Facing the Final Chapters, What Do I Believe Now?

I like to think of myself as a budding middle-ager disguised in a maturing body. But the truth is, I’m closer to the final chapter than I am to the middle.

And lately, fragments from past chapters are flashing before me as if I were conducting my own life review.

I’m not in crisis or breaking down. But questions linger in the back of my mind like an intruder, showing up at the most inconvenient times.

What Do I Really Believe Now?

The reality is that I’m no longer in the middle of life. I’m not even at the top of the mountain, looking back at the rocky ascent.

I’m somewhere else entirely.

As if I’m in the middle of a vast open field, and no matter which way I turn, I only see more field.

And for the first time in a long while, my dreams have turned into an interrogation, rather than the blissful slumber I had expected to experience in this phase of my life.

A Season of Shift

Recent life-changing events have altered the shape of my days, my conversations, and often, I quiver from the shrill of silence.

And in this strange new space, I find myself reaching for something more.
Not distractions.
Or anything outrageous, wild, or glamorous.
But context, words of substance, and meaning…
Books.

In the last week alone, I devoured three books:

The Books That Found Me

People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, MD. You can find it on the publisher’s site here: Simon & Schuster.

Further Along the Road Less Traveled (also Peck). Read more at Goodreads or find it on the publisher’s site at Simon & Schuster. I read “The Road Less Traveled” in the late 1980s and planned to reread it when I ran across its sequel.

And most recently, Proof of Life After Life by Raymond Moody, MD. You can read more on the author’s official site, LifeAfterLife.com, which explores its ideas in depth.

Each one struck a different chord in me.
One challenged my view of evil and denial, and even Hell.
One deepened my reflection on grace and direction.
And one opened the door to something I hadn’t even realized I was seeking.
But as I reflect, it seems that I’ve actually been searching for spirituality without being fully conscious of it…

A kind of spiritual anchoring.

I Thought I Knew What I Believed

However, I’m no longer so sure.

I believed in logic.

I believed in “doing the right thing.” And not always complying.

I believed in medical logic. In science, that makes sense. In effort, cause, and effect.

And while none of that has been abandoned… there’s still this hollow.
Something’s missing.
Something that no data, no study, no listicle can quite capture.

Lately, I find myself immersed in wonder:

Is there more than this?

Am I truly living my life — or just carrying it around?

Have I become so functional and living out of habit that I forgot to be whole?

And if there’s something more beyond this life… what would that change about how I live today?

What’s Surfacing Now

I don’t have tidy answers or a checklist to pull out.
But what I do have is this growing awareness that I’m not done budding yet.

Even now.
Especially now.

There are days when I sit quietly and feel like I don’t recognize myself anymore.
Not unmooring, exactly.

The Clearing and the Call

But in a way that feels like I’m standing in a clearing, looking around for the first time in years, thinking:

“I don’t want to live the rest of my life on autopilot.”

Maybe That’s What Spirituality Really Is

Not a doctrine or a set of beliefs. But the courage to ask the hard questions when the old truths have paled.

And maybe I’ve been looking for that without even realizing it. Because what else would make me seek out books about near-death experiences, the nature of consciousness, and evil that masquerades as goodness?

Maybe this is the spiritual search.
Not for certainty.
But for a deeper kind of honesty with myself.

In Further Along the Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck shared this powerful insight from psychiatrist Carl G. Jung:

Jung… further helped us understand the unconscious, ascribing evil to our refusal to meet our shadow, or that part of our personality that we like to deny, that we like not to think about, not to be conscious of, that we’re continually trying to sweep under the rug of consciousness and keep unconscious.”

Note that Jung ascribed human evil not to the shadow itself but to the refusal to meet this shadow.

None of us is perfect. We all have some sort of shadow, trivial or not. We should look it straight in the eye, invite it in, and release it.

And then we can truly call it ‘moving on.’

A Quiet Invitation

If you’ve been feeling off lately, as if something within you is shifting — or something’s calling, but you don’t quite know what…
You’re not one in a million. Maybe you’re here — right now, in this moment, in this season — for such a time as this.

Maybe you’re asking your own questions.
Or maybe it’s time to let one rise and see what it wants to show you.

I’ll leave you with the one that keeps circling in my own chest these days:

What do I ‘need’ to know?

As M. Scott Peck, MD, writes in his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled:

We are guaranteed winners once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to know on our journey.

Am I living out of habit… or out of truth and authenticity? So, what do I need to know now? What do you need to know?

If this post resonates, you might also appreciate this reflection on science, mystery, and meaning.
👉Is There More to Life Than What Science Tells Us?

👉And Reclaim Your Mind: Uncover Who Controls Your Thoughts

When the Customary Truths Begin to Crumble

I used to think the answers would come with age, along with the wrinkles.

That wisdom would naturally settle in like a mother duck sitting on her eggs.
But maybe it doesn’t arrive, maybe it asks to be sought.
And maybe that’s the real invitation in this stage of life.

Not to settle in… but to wake up.

To recognize that the mind, the soul, the spirit — whatever we call it — has this insatiable hunger — a craving…
Not for explanations, but for connection.
Not for more how-tos, but for presence.

What If This Is the Threshold?

Not the end. Not the winding down. And certainly not a decline.
But a threshold. A hinge. A quiet doorway.

What if the fourth quarter of life isn’t about finding comfort…
But uncovering truth?

Even if that truth undoes everything that I thought I had neatly organized and tucked away — about who I am, what life is, and what comes after.

And what if I’m not afraid of that anymore?

The Books Were Just the Beginning

I thought “I” was picking up those books.

But in hindsight, I realized they were picking up parts of me.
Pieces I had buried somewhere in my mental vault.
Parts I had shelved due to circumstances.

They weren’t just books.
They were breadcrumbs — leading me back to myself.

Maybe You’re Here Too

I’ve read a library of books on these subjects decades ago. But lately, I’ve started rummaging through them, tugging old titles off my bookshelf that now feel strangely relevant.

Maybe you’re not yet into your fourth quarter.

Perhaps you’re 62, 89, or 54, and feeling an unfamiliar void.

And possibly you’re not sure what you believe anymore, either — not because you’ve lost faith, but because something more profound is taking shape. Something harder to name.

And maybe you’re not looking for a religion or a ritual, but a realignment.

A return.

To something that once lit you up.
Or maybe it’s something you’ve never fully dared to explore — until now.

As we wrestle with what we believe and how it evolves over time, sometimes it helps to pause and put pen to paper.

👉 Begin your journey with these Guided Reflections for the Last Quarter of Life

What Am I Starting to See?

So here I am — not with answers or more how-tos, but with eyes wide open.

Not chasing a belief system but allowing the questions to surface.
To feel them. To honor them.

And to whisper to anyone else wondering the same thing:

You’re not tardy.
You haven’t fallen to the abyss.
You’re just awakening.

And lately, that vast open field doesn’t appear so infinite. I hear it whispering of more beyond the clearing.