Funerals, Beaches, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

Inspiring moonrise and some internal conversations

Good morning my friend.

I hope you’re well.

We're back from a week in South Texas, for the last of three family funerals in the last six weeks. It’s been a brutal schedule of travel, hotels, flights, and the swirling mixture of grieving and rejoicing over the loss of loved ones who knew Jesus.

Pat McDonald, a faithful reader of this letter and incredible encourager of my work, was joyfully celebrated at the Church of Christ in Ingleside, Texas. Pat is Tata’s sister-in-law, and our aunt, as she was a mighty force for good.

Given its proximity to the water at Port Aransas, we rented a house and stayed with Tata, two of our kids, and three of our grandkids and enjoyed a few hours on the beach. A full harvest moon over the Gulf of Mexico created a lifetime memory for us, and the healing power of huddling up with family brought this tough season to a meaningful conclusion.

Moonrise over the Gulf of Mexico

I spent a few minutes one morning walking along the beach, a few feet behind Tata. I noticed again that each step he took left a footprint, which was quickly washed away by the receding tide. Another poignant reminder of the No Old Beaches idea I discussed in my last book (Hope Is the First Dose), and on this episode of the podcast.

Inevitably, funerals and experiences like seeing the power of the surf and the vastness of the ocean make us ponder the big questions of life, as we discussed in last week’s letter.

In that letter, I asked you to spend a little time thinking about two of those big questions, generated by different ways of seeing the world:

1. If my life is a random event and there is no ultimate purpose to it, would that change anything about how I’m living it?

2. If there is a God who purposefully created me and gave me a mind and a brain so I could communicate with him, would that change anything about how I’m living?

What are your thoughts? As I walked along the beach with Lisa, I felt a mixture of feelings and a jumble of thoughts (besides the awe of feeling her hand in mine and wondering how she can be even more beautiful than an ocean sunset):

• Sadness over the loss of our loved ones, jumbled with gratitude for their incredible lives and the profound hope of our reunion in the resurrection

• Mystery of how the raw power of the ocean and its immense scale can make me feel so small and weak, and at the same time so grateful for its role in sustaining life on the planet

• A growing wonder how, if life is simply a random result of an uncaring universe, could consciousness have arisen to allow us to ponder such things? This “hard problem of consciousness” has troubled scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians for centuries, because if your sense of self and the idea that you have a mind arose simply from brain processes, how could it ever be something you stopped to ponder?

Look out over the ocean and calm your mind long enough, and you’ll notice that the crabs and fish have a very different set of problems than you. They’re all trying to do only three things: eat, reproduce, and survive. You, on the other hand, have those basic drives AND the desire to make sand castles, play with your kids, and think a host of thoughts.

Some of those thoughts turn to understanding that you have an embodied, lived experience that is unique to you. You have feelings and ideas in the first person (“I love this place,” or, “I prefer the beaches in Florida,” or, “I’m so grateful to be here,” or, “I hate getting sunburned.”) It’s true that, based only on your mindset, that you can be freely walking the beach but imprisoned by worry or fear or grief or simply a bad attitude, OR, you could literally be in jail somewhere but freely and happily walking the beach in your mind, and have the same physiological and psychological experiences based purely on how you choose to think.

What’s fascinating about humans is that we not only have this first-person narrative in our own heads all the time (a running conversation with ourselves about “MY” life, mediated on the brain side mostly by the default mode network), but we also have a third-person experience all the time as well (“Lee, you big dummy, why do you always…,” “Good job, Warren, that’s so typical of you,” “You should be better than that,” etc.).

How could random evolutionary forces have given rise to brains that then turn to wonder about themselves? And even have internal conversations in which we are aware that we are aware of ourselves as individuals with internal lives and thoughts that are distinct from everyone else?

The philosophers (and an increasing number of the more honest quantum physicists) call this “hypostatic consciousness.” That’s a complex term, so I asked ChatGPT4.0 to help me explain it better to you:

“Hypostatic consciousness" refers to a type of consciousness that is intrinsically linked to the individual person. It implies a unique, personal experience of being that is not merely a result of physical processes but also encompasses the individual's capacity to articulate their own existence and createdness. This concept is asserted theologically, suggesting that each person's consciousness mirrors or imitates the ultimate personal Being (God or the Creator), who is the source of this quality.

ChatGPT4.0, in response to my asking it to define hypostatic consciousness

The Bible says that how we think turns into how we live (Proverbs 23, Mark 7, Philippians 4, Romans 12, II Corinthians 10, numerous others). It’s becoming clear from science (particularly cosmology and quantum physics lately) that the Universe is far more complex and interconnected than we thought in centuries past, and that you as an individual have a role to play in creating and changing reality by the thoughts you think and the choices you make. This backs up scripture, and is incredibly empowering and meaning-making for us humans.

The crab on the beach has three functions: eat, reproduce, survive.

The evolutionary biologists and materialist scientists want you to believe that those are the only reasons you’re here as well. But walk on the beach for a moment and listen to your thoughts. Your hypostatic consciousness and the first-and third person conversations you’re hearing argue for more, don’t they?

You ponder your existence. You think about why you’re here and what it all means. You hear yourself say, “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), echoing Descartes’ famous idea from four hundred years ago, and you know in your mind (heart?) that you’re here for a purpose. The physicist Neils Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, put it this way:

“…one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.”

Neils Bohr

Science is catching up with scripture over time, and the message is clear: you matter.

Your life matters. You’re part of something bigger than yourself. The moon rising over the ocean was stunning and beautiful, and inspired me to wonder about God and his remarkable creative power.

Here’s the take-home message: just as the ocean wipes away your old footprints so you can never follow them back in time, the traumas and tragedies and bad decisions and even the triumphs of your past are fixed in the past and are thus unreachable and unchangeable by you now, but the future is limitless and changeable by your choices of how you think and decide to live.

There are no old beaches, friend, but there are also no limits on how you choose to direct your consciousness, submit it to the kind mentoring of your Creator, and make your life going forward one that will result in people saying things about you some day like they said of Aunt Pat: “This lady really made a difference.”

You can change your running narrative, my friend. Your thoughts do not have to stay the same or keep you stuck. And a good way to change them is to realize you were created for a purpose and are not stuck in the same footprints you’ve always walked. There’s an incredible amount of hope there!

And the good news is, you can start today.

Lisa and I are praying for you.

Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),

Lee

Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")

From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA

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