I was speaking to my sister Lisa the other day and we found ourselves having one of those conversations that begins casually but slowly moves into deeper water before you even realize it. We were talking about faith, where it comes from, why we believe what we believe, and how much of what we call belief is inherited long before it is consciously examined. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I shared with her that I think I am entering a new season in my life, perhaps even a new journey altogether, a journey of discovery and inquiry unlike anything I have honestly allowed myself to experience before. Not because I suddenly became intelligent enough to ask questions, but because I finally became conscious enough to sit still with them.
My parents did not discourage inquiry. In fact, they encouraged debate, but the debate was always built upon one primary assumption: that the Bible was the infallible Word of God. We argued over the interpretation of scripture, not over its origin. We debated theology, doctrine, prophecy, salvation, and faith, but we never seriously examined the compilation of the canon itself, the apocryphal writings, the historical development of the text, the councils that selected the books, the veracity of the claims, or the reliability of the history surrounding them. Those subjects were never discussed because we were never exposed to that level of critique, examination, or historical inquiry. Why would we have questioned the authority of the very source we held in the highest reverence? The Bible was sacred. Not merely respected, but sacred. It simply was not conceivable to us that the source itself would ever become the subject of examination.
My father was a preacher and a serious student of the scriptures. I was in awe of his memory and wanted to be just like him. We could open the Bible to almost any passage and he could preach on it for an hour without notes. That was how knowledgeable he was. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I never seriously challenged what he taught me concerning spiritual matters because every question I ever brought him, whether it concerned faith, theology, suffering, God, or life itself, he always seemed to have an answer.
The truth is I did not yet possess the intellectual capacity to know what questions to ask. I lacked the life experience, the emotional maturity, the theological training, the understanding of my own cultural history and spirituality, and perhaps most importantly, the consciousness necessary to contemplate existence itself at a deeper level. Even as a grown man, married with children, I was still very much a spiritual child. I did not yet know enough about being alive to ask myself why I was alive at all.
So here I sit at sixty-four years of age, speaking this essay into my phone — that is how I write these days — after raising four daughters, loving five grandchildren, preaching more sermons than I could possibly count as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and somehow finding myself sitting with questions I never seriously permitted myself to confront with the level of honesty, seriousness, and depth of understanding I have now.
I know some people reading this, especially those who know me personally, are probably feeling uncomfortable right now. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable too. How the heck did I get here?
Some of you may already be concluding that I am losing my faith. Others may be leaning in with curiosity saying, “Okay Eric, what are we doing here? Where are you going with this?” Those would be my friends.
And the honest answer is that I am not entirely sure where all of this leads. I only know I can no longer pretend these questions are not there. I can no longer hold without examination everything I inherited from my father, my church, and my spiritual heritage simply because it was handed to me with sincerity and conviction. These questions are real, and they are deeply personal.
There is something profoundly unsettling about becoming aware of your own existence. I do not mean becoming aware of your responsibilities, your career, your race, your religion, your politics, or your social identity. I mean becoming aware that you are here at all. That you are somehow alive inside a body you did not create, breathing air you did not manufacture, standing on a planet suspended in a universe you did not design, participating in an experience no human being fully understands. The older I get, the stranger that realization becomes. In fact, I am beginning to think the greatest mystery confronting humanity is not death but consciousness itself. The fact that we are aware enough to ask questions about our own awareness may be the strangest thing about us.
For most of my life, I inherited explanations before I inherited inquiry. The Bible was presented to me not as one framework among many but as absolute truth, final truth, divine truth, the kind of truth that settled all major questions concerning God, life, morality, salvation, suffering, eternity, and the purpose of human existence itself. And for many years that was enough because children rarely possess the intellectual freedom necessary to interrogate the structures handed to them by the people they trust most. Faith, at least initially, is inherited long before it becomes examined.
