Murray Walford
Murray Walford is currently a MAIS program student. He considers himself a writer, but is disguised as a mild-mannered professional accountant. He was a regular member of Edmonton’s Stroll of Poets and has dabbled in the spoken word every so often through Edmonton’s Raving Poets’ weekly reading series. Murray has lived in and around Edmonton his entire life. He currently works in Athabasca, but heads back home to Edmonton and his family on weekends.
In this article, I examine the potential for interdisciplinary studies to create new and sometimes epiphanic knowledge. The article is itself an integration of creative writing and several ideas and excerpts from essays I have written for Athabasca University’s Master of Arts—Integrated Studies (MAIS) program. It also represents one person’s search for meaning in a journey toward the core of the self and the source of creativity—a journey that weaves together the concepts of enlightenment, the “energy of the processes of life,” and purpose, through an integration of philosophy, spirituality, astronomy, and psychology. In the end, the article is a challenge to all to discover and cultivate their creative talents and thereby foster their connection to the world.
Keywords: creative energy, creative writing, energy of the processes of life, epiphanic knowledge, interdisciplinary studies, Jung, Lacan, life energy, unconscious
Just as the unexamined life is a life poorly lived, no life is complete without some effort to connect with the deeper meaning of our existence.
(Das, 2001, p. 10)
My own efforts to make a connection to the deeper meaning of existence began at a young age. At first these efforts were motivated by simple curiosity; I remember that my mother would cringe every time I started a sentence with the word “why.” She understood me well enough to know that her “because why” answers were never enough, and so she encouraged me to find my answers in school; in an effort to help me answer the bigger questions, she pointed me toward Christianity. Although she was a fundamentalist Protestant Christian, she was never comfortable with a specific church, and so she took us on a lifelong search for the “right” religion. We started off as Lutheran, became Jehovah’s Witnesses, then Seventh-day Adventists, and eventually members of the Worldwide Church of God. Although my family has remained firmly within the fundamentalist Protestant Christian paradigm, the fact that I had learned to question and examine my faith constantly allowed me to step into a fuller paradigm, and my search for meaning expanded to other forms of religion, spirituality, and philosophy.
I have an overwhelming thirst for knowledge, and Athabasca University’s Master of Arts— Integrated Studies (MAIS) program is my current path to that knowledge. I have taken four courses so far, and I simply cannot overstate how enlightening they have been; I would need several lifetimes to enter the doors they have opened.
In the course Making Sense of Theory in the Arts and Social Sciences (MAIS 601), I learned about paradigms, enlightenment, and the mercurial nature of truth. During the course Gender and Sexuality (MAIS 628), I started to turn my search for meaning inward toward the core of self. I then used the Researching Society and Culture (MAIS 602) course to explore this core more fully through an examination of the inner source of creativity. This examination then naturally led me to the course Writing the Self (MAIS 616), which enabled me to explore the depths of self through creative writing. So far my journey has been wonderful. It has enabled me to explore the questions that interest me most; using a unique integration of philosophy, spirituality, psychology, astronomy, and creative writing, I have made some amazing discoveries. The following essay is an integration of what I’ve learned through the MAIS program, and in it I weave together some of the material I have written for each course I have taken. With this essay I hope to illustrate the potential for interdisciplinary studies to create new and sometimes epiphanic knowledge.
Many times during the process of writing the material in this essay I entered what I call the “Zone,” a state of hyper-awareness in which I can absorb massive amounts of data. While I am in this zone, my conscious mind pays attention to the world outside, and my unconscious mind gets busy doing whatever it does with data: storing it in strange places, perhaps relating it to something obscure, or hiding it away for just the right time when it can be used against me. It is through the process of writing, both creative and academic, that my conscious and unconscious selves seem to synchronize, and through this intersection of energies I begin making all sorts of connections. For me, some of the ideas in this essay brought about an epiphany. Epiphanies are possibly the most creative leaps humankind can make—leaps that would not be possible without conscious and unconscious connections between broad ranges of seemingly unrelated data.
Simply put, interdisciplinary research nourishes this process. Using the brain as a metaphor, I would say that disciplinarity is much like a brain without synapses. Interdisciplinary programs like MAIS create synapses between touching cells, and, more important, they create synapses between cells on opposite sides of the “universe.” The more synapses we create, the more creative and the more conscious we become.
