In the beginning...

I was a baptized catholic school kid who altar-served on Sundays. I attended church regularly, said grace at dinner time, and prayers before bed. I didn't think much about the validity of the Catholic faith, after all, it was something that I was born into and in which the majority of my family participated (except for my Dad who wasn't catholic and only attended mass on holidays). Catholicism was right because it was all I knew. As I grew older, a feeling that something was amiss within Christianity grew in me. Sparked by records of historical atrocities, the indiscretions and subsequent prosecutions of less-than-holy clergymen and a general ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude of many people of the faith eventually led me to question my beliefs in Catholicism and Christianity as a whole. I had a passion for history and the cultures of the east, fostered by an interest in the World Wars and a budding martial arts practice. This led me to discover the prevalence of other religious institutions, many of which were plagued with the same or similar issues as the one I was a part of. It seemed to me that simply acknowledging the fact that numerous monotheistic systems of belief existed, which all claimed to be the one true path or course, put the validity of monotheistic religions as a whole into question. If I believed Christianity to be flawed, then by that same logic, these other institutions, which shared common links and modes of thought and behaviour, must also be flawed.

I still remember the first time I wholeheartedly disconnected from my Christian beliefs. My friends and I, high-school-aged at the time, were out late on a summer’s evening. Sitting around a campfire we had illegally built on public property on the shore of lake Ontario (This was perfectly safe by the way, as I, as well as some of my friends in attendance, were quite experienced outdoorsmen, after more than a decade in Scouts Canada and the different levels of that organization). The mushrooms we had ingested were beginning to kick in as we gazed skyward at the endless sea of stars. The topic turned to the origin of the universe and what was beyond our tiny blue planet. Each one of us around the fire shared a tidbit of information we had learned and then the discussion turned to religion. After hours of tripping and gazing up at the endless cosmos, a narrow and restricting belief system such as Catholicism no longer resonated with me. At the time, I felt there was no evidence to justify religious belief. After all, where was the evidence for a god? Science seemed to be doing a good job of proving their theories and could back them up with evidence. Religion seemed to ask its believers to adopt its tenets of blind faith. The punk-rock rebel in me would not stand for it! I felt that most religions left too many questions unanswered and in reality raised more questions than there were answers for. At the time, I failed to realize that these questions may not ever be answered. It wasn’t apparent then, that there could possibly be a limit to what we can truly know and that ‘faith,’ (not necessarily of a specific religious kind) doesn’t have to be blind and is an overall net positive in life.

I have since traversed decades of non-faith and atheism, agnosticism and I supposed I now find myself somewhat of a mystic. I have learned the benefits of holding a belief in something greater than myself. I have learned to open my heart and mind to endless possibilities and to routinely release self-limiting beliefs. I have developed a practice of meditation, albeit an unconventional one, and have carved out space and time for it in my daily life. It has been an interesting and informative journey and has benefited me greatly. It has instilled in me greater patience and self-awareness and has fostered a growing sense of hope for all of humanity. I am less judgmental of others and stress less about the unknown nature of life than I once did. It has led me to pursue my passions and craft a life that I truly want for myself and my family. By no means am I perfect, in fact, I have learned that no one is, and that is an important thing to understand in the pursuit of a good life.

In writing this blog I hope to pass on these insights and other mental gems to my two young boys (they are currently 2 1/2 and 11 months old), so that they never live from a place of fear or self-limiting beliefs. I have also rekindled an interest in writing over the last year (I self-published a book in Sept 2022, link here), so this blog acts as a platform for practicing my craft while sharing what I have learned with the men they will become, and anyone else who might be interested. My plan with this blog is to retrace the religious/spiritual/mystic path I have trod and share the knowledge and insights I have gleaned from nearly four decades of life. I will touch on all aspects of this journey, regardless of how far they seem to stray from spiritualism. Many of the topics I will touch on are things I am still learning or attempting to understand, so please bare with me if my explanations lack specialized knowledge, clarity, or cohesion of thought. I am doing my best to understand these important topics and part of writing this blog is to help me distill this knowledge and solidify these concepts for myself. If you feel inclined to provide any corrections, input, disputes, or feedback, or if you would simply like to discuss any topic further, you can reach me by email at front.row.at.the.cartesian.theater@gmail.com. Nevertheless, I will do my best to explain some of the history, theories, and pertinent information on the fields of interest that have shaped how I currently think, act, and feel. I will also discuss any relevant experiences I’ve had in this realm, from psychedelic trips to bizarre meditation sessions. In the following posts, I will touch on many topics, including religion, spiritualism, science (mostly relativity, quantum mechanics, and biology), psychology, philosophy, psychedelics, history, pre-history and more. I am by no means an expert on any of these topics and simply see myself as a layman of the aforementioned.

All of this is an attempt to parse out my beliefs on the true nature of 'reality,' our universe, and our existence as conscious beings. On this journey, I have discovered that a lot of the information out there is siloed, and it is not readily apparent how all these things play together. One revelation that has occurred to me on this path of discovery is that everything in our universe is connected. Ancient cultures believed this and now modern scientific discovery is proving this to be true. I suppose this blog is also an attempt to reveal this interconnectedness of all things, and what that means for our daily lives.

"Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be... Close your eyes and let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before." - Erich Fromm