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A fear of death. A fear of life.

Juan, my new friend on Galapagos islands saw the look of horror on my face when I saw the iguana carcass.

“It’s part of life,” he shrugged.

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As time on the islands passed I would see many more examples of the cycle of life and death, from the crab shell above to baby birds, to the bones of a sea-lion below. What struck me more than the death was the life that these animals live.

On these magical islands, animals live their lives to their full potential – they live their lives without fear. And they accept their fates with grace.

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Well, at least that’s what they told me anyway… anyway moving on.

So I’m learning to ride a scooter. Why? Environmental reasons? Monetary reasons? Parking reasons? … Actually, to be completely honest, my main motivation is that scooters are simply SO INCREDIBLY FUN!!! The lesser impact scooters have on the environment, on my pocket, and on my sanity when it comes to parking, are nice little added bonuses.

Today was my first day of the pre-learner course. It was like rekindling a lost love. Air and space surrounding my body as I sped along (at probably no more than 4km per hour so far) whisked me away to some other state of being. Was I once a bird flying in the sky? Was I once a horse galloping in a wild herd? Are these animals more me than I realise? I love scooters. I can’t wait to have my own: to ride to the beach, to uni, to the pilates classes I’ll one day get off my arse and start teaching again.

Alongside scootering it’s been an exciting few days. Yesterday I received an offer to present a paper at a peace conference in Mumbai. Considering I really don’t have to be in Australia for the month of May I figure I may as well backpack around India while I’m there. Maybe I could even write a sequel to my yet-to-be-published book… Ah dreams, gotta have them!

Backpacking alone around India, scootering around the city – am I afraid of killing myself in the process? No, not really. And if I do die, so be it.

I am NOT afraid of dying. I AM afraid of NOT LIVING LIFE TO IT’S FULL.

When it’s my time to go, I’m ready. Is that weird?

Death. What do you feel when you hear this word? Death. The last chapter of our life. Does it make you feel scared? Sad? Insecure? Happy?

Death, the only absolute in life, is what many people live their lives in fear of. But why? Is death really so scary? It’s completely unavoidable. One day it will happen to you. And that is that. Is there really any point in worrying about it?

Life & death. Two concepts completely meaningless without the other. Death is the inevitable consequence of life. Without death life on earth would never have evolved. It is through death that adaptation can occur. It is through death that new generations can become more suitable to environments than the previous. It is through death that life survives, thrives, and has lead to the diverse and beautiful flora and fauna that surrounds us and that we are a part of. We have been born into the body that we currently dwell inside, and eventually we will leave that body. When? No one knows. What will it feel like to be dead? People can pretend they know, but if we are sincerely honest with ourselves, we all know that no one knows this either.

I think of death as the ultimate peace. Call it “Enlightenment”. “Heaven.” “Oneness with God”. “Rejoining the Soul of the Universe.” “Becoming one with everything that is.” “Returning to a state of nothingness.” … living in a state where there is no separateness. No more ego. No fear-driven consciousness. A place of Balance. Of equilibrium. A place where opposites cease to exist. That doesn’t sound so bad does it? A little boring maybe, but as we live on through the consciousness of everything else that exists, and as we live on in the memory of the lives we lived – death, in my mind, really isn’t so bad.

But on the other hand to not live my present conscious to it’s full potential; to live a life that harms the universe; to deny opportunities; to regret decisions; to not enjoy the moments along the way… that, to me, is far worse than death. That, to me, is torturous. But death…

As long as I have lived each day of my life to it’s full – when it is my time to go I will farewell my consciousness with grace.

A few more of my favourite quotes from The Alchemist:

“There was a major battle nearby, and a number of wounded were brought back to the camp. The dead soldiers were replaced by others, and life went on. Death doesn’t change anything, the boy thought.”

“There was no need to be concerned about dying – the Soul of the World awaited him, and he would soon be a part of it. And, tomorrow, his enemy would also be a part of that Soul.”

“The desert takes our men from us, and they don’t always return” she said. “We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don’t return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hid in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything… they become the Soul of the World.”

“I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe.”

