the currents of the universe

"It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit."

-Antoine Rivarol

"Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."

-St. Augustine

It has long been known by shamans and seekers that the first step in giving up the illusion of life is forfeiting the ego. The ego, roughly defined, is who you believe yourself to be. From your name to your race, your ego is what society has built as the reflection of you. And you, being the impressionable human that you are, accepted that tried and true. The gravestones of millions display the names of egos now departed. But where have those egos gone? Are they in a "heaven" dancing gleefully with friends and relatives long passed also? A place of eternal joy and perpetual ecstasy? Where the best food waits atop gold tables and grapes grow from passing clouds? Where death is known no more and a bright light shines through and over everything? No. They are not. They are six feet in the Earth, most likely rotted to dust by now. Heaven is fiction (as is Hell). There is no debate, because there is no proof. And there is no point in having faith in that which is not. Heaven was created by men out of their own fear of death, that inevitable not being that we will all face sooner or later. A belief in Heaven is an escapist attitude and those days are over.

But do not fear, fellow travelers. Because at heart we are all on a journey. Our own individual journey. But it does not transcend lives, nor does it end in a Heaven or a Hell - or a nothing. The worst and the best, the brightest and the darkest, the most and the least all play out in the vast truth of equilibrium. And as any good traveler will tell you, one journey's end brings another's beginning. We are on the journey of a lifetime, an infinite one. You will not remember this life 100 human years from now, just as you don't remember the moment you were birthed into this world, or your first step onto it. You will not remember because there is no reason to remember. Those that live in the Present are given something more precious, more true, more abundant, than all the pillars of Heaven lined up until the end of that fictional kingdom. When you are aware of the moment and nothing else. When the past fades away as quickly as the future comes into your sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, you are on a ride with no end and no beginning. Where the admission is free and the speed indeterminable. You are experiencing life in an IMAX theater of reality. And when you are aware of life you are alive, and you are aware of it now, so why fear? Something - some indistinguishable force - has brought you here. It does not judge you. It will not punish you. And it will never be entirely known. But it has brought you here, know that. And seek nothing else.

The animal fear of death has destroyed mankind. It has given rise to a society built on fake spectacles and trivial pursuits. Escapists minds have built an escapist world. Those that believe they live in reality are in for a rude awakening. Reality is something far different - far more real and overwhelming - than most are ready to accept. Reality is energy. Reality is infinity. Reality is complete and utter shifting, falling, unknown, impermanence. It is the fire of the sun. The depth of the universe unknowable. The beating heart that seems to beat for no real reason at all. It is the flesh rotting off the bones of those men dead long ago.

And so we come back to that fact: why believe in something that doesn't exist? Death is very real. We all join the Earth again someday and yet we live our lives forgetting we walk, sleep, and live on it every second of our lives. It yields to us and takes us back in to yield to those after us. The fossil fuels that run our cars today were the animals of yesterday. The plants grow out of former life that now manifests itself in rocks, dirt, and minerals. This planet is in a constant state of mass recycling. Lives are lived and lived again. But not by the same person, or the same thing. Each living thing is unique in that it is the only one of its kind to grace this Earth, at this time, in this stretch of an infinite universe. So we are unique, we are "special," but we are not infinitely us.

Life is life experiencing life. You are alive, you are experiencing that which is, that which makes up the collective thing called life. But you are not you. You belong to Nature. You have control of "you," but every ounce of your being is something else, something completely organic, something you had no part in creating, only manipulating with your mind. You are the body of a species that took millions of years to evolve. One that literally came from the primordial, fundamental core of this Earth. Society has been built out of a single seed. We are all connected, indefinitely, infinitely, indelibly. Solids, liquids, and gases make up our surroundings. But they are not separate. They are atoms, side by side, connected. Separation is a complete and utter illusion. The flame of a candle is connected to the air around it. It may appear to stand alone, but it is not. Just as a human being is not disconnected from his or her surroundings, or a bird from the sky around it. When you feel the wind on your face, you are not just feeling it, you are coming in contact with it, coming in contact with an energy that is always there, in gas form, surrounding you, feeding you oxygen and life.

Nature/reality/existence is literally feeding itself to you so that you can experience it through it. Life is the miracle of being for the sake of being. Because nonbeing simply isn't any fun. There is, however, such a thing as nonbeing. There has to be. The corpses underneath the headstones in a graveyard are experiencing something, and that something is nothing. But they'll never know it. Just as you'll never know it when you die, because you can never know it. You can only experience it, and when you are experiencing it you are alive and incapable of knowing it - only experiencing it. The truth (life in the Present) is unknowable because if you were to know it, it would take the fun away. What's the point in watching a movie if you can see the cameras, and the cords, and the director in the background all the time? Then you would know you were watching a movie - you would know the magic behind it and that would make it pointless. You cannot know the unknowable and even when in that vast nothing called death, one is incapable of knowing, because they can't know in that state. There is nothing to relate it to, no life to make contemplations and surmises, no senses to make sense of it all.

