I must admit that I started with just about zero clue what I am to do with my life - and just absorbed from others. It is not necessarily a bad thing, no! I learned good values from my mother and saw the example of my father reaching for his dreams with passion and perseverance.

But it still did not tell me what I should do with my life!

When I started to turn my attention to the self, how it became what it is now, many new aspects came to light. But by far the most decisive effect was the recognition of the fact that there is a purpose to my life and then starting sensing that purpose with greater and greater clarity.

So I did a very simple thing. I started to do what inspired me the most - traveling in the mountains and learning everything I could about them. With that sense of purpose I pulled all my energy in a specific direction and worked hard towards my PhD in geography and then worked as a researcher. Later my sense and understanding of my purpose unfolded and evolved more and more rapidly but the main point here is that my internal beacon started to shape and direct my actions with greater and greater clarity.

Simply speaking I gained a tool to make choices at every turning point: how does it help me to move in unfolding of my purpose? The consequences of my decision to follow my heart's calling were nothing short of cataclysmic in my life but every step taken was with intent and purpose. So when I look at my life as a microscopic model of a greater whole, what if all lifeforms "out there" also have their own sense of purpose? I am referring here to the geologic realm, vegetation and animal world.

Think about it. All scientific evidence points to a stream of evolution on our planet that spans millions of years. Everything around us, including our own bodies, carry traces of that evolution. Is it really possible for this complexity to emerge without some sort of intelligence that desires, feels, decides, acts and above all evolves towards it's own purpose?

The mechanistic/reductionist school of thought says that yes, the observable world is nothing but a result of random clamping of atoms into molecules, into proteins, into bacteria, into animals, into humans. It is not that I disagree with the overall direction or even with the clamping part ... but the assumption of total randomness and purpose-less-ness of this process just does not add up.

The mere fact of evolution and it's astonishing complexity points to a purpose and intelligence capable of making choices at every turning point.

With warmth,
Arzhan Surazakov