If I haven’t mentioned it already, this simple allegorical tale is a very effective one, and a worthwhile quick little read.

When it comes down to it we are all going to the same place. We are all a part of the same incredible creation. Separateness is but a temporary illusion.

The inter-connections between humans, all life, and the planet we inhabit, are evident. Now all we have to do is  open our eyes and see the deeper truths behind reality. As we do I believe we will find our fears (of death and of life) will subside, allowing us to embrace life’s miraculous moments to each moment’s full potential.

A Postmodern Grand-Narrative

Come with me on a journey through time and space… the mighty booooooshhhh! (If you haven’t seen The Mighty Boosh, do yourself a favour – watch it!)


Searching for a Postmodern Grand-narrative….

I deferred this semester’s uni in hope of getting a scholarship to support a research project starting mid-year. Although officially I’m not a student I’m still going to uni twice a week (only an hour each day) to attend the lectures of an undergrad subject – An Introduction to World History.  This subject is more than World History – it covers the history of the universe, or “BIG HISTORY” as it has been termed.

As always, there’s a little story behind this…

A couple of years ago, before I went back to uni, I discovered H.G. Wells wrote a book called The Outline of History published back in 1920. (And available for free online HERE) Why didn’t I know about this book? Why didn’t everyone learn history in one nice (even if long) interesting narrative?

One of the first subjects I did back at uni was Historiography – a fascinating look at the different ways we have reported history, throughout history. I discovered the answer to my question:

H.G. Wells wrote during the period of Modernity, a time where people believed that science could provide all the answers. A time where people believed religion was no longer necessary and through a grand-narrative of history and science we could discover our place in the world, and move toward a place of unity. And then came World War Two and the cookie crumbled.

Grand-narratives were rejected and the period of Postmodernity arrived. Postmodernity is a time ‘post-war, post-holocaust, post-colonial, post-gender, post-history, and, most important for the cultural critic’s enterprise, post-‘master narrative.’ [1]

History itself was almost rejected due to it’s bias to one-sided perspectives, political motivations, propaganda, faming of heroes, demonization of oppositions, and recording of themselves as drivers of history. Absolute truth does not exist. Objectivity is impossible.

Derrida says ‘the persistent search for a centre, a fundamental ground’, maintains a given structure in a ‘false state of immobility, of finality, of fixed truth.’ We should conceive structures without a centre, so we can see they are ‘open to interpretation without end, unconfined, unreduced, unfinalized, not continuous, not linear, where truth is never arrived at, is always involved in a play of differences that keep deferring its arrival, its full presence.’ [2]

My generation was born into this confusing mixture of rejection of grand-narratives, which for me was extra confusing when combined with a religious grand-narrative that had not quite been thought through… While one text book said that Australian Aborigines had lived here for over 30,000 years, our bible classes told us Adam and Eve lived around 6,000 years ago and that they were the first humans on earth. Okay….????

Then there’s Ancient Egypt and Ancient Sumeria – what child cares about ancient civilisations that appear not the least bit significant to their life? If History, Geography, and Science are taught as disjointed from each other, and taught in a way that puts you to sleep, what’s the point of school?

In hindsight I believe schools need to teach these subjects in connection to some form of grand-narrative, even if it’s a tentative one with known gaps, but something to engage with, to gain perspective of where each piece of knowledge fits into time and space, and most importantly, how this relates to my life today.

The subject I am studying this semester at uni is doing just that – providing an overview of all the essential details that compile to tell me who I am and what process I am a part of. Oh yeah, back to my story… how met the lecturer.

Somehow in looking for more recent historical works along the same line as H.G. Wells, I came a across a book called Maps of Time by Professor David Christian from the US. I ordered it on Amazon and after reading it I sent him an email telling him how much I enjoyed it. Incredibly he wrote back telling me he was in fact working on and off at Macquarie University in Sydney! Two years later and here I am, attending his lectures, and with him as an associate supervisor of my pending research project.

What is this research project, you ask? I’m asking myself the same question. I know it’s about narratives of identity and peace. I also think it’s about bridging the gap between science and religion through the narratives we tell. It’s also about panentheism and process theology and the philosophy of science and big history… argh!!! Lucky I have time to narrow the scope… somehow I know all these factors align.

