Live, Die, and Take Notes

Anat Weinstein

Jan 14, 2016 | 1st pages, Spiritual

INTRODUCTION

ONE DAY I woke up from my life. I woke up the same way you suddenly realize, late in the afternoon, that you have been watching TV for so long that there is not much left of the day. I was in my mid-thirties. I looked at my life and saw that I had spent it all on the story of myself. And I realized that there had to be more to life than that. At that time I was in the habit of spending about eight hours every day in a cubicle, working as a mechanical engineer. The economy was going downhill, and the company I was working for did not have many projects to work on. As a result, I spent many hours each day in that cubicle without much work to do — at least not the kind I was supposed to get paid for. I had a lot of free time to think.

For whatever reason, my mind chose to focus on the mystery of existence. I kept asking myself: Why am I here? Why am I alive? What is life, anyway? In an attempt to find answers, I did what I usually do to find information: I googled “the meaning of life.” I did not find any satisfactory answers that way. Looking into religious materials did not even cross my mind. I grew up in Israel, where there is no separation between state and religion. I had to study the Old Testament at school, but it never made sense to me. I found too many contradictions in it and could not believe in a violent and vengeful God. I then proceeded to read about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. According to that theory, time does not actually exist, and if time does not exist that means space does not exist either. As Einstein famously put it: “Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

From there it was easy to deduce that I did not exist and neither did Descartes. He only thought he did. But what did all this mean? I felt as if a deep part of me knew the answers, but somehow I was unable to reach them. I felt as if I had amnesia, as if I did know but could not remember. Then the idea of hypnosis came to mind. I did not know much about hypnosis, but I thought it was a way to remember things that had been forgotten. I ordered a couple of books about self-hypnosis online. Increasingly obsessed with the meaning of life, I kept asking myself: Who am I? I felt that because I could not remember why I was here on earth, I could not know who I was. I am not my name; I am not my memories; I am not my job. I am not even my thoughts or my emotions. Finally, I am not my body. Then who am I?

I had tried discussing these issues with a few friends, but no one seemed to care. The topic did not seem to hold anyone’s interest but mine. While other people seemed to be busy with their day-to-day lives, I was consumed by the absence of apparent meaning in life. I continued to go to work and participate absent-mindedly in my everyday life, but my heart and my mind were elsewhere. Even though I perceived myself as an atheist, I found myself bargaining with some higher power I did not even believe existed. I made a list of all the things I was willing to give up in order to know the Truth: my money, my job, my friends, and my life. If I had been convinced that by ending my life I would get to the bottom of it, I would have ended it. I was not depressed or suicidal, only determined. I started to make vague threats to no one in particular: if someone did not show up and explain to me exactly why I was supposed to get up every morning and play my role in a script I had never agreed to, I would just stop.

I would not participate in life anymore. I would stay home and not move or make a sound until I understood. That’s it, I thought, I’ll quit. I was pretty sure, however, that this kind of “quitting” would end up with me in a straitjacket somewhere. Not an appealing thought! This went on for a while. Then somehow, without me even realizing it at first, my cry for help was answered. My journey to discover the Truth began over ten years ago. This is not the story of that incredible journey. This is about other stories, stories that are parts of the Truth I was seeking. As it happened, I never did read those books about self-hypnosis that I ordered. But more than three years later I started to study hypnosis and got professional training.

Generous Community

C Doyle. Andrew

Dec 23, 2015 | 1st pages, Spiritual

Introduction

On August 2, 2014, a large semi truck dropped off a gigantic dirt digger at the house across the street. Within fifteen minutes, it was destroying the 1960s ranch house that had most recently been the home of a series of renters. It is a scene familiar in Houston. Old homes, and just about anything that is left standing without purpose, is torn down so that a new something can be put up in its place. There is something that is both exciting and disturbing about this routine demolition. An architect friend once told me that not every house should be saved. Sometimes I think we think it is easier to simply discard the past and build a new thing.

I have discovered there is no real starting over. We are always walking into the future with a key ingredient of the past—ourselves. Lessons learned and lessons unlearned all come with us. The only thing new that is taken into the future is the lie that it is untouched and disconnected from all that comes before it. Bill Bryson, in his book At Home, writes, “Houses are amazingly complex repositories. What I found, to my great surprise, is that whatever happens in the world—whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over—eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famines, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment—they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers, tucked into the folds of your curtains, in the downy softness of your pillows, in the paint on your walls and the water in your pipes.

”1
The same is true for the Church—God’s house—in which we find ourselves. It is a storehouse of the past. It is filled with artifacts from the theology, liturgy, and Sunday Schools of our past. The culture has deposited here the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the 1950s, and all manner of musical tastes. If we take a walk and make our way through God’s house, we will find some interesting truths about the past Church. If we look closer still, we will see the profound impact the last 200 years have had on who we think we are and how we use the buildings of our faith.