What I Believe
I follow curiosity wherever it leads, using whatever disciplines, experiences, and tools help me better understand people, the world, and the systems we create.
At the center of that curiosity is something I have believed for most of my life: there is a spiritual reality to our existence, and it interacts with the physical world in ways we may not fully understand yet.
I want to understand that interaction.
I am interested in the human mind and brain: what they are capable of, how they experience and interpret the world, and what might be happening neurologically during experiences we describe as spiritual, mystical, intuitive, supernatural, or even magical. I am equally interested in a question that extends beyond the mind: whether these experiences are entirely generated within us, whether they might sometimes correspond to something that exists independently of us, or whether the answer lies somewhere in the interaction between the two.
That question is shaping the direction of my education as well as my independent exploration. I plan to return to college to study quantum physics, with the goal of developing the mathematical and scientific foundation necessary to investigate the physical side of these questions seriously. I do not assume that quantum physics will provide an explanation for spiritual or mystical experiences. I want to understand the science well enough to explore what it does and does not allow us to say about the nature of reality.
Alongside that, I am interested in neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, sociology, and anthropology. These fields offer different ways of examining the mind, perception, human behavior, culture, belief, and the ways people influence one another and collectively construct meaning.
I do not know what patterns I will find, whether the different pieces will ultimately connect, or which disciplines will prove most useful. That is precisely what makes the pursuit interesting to me. This blog is one expression of that pursuit, where I document my independent learning and evolving thoughts as I intentionally build a stronger foundation in scientific thinking.
Right now, I am intentionally developing my understanding of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, and scientific thinking. In the future, formal study in physics will add another dimension to that exploration: allowing me to investigate these questions from both sides, through the nature of human experience and through the nature of physical reality itself.
Who I Am
If there is one word I would use to describe myself, it is artist.
No matter what I study, what I do, or where I am, the world feels like a living organism. I approach everything through an artistic lens, and I believe creativity is my greatest strength.
That said, I do not see discipline, structure, or rigor as opposites of creativity. I value them deeply. To me, they are tools that allow curiosity to go further. They help me understand what I am actually looking at instead of only seeing what I want to see.
I like patterns. I like finding something strange, looking at it from different directions, and seeing what happens when ideas that seem unrelated are placed next to each other. Sometimes there is something there. Sometimes there isn’t. I think both are worth finding out.
For those curious about the more practical details, my name is Jevaria Bashir (pronounced jee-VAY-ree-uh buh-SHEER). I grew up in Queens, New York, studied Computer Science, and currently work as an Associate Solutions Analyst in Cleveland, Ohio.
I am Pakistani American and have spent much of my life moving between cultures. My family originates from Kashmir, and I grew up visiting Pakistan often, where many of my relatives now live throughout Kashmir, Islamabad, and Lahore.
Outside of work, I love drawing semi-realism, realism, and surrealism, reading stories that linger long after they end, and collecting tarot decks for both their symbolism and artwork. I enjoy volunteering, especially with environmental and community gardening projects, exploring new cities, learning to cook, and finding small ways to stay connected to both creativity and the natural world.
Why I Made This Blog
I have always been drawn to magic.
As a child, I was obsessed with fairies, not in the sense of researching them, but in believing that if I believed hard enough, they would appear. I was not searching for knowledge. I was searching for confirmation. I thought belief itself could make something real.
As I grew older, I realized that if I wanted to understand the spiritual world seriously, I could not spend my life looking for things that confirmed what I already believed. I had to become better at understanding the difference between what I believe, what I observe, what I assume, and what I can actually support.
Interestingly, that did not make me less spiritual. It made me much more curious.
I started wondering about the human mind itself. What are we capable of perceiving? How much of our reality do we construct? How do our minds affect our bodies, environments, and one another? Why have humans across history created spiritual systems, myths, religions, rituals, and ideas about realities beyond the immediately visible world?
And, most importantly to me, is everything we call spiritual simply something the human mind creates, or are there moments where the mind is interacting with something we do not completely understand?
I do not expect one field to answer that question for me.
That is why I find myself moving between psychology, sociology, anthropology, evolution, neuroscience, philosophy, history, spirituality, mythology, and whatever else becomes relevant along the way.
I am interested in what happens when these different ways of understanding human beings are allowed to sit beside one another.
I want to find the patterns and this blog documents that process.
Why I Am Learning This Way
Right now, I want to develop a strong enough foundation in scientific thinking to understand what research can tell me, how conclusions are reached, and how to evaluate them without simply accepting them because they sound convincing.
I am not trying to become a traditional researcher, and I am definitely not trying to become an expert in every discipline I touch. What I want is the ability to move between them thoughtfully.
Understanding the questions I care about requires knowledge from many places. That may include sociology, anthropology, psychology, evolution, neuroscience, linguistics, history, philosophy, literary analysis, spirituality, and fields I have not even discovered yet.
Some things will probably pull me deeply enough that I study them seriously. Others may give me one idea that changes how I look at something completely unrelated. I am interested in finding those connections.
I am also intentionally learning in public. I do not want this blog to be a place where I wait until I have mastered something before I am allowed to speak about it. I want there to be evidence of the process itself. What I studied, what I noticed, what confused me, what changed my mind, what I was wrong about, and what made me want to keep looking.
I have a very ambitious question at the center of all of this. I know answering any part of it requires interdisciplinary knowledge, effort, discernment, and a willingness to discover things that may challenge what I already believe.