Anyway, I’ll be sharing the journey on here. To begin with I’ll be sharing what I learn at these ultra-interesting lectures on super-novas and the beginnings of life on earth and milestones and paradigm shifts throughout our history.

To give you a quick overview of where we are going, check out this AWESOME little picture of world history in a flash bang 7 minutes!

http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/movies/flash_large.php

Then buckle your seat belts and get ready to (over the next few years)…  journey with me through time and space…!!!


References:

[1] Toulmin, S.E., Return to reason. 2001, Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University Press. p.1-5.

[2]  Derrida, J., Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. in Hutcheon, Linda and Natoli, Joseph P. A Postmodern reader 1993, Albany: State University of New York Press. p.224.


Word of the day: Quixotic

Quixotic means:

1. extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.

2. impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

3. (sometimes initial capital letter) resembling or befitting Don Quixote.

4. caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.

Cool word hey!

Photo from Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe – an incredible (and maybe a little quixotic) movie featuring lots of Beatles songs and the incredible charming Jim Sturgess. One of my favourite movies of all time.

I wonder if it’s a bad thing to be a little quixotic some times?

Richard Dawkins and WHAT is God?

Interesting interview on SBS with Richard Dawkins last night. Stream it at this address:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/600352/n/Interview-with-Richard-Dawkins

I left this comment and thought I’d share it with you:

There is a God VS there is no God.. haven’t we forgotten to define WHAT is it we refer to as “GOD”???

I was a fundamentalist Christian for 20 years but now having rejected it I am getting closer to “God”.

In evolution I see “God”. In intuition I hear “God”. God is not a man in the sky (I think even fundamentalists agree with this) “He” is the personification of creative energy behind life. Atheists prefer not to personify it.

Can we please just expose the manipulative dogmas and seek truth?

I would love to hear YOUR thoughts on this stuff…

Below are personal reflections written a couple of years ago when I was searching for answers.

Monotheisms

All monotheistic religions believe there is only one God. One transcendent being that is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and omnipresent (present everywhere.)

God, most of us acknowledge, is of a complexity beyond our mind’s capacity to ever fully understand. “He” or it, is a power beyond words our language offers us, a mystery that will always surround us but which until death we will never fully solve.

God’s name

In Spanish the word for God is Dios. In French it is Dieu. In Greek Theos. In Hebrew, Elohim. In Japanese it is Goezur, in Italian Dio, Malay Alla, Latin Deus, Peruvian Puchecammae, Persian Sire, Russian Bojh, In Syriac, Turkish and Arabic, it is Allah. Just as we say cold, the Spanish sayfrio, and Japanese samui, all refer to the same thing. When Muslims call out to Allah, they are calling out to God, but in their language. If they were to pray in English, they could call Allah God, and if we were to pray in Turkish, we would call God Allah. Different words for God doesn’t mean we pray to different gods.

God is on my side

The words Allah and God cognate two very different images of God in our minds, but why? It is due to the fact that most people in Turkey, Syria and Arabia, have been brought up Muslim, and most people in England, America and Australia, brought up to be Christian, that Allah is thought to be the god of Islam, and God, the god of Christianity. But this is wrong, both words mean God. I’m not saying that the Muslim God and the Christian God are one and the same God. No. They are two different civilizations attempts to know the same mysterious power behind life, of which both there is only one.

Islam and Christianity are based on different interpretations of someone else’s God-inspired teachings. The discrepancy between the two religions comes down to the credibility Mohammed and Jesus, the credibility of the writers who documented their stories, the credibility of their followers that continued to spread their words, and the credibility and accuracy of theologians who have interpreted these narratives into the creeds many people so strongly believe today.

Different interpretations of God’s will for different people at different times has led to each religions’ different beliefs about how to communicate with God, our life’s purpose, ideologies about how society should be run, what constitutes good morals etc, and God’s eternal plan for who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Aren’t these differences simply reflecting different civilizations in different times focusing on this one transcendent power behind our existence: worshiping it, praising it, praying to it, being inspired by it, wanting to please it and gain protection and direction from it? Surely if we can just recognize this common goal, and humbly admit our own nature as fallible humans who cannot fully comprehend this power, we have a stronger base to think through our own conceptions and ideas about God, and learn from each other’s?

