Existential crisis
8th October 2021
To be aware that you’re watching the voice talk is to stand in the threshold of a fantastic journey
– Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
When I was in my mid twenties I watched a science program that explained how the first spark of life started, something to do with relatively simple chemical processes which had made some of the water react with something else and voila, there was life!
This would not have been all that relevant if it wasn’t for the fact that it plunged me into a full blown existential crisis as I saw the idea of God that I had come to vanish before my eyes as I was watching the program.
Having been raised in Spain, Catholicism is not only a religion but a culture and so the idea of a benevolent God that would make sure I was okay if I was a good person was imbued in every fibre of my being. And it was something that I had come to rely upon in my daily life as I took challenges or tried new things, in the back of my mind I would be okay because God would make sure I was okay.
So, when I watched that scene that explained basically that there was no God that had created life on earth, my whole psychological schemas and coping mechanisms came crashing down. It was bad. I changed from a very optimistic and on the whole cheery person, to a depressive and anxious character. I feel sorry for my husband as I think about it.
And that was it. The world turned into a scary, uninviting place which didn’t feel like I could face. I just didn’t know how to. How was I supposed to navigate the world with our anyone looking after me, I was on my own. Alone in a big bad world. Or at least that’s how I saw it for the next ten years.
Until now. I’ve been wrestling with these existential dilemmas for more than a decade. I’ve read all the books I could get my hands on, meditated, thought about it and I just couldn’t get my head around it. Until I started reading the Untethered soul by Michael Singer, and I’ve discovered that the reason I couldn’t get it with my head is because it was behind my head. My ‘self’ is too focused on the world affairs and so talks and talks and tries to figure out every single thing that is going on around us, and so that’s not the same mind that can grasp the enormity of these questions. Only what is behind the mind, the talking self the person that you think it’s you, can understand fully. And that’s what I discovered that as long as I can stay low behind the voice, I understand everything.