In a symposium on interdisciplinarity hosted by the Athabasca University Centre for Integrated Studies (November 7 to 9, 2008), Professor Derek Briton introduced the term “interstitial space.” He defined this as a space in the middle of or the space between disciplines. He explained that interdisciplinarity in one way defines this space. Briton’s definition of interdisciplinarity envisions the creation of new knowledge, not simply a combination of old. He further elaborated, or implied, that an examination of this interstitial space can be transformational. Aptly enough, what this means to me is that the MAIS program was developed with creative transformation as one of its primary purposes.
My first encounter with the MAIS program was a mind bender, and, in the end, it was a mind opener. The course MAIS 601 shook the foundations of my belief system, and it required me to consider the uncomfortable possibility that absolute truths did not exist. I decided to face this challenge head-on by addressing this topic in my term paper. The following is an adapted excerpt.
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Apparently, everything is relative. There no longer appears to be any real authority, and truth no longer seems to exist. No matter how close I get to the truth, I accept that, like the universe in which we live, it will expand beyond my reach. I also realize that the closer I get to the truth, the farther this truth travels from anybody else.
However, one of my fundamental values is that I must act “rightly.” To act rightly, I must know what right action is, and, therefore, I must learn as much as I can about the meaning of life. My responsibility is to act according to my understanding of why we are here. Then, I must anticipate the consequences of my actions, as much as is humanly possible, and act accordingly. For me, enlightenment is a moral imperative.
Enlightenment is a personal journey and responsibility. It is an individual search for all forms of knowledge: natural, spiritual, experiential, and traditional. More important, it is also a reconciliation of all four. My most profound discoveries have resulted from my experience with nature, the connection I have made between nature and spirituality, and the affirmation of this connection through the study of astronomy, physics, philosophy, and psychology.
I relate enlightenment to the concept of an ever-expanding truth. To understand the world, the universe, the “multi-verse,” and beyond, we have to step consciously and purposefully into fuller and fuller paradigms. Eventually, we will integrate our knowledge, we will start seeing connections, and we will begin to pay attention to the world around us in a deeper, more meaningful way. The more we open our minds, the more we learn, the more we assimilate, and the closer we get to understanding what it means to act rightly.
The more I age and the more I experience, the more my truths morph into something I could not possibly have imagined. The truth I had yesterday expanded into the truth I have today, and my truth of tomorrow will be something extraordinary.
As the universe expands, so does truth. As our universe expands, so does our truth. The sun revolved around the earth, until it didn’t. The earth was flat, until it was round. The universe was small, infinitely small, but now it’s big, perhaps infinitely big. Who knows what we’ll discover next?
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Professor Paul Nonnekes’s Gender and Sexuality (MAIS 628) course was one of the more difficult personal journeys I have taken, but also one of the most rewarding. I was astounded to learn how much of the self is actually constructed. Taking the opportunity to peel the layers and layers of this construction was a difficult personal process. I learned much about psychoanalysis and gender. I caught a glimpse of something extraordinary at the core of who we are through a comparison of the work of psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, and through a personal application of this knowledge to an analysis of my own poetry. I was somewhat shaken by the realization that my unconscious mind had important things to say to me and had, in fact, been trying to get my attention for quite some time. This source of intelligence intrigued me, and so I started to turn my search for meaning toward the core of the self. In my term paper for MAIS 628, I began my search with an examination of Julia Kristeva’s semiotic chora and imaginary father, and Lacan’s jouissance, topics I revisited and integrated within my research proposal for MAIS 602.
Thanks to the excellent leads and encouragement provided by Professor Cathy Bray, I decided to focus my research proposal for Researching Society and Culture (MAIS 602) on an examination of the inner source of creativity. Along with writing a literature review for this proposal, I integrated much of what I learned from MAIS 628 and MAIS 601 with my evolving belief system. Following is an essay adapted from this proposal.
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As I was walking in the land between here and there, I spotted a sparkling river of light—I was amazed at its size. As far as I could tell, it had no beginning and no end. “What exactly is this river?” I thought to myself, “and what is it doing in the middle of nowhere?”
As I approached the river I had an overwhelming urge to jump in. As I prepared to do just that, a strange yet kindly young man tapped me on the shoulder and suggested otherwise. “That river is much too big and bright for you, son, it will swallow you whole. Why don’t you take a sip of it instead?” And so that’s exactly what I did.
