It involves sharing something with the world that you think could result in rejection by those you most care about and by your community. Something that will had the potential for massive upheaval in your life.
I’ve gone through this process a couple of times in my life, and it was gut-wrenchingly scary to “put it all on the line” and share my true self with the world.
You might think I’d had enough of these experiences. You might think I wouldn’t want any more of that fear and stress in my life.
But unusual times require unusual measures
In this case, I’ve kept a part of myself hidden for most of my life, but NOW it is aching to be set free – if not for my benefit, then for the benefit of others who are looking for meaning and a new way forward in these unsettling times.
Coming out of this particular closet could mean losing the approval of many friends and family members.
Even harder is knowing that my late father would not have approved if he were still alive.
Coming out of this closet feels scarier than in 2003 when I came out as transgender —back when most people didn’t even know what being trans meant.
Coming out of this closet feels scarier than in 2010 when I quit my tenured faculty job —as a way of exposing my anger at the system.
This closet of safety and fear is the “spiritual closet”—my personal knowing that the materialistic view of the world that is embraced by the scientists and rational people who make up my family and community doesn’t tell the whole story.
Now before anyone goes off and thinks I’ve joined some cult or “found religion”, I HAVE NOT.
This is a very personal and practical form of spirituality, one that is all about tuning into a deeper core of who I am.
You could use the word “soul” for that, but since that term carries too much religious baggage, I avoid it. Instead, I use “Core”—a term that describes what I see as a consciousness connected to my sense of self that extends beyond this physical body and the workings of this brain.
While I’ve shared this with a few whom I’ve been closer to, I have not shared this publicly before.
Why would I suddenly decide to “come out of the spiritual closet?”
Because I think the world needs it right now.
My journey was practical and transformative. Through it, I discovered greater insight, clarity, and purpose than I had known during my atheist years.
My journey did not stem from encountering any particular spiritual teachings—at least not in the first decade or so.
Instead, my journey began with philosophical and scientific questioning—asking big questions like “What is consciousness?” and “What is going on with quantum mechanics?” and “How do these two phenomena relate to each other?”
From those musings, my own thinking emerged that there must be something deeper going on – it’s the only way I could find to explain many of these big mysteries.
It is a spirituality free from religious indoctrination. I have never studied religious texts like the Bible, the Quran, or The Book of Mormon, as I’ve always resisted their “this is the absolute truth—believe it” approach.
It is a spirituality that rejects the need for external authorities claiming to be the sole voice of God—a God often limited by human imagination. A spirit or consciousness capable of creating a universe (or multiverse) with countless stars—so vast it would take over 100 billion years to count them at a trillion per year—cannot be confined to simplistic human constructs like white maleness or any other limited framework.
It is a spirituality derived from open-minded rational and scientific thinking and personal experimentation, wedded to a desire for improvement in both my own lot, and that of my fellow humans.
This perspective offers insights into our current situation that I wouldn’t have had otherwise
From my old perspective — the Atheist perspective — what’s going on now is simply a semi-linear (and sometimes chaotic) progression from one random event to another. In this perspective, the particular pickle we find ourselves in, not only in the US but with all sorts of issues being felt worldwide, is just the unfortunate byproduct of many random rolls of the dice that have ended up to be not in our favor.
From my newer more spiritual perspective, what’s going on in the world is a big ass invitation for the human race to either step up and evolve to the next, more enlightened stage, or in attempting to return to return to old ways (like fascism), likely wiping ourselves out.
From this view, we, the species, are on an evolutionary journey toward potential understanding and enlightenment
This is not a biological evolution, it is a spiritual and mental evolution.
Just like biological evolution, success on this journey is not guaranteed.
We may fail to grasp the essential lessons we need to learn. Without enough people evolving their understanding in time, we won’t have the collective wisdom to buffer ourselves against the difficulties we face.
The true rewards of living come from the very act of trying, regardless of whether we achieve our goals.
It is through our attempts to make a difference that we find purpose and meaning.
It is time for me to step up and contribute my part, advocating for a broader and better vision of humanity’s potential.
It is time to dream and imagine something better, and then work patiently towards its fruition.
In seeing ourselves for the miracle that we are, we can stop devaluing our humanity
We’ve let a few rotten apples spoil our view of ourselves, so many of us see ourselves as all being rotten, as all caving into our base animalistic desires to dominate, fight, and be greedy. Yet that is not the “truth,” any more than is sampling a few people in one fancy neighborhood about what their favorite car is.
Instead of letting the bad examples of humanity be just what they are – some people whose choices are made without any higher perspective involved – we diminish ourselves in guilt and shame for being human. More than once I’ve heard well-educated people share the view that we are a blight and that we shouldn’t exist.
That very attitude of self-shame for being human makes us all the more likely to ruin ourselves, and in the process, likely ruin our planet. That kind of self-shame, that ignorance of the miracles that we each are, makes us unable to see any bigger picture, or act from inspiration and imagination to improve things, if only one tiny step at a time.
