The Mystery We Keep Trying to Explain

Last week, I went to OMSI in Portland, Oregon to see Trust the Universe: The Philosophy of Alan Watts.

I expected to experience something beautiful.

I didn't expect it to follow me home.

There were moments during the immersive film when the enormous images surrounding me made the boundaries of ordinary life feel strangely thin. Mandalas, light, color, sound, movement- the scale of it made being human seem both incredibly small and utterly miraculous.

And somewhere inside that experience old questions began returning.

Questions about God.

About the body.

About consciousness and intuition.

About nature.

About everything we are taught before we're old enough to ask whether we believe it.

And perhaps most of all, about this strange human need to explain the mystery we find ourselves living inside.

The Maps We Inherit

I was raised with a particular understanding of God.

Like many children, I inherited an explanation of existence before I had experienced enough of life to question it.

Over the years, those explanations changed.

I read.

I listened.

I wandered outside the boundaries of what I had been taught.

I encountered different philosophies, spiritual traditions, teachers and ways of understanding consciousness. Some challenged me. Some comforted me. Some opened doors I didn't know existed.

Alan Watts is another voice along that road.

But sitting there at OMSI, I realized something.

I am becoming less interested in finding someone who can tell me exactly what all this means.

Because how could any of us possibly know the whole of it?

We are each experiencing existence from one tiny window of consciousness.

And yet we humans are remarkably confident creatures.

We write books about the meaning of life.

We build religions around it.

We construct philosophies.

Now we have endless voices on screens explaining awakening, consciousness, God, healing, purpose and the universe.

Perhaps some of them carry beautiful pieces of truth.

But I keep returning to one thought:

A map is not the forest.

What Have I Actually Experienced?

I began wondering how much of what I call reality I have actually experienced for myself- and how much was handed to me by someone else.

That question stayed with me.

Because there are things I know intellectually.

And then there are things I know because I have stood inside them.

You can read about a forest.

You can learn the names of its trees.

You can study its ecosystems and understand how water moves through its soil.

All of that knowledge matters.

But none of it is the same as standing beneath an ancient canopy when sunlight suddenly breaks through.

You can read a hundred descriptions of water and still not know what cold river water feels like moving across your hand.

Some things cannot be fully explained.

They have to be encountered.

Perhaps the mystery of being alive is one of them.

Nature Never Asked Me to Explain It

Nature has been one of my greatest teachers because she rarely gives me answers.

She doesn't seem particularly concerned with explaining herself.

A river moves.

A hawthorn makes berries.

A tree reaches toward the light.

Seasons arrive and disappear.

Life becomes death, and death becomes nourishment for something living.

Nothing announces what it means.

It simply is.

And when I spend enough time outside, something in me becomes quieter.

The questions don't necessarily disappear.

I simply stop demanding answers for them.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to the woods.

Not because nature explains the mystery.

Because nature allows the mystery to remain mysterious.

Becoming Quiet Enough

Teachers have mattered in my life.

Books have mattered.

Traditions have mattered.

They can show us possibilities we may never have considered on our own.

Teachers can point.

Traditions can offer maps.

But eventually, we have to become quiet enough to listen to ourselves.

That doesn't mean believing every thought or feeling that passes through us. Discernment matters.

It simply means leaving some room between ourselves and the constant chorus of people telling us what reality is supposed to be.

Room to notice.

Room to question.

Room to experience.

Room to say:

I don't know.

There is something extraordinarily freeing about those three words.

I don't know exactly what God is.

I don't know precisely what consciousness is.

I don't know why we are here.

I don't know what happens beyond this life.

And I no longer think uncertainty make the experience less sacred.

Perhaps it makes me pay closer attention.

Maybe Wisdom Isn't an Answer

For much of my life, I thought wisdom meant eventually understanding.

Now I wonder whether wisdom might sometimes be the opposite.

Maybe wisdom isn't collecting enough answers.

Maybe it's becoming comfortable enough with the mystery that we no longer need to force it into an answer.

Because beneath every philosophy, every religion, every scientific discovery and every story we've created to understand existence remains one astonishing fact:

We are here.

For this brief moment, anyway.

Looking through these particular eyes.

Standing beneath trees.

Loving people.

Losing people.

Watching sunlight move across water.

Laughing.

Grieving.

Beginning again.

Trying to understand what any of it means.

Maybe we don't need to solve the universe before we're allowed to experience the wonder of being part of it.

I left OMSI without an answer,

I'm glad I did.

I'm still wandering.

Still learning.

Still remembering.

And perhaps that's the point.

Love is enough light for the next step.

-Wild Hawthorn