Looking for Community
Early on, I hoped that I would find a church I could go to that would offer me a sense of community with like-minded people. At one point, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship seemed like a good match. It certainly wasn’t dogmatic, and it welcomed people from all belief systems. I have an open mind about rethinking it, but it seems more focused on societal needs than on the types of spiritual matters I’m more interested in pursuing at this point in my life.
I was also attracted to a group called The New Thought Center for Spiritual Living. If there were one in my local community, I would likely be an active member. Sadly, the closest one is quite a distance from where I live, which precluded me from getting involved.
The one group I found that works exceptionally well for me is the Theosophical Society of America. While it’s located over a thousand miles from my home, it offers an incredible array of online classes, conferences, discussion groups, meditation opportunities, and a lot more, covering a very broad range of spiritual and religious beliefs, as well as scientific and philosophical perspectives on such matters.
Beyond Religion and Spirituality
At some point, my interests expanded beyond the strict definitions of religion and spirituality. Essentially, I wanted to see how findings from different areas of our understanding of the world might coalesce into a bigger picture and further inform my spiritual journey.
I wanted to know, for instance, what the sciences might be able to reveal about spiritual matters. It seemed obvious to me on the surface, for instance, that quantum physics supports the idea of a spiritual realm.
I also wanted to explore religions from the perspective of cultural change over time. In particular, I was (and still am) interested in learning how cultures shaped our religious and spiritual beliefs.
What I’m finding is that everything seems to be connected to everything. I sometimes think of it in terms of the mythical Indra’s net, first articulated in Hindu spiritual text around the third century.
According to the story, the three-dimensional net extends in all directions throughout the universe. Multifaceted jewels exist at the intersections of each of the web’s strands, with each jewel reflecting all the other jewels in their entirety. As a whole, the net conveys the idea of the interconnected nature of the universe, where everything is part of everything else.
