Color the Sky by Two Steps from Hell - The meaning of life

This song...holds the meaning of life. Not just of life, as we think about it in petty human terms, but of all existence, for all time. Honestly, I listened to this song for three hours straight, and had a spiritual revelation. It's hard to describe, because to understand it you must be in this trance state. It went a little something like this:

Life is transience

Time is an delusion

Existence is a divine illusion

The whole of all is rapture

All stems from the whim of creation

God is an author who lives through his characters

We are all God

God is all of us

Life unto death unto life again

Plunging in and out of existence

Eternally reinterpreting self

Circle, circle

Forever

I wish I could explain it better. I really do. But it cannot be explained, only experienced. You must forget everything. You must forget your sense of self which tethers you to a single form, a single mind. You must realize that you are everything--that neighbor cutting his grass, that pilot flying through the sky, that dog barking as you pass by, trying to protect his home. Everything, everyone, every life of every kind is the same thing. Everything exists simultaneously. There is no past, no future, only the moment, and all happens within the moment. The moment of creation, of experience. The divine is experiencing life as an ancient hominid, wandering nomadically with their tribe at the same time as it is experiencing being a minuteman in the American Revolution, at the same time as it is writing this blog, fingers tapping on the keyboard, at the same time it is staring at a computer screen, reading this other person's blog. Time does not exist. We are all the same force played out over and over again, reinterpreting, experiencing, becoming, changing. Everything exists separately as it experiences all from one consciousness, but everything is happening simultaneously. Consciousness' interact with one another, because time is a delusion.

God is not a form, a person, a figure. God has no gender. God is only the Divine, that from whence everything comes, and everything returns. The Divine is simply a force of creation, taking rapture in creating, experiencing everything, like a newborn child, or an author. This is God. There is no good or evil. Only existence, and the whole of existence is rapture. The divine goes through one full existence as a single consciousness, then is reborn as a new one. The divine is both aware of itself in its primal form and unaware of itself in it's eternal transmutational forms of existence.

I'm sorry. This is getting really confusing sounding. As I said, it can't be explained, only experienced. I think authors will grasp it more easily. They write to experience from a certain consciousness. To create. That is what they an impulse drives them to do. They cannot not create. At the same time that they are their character Mathew enjoying a cup of coffee and reading a great new book in their favorite cafe, they are the waitress Allison at that cafe, asking Mathew if he'd like more coffee, and Mathew's friend Shawn, showing up and seeing Mathew unexpectedly and feeling a rush of serendipitous joy. At the same time they are Mathew's father, fighting in WWII, meeting Mathew's mother as a nurse. Keep going. Keep the story unfolding. Past and present are created simultaneously, because time is a delusion. The story never ends. It continues on forever.

As Tsou, who is my character and therefore myself, just as I am also a 'character', puts it, "Such is mortal life: a fleeting rapture."

In a way, as we are but an experience of one consciousness, and our characters are but an experience of one consciousness, we are equal, and neither is more "real" than the other. All fiction is real.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death (poem)

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

 

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

-Emily Dickinson

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe (my favorite poem!)

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

-Edgar Allen Poe, 1845