But life has a way of introducing questions that inherited certainty struggles to answer cleanly. Death introduces questions. Suffering introduces questions. Watching children die introduces questions. Watching disease slowly consume the body introduces questions. Watching loneliness destroy people introduces questions. Eventually every honest human being, regardless of religion, encounters moments where existence itself begins pressing against the boundaries of inherited explanation. Some people respond by clinging more tightly to certainty. Others begin questioning everything. Most people, if they are honest, fluctuate somewhere between the two.
What interests me now is not merely whether particular religious claims are true or false, although those are important discussions. What interests me more deeply is why human beings seem incapable of sitting quietly inside existence without immediately constructing systems explaining existence. Religion attempts to explain it. Philosophy attempts to explain it. Science attempts to explain it. Politics attempts to organize it. Psychology attempts to interpret it. Mythology attempts to narrate it. Every civilization that has ever existed has attempted, in one way or another, to answer the same fundamental questions: Why are we here? What is this experience? What happens after death? Is there a Creator? Is there meaning? Is there purpose? Is there justice? Is there something beyond this visible world?
And yet despite all our books, doctrines, debates, institutions, councils, creeds, rituals, denominations, and ideological systems, the basic mystery remains. We are still here wondering what it means to be here.
That realization came to me again recently while reflecting on Psalm 1, specifically the passage comparing a righteous man to “a tree planted by the rivers of water.” I had not only heard Psalm 1 before; I had preached it for years. I can quote the chapter by heart just as I can Psalm 23. These were not unfamiliar scriptures to me. They were woven into my life as a minister, preacher, and believer. Which is why this recent encounter with the text affected me so deeply. The words themselves had not changed, yet somehow they opened differently, almost as if another layer hidden beneath the language suddenly revealed itself to me. It made me realize that sometimes revelation does not come from hearing something new. Sometimes it comes from becoming new yourself. Sometimes consciousness deepens to the point where familiar truths begin revealing dimensions that were always there but could not previously be perceived. It felt less like learning and more like a portal opening inside awareness itself.
And so instead of hearing the scripture devotionally the way I had so many times before, I suddenly found myself staring at the image itself. A tree planted beside a river. A living thing rooted near its source. Existing fully without explanation. And the more I contemplated the image, the more deeply it affected me. I no longer experienced the tree merely as religious symbolism or devotional poetry. I found myself contemplating what it means for a living thing to stand so fully inside existence without appearing burdened by the need to explain its existence.
The leaves are not resisting the wind but moving with it. The tree stands silently beside the river as if participating in something ancient, something intuitive, something so deeply connected to life itself that human language struggles to adequately describe it. And I realize these are simple observations, almost painfully obvious observations, yet they resonate within me as truth. Not intellectualism searching for complexity. Not mystical exaggeration pretending simplicity is profound. Something much deeper and much quieter than that. I am attempting to recognize the life beyond the bark and the leaves. I am contemplating the possibility that the tree, in ways beyond my comprehension, knows exactly what it is.
And perhaps that is what moves me so deeply. The tree does not appear psychologically divided against itself. It does not seem burdened by identity confusion, existential panic, ideological conflict, or theological insecurity. It simply participates in life. The river was flowing perhaps even before the tree understood it. The sun was shining before human beings developed language to describe it. Existence itself was unfolding before civilizations constructed systems explaining existence. And as I contemplate these observations, they take me deeper into my own awareness, deeper into the mystery of consciousness itself, and deeper into the strange realization that while I may not fully understand what life is, somewhere in my heart I know that the tree knows exactly what it is. And somewhere even deeper within myself, I know intuitively that I want to become more like that tree.
Human beings, however, seem incapable of doing this. We are constantly explaining, defending, arguing, categorizing, labeling, systematizing, fearing, projecting, and dividing. Perhaps that is the gift and curse of self-awareness. We are aware enough to contemplate existence but not aware enough to fully comprehend it. And in that space between awareness and comprehension, entire civilizations of explanation emerge.
