Clinging on and letting go

For Marek

Yesterday I was travelling from Łódź Fabryczna to Łódź Widzew on my way home. Boarding a crowded local train, I found myself sitting next to an elderly woman in a headscarf  and woolly cardigan - the stereotypical baba w chuście that has all but disappeared from the Polish landscape, replaced by elderly women in leggings and sweatshirts. Anyway, the headscarfed woman was clutching rosary beads and was deep in spiritual contemplation. Staring down at her fingers, her lips moving silently, she was not present with the other commuters as they scrolled down their social-media feeds on their omnipresent smartphones. She seemed more focused and calmer than everyone else - sublimely transcendent, indeed.

I could see a greater commonality between her and an orthodox Jew, head bobbing up and down in prayer, or a whirling Dervish in a trance, or a Hindu chanting a mantra, than between her and her fellow Poles in the train. 

But was she clinging on to a learned behaviour, or was her faith an integral part of her identity? 

Since the James Webb Space Telescope began transmitting data, astronomers and cosmologists have taken to question the nostrum that our Universe is 13.8 billion years old. Some are starting to suggest that it might be twice as old - others are trying to get more a more precise number, whittling down the hundreds of millions plus-minus to a smaller number. Most scientists feel comfortable with that 13.8 billion age - but are they clinging to it? Will this accepted figure end up being completely overturned? In five years' time, will our textbooks teach pupils that the Universe is 27.6 billion or 13,787,150,000 years old? Don't know.

I am entirely agnostic, watching videos on YouTube I see the majority of mainstream cosmologists sticking with the accepted figure. I wonder what it will take to shift that consensus. If it does shift, will there still be die-hards clinging on to the figure of 13.8 billion? 

It is, I posit, much easier for a rationalist, scientific mind to accept a changed consensus on the age of the Universe based on analysis of observed data, new hypotheses put to peer review, and multiple experiments all pointing to the same outcome, than it is for such a mind to accept a genuine paradigm shift regarding consciousness. From an emergent phenomenon, the by product of biological evolution, to a fundamental property of the Cosmos. Indeed, the fundamental property of the Cosmos

I believe in the power of intuition, a power that is metaphysical in origin, a manifestation of non-local consciousness. My belief in intuition is an intuitive belief, not something taught or learnt. It is something I have observed over time, and in my own n=1 world, it holds true.

If you intuitively hold that something is right, then its validity runs deep. It's as right to you as any extraneously derived theory. Deep intuitive conviction, emotional, visceral and abiding, honed over decades, elevated to higher levels of understanding. The honing process is a mixture of absorbed knowledge and intuition - science and spirituality together, blended, in balance. Fine-tuning of an idea, rather than rejection or clinging to dogma. Like a statue coming to life from a block of stone, rough hewn at first, but taking on shape and definition with the judicial honing.

This time three years ago:
Out in the mid-September heat

This time four years ago:
Poland's ugliest building?

This time nine years ago:
Weekend cookery - prawns in couscous

This time 11 years ago:
Draining Jeziorki

This time 12 years ago:
Early autumn moods

This time 13 years ago:
The Battle of Britain, 70 years on

This time 14 years ago:
Thoughts about TV, Polish and British

This time 15 years ago:
Time to abandon driving to work!

This time 16 years ago:
Crappy roads take their toll