Dear Christians

Does it really make sense that your God would only reveal himself to the Israelites, one small group of people who exited Egypt around 3000 years ago? What about all the people that lived before the Israelites? What about the Sumerians and Egyptians, the Indian and Chinese, the Indigenous peoples of Americas and Australia? Does God not care to have a relationship with these people too? Why would he bother creating them then?

Does it make sense that the only way to have a relationship directly with God, is by believing in Jesus? Does it really make sense that God would make the condition of entering a relationship with him be based on accepting a number of statements only available to a small percentage of the population? Is God not powerful enough to forgive without creating aformula of sacrifice and forgiveness? Wouldn’t “he” want to have a relationship with all “his” creations?

When you think of God, what image come to mind? A king? A judge? A man or woman sitting on a throne in a golden castle? This is an image but is this what you really believe God is? Does God experience days, and time? Time on earth only exists because of earth’s rotation around the sun and on its axis, so how is it in heaven? Is there a past, present and future in Heaven? Does God sit on his throne reminiscing the past – those good ol’days when Lucifer was his right-hand angel? Does God think back fondly to the times when his creation was perfect, the times when we were his obedient human creations that had not yet sinned?

Does he think about what went wrong, and wonder how he could have allowed himself to be so betrayed? Does he wish he’d used his omniscience and omnipotence to stop it? If he is omnipotent then can’t he do that now? I know we explain this by saying he wanted it to happen, because he wanted us to have choice, does that mean he is disappointed in our choice? But, can you imagine God of most power, actually feeling disappointed and sad? If you were all powerful, would you really take things so personally? Or would your ego be quite ok without needing other’s praise and acceptance?

What would the point be for God to set up such a grand narrative: throwing Satan out of heaven, planning a battle between good and evil whereby we, his special human creations, must choose which side we want to be on? All this bother when he is already “all-knowing” and knows that in the end he will win – and those that chose good will be saved and live for eternity with him. Why did he do it? Why would he bother? Just so that he could have friends? Weren’t the angels his friends? Is it because he was bored?

I guess eternal life of peace might get boring. In a place free of conflict – a place of pure peace and tranquility where every day you feel safe and happy – I think I too would eventually pick a fight with someone, fire things up, just make life interesting again… Could the narrative of a battle between Satan and God be a mythological representation of this ongoing conflict between yin and yang? Did “God” “create” each of these opposites simply in order to write a more exciting story fo the world? The universe is constructed with protons and electrons, which combine together in different combinations to create different elements which combine to create different forms of matter. + and -. It’s like binary code of a computer 0s and 1s. Necessary opposites. It is the balance of opposites that make up for me the wonder of life.

“God” created this myriad of experiences available to us, so that life can be experienced to the full, in whichever way we want. God is more creative, clever and powerful than we give him credit for. In my mind “He” is not some ego maniac king demanding praise and creating hard-to-belief formulas with the requirement for us to believe it, so that when we die, we can meet him and become his servants in heaven. This image sounds like something people living in these type of conditions on earth would have imagined. Think about it, does it really make sense?

How can we believe God is omnipotent if we believe Satan to be a serious threat to our salvation? How can we believe God is omniscient, knowing already who will be in heaven, yet simultaneously believe we have free choice? The only way this can make sense to me is through the omnipresence of “God” when freed from human-constructed conceptions of “His” form.

How I imagine “God”

If God is present everywhere then isn’t “he” in every cell of our body and every spec of matter in our universe?And hence if we are in God and God is in us, can we not derive that the universe IS God. God may be bigger than the universe too, we can never know what’s outside our universe, but we can know that God is everythingin this universe.