What fascinates me is that despite all our explanations, there are still certain things every human being encounters directly without requiring belief. I know the tree exists because I can touch it. I know the sun exists because I can feel its warmth. I know life exists because I am experiencing it right now. No one must persuade me that I am conscious. I may not fully understand consciousness, but I cannot honestly deny the experience of being conscious. Existence announces itself directly.
And perhaps this is where my own spiritual inquiry has started shifting over the years. Less interest in defending inherited certainty. More interest in direct experience. Less obsession with proving doctrines. More attention to awareness itself. Less anxiety about controlling mystery. More willingness to sit honestly inside it. That does not mean I have abandoned faith. In many ways, I think the opposite may be happening. Faith is a choice, and exploration does not diminish faith. If anything, honest inquiry may deepen faith by forcing it to mature beyond repetition and fear. Because there is a difference between inherited belief and conscious awareness. There is a difference between repeating what you were taught and honestly encountering life for yourself.
I understand why many people resist these conversations. For some, certainty functions emotionally as protection against chaos. If the structure collapses, they fear meaning itself collapses with it. I do not mock that fear because I understand it intimately. Human beings need meaning. We need coherence. We need some way of reconciling love and death, beauty and suffering, joy and tragedy, birth and disappearance. Without meaning, life can begin to feel psychologically unbearable.
At the same time, I also understand the person standing outside religion asking difficult questions. If God is good, why does evil exist? If God is loving, why do children suffer? If there is divine order, why does existence often appear indifferent to human pain? These are not shallow questions asked by rebellious people trying to escape morality. Often they are questions asked by deeply wounded people trying desperately to reconcile suffering with goodness.
And perhaps one of the greatest mistakes religious institutions sometimes make is treating questions themselves as threats instead of treating them as evidence of consciousness searching honestly for truth. A child asking why suffering exists is not rejecting God. A person wrestling with doubt is not necessarily evil. A human being staring into existence trying to understand what life actually is may be engaged in one of the most sacred acts imaginable.
Because if we are honest, none of us fully understand what this experience is. We know enough to survive. We know enough to build civilizations. We know enough to manipulate matter and split atoms and engineer technology and travel through space. But we still do not fully understand consciousness, life, death, or existence itself. We remain profoundly mysterious to ourselves.
Sometimes I wonder whether our endless need to explain life prevents us from actually living it. We move constantly from distraction to distraction, argument to argument, ideology to ideology, rarely becoming still enough to encounter existence directly. The tree, meanwhile, simply stands beside the river participating fully in the life given to it.
Maybe that does not eliminate religion, scripture, philosophy, or theology. Maybe those things still matter deeply. But perhaps they matter best when they point us back toward direct awareness rather than replacing awareness altogether. Perhaps the danger is not belief itself but becoming so consumed with defending explanations about life that we stop experiencing life directly.
I do not know exactly where all these questions lead. I only know that I can no longer pretend not to ask them. I know I am here. I know I am conscious. I know life exists. I know suffering exists. I know beauty exists. I know love exists. I know death exists. And somewhere inside all of this mystery, I continue searching honestly for what it means to participate fully in the strange experience of being alive.
Poetry says the rest: https://thepowerisnow.com/the-tree-knows-poem/
Thank you for reading this blog. I appreciate your continued support in raising awareness about the issues that impact our relationships, families, friendships, and the institutions and environments—political, social, and economic—in which we live and work. Please share this blog—and explore my other articles and videos—each one created to educate, empower, and uplift. Together, we can challenge the belief systems that hold us back and press forward into openness, love, consideration, and peace—opening doors of opportunity for all.
Subscribe today to The Power Is Now TV for insightful shows on real estate, business, and wealth-building. Become a member of EricFrazier.com to access exclusive business and personal financial consulting resources.
Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
Your trusted advisor in business and wealth
EricFrazier.com | ThePowerIsNow.com
NMLS #451807 | CA DRE #01143484
Schedule a consultation: https://calendly.com/ericfrazier/real-estate-mortgage-consultation-clients
Sources & Research
The Tree Knows
I was speaking to my sister Lisa the other day and we found ourselves having one of those conversations that begins casually but slowly moves into deeper water before you even realize it. We were talking about faith, where it comes from, why we believe what we believe, and how much of what we call belief is inherited long before it is consciously examined. Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, I shared with her that I think I am entering a new season in my life, perhaps even a new journey altogether, a journey of discovery and inquiry unlike anything I have honestly allowed myself to experience before. Not because I suddenly became intelligent enough to ask questions, but because I finally became conscious enough to sit still with them.
My parents did not discourage inquiry. In fact, they encouraged debate, but the debate was always built upon one primary assumption: that the Bible was the infallible Word of God. We argued over the interpretation of scripture, not over its origin. We debated theology, doctrine, prophecy, salvation, and faith, but we never seriously examined the compilation of the canon itself, the apocryphal writings, the historical development of the text, the councils that selected the books, the veracity of the claims, or the reliability of the history surrounding them. Those subjects were never discussed because we were never exposed to that level of critique, examination, or historical inquiry. Why would we have questioned the authority of the very source we held in the highest reverence? The Bible was sacred. Not merely respected, but sacred. It simply was not conceivable to us that the source itself would ever become the subject of examination.
My father was a preacher and a serious student of the scriptures. I was in awe of his memory and wanted to be just like him. We could open the Bible to almost any passage and he could preach on it for an hour without notes. That was how knowledgeable he was. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I never seriously challenged what he taught me concerning spiritual matters because every question I ever brought him, whether it concerned faith, theology, suffering, God, or life itself, he always seemed to have an answer.
The truth is I did not yet possess the intellectual capacity to know what questions to ask. I lacked the life experience, the emotional maturity, the theological training, the understanding of my own cultural history and spirituality, and perhaps most importantly, the consciousness necessary to contemplate existence itself at a deeper level. Even as a grown man, married with children, I was still very much a spiritual child. I did not yet know enough about being alive to ask myself why I was alive at all.
So here I sit at sixty-four years of age, speaking this essay into my phone — that is how I write these days — after raising four daughters, loving five grandchildren, preaching more sermons than I could possibly count as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and somehow finding myself sitting with questions I never seriously permitted myself to confront with the level of honesty, seriousness, and depth of understanding I have now.
I know some people reading this, especially those who know me personally, are probably feeling uncomfortable right now. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable too. How the heck did I get here?
Some of you may already be concluding that I am losing my faith. Others may be leaning in with curiosity saying, “Okay Eric, what are we doing here? Where are you going with this?” Those would be my friends.
And the honest answer is that I am not entirely sure where all of this leads. I only know I can no longer pretend these questions are not there. I can no longer hold without examination everything I inherited from my father, my church, and my spiritual heritage simply because it was handed to me with sincerity and conviction. These questions are real, and they are deeply personal.
There is something profoundly unsettling about becoming aware of your own existence. I do not mean becoming aware of your responsibilities, your career, your race, your religion, your politics, or your social identity. I mean becoming aware that you are here at all. That you are somehow alive inside a body you did not create, breathing air you did not manufacture, standing on a planet suspended in a universe you did not design, participating in an experience no human being fully understands. The older I get, the stranger that realization becomes. In fact, I am beginning to think the greatest mystery confronting humanity is not death but consciousness itself. The fact that we are aware enough to ask questions about our own awareness may be the strangest thing about us.
For most of my life, I inherited explanations before I inherited inquiry. The Bible was presented to me not as one framework among many but as absolute truth, final truth, divine truth, the kind of truth that settled all major questions concerning God, life, morality, salvation, suffering, eternity, and the purpose of human existence itself. And for many years that was enough because children rarely possess the intellectual freedom necessary to interrogate the structures handed to them by the people they trust most. Faith, at least initially, is inherited long before it becomes examined.
