six
How should we see God?

Lent 2020: Day six
Build your own religion – the tenets

Lent 2026: day five – the place of the Ego

Our bodies are containers for our consciousness. Our bodies are biological, the result of evolution. We are – each one of us – the product of lineages that have reproduced successfully every single time, all the way back in an unbroken chain to the moment that life first emerged on this planet. Survivors, biological survivors. The survival instinct is powerful. 

Being biological creatures, we are guided by instincts and desires, forces that are tempered by intellect and by social norms. And over time, evolution of Homo sapiens has come to select for intellect as much as for more physical attributes. 

Males (and I can see this clearly in cats as well as humans) are driven to mate with as many females as possible - it's what males do. Females are driven to be selective in regard to their male partner, to ensure the best genes and (in humans anyway) a carer/provider. Males need to display their determination, energy and social status to females. Females compete for mates with beauty. Sex for security.

The Ego provides the drive to compete in society, to find an optimal mate(s). However, that ego can become toxic; symptoms include seeking an ever-higher place in the status hierarchy and constantly seeking external validation. As this happens, empathy dims, other people become treated instrumentally.

The Ego can easily be seduced – through flattery, through advertising; buy this car and you will raise your status. Boast about this, boast about that, and – the Ego reasons – people will think more highly of you. Materialism is seductive. Surround yourself with the trappings of material success, and your ego is boosted. People look up to you. Or so you think...

Left: I asked ChatGPT to design a 1950s car ad from the US aimed at the potential (male) buyer's ego, and got this excellent piece of artwork and copywriting. The golden age of psychological manipulation. An entire socio-economic system predicated on flattering the ego. Our advertising industries today are less crass; in any case our regulators would take a dim eye on such blatant ego-manipulation.

But lose your ego – then what? What would it be like wandering around without an ego, especially in one's early twenties. I think of the classic ego-death brought about by abuse of psychedelic drugs. I think of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson as examples of great musical genius that took too many trips and lost it.

There is a time and a place to lose your ego; it is once you have brought up the children. When you can step back from the status-hierarchy race. When you are living comfortably – not precariously, not in luxury, but comfortably – then wind back the ego and refocus on the spiritual, regain the child's awe at the Universe around you. Let the spirit evolve.

We must understand our biology and rise above it.

Lent 2025: day five
Is it possible to be a mystic materialist?

Lent 2024: day five
Believers and the unbelievers

Lent 2023 day five

Reality, the New God

Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil

Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God

Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism

Lent 2026: day four – is the Universe conscious? Pt II: God in all, or God above all?

You are conscious. I am conscious. My cats are conscious (pet guardians would be the last to deny the consciousness of their cats or dogs!). Rats, mice... conscious. Octopuses and squid? Certainly. I'd posit that all life forms, even the simplest, even those without a brain and sense organs with which to process sensations from the environment, are conscious. Nematodes, tardigrades, rotifers, amoeba – I intuit that they all have some primitive form of consciousness. Plants – entirely possible that they too are conscious in some simple way. It's just that we can't detect it. But why not? Is biological life per se conscious... or does biological life serve as a host to consciousness?

An illustration suggesting that all life is conscious: Google Gemini Nanobanana

Next question: what about non-life? Rocks, water? The sun? Atoms? Are subatomic particles conscious? Aware of their own existence? Even to the teeny-weeniest degree? And, given that electromagnetic and gravitational fields fill the universe, pushing, pulling and rippling particles, connecting matter across space and time, one could argue that the whole Universe is conscious – entangled. (Science – the language with which to explain reality: quantum entanglement).

So we can consider the notion of consciousness everywhere. But is this consciousness agential? Does it have a desire, a direction, a will? Or is proto-consciousness (if atoms, subatomic particles and fields are indeed conscious) just a property of the Universe, along with mass and charge?

If we are to slip back from the language of science to the language of theology: is God part of the scene, or is God behind the scene? Is God present within every atom, or does God transcend spacetime and matter, or both at the same time?

This is the question of panentheism (an extraneous God looking in from the outside, which is what Gemini AI sees, above) vs pantheism – all is God, God in all. This then leads us to the dualism vs monism dichotomy; the Cartesian view that the physical and spiritual realms are entirely separate, as opposed to the far more ancient Eastern (Hindu and Buddhist) conviction that matter and spirit are in essence one. I'd hold to the notion of dual-aspect monism; the spiritual and the material are two sides of the same coin rather than two coins. [Then of course there is physicalist monism, which holds that all is matter, and that nothing exists outside of the physical realm.]

