My truth, my belief, my purpose

I’ve had an encounter recently that has left me contemplating what I think to be true, what it is I actually believe, and so what my purpose really is.

The discussion, I had initially thought, centred around respect and compassion. We seemed to be in complete agreement. Until, out of the blue, it seemed, I was informed our positions were ‘irreconcilable’.  He came at it from a rationalist perspective. I came at it from a non-dualist perspective.

The encounter has left me feeling really quite saddened that our differing worldviews are seen to be more important than how we actually live our lives. From a tantric perspective enlightenment, awakening, transcendence, or whatever you want to call it, is irrelevant unless the wisdom gained from it is grounded in how we actually live our day to day lives.

So, this raised the question for me, how do I justify saying I’m a non-dualist? For me, this is simply through direct experience, my tantric practices have opened this experience for me. Accounts of gurus, yogi’s, and yogini’s and other enlightened or awakened beings, alongside tantric historical texts (and indeed other spiritual texts) have confirmed what I have experienced. Does this make it true? It makes it my truth. Tantra is an embodied practice. I know the truth of this in my body.

But whether it is the definitive absolute truth or not I have no idea.

I find science fascinating and mind-blowing. I read scientific magazines, articles, and books profusely. I find science amazing, especially when it comes to the big questions around something coming from nothing and the origins of the universe, and neurosciences and consciousness.

What’s not to love.

When did the Big Bang actually happen? Noone knows for sure. Indeed, new findings through the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) as seen by Rohan Naidu at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2022, have started finding galaxies that “surpass all predictions”. As Charlotte Mason, astrophysicist at the University of Copenhagen says, “We’re peering into the unknown.”

Likewise, the new work around quantum entanglement is questioning the assumption that something can’t come from nothing. Or rather, they are showing that what we thought was nothing isn’t quite what we thought. Nothing, it now appears, is full of somethings, just not somethings we knew how to identify or define previously. As Albert Einstein said, “spooky”.

And talking of spooky. What about the new work in Integrated Information Theory which attempts to explain subjective experience (consciousness). As Christof Koch, one of the neuroscientists who put forward the theory says, “Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.” Pretty much oneness in the non-dual sense then.

From the results from IIT it would appear there is no magical point at which a nervous system spontaneously turns conscious, and that it is more likely that a continuum of experience exists. In essence the mind (or psych) is everywhere, ie universal consciousness (Spinoza, Leibniz, and William James are all considered panpsychists, so it’s not just Tantra practitioners who think so.)

Indeed, as Albert Einstein said, "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity."

So where does this leave me in terms of my truth, what I believe and what my purpose might be?

My truth centres around the oneness of all things. Currently there is no empirical evidence for this, but I believe in the need for unity because this is what I have experienced as my inner being. Once science and spirituality stop fighting it out and come together, we will be able to gain a more unified view of the world. My purpose then, in this context, is simply to hold fast to my truth and belief and support others to be able to sit in this uncomfortable place of currently not knowing - intellectually (although knowing at a deeper level).

This can be disconcerting and challenging for many, but because something is uncomfortable doesn’t make it untrue. This is when we need to be brave, stand in our power, and bring everything we do and say from a place of love to support us in the here and now in our day-to-day lives.

Brining it all together

Science and spirituality are not opposing views, rather they are two sides of the same coin. Once we stop seeing the coin as one flat surface and start realising that every surface has a front side and a back side, we can start to unify our worldview. In the meantime, we need to stand in our power and come from a place of love, no matter how attacked we might feel from others.

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Email me direct if you are interested in mindful, embodied, trauma-informed, or spiritually-informed coaching, or if you would like to join my new Pink Tantra Towards Awakening group for chat rooms, video channels and in-person workshops around tantra and intimacy practices robert.pinktantra@gmail.com

See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2

And for a bit of light reading, see my first historical fictional novel Fermented Spirits published through Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022. ISBN-13: ‎978-1398437159