I see “God” in the middle of “His” process of self-creative evolution. We humans might even be God in his most creative and dynamic expression to date. More recent developments in this creation process have led to an individualistic self-awareness, whereby we have developed complex minds that construct and deconstruct the realities around us. This is a magnificent part of God’s creative expression, yet in the process we have taken an interesting turn. We are born into a world that teaches us we are separate: separate from each other, separate from nature, and most important, separate from God. This separateness has led to creation of an ego. Our ego has positives and negatives. It allows a greater breadth of feelings, yet is also the cause of loneliness, fear, and confusion. Through self-analysis we have lost sight of what we are and what is our purpose. Our separateness feels like an eternal separateness, and most of all we fear what will happen when we die.

Our purpose in life, as an expression of God, is to continue our collective godly process of creation. To do this we must reconnect with our true self, this means listening to the voice deep within each of us and taking comfort in the fact that all of us are separate yet one. We are all expressions of God, and together we are God. God is you, me, humanity, all life, and the entire universe and beyond – we are all God.

When we realize this, we will realise that peace is possible. This paradigm shift is consistent with all religions, and sciences. Ultimately we are all matter, and in a reality that mind-body-spirit between man, animal and plant, all connect in ways we do not yet understand. Developments in quantum physics, in discovering your intuition, connect to Buddhism, connect to mysticism, connect to the teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Abraham, Buddha and all the other spiritual gurus of the past and of today.

If we open our minds to an image of God that is not the symbolic one we have grown up with, if we recognise our interpretations are fallible, if we accept that “God” is an incredible entity of which we are a part of even if “He” is not a person and exists in a form that no words can describe – then I think we can truly discover a relationship with God/Our Universe, that so many wise teachers have described.

If we wish to forego our egos, we can return to the oneness of God – just as Buddhists do when they meditate into blissful enlightenment. But egos are also a source of pleasure and competition which spurs creativity. Maybe egos are also good, as long as it’s kept in perspective of the oneness which we are more deeply a part of. I don’t know – what do you think??? (comments??)

Ego or no ego I believe we are simultaneously God’s creation and God’s creators, and we have a purpose: to create! This means we can transform this world and universe to the one we want it to be. How? Well we can start by reconnecting with each other, increasing awareness of our egos, and designing a vision, a blueprint, of the reality we want to create.

Oh, and if you are interested in the comment from Pat Robertson (a leading evangelical in the US) that said Haiti experienced the quake because of their “pact with the devil”, I found the snippet from his interview on youtube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5nraknWoes[/youtube]

Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

And when it comes to Atheists – don’t you think they have a right NOT to personify this power if they don’t want to? What difference should it make to anyone else if some people personify it while others talk about it in the scientific terms they decide to delegate to it? Richard Dawkins may be a little derogatory in his approach but he makes a good point – at least he is going about his pursuit of truth through words not war.

When it comes to the crunch we are all incredibly complex beings inside an incredibly complex universe constructed by an incredibly powerful creative energy – personified as God or described as a series of Supernovas – aren’t we all just using different words and conceptions to describe the same thing?

 

 

Narrative of the TXT

Do you ever send a text later wonder if the receiver interpreted as you intended? Do you ever receive a text and wonder what the sender meant?

On my walk this morning (my ankle is finally better!!!) I found my mind applying narratological concepts to txt messages and facebook.

When I received a text message my interpretation is influenced by more than just the words it contains. The narrative of the text is also determined by: who sent it, my relationship with that person, my past experience with that person, the day and time the message was sent, and finally the words the text contains interpreted within the context of my personal understanding of my and the sender’s language and my and the sender’s culture.

Let me give you an example:

Once upon a time a male friend sent me a message in the early evening that told me about his day and said he ‘should be back in Sydney around 10…’

Ok – what’s that supposed to mean?

‘It’s a booty call,’ another platonic male friend told me.

Seeing I was attracted to the guy who sent it, and seeing as the guy was having troubles with his girlfriend, and seeing as our culture reads such a message in such a way – I had to agree. It took will power, but I didn’t reply.

Questionable narratives are often embedded in the text messages I send with the intention of making a witty jokes, but which after sending I rethink, wondering whether or not the receiver has instead taken my words seriously.