I tend to see 'God' more as a process than a person; a process of spiritual evolution, a work-in-progress; God as the Flow, running ever in one direction – from chaos towards perfection, a tendency and not a state. I see God as syntropy, the opposite of entropy; building ever-higher levels of quality as the Universe unfolds. God as a building block of the Universe, and its ultimate goal. And we should align ourselves with that direction. But along that journey from Zero to One, we are not even halfway there. And along this Lenten journey, there's still so much more to discuss.

Lent 2025: Day four
Where is God? Inside or outside the Universe?

Lent 2024: Day four
Metaphysical powers: woo-woo or fact?

Lent 2023: Day four
The Nature of Reality (Pt III)

Lent 2022: Day four
The Ego: what is it good for?

Lent 2020: Day four
Conscious life after death?

Lent 2026: day three – is the Universe conscious? Pt I: Does God play dice?

So the Universe started with the Big Bang. But why did the Big Bang happen? What caused it? Atheists/physicalists/materialists put forward several arguments that try to get around the need for a metaphysical ('beyond physics') answer, but ultimately each one can be tripped over by the question "and what happened before?". 

Some physicists suggest that 'nothing' is unstable at a quantum level. In this view, the universe could have emerged from a vacuum fluctuation where particles and energy pop into existence and expand. Right. So where does that fluctuation come from, ditto particles and energy? The Cyclic Model posits that the universe undergoes infinite cycles of expansion (Big Bang) and contraction (Big Crunch), meaning there was no 'first' cause because the system is eternal. Then explain where that eternity started. The Multiverse hypothesis puts forth that our universe is just one 'bubble' in a much larger foaming sea of universes. The cause of our Big Bang would be a physical process occurring in a parent universe. Which was formed how? Stephen Hawking famously proposed that asking "what happened before the Big Bang" is like asking "what is north of the North Pole." If time itself began at the Big Bang, there is no 'before' for a cause to exist in. OK, but what kick-started the whole process?

The established scientific paradigm tells us that every physical effect has a physical cause. Cause precedes effect. Scientists tell us that there are no unseen, indetectable, forces acting upon our reality from outside of our physical reality. 

Everything can be described in terms of atoms and the forces acting upon them; there is no explanatory need for intercession from the supernatural. This way of looking at the world has been wildly successful since the days of Newton and Leibniz – billiard balls in motion, striking each other and bouncing off with predictable speed in predictable directions. 

From the birth ot the Enlightenment, well into the 20th century, the scientific paradigm has forced supernatural worldviews into retreat. The unfolding of the universe is an entirely predictable process, claimed French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. He posited that an intelligence ('Laplace's demon') with sufficient processing capacity, knowing the location and momentum of every atom in existence, can foresee every possible atomic interaction until the end of time. A beautiful model, and one that is held dearly by causal determinists to this day. It is a model that implies no room for free will or ethics, no good, no bad – just that, which has been determined.

But then, a hundred years ago, along came quantum mechanics. By the early 20th century, the inner workings of the atom were shown to have strange, random qualities that classical mechanics could not account for. A sceptical Albert Einstein famously remarked "God does not play dice", bridling at the notion of a probabilistic Universe. 

Above: God playing dice, as imagined by ChatGPT

How does quantum mechanics differ from classical mechanics? Consider, for example, one atom of an unstable radioactive element with a half-life of one day. This means that there is a 50/50 chance that in that time, the atom's nucleus will decay. Whether it does so or not is entirely stochastic (random; an effect without a cause). One day later you ask – has that atomic nucleus decayed yet? You know the statistical probability; half and half. But you don't know for certain. You need to make an observation to find out. Without an observer present to open the box and check on the experiment, there can be no certainty. The atom is said to remain in 'superposition' until the outcome is observed.

The observer principle is crucial to the quantum world. If a tree falls in a forest, and there's no one there, has it made a sound? No – because 'sound' needs somebody to receive the pressure disturbances propagated through air, someone equipped with a brain to receive the waves and interpret them as sound. Similarly, if there was no consciousness present in the Universe – would it exist?

