Last week’s post on “How To Live A Spiritual Life In A Scientific World” generated a lot of email. Many people responded to its perspective that there’s a place for both science and “sacredness” (or whatever you want to call it) in human life.
Today I want to illustrate a little more about what I mean with a simple example: the face of the Moon.
Here is a question for you. Why does the Moon’s face always look the same?
Obviously, the Moon has phases where, over the course of a month, there are changes to how much of the moon’s face we see. During the New Moon phase you can’t see it at all and it’s completely visible during the Full Moon phase.
What never changes is the moon’s face itself - the features you can see when you do see the moon. The pattern of dark patches and brighter regions always looks the same. Maybe you never noticed this before but consider for a moment if you were looking at the Earth from the Moon. The Earth spins on its axis once every 24 hours. That means, as seen from the Moon, the Earth would always be changing. If you looked at breakfast time, you’d see an Earth face dominated by the Pacific Ocean. A few hours later you’d see a face dominated by Asia.
So why does the Moon always look the same to us?
The answer is the Moon’s orbital period around the Earth and its rate of spinning around its own axis are the same. It takes about 28 days for the Moon to circle the Earth, but it also takes about 28 days for the Moon to complete one full spin. You could say the Moon’s “day” (its spin) is the same as its “year” (its orbit).
Because the Moon is spinning at the same rate as it’s orbiting us, the Earth-facing hemisphere is always the same. That also means we never get to see the other hemisphere i.e. the Moon’s “far side”.
Astronomers call the Moon’s situation “tidal locking”. When the Earth and the Moon were young, the Moon was closer and it was spinning much faster. The Earth was spinning much faster, too meaning the days were about 5 hours shorter. Over billions of years the gravitational force of the Earth on the Moon and the Moon on the Earth slowed the rotation of both bodies (also allowing the Moon to drift farther from Earth). This dance of gravity, mass and motion left us with a Moon that always presents us with the same face. The other face – the far side – is hidden.
If you want more details on this tidal locking and the different “sides” of the Moon you can find them here and here.
So, what does any of this have to do with living a spiritual life in a scientific world? The answer is simple: attention.
The “practice” part of a spiritual practice is all about paying attention. Most of the time we are lost in thoughts about ourselves. We deal with day-to-day concerns, get lost in day-dreams, worry about the state of the world, worry about what others think of us. Add it all up and we are rarely ever here. We are rarely ever present to the strange tenuous beauty that the Universe keeps presenting to us. In the end, we miss our own lives and the deep, deep connections we have to the world and each other. To have a spiritual practice is to try to wake up from this distraction and live a fully mature, fully human life.
And how do you do that? Well, seeing the Moon – really seeing it – is one way. You want to be alive enough to the night sky so that you notice what’s happening in it including the Moon appearence. This is a first step in drawing closer to the depths possible in the actual experience of our lives (as opposed to ideas about them).
Then comes the science.
Once you start learning - once you start understanding the patterns that underlie the appearances - your experience can deepen. You can start to see the world with new eyes. Every leaf, every breeze embodies subtle connections and patterns you never imagined before. In that way the Moon, the forgotten stalwart of in the sky, can become an invitation to understand what you really are and where you really are: the eyes of the Universe awakened to see its own glory even if just for a moment.
— Adam Frank 🚀