As more and more people get lost in the mire of “doom,” we thereby accelerate towards the very thing that is our worst fear
Emotions like shame, guilt, blame, and hate block us from accessing the inspiration, clarity, and compassion we need to solve the very problems that trigger these difficult feelings in the first place.
It is truly miraculous that we exist here in this vast universe, able to contemplate big questions, to love and to hate. Most of us don’t appreciate that miracle, because seeing only the surface of what’s going on makes it all seem so petty, greedy, and purposeless. It is only by going deeper, wider, and higher in our perspective that a different picture can emerge.
It is not a picture of one political party versus the other. It is not a picture of one environmental or social challenge versus the other. It is a much bigger picture of a species that is presented with these challenges so that we can either choose to shift and grow – or fail to do so and perhaps not return from that choice. It sounds scary, but in the big picture, it’s no scarier than the reptile who may have lept out of a tree towards another tree, spreading its arms with nascent wing-like protrusions in hopes the extra lift would get it across the gap.
Those “wing-like protrusions” in our case are the higher perspective and spirituality that can emerge when we abandon the religious dogmas of either old-school religion and of materialist science.
These nascent wings are the perspective of seeing that we’re truly all in this together, and that by fighting and hating the other side – no matter how well justified based on their behavior, we’re only contributing to more hate. The wings are fragile, and cannot persist in an environment of hate and fear.
There are many who actively resist this evolution, and spread hate and fear, because they’d rather cling to their outdated notions. They’d rather avoid evolution, because they believe, according to their dogma, that they’ve found The Truth, and are sticking to it at any cost.
Letting go of dogmas and “Truths” — with their attendant fears of any change — and instead engaging in this evolution that is gently inviting us all forward, has many benefits. Not only for the potential to solve some of our very big problems, but to solve some of our personal problems, here and now.
Those benefits include more clarity, more perspective, more compassion, and more fun.
Engaging these benefits has helped me get through the major ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey – a much more difficult journey than getting funding and tenure was at UNC-Chapel Hill.
It has helped me work towards being a better person, even though I have still much more work to do on that front.
It has helped me get through very difficult times stemming from major health issues.
It has helped me help others whom I’ve had the braveness to share my ideas with.
Why wouldn’t I want to share that with my friends and fellow humans?
Fear. Simply put, many on the scientific and academic side are not so open-minded as they like to think. And they often use the same tools that many religions have used to get non-believers in line: rejection, ridicule, and ostracism. I feared being ostracized.
There’s also fear of being lumped in with a group that I find particularly negative.
In our town, there are people who, during crowded times, show up on a busy corner and hand out Bibles to anyone who will take them. Not only that, they’ll try to engage anyone who pauses for a moment, into a conversation that is very one-sided, preaching at people about sin and redemption. My kids laugh at the “crazy” that represents, and I understand it.
Having grown up in Utah while avoiding being LDS (mormon), I was exposed to many efforts by well-meaning people to PUSH a religion I didn’t want on me. In part, I avoided it because I knew inside that I was different, and I knew that that religion would tell me that I am “wrong” for simply being who I am and feeling the way I do. I very strongly believe that no spirituality that tells people that they are inherently wrong for just being who they are represents any kind of “Truth” in the universal sense.
And I have feared being lumped into a group with those people that teach us we are all sinners, that we are all imperfect in the eyes of the creator unless we follow the very specific rules they have laid out for us in the name of their notion of God. I don’t want any association with that, but I feared in speaking of spirituality, I’d be immediately lumped in with that.
I can no longer let that stop me. The stakes are too high. This is not a push, this is a sharing of my journey and perspective.
From that perspective, I believe “wrong” or “right” is an in-the-moment thing, based on the choices we make about whether to work towards higher good for all, or whether we choose to do the opposite, like trying to use hate and fear to repress and control other humans.
I share in my “coming out” as an invitation to think, to question, to consider – but not to accept some particular dogma about how you must be in order to be considered worthy or valid. That goes for any dogma, whether it’s traditionally religious dogma or scientific materialistic dogma.
I am overcoming my fear, in part because my fear for the future if I don’t try to do something has become greater than the fear of the ridicule and ostracism
I believe there’s not much left to lose, because the guardrails of the work that I’ve been doing for 15 years with researchers is being torn apart by the changes happening in the US government and science funding right now.
The guardrails of our society, the rules I grew up with for how it was proper to behave, are falling apart. This is happening worldwide. While many people are sleepwalking toward the cliff—hoping this is just another “temporary” setback that will resolve itself with a gentle landing—those who don’t wake up to our reality are, I fear, the most likely to fall over the edge.
I am going to do what I can, to share more of my story, and the perspectives I’ve found along the way, in hopes of both learning through that sharing, and also inspiring others that things don’t have to be so dire, that there is hope, and that our if we engage our imagination in combination with a higher perspective, we may just open the path to a much better world for all – even if it takes decades or centuries for us to get there.
I think it’s worth sharing.
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