The template of meaning

I've had an interesting life, philosophically speaking. At a very young age, influenced by the humanism of Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek," I was an atheist. In my teen years I joined a fundamentalist Christian church while simultaneously dabbling in emerging New Age philosophies. I then became an agnostic, which I remained throughout the '90s. I have sampled many beliefs and religions, discarding much, retaining some core insights.

I now hold, as a core belief, something that most Southern Americans are taught from an early age to believe: that there is meaning and purpose behind human experience, and there is a positive guiding force that moves human events... And that this guiding "force" can be engaged; that we can walk in partnership with it.

Unlike others, however, I arrived at this belief through personal experience, and despite the subtext of catastrophism that informs both the American religious mainstream, and the extremes of New Age and paranormal ideology.

I can't rule out the very real possibility that I believe the way I do, and interpret reality in this way, because it is how I want reality to be; that I'm projecting onto my experiential reality a template of meaning, and cherry-picking the memory of my experiences to conform to this belief.

Furthermore, my readers may strongly disagree with my view of reality. They may insist that events are generated by random occurrences of biological action, or rather psychological gestalts that evolved from primal survival mechanisms, that have no connection to an altruistic "creator," or first cause. We throw the dice, and what we get, we get... And nothing from my experience will convince them otherwise.

Such believers may well be "right." In fact, I'm sure that they are... just as I am "right." Because, in the end, the human mind / brain is a powerful reality-creating tool, powerful enough to mould a reality that faithfully, consistently, and measurably gives us what we believe that it will. To peek behind the curtain, to glimpse the ultimate nature of reality, is the goal of both the materialist particle physicist working on the frontiers of science, and the humble metaphysical blogger working on the fringes.