 Scispirit Who he? |
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I think of my life in, so far, four stages. They don't really map onto Shakespeare's ages of man - he got it wrong. There was childhood. Quite difficult emotionally, though very secure materially. Love was conditional on performance, which never seemed to be quite good enough. So the good side was that I was clever, the bad side was that love and trust were difficult. Then came the first half of a family and academic career: Cambridge University, two children, Lectureship at York University, considerable success in theoretical physics and astrophysics. Lots of incomprehensible papers and books written. And all this time being in touch with the Christian church, and in particular a remarkable group of contemplatives called the Epiphany Philosophers, who combined a searching rigour with a respect for the mystical tradition. Soon after moving, at the age of 40, to a Professorship at the University of Southampton, I went on a Reichian personal development weekend. I discovered I had a body, full of passions, and that the world was immersed in a sea of love. I did a quick recap of the adolescence that I had missed out on at the proper time, and then discovered the movement that Matthew Fox had named Creation Spirituality, bringing the mystical, physical and intellectual into a spirituality for the whole person. I became Dean of the Faculty and learnt a bit about management, finance and leadership. The first comprehensible book appeared. All that was good preparation for taking leave of the University in 1999, backed financially, intellectually and in every way by my wife, and setting sail on free-lance work - the start of a fourth phase.
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