Science and Spirituality
Are your beliefs truly yours? Or just what you’ve been told? The culture and community around you shape these from an early age, do you ever pause to question them?
I grew up within an atheist family. (To the point where my parents actually had a non-Christening party when my brother was born.) I also grew up doing yoga, on and off, throughout my life. I often heard about energy, chakras, and things like ‘the divine universe’. I never paid it a second thought. I let those words wash over me as I focused on using yoga to become stronger and more flexible. Now I’m writing this in Bali, preparing to cleanse my tarot cards under tonight’s full moon… what.
I’ve never been spiritual. Or believed in crystals or life-after-death. I went through phases as a teenager. Looking in tarot because I liked the IDEA of it, not because I believed it - the same with ghost hunting. I could never get on board with the idea of chakras. Or anything that can’t be explained with science and stats on a big, non-bias data set. I started studying marine biology at age 16, then went deeper into this at uni. I was surprised at how many religious students were on my course. Even how many of my professors were religious too. It was interesting to see how they combined science and their faith.
My post-grad was on evolutionary and behavioural ecology. Specifically, how intelligence may have evolved within corvids (crows, jackdaws, ravens etc). The more I learnt about the natural world, the further I moved away from any kind of faith or spirituality. Why would anyone need or want anything more than what this incredible word already has to offer?
As a scientist I should have seen that if I was going to completely discount something, I should learn about it. Try it. And draw my own conclusions. But, like how most religious individuals grew up in a religious family/environment, we stick to what we know. What we are taught. By those around us, our community. This itself is basic human survival when you think about it. Straying from the ‘norm’ of your community is dangerous. It could get you isolated or attacked.
The only time I ever felt… something unexplainable, was in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Singapore. It felt… special. Content, peaceful. Something I’ve never felt in any English churches, which I find rather cold, gloomy and depressing. Far from comforting.
At age 32, after 4 days in Bali, I decided to see a Guru. It was an extremely… strange, experience. Positive, but unexplainable. So much so, I saw him again a few days later, but this time to ask him… what WAS that. He spent time teaching me. I’m not even going to try and explain here the experiences I had. It left me no choice but to shatter my entire belief system and re-evaluate it. This time, not based on what I logically knew, or had been taught, but based on how I felt and could experience.
I’ve since tried to embrace all the new experiences I can, with an open mind. Aligning chakras, reading tarot, scanning energy. All things past Jen would have probably internally scoffed at (I’m ashamed to say). I feel embarrassed writing this. My friends and family back home must think I’m high on mushrooms or something.
Now I don’t know what I believe. I’m not sure I’ll ever be a person of faith. There’s too many awful things in the world for me to wrap my head around a ‘God’ like figure ‘allowing’ it to happen. Or the idea that we are somehow being scored. That we will spend eternity either being rewarded or punished (anyone seen the TV show ‘The Good Place? Great watch). But I can't deny my spiritual experiences that I'm leaning into now.
My therapy work will of course always be grounded within the neuroscience. Our nervous system, boosting serotonin and rewiring pathways within the brain. However, inside Jen I guess will be leaving Bali 90% scientist… 10% witch?
I think the take-away I want to highlight is… It’s okay to change. Not just career or clothing style or gender, but your entire belief system. It’s good to question your beliefs and where they come from.
Are they truly YOUR beliefs? Or just how you were raised and taught to believe? And if/when needed, are you brave enough to have them come crashing down around you? If so, you can build them back up yourself.
It’s a new sense of authenticity I didn’t know existed.