For example last night another male friend sent me a txt that read, ‘I was in paddo all night tonight and totally forgot to call you…’

In the context of who this guy is (cute and I think single), my relationship with this person (platonic thus far) and past experience (flirty but does not go anywhere, and who I haven’t spoken to in over a month), the time (3am after a Saturday night out) combined with his choice of words led me to read his txt as a message send more or less to just say hey. So I replied jokingly, ‘Well that makes me feel special ; )’

But then the rethink: will my text be received as the light-hearted joke I intended? I rely on that little wink to notify receivers that I’m not serious – but do they read it the way I intend? I guess the local moral for any of my friends reading this blog is that if my texts contain a wink then, as an old friend used to say, “it’s a joke, you may use it,” and I hope that, even if my jokes are not very funny, you will laugh 😉

Wider questions also arise: be it in a txt msg, a status update, a telephone call, or even face-to-face communication what is narrative do people interpret from our texts? How can we prevent our intended messages from getting lost? Or is the ambiguity of texts and the openness for interpretation all just part of the fun of it?

A time for everything

Time is the most valuable asset we have. We count as weeks and years go by, as we get older and our borrowed energy starts to dwindle. There’s not enough time in our day. Not enough time in our weeks. Not enough time in our lives. And yet there is, we just have to accept that there is a time for everything:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.

You wouldn’t expect this to come out of the bible hey! So Taoist!!! And so true. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

A photographic interpretation:

A time for icecream

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A time for dropping it

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A time for five-second rules? (and pouting)

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And I’ll always have time for huskies.

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Photo credits:

Bernie de Belles http://debellesimages.com

Finding treasure

Have you read The Alchemist – by Paulo Coelho? The first time I picked it up it didn’t grab me and I soon put it down. But  the second time I picked it up, the simplistic beauty of the allegorical novel suddenly clicked. I’m going to share some of my favourite quotes over the next few weeks.

Paulo describes four obstacles to finding treasure:

“First we are told from childhood onwards that everything we want to do is impossible.”

“The second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.”

“The third obstacle: fear of defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’”

“The fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we have been fighting all our lives.

… BUT we do deserve to get what we want and there’s no reason not to realise your dreams.

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them – the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

Are you following a path to happiness?

Lifting the veils, peeling the onion

As we walk through time our view of the world is constantly in flux. One day I think this, the next day I think that – nothing is ever static. There is always something new to learn, and that new thing might well knock down a wall that previously blurred your view.

The problem, it seems, is that more veils that are lifted, the more one wonders how many layers still remain. Slowly through our lives, and probably through our death, the facades that surround us are exposed. We slowly peel down the layers of the onion, and maybe only in death do we discover our true core.

For me, this unveiling process began with some radical realisations surrounding the religion of my upbringing. I was born into a religion. By that I mean I was brought up being told that religion was Truth. I could accept it (and go to heaven) or reject it (and go to hell). With no seemingly comparative alternatives on offer, I chose the former: I accepted it with a full heart, adopted it as part of my identity, and used it as a framework to evaluate my surroundings and give my life some purpose.

As I “grew up” and my social network widened, this framework evolved. I started to question. The first veil lifted.

I looked out at the world with new eyes, curious about the beliefs of other cultures and past civilisations, curious to understand how different groups have evolved to see the world so differently. I started to question:

  • How do I know if a story is true or false?
  • How can I evaluate right from wrong?
  • If evangelising to the world is not my life purpose, then what is?

Ahead of me I saw a much bigger more dynamic world, albeit more scary it was beautiful and exciting.

As I learned about history and science and culture, I began to look at them more critically. My favourite analogy for this is to think of it as analysing the “stories” that they are made of. As I pulled them apart I realised that every story has its biases. There is a story behind every story.

Every story is the result of events that have occurred throughout history – that all aspects of our lives come from our ancestors and how they adapted to fit environmental changes, or how we are taking this position and adapting to changes in our environment.

I guess that what has led me to philosophy. It seems the question at the onion’s core is: What is “reality”?

Slowly, slowly, I feel I am getting closer to determining what it means (to me) to be “alive”. Or at least I’m figuring out what story of reality makes the most sense to me.