Knowing in the unknown

Many people take their spirituality for granted. By spirituality, I am referring to an individual’s experience of the sacred or transcendent that expands their sense of self into a more unified state of awareness. It’s usually associated with a search for deeper life meaning, with questioning identity and having a willingness to change through personal transformation.

Whether pursued within a structured religious expression or a more informal, personalised context, spirituality is viewed by spiritually aware people as a core aspect of identity. They have a “spiritual knowing” that grounds them to something greater than their mortal lives, a knowing that helps them deal with life’s challenges. It’s not that they never experience doubt; it’s just that they hold that experience within the comforting embrace of a faith or deep knowing.

Others, however, experience the gnawing discomfort of sitting on the fence, doubting the idea of a spiritual reality. They are not atheists who reject a spiritual basis to life. These doubters, perhaps a large proportion of agnostics, hope for some continuation beyond death. They may have experienced spiritual and/or psychic experiences at times but feel uncertain about the validity of materialist and spiritual perspectives.

Each perspective —