I often return to this river. Sometimes I just sit on its banks and wonder. Every now and then I cup my hands together and take a sip. On the rare occasion, my friend paddles up to shore in his canoe and takes me for a ride. As we float down the river, I caress the gentle waves with my fingers and we get lost in creative conversation. Each time the journey is an exhilarating, inspiring adventure. And each time I step out of the canoe, I walk upon the world with brighter eyes.
* * * * *
When John Freeman asked Carl Jung during a BBC television interview if he believed in God, Jung responded, “I know. I don’t need to believe” (Nagy, 1991, p. 2). I cannot express how much I envy such certainty. I have spent virtually my entire life searching for God. It has been like an endless research project with many unexpected, sometimes remarkable, and sometimes frustrating twists and turns. Although my definition of God has altered or evolved quite dramatically over the years, I have always believed or had faith in the existence of a universal phenomenon. Sometimes I am certain this phenomenon exists, but it is always an ephemeral certainty that evanesces from my mind when I try to seize it—as do my nightly dreams.
One of the major alterations in the course of my lifelong search occurred quite recently. About seven years ago I started writing poetry. As a new poet, I was constantly amazed at the words that seemed to appear “magically” on the page in front of me. This sparked a passionate interest in trying to identify the source of my creativity, and as do many writers, I eventually came to realize that this source resides within. This means that, inevitably, my search has led me to the core of self.
In the early 20th century, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud identified this core of self as the id. About 60 years later, Jacques Lacan introduced his concept of the real. According to Freud, from the id comes libido, and according to Lacan, from the real springs jouissance. Psychologist C. G. Jung modified the term “libido” coined by Freud and expanded the definition from “instinctual energy, basically sexual in nature… to the energy of the processes of life” (Progoff, 1953, p. 59).
For me, the term “energy of the processes of life” is pregnant with meaning. To Henri-Louis Bergson, a major French philosopher in the early 20th century, it was the vital force that nourishes the evolving universe. According to Edman (1977), Bergson coined the term “élan vital” to describe this “creative surge of life” (p. xii). Carl Jung identified quite closely with Bergson’s “élan vital,” and turned the focus of his life’s work to the study of the unconscious and the movements of this vital energy “manifested specifically in the psyche of man” (Progoff, 1953, p. 59).
There appear to be several hypotheses as to what this creative energy is. As I mentioned previously, for Freud and many present-day psychologists, it is simply a libidinal, drive-based energy that is basically sexual in nature. Lacanians complicate this definition somewhat by introducing the concept of the real, from which springs a raw, sexually implicit jouissance. Because of the libidinal connotations, and to tickle my own core of self, I like to refer to jouissance as our “creative juice.” For Lacanians, the real is what existed before signification and subjectivity, and therefore it is impossible to define. Chen (2007) says jouissance is what remains after our separation from the real. According to Chen, the real is “the lost object that remains enigmatic and inaccessible. The fundamental lost object compels the subject to keep searching for and circling round it without daring or being able to touch it” (p. 2).
I suggested earlier that Jung had expanded the Freudian definition of libidinal energy quite significantly. Progoff (1953) says Jung
works with a larger and more flexible concept of energy. He treats it under two aspects: one is energy expressed on the cosmic level of life, energy as a whole; the other is energy manifested specifically in the psyche of man. On the wider plane, under its cosmic aspect, it corresponds somewhat to Henri Bergson’s “élan vital,” and in this sense, as Jung remarks, psychic energy becomes “a broader concept of vital energy which includes so-called psychic energy as a specific part. (p. 59)
Jung rejected Freud’s “exclusively sexual theory of the unconscious and put in its place an energic view of the psyche” (Read et al., 1978, p. 8). For Jung, the unconscious includes everything “whose energy charge is not sufficient to maintain it in consciousness” (p. 8). He adds that the unconscious comprises everything we have forgotten and everything we have experienced but didn’t consciously notice (subliminal perceptions). He labelled this the “personal unconscious.” Jung elaborates that our personal unconscious makes associative connections of high intensity, which cross over or rise up into consciousness in the form of inspirations, intuitions, and lucky ideas (Read et al., 1978, p. 9).
