Book: Sceptical Spirituality

The human spiritual predicament

Outlined in the simplest possible non-religious terms

Collage of the hand we are dealt. (Artwork by the author.)

Existence is, when all is said and done, something of an unpleasant affair. Yes life can give you good times, but if you have a certain very specific sensitivity — which doesn’t necessarily mean that you are a good or saintly person — then no matter how good the good times are, you always feel as if something is not quite right. Something is missing. Something is definitely wrong somewhere.

But what exactly ? This is the mystery, made all the more mysterious by any attempt to grab hold of it. We may have a sense of something not quite right, but as soon as we turn towards that sense, it disappears into the background, leaving us with only a trace of its having been there in the first place. And even at its most persistent, it remains elusive.

More to the point, it is a ‘something wrong’ that begs to be put right. We can’t really leave it alone. It interferes with everything. This is our basic spiritual predicament, because it involves our entire being, and entire existence.

So we try various solutions, covering every possibility we can think of, physical, psychological, and intellectual, but nothing really works. That is to say, nothing works in the long…