I completed my last post by stating that I didn’t always believe I was meant to be a researcher. This is true—not because I don’t believe in the process, not because I didn’t think I could be good at it. I rejected research as a paradigm (even as I progressed through higher education) because I didn’t like the vibe of research/researchers. I didn’t like the idea that there’s a sort of “objectivity,” that some people are biased and some people aren’t. I didn’t like the superiority given to researchers. I didn’t like how many academics walk around acting like assholes just because that’s how someone treated them. Having a PhD (or any other qualification) does NOT give you permission to be an asshole! It was an internal crisis (no shortage of those along my journey). :-)

I believe that the purpose of research is to both explore the world and facilitate its improvement. I didn’t like (and still don’t like) the distinction between “formal research” and the explorations that people who don’t have PhD’s embark upon. It’s not to say that I don’t like science. Look. I LOVE SCIENCE! It’s not that I don’t believe in the scientific method—as I’ve mentioned previously, it’s a critical spiritual practice for me (and I think for a lot of people who would claim to be much less spiritually-oriented than I). It’s that I think Science (with a capital S) is a cultural system, a spiritual system. And, simultaneously, I believe that all cultural systems and spiritual systems are also scientific systems—ways of exploring the world, ways of discerning what is actually happening, ways of predicting the future. Even crazier (perhaps), I believe it’s possible to merge these different systems. I don’t believe in the separation of spirit and matter. And in reality, the separation of spirit and matter—even in western Science—is quite recent. A large piece of what I hope to contribute to the world lies in my ability to hold spirit and matter together in my own Scientific research, as a serious (formal) researcher.

I used a combination of methods to go about analyzing the data I collected for my doctoral dissertation. One of the methods I used was poetic. In 2015, I performed a spoken word form of my dissertation in Nassau (Bahamas—my research site and my adulthood home). This is an excerpt from one of my pieces:

“Research is divination.
And diviners are researchers
in an eternal rehearsal
sometimes calling for a reversal
in direction, but destiny
still tryna find the best in me.”

This statement is a reflection of my belief that divination systems are complex research systems. I am a researcher. I am also a diviner—and, most likely, my divining (like my research) will continue to expand as my own sense of spirituality and connection to divination systems expands and strengthens. Divination, I believe, is just spiritual research. Divination is a conversation between the internal divine and the external divine. Intuition drives divination and intuition is the opposite side of the coin of intellect. My sense is that one’s intellectual capacity and one’s intuitive capacity are the same. Another thing that I hope to write about more and about which I'd like to read more are the ways in which people use their intuition to conduct research. There are times when a rational decision hits like lightning. Intuition makes it so obvious that you have to do something and, in hindsight, it assists the intellect. The intellect is like, “Of course! Thank god for intuition (literally) making that rational choice.”

In my last post, I also mentioned that I am a researcher because it’s part of my destiny (hence the above statement: “destiny still tryna find the best in me”. Through my own journey of consciousness, this has become more and more obvious. But in order to claim this title, I had to let go of my own baggage about the term “researcher” and I also had to let go of my perceptions of other people’s beliefs about and associations with this word. After all, re-search (like re-flect--which I also discussed in my last post) means literally to go over again, to look for once more, to wander. And if there’s something I love to do, it’s wander--physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.

I reached a point inside of myself when I realized that a researcher is a person who formalizes/liquidates their own sense of wanderlust. I can get down with that concept. Clearly. (See Exhibit B: Buying camper and driving through the U.S. for several months talking with people about their own journeys and explorations.) So you see—this is what I meant in my last post that my work is about re-defining words and experiences, re-telling stories in different ways that align with the truth of who one is. Hopefully, you can start to see that I feel called to walk next to people on this journey because I have walked it myself, I continue to walk it myself, and I know how powerful it can be. In my next post, I will move deeper into the ways in which divination has helped me own my title as a researcher by exploring aspects of my astrological chart, by coming to terms with how my own chart indicates that this work is my destiny, after all.  

Thank you for reading.