Jung further expands his definition of the unconscious to include the suprapersonal unconscious, which is “buried in the structure of the brain and disclosing its living presence only through the medium of creative fantasy” (p. 10). According to Jung, “it comes alive in the creative man, it reveals itself in the vision of the artist, in the inspiration of the thinker, in the inner experience of the mystic” (p. 10). He also calls this the collective unconscious, which is a sort of “extension of man beyond himself” (p. 10). In these deeper layers of the unconscious are “innate possibilities of ideas, a priori conditions for fantasy-production” (p. 10).
Jung attached the term “archetype” to his concept of the “innate possibilities of ideas.” The archetypes for Jung form the core of our being. Nagy (1991) provides an excellent and thorough philosophical analysis of Jung’s understanding of the unconscious, the “creative force” and its intentionality, and archetypes as a priori, or “inborn forms of perception and apprehension” (p. 142). Nagy says that “for Jung the concept of the archetypes embraces both the unknown energic drive force or life force and (partially) the image by which it is expressed and perceived” (p. 144).
Jung’s broader concept of this creative energy and the space from which it springs has many parallels. According to Dorcas and Yung (2003), in traditional Chinese culture “qi” is the term used to “indicate a type of energy or dynamic force that sustains and nourishes life” (p. 198). They also say that in “traditional Chinese writings the mind or consciousness comprises two main elements, shi shen and yuan shen” (p. 199). Yuan shen “is seen as the mutable dynamic force inherent to Qi that is responsible for the natural rhythmic movements of all living things. In other words, it is the source of life from whence even the vital energy mentioned previously (qi) draws its power” (p. 200).
Another word used to describe this energy comes from India: “prana.” According to the Free Dictionary, prana is “vital energy as articulated in the spiritual and healing systems of India.” Further, it is a life-sustaining energy or life force that is centred in the human brain and that governs inspiration and the conscious intellect.
The closest we can get to this creative energy, I believe, is a sort of holding space within our own minds. For psychoanalyst and former Lacanian Julia Kristeva, this formational and transformational space resides in the deepest layers of the unconscious. She labelled this space “the imaginary father.” Kristeva (Moi, 1986) introduces the imaginary father as an expansion of Freud’s “father of individual pre-history” (p. 238). She defines the imaginary father as the place of transference, or a place of love, like a cocoon or chrysalis, where self-transformation occurs. In the process of ego development, the imaginary father is a space or fragile boundary thrown up by the child to protect herself or himself from the void created by separation from the mother. It is in this imaginary space of love that the self begins the process of construction. It is also the place to which psychoanalysts take their clients to discover, renew, and/or re-recreate the self. In addition, it is, I believe, the space to which some of us can return by other means. Elliot’s (2008) concept of a holding, transitional sort of space, for example, is very similar to the safe place of transference or the imaginary father defined by Kristeva. In her paper, Elliot defines this space as “both in the room between the therapist and the patient, and in the patient’s mind, either cultivated internally through meditation or externally through art and creative process” (p. 27).
I have already provided a subjective interpretation of the phrase “energy of the processes of life” in my opening parable. In this parable, the land between here and there is the unconscious realm. The river within the unconscious realm represents the creative force. We can stand on its banks and bathe in its warmth, and perhaps take a sip of it every now and again, but this is only a residual warmth, a residual jouissance. For Lacan, the river might be the real to which we cannot return without losing our selves. According to Lacanians, it is the “petit ‘objet a’,” for which we forever search but which we can never attain.
The banks of the river are where many of us go, perhaps when we sit or work in our gardens, read exciting novels, or try to get closer to nature; we may go there by doing something as simple as camping, or, better yet, by canoeing down the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan. Those of us who take a sip of the river are the inspiring poets and artists, the deeply spiritual, and likely those intuitive, transformative leaders we run into or hear about every now and again.
The canoe, I believe, is a chrysalis of transformation. It is the closest we can get to the river without losing ourselves in its depths, and it is much like the space of Kristeva’s imaginary father. This is a place of safety, from which we can maximize the level of creative energy available to us. I believe this is the most cathartic, transformational, and perhaps mystical form of “the energy of the processes of life.”
The opening parable also includes a representation of the persona that seems to provide a bridge to the source of this creative energy. Depending on one’s world view, the young man in the parable could be my higher self, my unconscious self, a representation of Kristeva’s imaginary father, a Jungian archetype, God, or perhaps something entirely imaginary.
