Is the spirituality the result of education and wisdom, or does it start early in life?

Narrative identity is defined as the internalized story we construct about ourselves.

Our deepest values and characteristic ways of making meaning appear early in our lives.

What is the origin of our spirituality? Is it the result of education and wisdom attained through years of schooling and life experiences, or does it start very early in life?

A patient’s mother once asked me how I became so spiritual. My initial response was that I learned from my patients, once I started using hypnosis and directly interacting with their subconscious.

But as I reflected on the question, and looked backward across my life, I found parts of the answer in fiction stories I wrote as a teenager, and in my experiences as a young child. My spirituality, it turns out, appears to have been there all along.

For instance, I remembered a story I wrote as an 18-year-old in which I explored reasons why a life of limited length may be better than immortality. In the story, the Potionmaker offers a potion of everlasting life to three individuals.

He tells the first one that before he decides whether to take the potion, he should know that the Potionmaker has proven that there is no existence after death. The Potionmaker is asked if he has taken the potion, and says that he........

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