I sometimes wonder what is the difference between myself and a brick. Aside from the more fluent conversation I occasional am able to produce, why is it that I have the ability to think and feel, while a bricks abilities are fairly limited. And the answer is simple — the absence of spirit of life. While this may appear seemingly obvious, acceptance of this fact opens us up to a larger amount of things to ponder, far more intellectually teasing then my first question. What has this spirit of life? What is it, and where did it come from? Where is it going to?
Let's quickly look at some religious views: The Book of Genesis, Adam was originally a lifeless being. He had a body and form, but it is not until God breathed life into him that he became ‘alive’. In the Jewish tradition, the belief is held that the difference between a living being and lifeless one is the absence of a single word; this word containing the substance of life within it. When we look around, though, it is not just humans that possess this spirit — it is the entire world around us. It moves and breaths, is equally as capable of flourishing, reproducing, and also dying. Without thinking, we often use emotions to describe aspects of our world — the sea looks calm today, or violent, that tree is looking fairly sad with that branch dangling off. But perhaps these statements hold more validity then we are aware. Whislt our emotions can be observed by our neural pathways, it is unknown whether what is going on in our brain is the cause of what we feel, or simply a showing affect of what we are currently feeling. In the same way, could not be world show the effects of its contentment in its peaceful and quiet winds, or blue sea? We have all experienced times when a certain place, whether previously visited or not, suddenly holds a pervading air of a certain emotion. Perhaps this is just the emotions of the lively beings around with that we are begin to become in-tune with.
I have begin to understand this to be the ‘essence of life’; the essence of which we were born, belong, and will return to. Our bodies are limited by their earthly belonging — everything in the natural world must find their end. However, life is much more curious than that. The essence of life was present from a time we don’t even know, created the world with this essence, and universes beyond our imaginings. It is an infinite spirit that only expands in it's being. Life is not limited in the same way are earthly things — for it is the essence that in fact created and inhabited these beings for a time. Thinking of it in this sense, it becomes perfectly plausible that people have claimed to have had ‘interactions with the dead’. If life is just an essence in itself, it leaves the body when the body becomes deceased, and returns to join the eternal essence that is omnipresent within our universe. Surely then it becomes logical that a human could claim their deceased grandparent is inhabiting the tree above their burial site, or claim to feel their deceased partners presence with them on a regular basis. This also opens us up to perhaps even accepting the possibility of ‘soul-mates’, for if we are all made up of this spirit of life that constantly changes, perhaps we were once part of the soul that now inhabits our significant other.
This 'essence' can help us to understand our sense of connectedness to the earth, universe, and those around us -- for we are all ultimately part of the same being -- we are part of Life. In Tarot readings, the card of 'Death' means deep change. Just in this way, death can be seen as a mere time of transformation for the soul -- the essence of life -- as it prepares itself for its next journey. 
No comments:
Post a Comment