But life has a way of introducing questions that inherited certainty struggles to answer cleanly. Death introduces questions. Suffering introduces questions. Watching children die introduces questions. Watching disease slowly consume the body introduces questions. Watching loneliness destroy people introduces questions. Eventually every honest human being, regardless of religion, encounters moments where existence itself begins pressing against the boundaries of inherited explanation. Some people respond by clinging more tightly to certainty. Others begin questioning everything. Most people, if they are honest, fluctuate somewhere between the two.
What interests me now is not merely whether particular religious claims are true or false, although those are important discussions. What interests me more deeply is why human beings seem incapable of sitting quietly inside existence without immediately constructing systems explaining existence. Religion attempts to explain it. Philosophy attempts to explain it. Science attempts to explain it. Politics attempts to organize it. Psychology attempts to interpret it. Mythology attempts to narrate it. Every civilization that has ever existed has attempted, in one way or another, to answer the same fundamental questions: Why are we here? What is this experience? What happens after death? Is there a Creator? Is there meaning? Is there purpose? Is there justice? Is there something beyond this visible world?
And yet despite all our books, doctrines, debates, institutions, councils, creeds, rituals, denominations, and ideological systems, the basic mystery remains. We are still here wondering what it means to be here.
That realization came to me again recently while reflecting on Psalm 1, specifically the passage comparing a righteous man to “a tree planted by the rivers of water.” I had not only heard Psalm 1 before; I had preached it for years. I can quote the chapter by heart just as I can Psalm 23. These were not unfamiliar scriptures to me. They were woven into my life as a minister, preacher, and believer. Which is why this recent encounter with the text affected me so deeply. The words themselves had not changed, yet somehow they opened differently, almost as if another layer hidden beneath the language suddenly revealed itself to me. It made me realize that sometimes revelation does not come from hearing something new. Sometimes it comes from becoming new yourself. Sometimes consciousness deepens to the point where familiar truths begin revealing dimensions that were always there but could not previously be perceived. It felt less like learning and more like a portal opening inside awareness itself.
And so instead of hearing the scripture devotionally the way I had so many times before, I suddenly found myself staring at the image itself. A tree planted beside a river. A living thing rooted near its source. Existing fully without explanation. And the more I contemplated the image, the more deeply it affected me. I no longer experienced the tree merely as religious symbolism or devotional poetry. I found myself contemplating what it means for a living thing to stand so fully inside existence without appearing burdened by the need to explain its existence.
The leaves are not resisting the wind but moving with it. The tree stands silently beside the river as if participating in something ancient, something intuitive, something so deeply connected to life itself that human language struggles to adequately describe it. And I realize these are simple observations, almost painfully obvious observations, yet they resonate within me as truth. Not intellectualism searching for complexity. Not mystical exaggeration pretending simplicity is profound. Something much deeper and much quieter than that. I am attempting to recognize the life beyond the bark and the leaves. I am contemplating the possibility that the tree, in ways beyond my comprehension, knows exactly what it is.
And perhaps that is what moves me so deeply. The tree does not appear psychologically divided against itself. It does not seem burdened by identity confusion, existential panic, ideological conflict, or theological insecurity. It simply participates in life. The river was flowing perhaps even before the tree understood it. The sun was shining before human beings developed language to describe it. Existence itself was unfolding before civilizations constructed systems explaining existence. And as I contemplate these observations, they take me deeper into my own awareness, deeper into the mystery of consciousness itself, and deeper into the strange realization that while I may not fully understand what life is, somewhere in my heart I know that the tree knows exactly what it is. And somewhere even deeper within myself, I know intuitively that I want to become more like that tree.
Human beings, however, seem incapable of doing this. We are constantly explaining, defending, arguing, categorizing, labeling, systematizing, fearing, projecting, and dividing. Perhaps that is the gift and curse of self-awareness. We are aware enough to contemplate existence but not aware enough to fully comprehend it. And in that space between awareness and comprehension, entire civilizations of explanation emerge.
