Between 2009 and 2015, I wrote a blog called WillSpirit. At its peak, a mere 300 people followed it. Yet they formed a supportive community, and they helped me work through issues around spirituality, mental illness, and science. WillSpirit fed into Mindful Biology, which began in 2010 and moved ever closer to the center of my life as years passed.
Now, as 2024 nears, I’m giving thought to what comes next. I will continue developing Mindful Biology, but I may devote less time to it. It’s beginning to feel important to focus on meditation practice without so much overlay of biology.
Because blogging helped before, I’m returning to it, a little. As the spirit moves me, I plan to repost old writings and muse about new directions.
I intend to keep the current blog organized around the reality that personal progress grows out of community. My ideas—and indeed my entire life—aren’t properly looked at as ‘mine’. Rather, they’re outgrowths of historical and current priors.
My life has called me to grow beyond the traumatic events and toxic ideas of my childhood. It’s led me to quit fighting what happened, accept my circumstances, and replace narrow self-focus with wider and wiser knowing.
Because we each meet Life on lowercase terms, I believe sharing my struggles may be generally helpful despite its personal focus. It may, in other words, help some of the readers who find it. Maybe it will help you.
At the same time, my personal work of acceptance has largely been done. The question thus becomes: what do I work on now?
This blog will, I hope, help me clarify my goals as I explore ways to devote myself more fully to serving others.
I realize there might be a contradiction in the idea of working toward helping others while writing about myself. The resolution may be in honoring the truth that we are not isolated mortals doomed to oblivion, but vital parts of a unitive, enduring whole.
That realization began dawning in my consciousness decades ago. It was in my mind in my early blogging days, and it guided me as I figured out how to express myself with Mindful Biology.
I wonder: where will it lead me now?