By finding our way to the “river,” we align our conscious and unconscious selves and, more important, perhaps we create an alignment with the energy of the processes of life. When we have this alignment it’s like plugging into a socket; the energy turns us on and wakes us up. The more aware of our unconscious we are, the more conscious we become. I believe that at this specific moment in our history, we desperately need conscious, purposeful action to solve the problems we have unconsciously created. It is simply a matter of survival.
I have a personal conviction that we all have a purpose. Regardless of whether each one of us is an idealist, realist, rationalist, pragmatist, existentialist, creationist, atheist, agnostic, or some combination of any of these, we must accept that our purpose is to foster our creative impulse. To leave our talents undiscovered or undeveloped is a waste of life.
In a discussion about the philosophy of Henri-Louis Bergson, philosopher C. Joad (1957) said, “It is the nature of life to be creative, and the individual taken as a whole is necessarily creative from the mere fact that he is alive” (p. 556). Joad surmised that “if Bergson is right… the world then is the embodiment of an immanent principle of living change, which, as it comes into existence, progressively creates the evolving universe” (p. 542). Echoing Bergson almost 100 years later, current-day biotechnologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman (2009) have posited an exciting new theory called “biocentrism, which holds that the universe is created by life and not the other way around” (p. 55).
The expression of our purpose has profound and infinite possibilities, and, as do many philosophers, I believe our potential is limitless. Das (2001) says Buddhism “teaches that no matter when Karma is created it can be changed, worked with, expiated, purified, and transformed. That means our destiny is in our own hands” (p. 18). On Nietzsche, Appelbaum and Thompson (2002) say that his “philosophy is presented as a challenge to follow one’s highest aspirations, to go beyond what has been done before, to move from man to ‘over-man’, to a higher form of humanity” (p. 93). William James (1978) believes that “[o]ur judgments at any rate change the character of future reality by the acts to which they lead” (p. [57]223). He also says that pragmatism favours the idea “that the world’s salvation is possible and that we should endeavour to secure it” (p. xxi).
I believe we actually have the power to create the universe in which we choose to live. Creating a universe may seem impossible, but we have an eternity in which to do so. All it will take is simple, purposeful, creative action, each and every day, one day at a time. Astronomers estimate that five billion years from now, we’ll be meeting up with the Andromeda Galaxy. Just imagine all the things we could do then.
My next foray into the depths of the self led me directly to the course Writing the Self (MAIS 616). It was in this course that the discoveries of academia and the wisdom of the mystics confirmed what I have known for quite some time: writing is self-actualizing and it is emotionally, physically, and spiritually therapeutic.
I discovered that through Proprioceptive Writing, a primary autobiographical learning tool used in Writing the Self, “you can remember who you are” (Trichter-Metcalf & Simon, 2002, p. 134). Simon explains that this form of writing is a spiritual process, and by “examining the language of your thought for its associated images and meanings you elevate self-exploration to a form of holy contemplation” (p. 134).
A personal application of poetry and autobiography for my final MAIS 616 project was an intensely spiritual journey. It was much like the confession, which, according to Peter Abbs, “is the quintessential rhythm of spiritual autobiography” (as cited in Hunt & Sampson, 2005, p. 122). Ira Progoff (1975) explains that his intensive journal method, a deep form of spiritual autobiography, helps us “discover that our life has been going somewhere” (p. 11), bringing us face to face with the meaning of our personal existence (p. 12). During the writing of my final project, I learned that through a dialogue with one’s self, spiritual autobiography connects us to ourselves, to others, to nature, and to a deeper meaning. In my mind, this deeply personal act of writing accesses the same amazing source of creativity, the energy of the processes of life, which has the power to inspire and also the power to re-create our selves. I believe it is in this poetic space where we tap into something eternally and infinitely universal.
It is therefore apt that in this course I began to explore that very large interstitial space between the singular core of self and our seemingly infinite and eternal universe. It was via this exploration that I discovered the real meaning of synchronicity, something that, until a few years ago, I thought was a loopy New Age concept. The term originated with Carl Jung when he had the insight “of a connection that is potentially present in each of us between our inner psychic realm and the external cosmos” (Coward, 1996, pp. 3-4). What synchronicity now means to me is that we can attain inner peace from an external world. It means contentment while I gaze upon the stars on a warm summer night, the power I feel when I canoe down the Churchill River as it carves its way through the Canadian Shield, the awe I feel when I walk through the old-growth forest of Vancouver Island’s Cathedral Grove, and the connection I experience when I write from my heart.
