Session Two: Filling Out the Six Questions

Retreat Series: Spirituality for Atheists, Agnostics, Druids, Pagans, and Seekers

Each Person’s Answers Are Correct

Introduction

This second session continues the conversation begun in the first. You have already met the six questions. Now the invitation is to fill them out with the particular texture of your own life. Each person’s answers are correct for that person. There is no external referee.

Scientists measure what is visible. Newton described the laws that govern falling bodies and orbiting planets. Fermi worked with the invisible forces inside the atom. Yet both left open the human questions that cannot be placed on a scale. Your answers arise from the life you have actually lived.

You may write, draw, or hold the questions in silence. You may answer one question thoroughly and leave the others for later. The work is not to produce a permanent document. It is to become more accurate about the Center you have already chosen.

Meditation

Return to the first question: What is the purpose of life? Recall three concrete episodes from your own history in which purpose seemed present or absent. What did you do? What remained after the episode ended? Aristotle would have asked what end those actions served. Write or remember the details.

For the second question—What is your purpose within that larger purpose?—list the commitments that have actually received the largest share of your time, money, and attention over the past five years. Maslow would recognize which needs those commitments served and which higher capacities remained unused. The answer reveals the Center you have placed in the middle of your life so far.

What does reality look like? Describe one ordinary day in as much detail as you can. Include the body, the weather, the tasks, the interruptions, the people, and the thoughts that arose. Then describe one extraordinary day. Husserl called this the lifeworld—the world as we live it before science abstracts it. What remains constant across both days?

How does it all fit together? Take two areas of your life that feel disconnected. Write a paragraph about each. Then place them side by side. Heidegger noted that the human being is always already stretched between projects that do not always cohere. Notice whether any unexpected connection appears.

How do you love fiercely? Name one relationship or practice in which you have continued to show up when it was costly. Fromm would ask whether that showing-up was a practiced decision rather than a passing feeling. Describe the cost and the continuation.

You know you are going to die; now what? Imagine that you have one year of ordinary health remaining. What would you continue? What would you stop? Heidegger’s being-toward-death is not a theory of the afterlife. It recognizes that limited time can clarify present choices—notice which of those changes you could begin this week.

As you fill these out, remember that each person’s answers are correct. Correct does not mean final. It means they arise from the life that has actually been lived and can be examined by that person’s reason.

If resistance appears, notice it without judgment. The upper room of the inner self can hold both resistance and insight. Sit with whatever is present.

Three Reflections on What Science Cannot Measure

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” — Albert Einstein.

“The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe bother to exist at all?” — Stephen Hawking

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.” — Martin Buber.

Contemplative Time of Fifteen Minutes

Find a quiet place. Sit or lie down comfortably. Go to the upper room of your inner self and shut the door on commentary. Stay in silence and solitude for fifteen minutes. If thoughts come, notice them gently and return to the quiet. There is nothing to achieve. Be present to your own experience and to the questions that remain after measurement ends. If fifteen minutes feels long today, stay as long as you can. Begin again when you are ready.

Action

After the silence, choose one small, concrete action that arises from what you have noticed in these reflections. It may be as simple as writing one sentence about one of the questions, contacting someone you have been meaning to reach, or sitting in silence again tomorrow. Do one thing, small enough to complete before the day ends. Then notice what happens.

Copyright of Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All rights reserved, with collaboration from Grok.