Is the Universe conscious of itself, of its own awareness, in the sense that we are conscious of our consciousness? Is that consciousness distributed, atom by atom, across the Cosmos, dwelling within the very fabric of Creation? Or does a Universal consciousness reside outside of matter, in an aetherial realm?

Tomorrow I will consider the question of Big 'C' Consciousness and small 'c' consciousness, and where we conscious humans fit into the scheme of things

Lent 2025: Day three
Is God a person or a force?

Lent 2024: Day three
On spiritual evolution

Lent 2023: Day three
The Nature of Reality, Pt II

Lent 2022: Day three
Gratitude and Consciousness

Lent 2021: Day three
Would the Universe exist without us?

Lent 2020: Day three
Define your Deity

Lent 2026: day two – the very essence of your being

I am aware of being aware, therefore I am. Awareness – consciousness – precedes thought. Thought is a cerebral process, thought is the passage of electrons firing through neurons and synapses. Thought is about reason, deduction. But consciousness is primal. It is the very essence of your being. Feeling, experiencing, being alive. 

Here, the notion of qualia needs to be explained. Qualia are the subjective, first-person instances of 'what it's like' to have an experience. The word 'qualia' (from the Latin, of what kind) stands in contrast with that which is countable – quanta.

Example: having just drunk my morning cup of black coffee, it would be possible for a scientist to measure the pH level in my mouth, and to compare the metabolic effect of the caffeine on my organism to the state of my blood pressure and heart rate before I drank the coffee. But all none of this data captures the 'coffeeness' of my experience itself. That complex sensation of coffee aftertaste that I'm experiencing right now is a quale (the singular of qualia). As is the feeling that I just got looking up from my keyboard at the horizon through the snow-covered forest, tand he brightness of the sun shining through the trees.

Qualia are the quintessence of your lived experience. They are sensory in origin; the smell of the now-empty coffee cup; the feeling of stroking the long, silky hair of my cat Céleste; the pungent taste of anchovy; the sound of my laptop's 'new mail' alert; sunlight acting on my retina. Sensory inputs all adding up to how it feels to be you at any given moment. 

Those lived moments are experienced and remembered; they return, familiar moments of recognition, tinge your consciousness with their afterglow, then dissipate in a second or two, like a snowflake melting on your hand. But they give you a sense of continuity; despite not a molecule in your brain having been there even ten years ago, those recollections persist.

The youness of you is formed over time from myriad qualia memories, memories of qualia rather than events, as the recollections of doing things, witnessing things, saying things, all tend to degrade over time, changing with each subsequent retelling, shifting in emphasis, importance and tone. But qualia memories remain constant to you across time. Sharp and resonant.

Qualia imprint themselves on your memory, and those memories of purest qualia experience can return to you, summoned, triggered or unbidden. I've just conjured one up – an old familiar one – the qualia memory of the smell of my first day at primary school – the smell of newly-varnished parquet flooring and Magic Marker pens. A qualia memory as sharp as the moment I originally experienced it. And this prompted a new memory, just as vivid, but one I've not had since leaving primary school; classroom door knobs. Knurled brass with concentric 'ribs' – set high, I was not yet five years old – reach up, twist and push (or pull) to open the heavy door... I can see it, feel it in my small hand... as if it were yesterday. Yet it was over 60 years ago.

Our bodies age, but our conscious experience does not fade over time. The experience of being aware, conscious, is as acute as its ever been. This fact to me offers proof that unlike our bodies, our consciousness is not subject to entropy – the second law of thermodynamics; things fade and decay, but qualia memories (as opposed to memories of events) maintain their precise quality, unsullied by time.

This to me is an intimation of the immortal nature of consciousness, or to use language of the past, the soul; the spirit. It is a consciousness that's fundamental, that pervades everything and everywhere in the Universe; consciousness that is present in you and in me, consciousness that abides – unlike matter that is subject to death and decay.

More tomorrow on how I understand that 'consciousness everywhere' idea.

Lent 2025: Day two
The language of science, the language of spirituality

Lent 2024: Day two
How much spirituality do we need?

Lent 2023: Day two
The Nature of Reality Pt. I

Lent 2022: Day two
Objective/Subjective, Ego and Consciousness.

