This year's Lent (from Ash Wednesday, 14 February to midnight on Easter Saturday 30 March), will be of special symbolic importance to me. It will be the 33rd year in a row that I observe this period of fasting – and being 66 years old, so this means that I've been doing it for half of my life. And half of that has been blogged.
Over the years, Lent has become much more than six-and-half weeks of self-denial – it's increasingly become the high-point of my spiritual year. This blog is central to this process, serving to document my growth in spiritual understanding; an annual summing-up of my current state
This year, as in the past four, I will be posting daily on the blog, examining human spirituality through the prism of the phenomenon of consciousness, and attempting to frame our human existence within Cosmic reality.
Science and spirituality should really strive to develop side by side, much as they have done for most of human history. Our worldview today is shaped by Western reductive (or reductionist) materialism, which historically and culturally is an outlier.
Whether it was the Ancient Greeks, the eastern traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, the alchemy of mediaeval Europe, or the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age – the metaphysical was ever-present in scientific inquiry. The rejection of God (however one wants to define God), and the replacement of God by a Universe solely consisting of matter, is a recent and geographically limited phenomenon.
For those with a spiritual yearning, traditional religion, bound by dogma, a proscriptive shackling of mankind's desire for the numinous for the purposes of social control, can often be insufficiently fulfilling. Reductive materialism, based on the view that only arose recently, that all of reality can be reduced down to elementary particles, is a deadening ideology that strips away the magic from life.
Since the middle of the last century, the Western worldview has been deeply materialist. There is nothing but matter, so pursue matter and revel in the pleasure of the material world.
Then what?
Depression among humans, despoliation of our planet. And reductive science does not hold all the answers to the mysteries of the Universe. A holistic approach to life and the Universe is called for. As the 21st century unravels, more and more scientists and philosophers are looking to marry the science that's brought humanity so many great gifts with a greater awareness of Cosmic purpose.
I want to delve deeply into the interface between science and spirituality, to ponder upon the nature of God and consciousness; to ask about survival of consciousness after biological death; the unfolding of the Universe (entropy vs. emergence); and what we are all here for.
As with past years where my Lenten blog posts focus exclusively on matters spiritual, I know that traffic on my blog falls by roughly half (currently 18,300 page-views/month). But then there's a small but loyal group that continues to visit. I'm encouraged to see, for example, 32 views overnight of a post I wrote at the start of Lent 2016 about spiritual evolution. This suggests that someone has come across it via a Google search and has posted a link to it on their social media profile.
The internet and social media have opened the public discourse on these matters. Once it was library books, specialist magazines, occasional newspaper articles, public meetings – access was limited. YouTube and Wikipedia in particular have opened new doors to enquiry to all those who are curious and who have that spiritual longing.
From Ash Wednesday 2020, I have kept up the discipline of posting daily throughout Lent for the past four years (a total of 176 posts so far), starting with this one.
Between now and the start of Lent 2024, it will be regular blogging, local snaps, trains, weather, Warsaw, development, politics etc. From Ash Wednesday on – 46 Lenten daily posts, no more, no less.
This time last year:
Born under punches
This time three years ago:
Yo-yo winter
What happened at the Railway Hotel?
This time seven years ago:
How to annoy the passengers
This time eight years ago:
Zloty symbol - your suggestions
This time nine years ago:
The future of Warsaw's public transport
This time nine years ago:
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