I had a realization one day: I am here on this Earth for a reason, and that reason has something to do with who we are and why we're here. It finally dawned on me that my passion for science, followed by my insatiable appetite for all things spiritual, was in preparation for something. Something big.
As I continued to retreat from the outside world that year, I finally understood that I was more than Harry M. Phillips. I was more than this. I knew it. I couldn’t prove it. I didn’t even feel the need to. I just knew, more and more each day, that Harry was not the whole picture. He was only the tip of an iceberg of some sort.
I stopped pondering whether or not there was life after death, or whether or not the Bible was true, or whether or not I had a soul that was separate from my body. All such lines of questioning stopped entirely.
This was certainly something new for me, and it took me a while to realize it. But once I finally did, it saved me, in a way. My attention gradually shifted away from the mundane details of my outside life and toward what one might call “deeper” things: What else am I? If this physical being, this ego-based personality, is not the real me, then what is the real me? Who am I?
I had considered such questions before, but now it was different. The questions felt different, as did my answers. Though I have to say, there were very few answers at this time. I wasn’t finding different answers to the same old questions. I wasn’t finding any answers at all. What changed were the questions I was asking. I seemed to have moved beyond the old questions and on to new ones.
Previously, I had wondered about Christ’s message, about the ideas of heaven, of sin, of salvation. I had wondered whether or not it was true, factual. I wondered how much of Christ’s story actually happened the way the Bible said it did, and how accurate or correct the other religions were in describing God, in describing the purpose of life and what, if anything, happened afterward.
But I began that year to move beyond such questions. I was no longer concerned with facts, with what did or did not happen. I started to see that such questions were distractions. It was tail chasing. It was trying to prove who or what was right or wrong.
The intelligent design debate showed me the futility of argument, of trying to prove that your beliefs are right and someone else’s are wrong. There had to be a wider perspective, one that clarified such debates and somehow accounted for them. Perhaps without even needing to answer them.
So I began reaching not for answers but for new questions, bigger questions. Questions such as: if I existed before this life, and I had somehow played a role in determining my life circumstances or my abilities and talents and preferences, would that make sense? Is there any evidence within my experience that might indicate that?
Can the extreme variety of personalities and abilities and preferences we see in human beings be explained by evolution? Is there an evolutionary explanation for the complexity of emotions we experience? Why do we all look so different from one another? Why do siblings often develop so differently from one another?
I pondered these things and more. Every person I ran into triggered more questions in me. I began to suspect that we somehow brought some of our uniqueness with us into this life. I simply could not accept the explanation that it was all conditioning, or that the human race had evolved into such mind-boggling diversity of talent and preference and personality.
I’m rambling, I know, but during that winter I woke up and began to ramble. Observations triggered questions, questions led to other questions, and just like that, in the span of just a few short weeks, my world came alive again. Only now, it was more alive than it had ever been before.
Suddenly, every person I came into contact with was a new mystery, a new fountain of uniqueness, an avalanche of new ideas to ponder. It was almost overwhelming at times. I often found myself frozen in place, in mid-conversation. I jokingly referred to this as my “epiphany” stage. I was having realizations, insights, coming at me from all directions. And each time, it would stop me in my tracks. I frequently had to walk away from whatever I was doing and allow whatever insight was breaking through into my mind to do so. It was wonderful.
So there it was: a new dawn. And it happened just when things looked the darkest, when there appeared to be no light on the horizon. Just when my life had hit that lowest of spots, dawn arrived.
Was it the end of darkness for me? Certainly not. What would happen to the Earth if night never came around again? Eternal light – good for the soul? Apparently not, at least not at this stage. Just as a plant would suffer without it’s nightly break from sunlight, so too the soul requires the contrast of light and dark to know in which direction it wants to move.
Human life on Earth is all about contrasts – the beautiful and the ugly, the light and the dark, rain and sunshine, happiness and sorrow. Contrast. Without it, life might become colorless, a flat road. When the sun breaks through the horizon and a new day dawns, that new day is unlike any that have gone before.
Yes, this day will eventually end. And when it does, the world will become dark. But no matter how long and dark that night is, the sun shall rise again.
I learned that winter that the sun always rises again. It was a lesson I would never forget, one that would get me through future inevitable nights.
But never again would I sink quite so low as I did during the months leading up to that new dawn. And if there was any way I could share that understanding with others, perhaps to alleviate their fear of the darkness and encourage their faith in the coming new day, I was determined to do it. I would somehow share what I had learned with others.
Sharing deep insights is not easy. Most people are too caught up in the details of their lives to think about such things. They have little interest in words of encouragement, at least not until they are in the throes of their own dark night. But by then, it is often too late. Better to get your encouraging words to them now, so they can tuck them away and have them ready when they really need them.
That became my goal as winter turned to spring: to somehow pass on what I had learned in an effort to be helpful. I had made it through a dark and difficult stretch, and I knew that I was not alone in doing do. But I had emerged with tremendous insight, and I was anxious to share it with anyone who would listen.
Finally, my life had a purpose.
A new day had dawned.