Lent 2021: Day two  
Your life: a miracle? Or something that just happened?

Lent 2020: Day two
The Physical and the Metaphysical; the Natural and the Supernatural

Lent 2026: day one – in the beginning.

In the beginning was... what?

Since before the dawn of recorded time, we humans have grappled with our origin story. How did we explain how we came to exist, how our world came to exist, how our universe came to exist and why? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here to participate in the great unfolding of the universe? How do we make sense of reality of which we are a part?

At such moments of existential curiosity, we have always been able to devise answers to fill the void.

Every culture has its creation myth. And every one of these myths required supernatural intervention to kick-start existence. A god or gods, standing outside of the day-to-day routine of human life. From those oral traditions – myths and legends passed on from generation to generation around paleolithic campfires – to written accounts that would formalise into the great religions of the world, myth morphed into theology. Today, the language we use for our creation myth is that of science. The Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The Enlightenment shed new light on creation. Descartes stripped away the material from the spiritual, creating dualism; two worlds, one material and one spiritual, the latter being an invisible realm of the soul, of angels and of God. Newton turned alchemy into science; the scientific method demanded that every effect have a cause. And for Newton, a God-fearing man, the first cause was God. But subsequent generations of scientists bore down in ever-greater detail into the physical world of matter, with more and more coming to reject the need for a Supreme Being to explain reality. 

By 1885, Nietzsche could proclaim – without fear of being put to death as a heretic – that God is dead. Indeed, who needs God if you have steam engines, telegraphy, weaving machines, newspapers and hygiene? And as a theory posited by Darwin, evolution has great explicatory powers to answer questions about how we came to be. Descended from apes, which in turn were descended from early mammals, which evolved from fish that learned to adapt to life on dry land. And all the way back to the last universal common ancestor, then back to the first primitive life forms on our planet.

While science was getting to grips with the inner workings of the atom and the cell, and the vastness of the Cosmos, our lives were becoming more and more focused on the acquisition of material possessions. The spiritual aspects of human life withered away under pressure from consumerist ways, especially in 'advanced' Western societies as the 20th century wore on. 

Atheism spread through societies as they urbanised. Science preached cause and effect, and if no cause could be found, then randomness and complexity were the answer. The implied physicalism of the Universe – everything is composed of matter. And by analogy, materialism came to mean the craving to buy stuff because that's become the meaning of life. If there's no God, no metaphysical dimension to the human experience, then what's left? Matter, and its acquisition, for the sake of indicating status. We work to buy, we buy to show off.

After a century or two of science's primacy that brought about huge improvements in the material quality of human lives, serious questions – doubts even – started to emerge. 

Scientific progress stalled. 

Theoretical physics of the past half-century has had but one major breakthrough – confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson. Beyond that? String theory? Going nowhere. Dark energy and dark matter? We don't know. A hundred years on from the foundations of quantum mechanics and there's still no consensus as to how to interpret quantum effects. And why does the universe appear to be so precisely fine-tuned for life? Then there's the question of abiogenesis – the leap from inanimate non-life to life that feeds and breeds. How did complex chemistry turn into simple biology?  Don't know (although some interesting progress has been made in investigating space gum from asteroid Bennu which contains all five nucleobases essential for RNA). 

But above all, the greatest mystery is that of consciousness. And it is in consciousness that my spiritual journey is grounded.

Consciousness is the bedrock. It is there; it is a real experience, that cannot be negated. No one can tell me that I'm not aware, that I'm not experiencing consciousness. Materialist-reductionist physicalists would argue that consciousness is either an illusion or a byproduct (epiphenomenon) of evolution, a thing our brains do. I would argue that consciousness is absolute, it is the fundamental property of the universe; without consciousness there would be no spacetime, no matter, no energy.

So – in the beginning was Consciousness. [Consciousness comes before thought, thought is articulated and communicated as word.] If we accept that in the beginning was Consciousness rather than its derivative's derivative, then we can take it as the ground zero from which to ask all further questions about the spiritual, the metaphysical, the supernatural nature of our reality. You are conscious, therefore you are. Let's start from there.

More tomorrow about consciousness tomorrow.

Lent 2025 Day 1

Lent 2024 Day 1

Lent 2023 Day 1

Lent 2022 Day 1

Lent 2021 Day 1

Lent 2020 Day 1