That is to say, there is no soul. The soul is an illusion. The "soul" is a rough term for the non-interconnected lives that we will live infinitely. The lives are connected by infinite energy that is always present, but not connected in any sort of subjective way. You are not all you'll know and you are not all there is, and yet you are, to you, NOW, but not always. You will be something/someone else, but always linked to it in spirit, or energy in a physical reality that goes on and on and on. There is no higher calling. There is no greater good. There is no infinite soul on a determined journey to achieve some sort of greatness. The greatness is already here and you are capable of seeing it. But first you must open your eyes. Open all of your senses. There is some sort of eternal, objective, good, a recognition of reality that manifests itself as "Heaven," but it is not reached by becoming something. It is reached by becoming nothing, becoming merely a reflection of life itself - the all seeing eye in the midst of things. Walk into the forest, but leave only your footsteps. The forest changes, but does not end, as you will change forms, but will never end.

There are no ends. And Heaven as we describe it today is described as an end. Now is the end and now is infinite. You are not infinite, but it is, and you are a part of it, so thus you are infinite. Each journey breeds another journey and thus no end is possible. One thing done entails another trial to overcome. And that means that the life you are living now is all there is - for now. You will live again, but that life will have absolutely no relation to this one. There is no need to even think about that now, because that hasn't happened yet. Energy hasn't taken up that form, you are here now. You emerged into these five senses and these five senses will end eventually. You are powered by your mind and you have the power to escape it, but you cannot escape your body without ending this life. There is no escape from reality. And physical reality is as much a reality as any. There is no soul that can transcend infinity. To live you must be in a form, and that form is body. There is mind. There is body. There is not soul.

Not to sound pessimistic. There is a "soul" to an extent, just not the one we're used to thinking of. The soul is the state you reach when you're in your mind and body, but have completely transcended out of them. When you have reached a state of nirvana, a state of true acceptance and true appreciation... true love of life and all its details and quirks. When you have come to love the unknown and unknowable and take it as it comes. That is what soul is and it is possible to achieve it. It is possible to live the life of a soul in the life of a body with a mind. But first one must accept that they are in a mortal body, that that mortal body will eventually die, and that another mortal body will follow it. That they are not going to Heaven when they die. That Heaven is NOW. There will be more nows, but why worry about them. They are unknowable, because they have not yet happened, so live in today. Don't live in the past. And don't live in the future. Live in the now and it is there you will find eternity. The dead are dead. The not-yet-born are not yet born. Don't live a life stuck in the past or one glued to the future. Only the moment will set you free. The moment/present/now/exact second is the truth. It is what all humans are looking for. It is why everything from roller coasters, to drugs, to this thrill or that exist. To get people in the Present so that they feel truly alive.

And you are truly alive. Your heart is beating and you don't control it. It beats for you and no one else. It beats so that you may experience and so that you may live. It beats for the moon and it beats for the sun and from just outside Earth you can hear the quiet sound of billions of heartbeats. In sync and infinite, recycling time and time again for the sake of the beat. The rhythm of life. Beyond Earth there are many other lives experiencing life, but for now you are you. Know that by you, I do not mean who you think you are, but the collective experiences the body that you currently inhabit calls its own. And you will live again. You will meet new people, see new places, know new things you could never even imagine existed. There is only one New York City in the universe. There is only one thing called pizza in the universe. There was only one President Lincoln and one Mahatma Gandhi in the universe. Earth is a very unique place, cherish it while you can. Experience as much as you can and love it all equally and unconditionally. You may only be here once and although you won't remember it, living in the Present will render that fact void, because living through all your senses in this precise moment ensures eternity, it is now and it is all you know.

One day you'll awake another person/thing/species in another place in space and time. As you awoke into this body so you'll awake into another. You are in a physical reality and that is all there is. You are your five senses as perceived by your brain and nothing else. You are a part of a physical universe that longs to persist. It is no wonder every species is so concerned with procreation. It is the continuation of life that gives us hope and promise, for we know that we are a part of it. Somewhere far off there are individuals within species just meeting that will one day ensure our life in another place, somewhere in this very universe we will be born again. And again and so on, forever. Forever does exist. Individual life has a beginning and an end, but life itself does not. It is energy, and energy changes forms but never disappears. But the goal of life is not procreation, just as it is not reaching Heaven, or scoring a perfect score on an exam, or winning a million dollars, etc. There is no goal to life except to live. To take it as it comes and love every minute of it for better and for worse. To realize that one is not entitled to anything nor should expect anything. Nothing is certain or expected in an unknowable universe. Your heart could stop a minute from now or decades from now. There is no telling.

And there is no need to tell. Or to know. Or to ask. It is the day man begins to ask who-what-when-where-why-how that he digs his own grave. Life is not a game. Life is not an obstacle. Life is not a puzzle. Life is a ride. Life is a free fall. Life is a journey. Life is your five senses and the body that supports them. Life is not a soul that aims for some higher good or understanding. Life is what you look at every time you open your eyes - and close them. Life is the interconnected energy that makes up your surroundings and manifests itself as an environment. These indefinite surroundings are nothing more than an apparent phenomenon. Think of yourself as the organic matter that you are. Walking across a vast solid sphere in the middle of an infinitely vast space. You are not grounded, you are floating. You are floating in an existence that knows no up or down. You are spinning on a planet that knows no end, in a reality that only knows today. You are part of something huge, but are undeniably small. But you are your world and your world is you. There is brilliance in the greatness of things, but also in the detailed genius of a room or a pile of clothes or a drop of water. The vast universe is made up of little lives, just as our gigantic sun is made of simple flames the size of a candle burst. And across the universe infinite heartbeats beat on and with them, life.