Learning from spirituality and science

If I use the term "spirit" or "Self," you might be hesitant to believe me, but if the physicist says the wall is nothing but energy, you will believe that. So using the scientists' language, there is nothing but energy everywhere.  Even the atom is a form of energy.  The same energy appears in different forms to which we also give different names. So the form and name are just different versions of the same energy. And according to the yogic scientists such as Patanjali-behind the different forms of energy is one unchanging consciousness or spirit or Self.
-Satchidananda (page 8)

I have been feeling so off physically the last few days that it is affecting my sleep.  I wake up with the pain and whether I reach for the nitro or not, I know the pain is there for a reason.  It is one of the many, many teachers that have been lecturing me over the last decade or so.  Sometimes what it teaches and how it teaches is as clear as day; other times it is as garbled as the voice of Charlie Brown's teacher. I can't make sense of it.

Not Making Sense of the Lesson

I am having a bit of trouble making sense of it now.  I can  almost see physiologically what is going on in my body in regards to the chest pain but I know the learning my body offers entails much more than that. I am less and less concerned about the physical cause of my pain....of anything really.  I want to understand what it is teaching.

So I lean forward at my little desk and twist my head to strain to hear what the teacher is saying.  I know somehow that its lesson is profound and wise and something I must learn in detail but right now it  just hits me like  garbled nonsense. I don't understand it.   Sigh!

Is there a Relationship Between Spirituality and Science?

In one of my awake moments last night I began to think, without choosing to, about the relationship between two fields of thought I am exploring: spirituality and science.  It got my mind spinning off away from the pain and into  so many different questions and directions.

I watched the biography of Allan Kardec on Netflix the other evening and curiosity led me to purchase the Kindle version of his translated book "The Spirit's Book" which was written in 1857. I have been reading that. I have also been revisiting my fascination of  the work done at The Institute of Noetic Science in California. So much to consider.

What really impacted me was the way Spiritism came to be, expand and flourish despite such resistance from religion and science. And how the work done at IONS is getting done and being received so well by the general population despite such extreme opposition from traditional science. People are called to do this work, most of whom come or  came from very pragmatic and analytical backgrounds. Both the work of Allan Kardec and the work done today by the institute are done using a scientific approach. Both have taken "science" into their approaches to explain what cannot be so obviously "observed" like matter can. And the foundation of both is simply to be able to question what we assume is reality so we may actually as if there is an interconnectedness between all things.

How to make sense of it all?

 So I am left with more questions.  These "unanswered questions" and "understandings" are landing in a pile of all my other recent  learnings and I bet my mind  looks a little like the top of my desk right now. How do I sort out that pile? How do I make sense of it all? How do I get Charlie Brown's teacher to take the darn cotton out of her mouth so I can hear her when she answers the darned questions?

And then there is Yoga

Then I read the sutras or practice hatha or pranayama or read something from a yogi ....and the pieces of both science and spirituality seem to come together. There is a connection!

A Compulsion, much bigger than me

Well I do one thing to help with understanding this  learning.  I come here.  I come here against all my ego's resistance...and despite my love of science.  I come here despite this fear I have of being "excommunicated" by the religious bound society in which I live and the scientific one.

I just feel the pull to come here everyday.  I sit down with my questions and so little knowledge and out it all spills.  I am not sure if it makes sense to anyone else out there.  I am not even sure if it matters if it does.  The pull that makes me come here and spill all my learning, in the most imperfect way I do, upon the page is truly beyond me.

I will probably never understand why I keep coming here.  I will  not understand why I am drawn to this learning.  I don't understand why I am thinking the way I do now. And I do not understand why I feel so very compelled to share it.  I just know that I am and I do and it is what it is.

But man...I need some sleep lol. So I hope it all makes perfect sense to me soon so I can feel good enough to sleep.

It is all good.  All is well in my world.