Next to normal

Normal is a matter of what you have known. When I was teaching spiritual workshops students would sometimes ask me when and how my spiritual journey began. The thing is, I don't really know. I don't know when I didn't know that the world was made up of both the seen and the unseen. In that regard I am particularly fortunate, for unlike many people, I haven't had to break through the fear that so many of us are born into around spiritual faith.

My partner would have me believe differently.

He is a man of science, a wonderful, rational human being who has no faith in the unseen whatsoever. He has good, solid reasoning, based in his study of the human mind, that there is a reason people need to believe in something other than what can be seen. He knows that human mind can play tricks, suffer disorders, fabricate events. He knows that pretty much everything can be tested with science.

My partner would suggest that I was born into a world of magical thinking that was perpetuated by my caregivers, and that in fact, there was no advantage to that at all. The world right in front of us holds enough mystery and wonder that we don't need to go seeking things that can never be proven anyway.

And I respect him and his opinions. As a great shamanic teacher once told me, the best approach is to bring everything back to its most logical conclusion. I have to agree, both with my partner and the shaman. And yet I still believe in the things I cannot prove through rational means, as much as I do in the the gob-smackingly stupendous wonder of this world right in front of me.

I have struggled with this paradox for quite some time. Actually, perhaps all I have struggled with is how to explain that this dual path is so very natural to me. In fact, I did an entire PhD in magical realism to try and qualify this belief (but that's another story).

I know, as my partner does, that the world is an amazing place. I know it because I have touched it, tasted it, felt it, smelt it and heard it. But I also know it because I have had moments of what can only be described as divine connection to all that is - when I have looked at a sunset or a tree or a felt a moment of such deep gratitude it is as if I no longer have skin and I have melted into the thing that I am observing. And I am forever transformed.

This is not something science can explain, but it is as important to me as my empirical senses in navigating the world. It is the world around me that astounds me, in both good and bad ways. But from being in the world and living and loving, I am freed from it. I feel myself extend beyond it. I feel myself connected to something greater than all the Universes.

So I do feel a great sense of gratitude that I was raised to know that I am in the world, and to make the most of this journey, but that I am not of this world. I am more than the quantifiable and rational. I remember and live my connection to the mystery and wonder and worlds beyond the world. I call this faith. And this world, and living in it, is the greatest act of faith of all.