One Year Later…

It’s now been about one year since I started my self-work that led to the experience that launched both of my books and my general calling to writing. I wanted to spend a moment reflecting on that experience.

All along, what was beneath the surface in all of my seeking was a desire to have something to hold on to – something real. I’ve now come full circle with that. Whether it be the scientific questions, the philosophical, or the personal, I found the answer of what I could hold on to as real.

Nothing.

Describing reality as information, stochastic, and relational is accurate to my understanding, and at the same time simply another useful fiction. It’s a description of my own experience, of how I see the world.

Understanding this – that not all truths are unequal – was what I needed to find rest. The answers to understanding reality – whether on the physical or metaphysical level – are that there are no answers. There are only descriptions, and those descriptions should be judged on how well they work toward whatever goals they have.

For science, our effective theories are even more useful. If there is nothing that is intrinsically real, then any descriptions that accurately describe phenomena and offer predictive value are useful in their applicable domains.

For metaphysics, philosophy, and religion, our descriptions are useful in the value they offer to our lives – useful illusions that help us connect, communicate, and understand.

I’ve seen the same reality that Nagarjuna saw, where everything is empty of intrinsic meaning – including emptiness itself. And for me, that is enough.