What fascinates me is that despite all our explanations, there are still certain things every human being encounters directly without requiring belief. I know the tree exists because I can touch it. I know the sun exists because I can feel its warmth. I know life exists because I am experiencing it right now. No one must persuade me that I am conscious. I may not fully understand consciousness, but I cannot honestly deny the experience of being conscious. Existence announces itself directly.
And perhaps this is where my own spiritual inquiry has started shifting over the years. Less interest in defending inherited certainty. More interest in direct experience. Less obsession with proving doctrines. More attention to awareness itself. Less anxiety about controlling mystery. More willingness to sit honestly inside it. That does not mean I have abandoned faith. In many ways, I think the opposite may be happening. Faith is a choice, and exploration does not diminish faith. If anything, honest inquiry may deepen faith by forcing it to mature beyond repetition and fear. Because there is a difference between inherited belief and conscious awareness. There is a difference between repeating what you were taught and honestly encountering life for yourself.
I understand why many people resist these conversations. For some, certainty functions emotionally as protection against chaos. If the structure collapses, they fear meaning itself collapses with it. I do not mock that fear because I understand it intimately. Human beings need meaning. We need coherence. We need some way of reconciling love and death, beauty and suffering, joy and tragedy, birth and disappearance. Without meaning, life can begin to feel psychologically unbearable.
At the same time, I also understand the person standing outside religion asking difficult questions. If God is good, why does evil exist? If God is loving, why do children suffer? If there is divine order, why does existence often appear indifferent to human pain? These are not shallow questions asked by rebellious people trying to escape morality. Often they are questions asked by deeply wounded people trying desperately to reconcile suffering with goodness.
And perhaps one of the greatest mistakes religious institutions sometimes make is treating questions themselves as threats instead of treating them as evidence of consciousness searching honestly for truth. A child asking why suffering exists is not rejecting God. A person wrestling with doubt is not necessarily evil. A human being staring into existence trying to understand what life actually is may be engaged in one of the most sacred acts imaginable.
Because if we are honest, none of us fully understand what this experience is. We know enough to survive. We know enough to build civilizations. We know enough to manipulate matter and split atoms and engineer technology and travel through space. But we still do not fully understand consciousness, life, death, or existence itself. We remain profoundly mysterious to ourselves.
Sometimes I wonder whether our endless need to explain life prevents us from actually living it. We move constantly from distraction to distraction, argument to argument, ideology to ideology, rarely becoming still enough to encounter existence directly. The tree, meanwhile, simply stands beside the river participating fully in the life given to it.
Maybe that does not eliminate religion, scripture, philosophy, or theology. Maybe those things still matter deeply. But perhaps they matter best when they point us back toward direct awareness rather than replacing awareness altogether. Perhaps the danger is not belief itself but becoming so consumed with defending explanations about life that we stop experiencing life directly.
I do not know exactly where all these questions lead. I only know that I can no longer pretend not to ask them. I know I am here. I know I am conscious. I know life exists. I know suffering exists. I know beauty exists. I know love exists. I know death exists. And somewhere inside all of this mystery, I continue searching honestly for what it means to participate fully in the strange experience of being alive.
Poetry says the rest: https://thepowerisnow.com/the-tree-knows-poem/
Thank you for reading this blog. I appreciate your continued support in raising awareness about the issues that impact our relationships, families, friendships, and the institutions and environments—political, social, and economic—in which we live and work. Please share this blog—and explore my other articles and videos—each one created to educate, empower, and uplift. Together, we can challenge the belief systems that hold us back and press forward into openness, love, consideration, and peace—opening doors of opportunity for all.
Subscribe today to The Power Is Now TV for insightful shows on real estate, business, and wealth-building. Become a member of EricFrazier.com to access exclusive business and personal financial consulting resources.
Eric Lawrence Frazier, MBA
Your trusted advisor in business and wealth
EricFrazier.com | ThePowerIsNow.com
NMLS #451807 | CA DRE #01143484
Schedule a consultation: https://calendly.com/ericfrazier/real-estate-mortgage-consultation-clients
Sources & Research