It seems quite evident to me that people do NOT believe that science and spirituality can CO-EXIST. If they didn’t co-exist, however, then evolution would not be possible.
Everything begs to be challenged in some way. That is the nature of duality, perhaps important to morality, and it is the way of our world; like the sun and moon.
Without spirituality, there would be no philosophers to ask the bigger questions. Without science, there would be no physicians to give answers.
-Lakin
I do not own this photo.
This morning, I woke up asking myself the question of what is more important? Is it science or spirituality?
I decided that neither one was more important than the other and I believe in them both equally. In fact, it is both of them that balance my interests and it’s combining them that have brought me here to create this blog.
Growing up, I went to church and considered myself a Christian until I was about sixteen or seventeen. I had a falling out with my youth group at that time and was experiencing a lot of inner turmoil from my memories of my growing up.
It had all seemed to hit me at once, right after my first break-up and I began to feel a lot of anger towards my parents and others involved. I didn’t get along with my mother and she was experiencing her second divorce and going through her own traumatic experiences to be able to really understand my needs as a teenage girl growing into a woman.
I was feeling neglected, abandoned, and very insecure. I had no self-worth.
I didn’t want to lose another dad and I didn’t want to be subject to someone deciding I wasn’t enough for them. In retrospect, I know now that someone breaking up with me or an ending to my relationship (of any type) with another person would be my trigger for the next ten years. Any time I felt that someone may leave me, I’d distance myself so that I didn’t feel that loss or so I can feel like I was in control of who comes and goes in my life. I didn’t even realize I was doing it!
In my late teens and early twenties, I went from agnostic to atheist to pagan. I was jaded by churches and sickened by the feeling of others trying to force their views on me. I was really struggling to understand who I was and whom I wanted to be when I “grew up“.
I no longer supported church or religion, once I moved out of the state and the southern USA, where Christianity is quite popular. Blaming mystical ideas for the world’s problems, I thought anyone who practiced a religion was ignorant and that they denied the proof of science. I became heavily invested in politics and thought conservatives were actually all narcissists. No matter who it may be, I’d argue if they didn’t seem to agree with my view on things.
Over and over again through the years, I asked myself, “How could anyone believe in something that they can’t see?” Hard, cold facts were the only real things to me. I wondered how God could make all of creation in seven days, when we literally had the bones of dinosaurs and we knew they existed thousands of years before men ever did. Where was the religious text’s explanation of that, I wondered?
I even asked a preacher once if not the big bang, then where did God come from? He must have been created by someone if he were real, right? “God is just God and you have to have faith,” was the reply I received from him. He even laughed at me a little bit, as if I were naive in my thinking.
Years later, after my divorce, I jumped straight into another relationship. Oh, I was in love and in trouble. It was completely toxic and co-dependent. It lasted for three years and during that time, I began to notice some rather strange things without meaning to, of course. I thought I was confident in my lack of faith.
Still hovering somewhere between agnostic and somewhat pagan, at the beginning of those three years, the difficulties that I experienced throughout it is ultimately what led me to believe in something greater than myself. I was thrown a bone–an opportunity to discover my true self.
By the time the relationship was over, I was someone completely different. It tested me, yet strengthened me. It broke me all the way down until I was baring bones and exposed to the world, yet I was awakening. Although the relationship was hard, I wouldn’t take it back. It pushed me into a total transformation of self and for that, I’m grateful. Now, I’m stronger than ever.
It was exactly what it took for me to understand myself. That understanding included all of my undiscovered strengths and all of my weaknesses too. Nothing would be left hidden from my conscious mind by the time it ended. The very week I walked away from it and made a final choice, knowing deep inside me it was finally happening, I experienced a kundalini awakening. Afterward, I realized how much I seriously needed to heal from my past wounds and fears.
Somewhere during that time, my questions started to change. I became rather philosophical in my approach to wondering. I began to ask myself things like, “why do my dreams feel so real?” “How is it possible that I can always seem to guess what happens next or is it that thing they call the law of attraction?” And “why are there so many similarities between so many religions?”
I wrote so often during those three year to express the sadness and loneliness and heartbreak I had been feeling. Becoming drawn to many forms of divination, I began practicing tarot readings on my friends. Numerology had ultimately been the thing to lead me down the rabbit hole. The happenings were so strange sometimes, that I didn’t even share my experiences with others, but there was absolutely noway I could deny them happening either.
It’s like I could hear a clock ticking throughout that time and the closer I got toward opening the door, the ticking turned into the sound of a gong and not until I made the choice to step through it did it finally become quiet.
Later, I began integrating the little bits I knew about physics with my newfound beliefs in astrology, my knowledge of psychology with tarot reading, and my understanding of geometry with numerology and sacred geometry.
I started noticing symbols as I studied religious texts and mythology. I wanted to see the links between it all. Every now and again, I would get a momentary glimpse at one’s aura and that led me to studying yoga, meditation, and the chakras.
I could see how the line became divided between the factual side and the existential side of things. One was all about hope and faith and believing in more than your individual self and the other was grounded in proof and the ego feeling confident in knowing the facts. Both are important and everything should be used in and practiced in moderation.
After all, science evolves everyday and spirituality is personal. Philosophers ask questions, big questions, when there are not yet answers to things they’re curious about. Astronomers and engineers and the like answer more and more questions about our existence overtime, but we shouldn’t forget both of their integral roles.
I decided somewhere along the way that both were necessary for healing properly. Otherwise, loss will continue to shake us until we stop getting in the way of ourselves and open up to possibilities.
My understanding led to my belief that everything is connected, including the tangible AND intangible. One can’t possibly exist without the other.
We are all a part of the yin and the yang, good and evil, and the darkness and light.
Neither here, nor there.
As above, so below.
Click here to learn about duality
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-Lakin