Through the use of creative writing, I have learned that there is much to life that cannot be explained and that there is much I have yet to learn. Perhaps one of my greatest epiphanies has been the realization that things born in imaginary spaces are themselves imaginary. In the end, my search for knowledge and truth has not led me to the God for whom I was looking; however, with the energy of the processes of life I have discovered something just as intriguing and potentially more relevant in an infinite and eternal universe. Much like the Möbius strip, my search has taken an amazing twist. As I travel deeper and deeper into the core of self, my sense of connection with, and awareness of, the external world has similarly deepened. Like the singularity that existed at the birth of our universe, the singularity of self has expanded into universal significance.
With the MAIS program, Athabasca University has created a learning environment that permits us to explore the questions that matter most to us. Is there an absolute truth? Is there such a thing as God? What is the source of our creativity? What lies within the depths of self, or the depths of the universe? Who am I? Why am I here? If we so choose, this program can be a means to examine our lives and help us connect to its deeper meaning. To do so, we must take the opportunity to invest and integrate our singularly unique selves with the combination of experiences, knowledge, and talents only we possess. Then we can enter into this luminous and vibrant process of learning to discover unique answers to the questions only we might think to ask.
I wrote the following prose poem a few years before I started the MAIS program, long before I read about Bergson’s “élan vital” or Jung’s “energy of the processes of life.” After taking the four courses I have described throughout this article, and integrating most of what I learned, I took another look at this poem. The depth of its meaning, its relevance to the energy of the processes of life, and its undeniable synchronicity were a revelation. I had the epiphany that the MAIS program doesn’t ram knowledge into us; rather, it gently and expertly draws it out. Much of what I have learned in this MAIS program already resided in the depths of my soul.
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Sometimes I’m afraid. Afraid this might be real. Most times I’m sure it’s just a dream. A harsh dream overflowing with the walking dead. Where autistic, evanescent souls bleed through self-inflicted wounds of false beliefs. An illusory reality where we cling to a cage of relentless desperate isolation.
We are lost, in this dream of severance. In this dream we have no memory. We forgot how to nurture our hearts. To touch life. A touching that transcends this dream into an eternal sun that bleeds its love freely. A love to rouse us from our dreary sleep of death and vanity. Awaken us to a world where all that’s living dies and lives again. An everlasting gift that surges and pulses like the semen from our loins, the blood from our wombs, and the noble truth in our hearts.
We can come home. Where we don’t need dreams to be happy. Where the exuberant universe ignites us, and the living Earth embraces us, and holds our dead. We are of this power, this life. This amazing, magnetic, dynamic, living wonder. We are its ultimate conduit. Our hearts resonate with this truth. This blessed, living, loving force that is us. That is God.
Here we are, lying on the ground, gazing up at the moon. Tonight there’s a comet swinging by. And there’s Saturn, and Mars, and Jupiter, too. Look at the stars. And the galaxies pretending to be stars. Can you see the Milky Way stretching across the sky? Can you imagine its size? Whirling and swirling God knows where. And there’s Andromeda, billions upon billions of miles away, sharing the dawn of a billion suns. A dawn lighting our eyes at the zenith of a journey that began over two million years ago. Can you see? Can you feel?
Here we are, lying on the Earth, looking up at the moon, all of us whirling around the sun, floating and swirling in a galaxy dancing to eternity. Grounded on our Earth, with only our hearts to reach out and beyond, to wonder and to love, and to bind each and every one of us to all that is. This dazzling beacon of life and love that echoes throughout the universe. An echo born in our amazing hearts where living energy is transformed into a loving, radiant miracle.
Here I am, looking in awe and wonder and amazement at the stars in the sky and at the miracle in your eyes. Seeing eternity in your eyes. Feeling eternity in the hug of the ground and knowing eternity in your love. All the energy in the universe converging in this moment to say we are one. You are just right for me. The universe is just right for us. And that is why we are here.
Here we are, my noble friends, standing on this floating, spinning, astonishing Earth, soaring through the universe, holding each other’s hearts, reaching out to the stars.
It’s hard to be the forest as a tree.
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I look forward to future MAIS courses in which I will continue to explore strange and wonderful ideas. As physicists and astrophysicists wrestle with the whacky progeny of quantum theory, such as entanglement, string theory, dark energy, and biocentrism, I will think deeply about their ideas. Then I’ll put pen to page and see what happens.