Day 46: Easter Saturday
My annual period of self-denial and spiritual focus is coming to an end; this is the 27th year in a row - the first was in 1992. Then I gave up nothing more than giving up alcohol, confectionery, fast food and salt snacks between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. Over the years, I've forsworn more items (meat in particular), but more importantly, I have begun treating Lent as a time for spiritual growth rather than just giving up things.
After the excesses of Christmas - the alcohol-fuelled merrimaking and excessive food consumption that sees you though the dark, cold and miserable time of year in our hemisphere, I look forward to the beginning of Lent more and more with each passing year; it's both a welcome detox for the body and a chance to revisit those most important aspects of what it is to be human, to be conscious, to be alive, to think, to reason, to feel.
As those of you who've followed by Lenten quests over the years, a key issue for me is to seek a clearer path towards the truth. In general terms, I believe it lies neither in the received truths of organised religions nor in the reductionist materialism of traditional science. Rather, I intuit that we humans do have a spiritual nature that is metaphysical and indeed supernatural; that consciousness evolves, that the universe has a purpose, and that God exists - but we have yet to come anywhere close to an understanding of what God is or means. All we can do is seek - our seeking should be based on insights, intuition and reason, on reading widely from many sources, looking for highest common factors, looking for commonalities between cutting-edge science and human tradition - and intuition.
Some of us have a need for a spiritual search, a search for meaning - others don't. Those that don't may feel the need to dismiss my personal search as misguided. But the search is moving me in the right direction, and this Lent I have found much inspiration in Stuart A. Kauffman's Humanity in a Creative Universe. While taking great pains not to write off classical Newtonian science and all the advances it has brought us over the past three centuries, Kauffman opens doors to new ways of looking at our universe that do not dismiss an intuitive approach.
Doubts in my mind have often been engendered by that cold scientific approach. It is born of the faith that consciousness resides in the brain and that death means a final snuffing out, an extinction of self; nothingness. Classical science based on certainties plotted by quadratic equations would posit that thinking otherwise is nothing but self-delusion. But Kauffman - and other serious scientists too - are pointing to a new view of reality, based on the uncertainties at the heart of quantum mechanics, and on the rejection that we're not far from uncovering a final grand theory of everything. The evolving universe is too complex for that, says Kauffman, who posits that the laws of nature themselves may be evolving. I found myself several times during the course of reading this book having insights that not only brought on new horizons - they actually made me feel happier. [I felt a 'Good News' moment of true joy when I read that a serious theoretical physicist arguing that dark energy and dark matter might indeed be consciousness, or that consciousness might be a property of matter along with energy and mass. I was overjoyed to read these ideas.]
Yes - happiness. Being optimistic and positive is a far better way to approach life than being pessimistic and negative. I have met people, ostensibly successful, wealthy and driven, whose worldview is dreadfully negative, whose negativism and misanthropy acts as a black hole sucking in all the hope of people around them. We should avoid contact with such people.
Happiness brings about greater mental health, health and happiness are linked; if you feel there is sense to life, that life is about moving forward on that great universal continuum from Zero to One, then your life has more meaning, you are more likely to fulfil your human potential.
This time last year:
Health and fitness in a Quarter of Abstinence
This time five years ago:
Cycling to work - the new season begins
This time eight years ago:
Five weeks into Lent
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