🌀 Inside Other People's Universes: God, Religion & Spirituality

Vancouver Curiosity Club
🗓️ Date: 12th September
🕒 Time: 1pm - 3pm
📍 Location: Vancouver Public Library (9th floor common area)

What do we believe about the universe?
Not what the religions say.
Not what our families teach.
Not the labels we prefer.
What do we actually think is happening?

For this gathering, we're going to explore one of the most intimate and rarely discussed parts of being human: our personal relationship with the unseen, the divine, existence, morality, consciousness, meaning, and mystery.

You can be religious or spiritual or neither.
Maybe you pray, or meditate, or talk to your ancestors. Maybe you believe in energy, karma, consciousness, or nothing at all beyond the material world.
All perspectives are welcome.

💭The idea
Think of this as a small experiment conducted on ourselves.
We're going to temporarily put aside the question of "Who is right?" and try to see the universe through another person's eyes.
Each person will have an opportunity to describe their own worldview and experiences. The rest of us will listen carefully and ask questions with the sole purpose of understanding.

⚠️ Debating people's innermost beliefs is not permitted in this discussion. These concepts are mysterious by definition. Nobody is expected to have the "right" answer. The goal is to understand different perspectives.

📝We'll explore questions such as:

1. Your spiritual history:
Where did your worldview come from?
How were you raised? What did you believe when you were younger? How have your beliefs changed over time? What experiences, people, traditions, books, doubts, or discoveries shaped the way you think today?

2. What do you actually believe?
How would you explain your understanding of reality (without labels)?
What do you think exists beyond what we can directly observe?
What do you think consciousness is?
What do you think God is? What, if anything, do you think is divine?
What do you think happens when we die?
How do you understand things like morality, love, meaning, intention, energy, or other invisible aspects of human life?

3. How do your beliefs affect your life?
What values follow from your worldview?
What kind of person does it encourage you to become?
Does it influence how you make decisions, handle suffering, experience relationships, understand death, or pursue a meaningful life?

4. What are your practices?
Do you pray, meditate, perform rituals, attend religious services, commune with nature, journal, study philosophy, research, discuss your beliefs with others, or do something else entirely?
How do you feed and develop your understanding?
Or have you mostly never explored these questions very deeply?

5. Was this difficult to share?
Is there anything about your beliefs, experiences, or practices that you find uncomfortable to tell other people? Why?
Do you find it difficult to think about or articulate these things? If so, what makes them difficult?

6. What's the weird thing?
What's something you believe, experience, or practice that you rarely tell people because you expect them to find it strange?
You never have to share anything that feels too private.

💡Come curious.
In your years in this existence, you have gathered beliefs about the spiritual workings of the universe.
During this discussion you will share those beliefs, and you will learn what beliefs others have built in their own time.
You may discover that someone else's universe is much stranger than you expected.
You may discover that your own is.
And you may discover that beneath wildly different explanations, human beings have been wrestling with many of the same questions for a very long time.
Come prepared to think honestly, speak honestly, listen carefully, and leave room for mystery.
You don't have to change your mind.
You only have to understand another's.