It’s Spring!
Rebirth – animals, plants, things under the earth becoming conscious and experiencing consciousness for the first time. All that becomes living will have different lifespans, different timelines with which to do things within this conscious period. After which each, also at different times, will fade and die. This is life. The only one we know.
Spring – the first of our seasons. Growth, any growth, needs food and water in order to exist. Continued growth needs continued sustenance. Some of earth’s life-forms are mobile and some are immobile – stuck to one place on the earth for their entire lifespan. Mobility, obviously, has nothing to do with consciousness. But while conscious we make the best of whatever situation in which we find ourselves. Our entropy seeks the light, upward mobility, anything to extend life and consciousness. All life seeks its own survival whether mobile or immobile.
We as humans not only have consciousness, but sentience. We also have mobility, the ability to reason and, of course, opposing thumbs. We have a huge advantage over all other life. Given these assets, we should exist in a veritable paradise, except for an additional factor in our consciousness – free will.
With consciousness, mobility, sentience (the ability to feel or perceive), rationality (the ability to think or reason), opposing thumbs and free will, we now have the ability to make choices, and the most basic choices involve good and evil. When our reasoning first develops, we have the dawning ability to realize the difference between right and wrong. Parents or mentors help to guide us in this. Included is an innate ability to recognize that hurting someone or damaging something is wrong; that taking the possessions of others is wrong. But we now begin to realize that we are able to make choices. We can continue to do something even though there are consequences, or we can stop and change direction. This development takes a different amount of time for each person. Some of us “get it” very quickly and some struggle with this concept for their entire lifespan. Each of us is given this gift of consciousness; few of us really appreciate it. We have the unique ability to affect our environment and our fellow travelers in a constructive way. Choice governs our lives and and with this choice, we experience a craving for the light or for the dark.
Our arts sometimes mirror this process and sometimes influence it. Music consists of frequencies (vibrations that connect to feelings and emotions – sentience), and rhythm (regularity or organization which connect to reasoning – rationality). It has played a part in the development of every society and civilization that has existed on the earth. The creators of music throughout all ages have made a choice for light or darkness. The listener also has had to make a choices for light or darkness, the lofty or the mundane. Do we listen as food for our thoughts, organization of our emotions, or relaxation for our consciousness (more complicated patterns)? Or do we listen to the more simplistic, primal rhythms and vibrations for our baser emotions? We make these choices daily. Music isn’t exactly brain food. But it can be used as brain healing, a diversion from a complicated and stressful lifestyle, or to create an atmosphere either to support or deny reality.
Our listening should be discriminating. It should also keep in mind our delicate consciousness, sentience, mobility, our ability to think and reason, and most of all – our expiration date! Music is our ultimate connection to the universe. The universe, whether macroscopically or microscopically is connected with waves and vibrations and pulses. When present they are the essence of light. When missing they are darkness. While we may never harness the music of the spheres, we may eventually learn to appreciate its beauty. All religions look forward to the light. Music is our connection to life after we fade from this existence. Let us listen intently each day of our lives. Let us appreciate this great gift that we have been given. Let us choose the light – in our lives and in our music!