“Sing like no one is listening.

Love like you’ve never been hurt.

Dance like nobody’s watching,

and live like it’s heaven on earth.” Mark Twain

Sing. Love. Dance. Live. Repeat.

According to QED (quantum electro dynamics) all of existence is comprised of interconnected fields of energy. You and I are both fields of interconnected and interpenetrating energy. In other words, we are part of one big energetic field. It is the interplay of the various energetic fields that gives rise to what we perceive as reality, all forms are interactions among fields-you and I are fields of energy-we have no independent existence outside of the field. I exist because you exist and we both exist because of the interaction of all that exists. Counterintuitive? Yes, but true according to latest theories in quantum physics.

The Vedic sages, thousands of years ago, conceptualized these energies as subtle and coarse, our mind and emotions are made of subtle energy and our body from coarse energy. Sri Aurobindo, in his book Life Divine, writes “The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific….”[i] The Vedic sages did not have the scientific knowledge that we have today. We know now, through science, that our thoughts and emotions are patterns of neuronal firings in the brain, hence ephemeral and transitory, whereas our bodies are solid. This view from the latest theories in science is very similar to the conception of mind and body in the Vedas.

Three thousand years ago, the Vedic sages, concluded that the world of forms is an illusion. Forms are waves in consciousness. Buddhists posited that all forms are interdependent co-arising. The conclusion of Buddhism is that “nothing possesses its own irreducible self-nature, but everything depends on something else for its existence. Therefore, all things are empty, empty of intrinsic reality and intrinsic value; all existence is relational. Whatever the ultimate reality of things, it is inexpressible and inconceivable; therefore Empty. All things arise through the co-working of many causes and conditions.”[ii]

I can see myself as a swirling eddy of different energies flowing in and out of me, if I let my imagination run. I can visualize all of existence as pools of energy. The pools and the eddies are different in form from each other, but the energies that create them are the same. The movement of energy in one eddy alters other eddies because they are interconnected; their existence is relational. The pools and the eddies have no existence without the energies that flow through them.

The stars, our planet, and everything in it, including us humans, are like eddies and pools through which life energies flow. We have no separate existence apart from the energies that flow through us. We are pools and eddies in the flow that is life. Like the pools and eddies, we are ephemeral, but life energies are permanent-they cannot be created nor destroyed; they only change form.

You and I are forms like the myriads of forms that life energies take. We are “impermanent, interdependent co-arising” as the Buddhists say. We are like a rainbow we come into existence when the conditions are just right. The sun, the moisture and the particulates in the air, the air temperature have to be just right for the rainbow to occur, similarly when the conditions are just right we are born. We are held together in a physical form by life forces and they also give rise to our feeling of self. The self is like a rainbow, it only appears to be real, it has no existence apart from life forces that give rise to it.

Yet, we are trapped in this illusory self without even knowing that we are prisoners of our own creation. We are born to be free. Yet, we keep ourselves in bondage. Dancing or singing with abandon, gives us a glimpse of what it is like to be free. We have imprisoned our authentic self in our ego. Our true self wants to be free.

I lose my sense of self when listening to music or dancing or watching a beautiful sunset. There is no self in these moments. Meditation, music, dance and laughter are portals to transcending one’s ego and experiencing what it feels to be free.

“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.”[iii]

We are born to be free. We have imprisoned ourselves in our ego-our false self. We can set ourselves free by abandoning our pretenses, our false front, our ego.

“Dance, when you are broken open.

Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.

Dance in the middle of the fighting.

Dance in your blood.

Dance, when you are perfectly free.”~Rumi

[i] (auromere.wordpress, n.d.)

[ii] (http://bschawaii.org/shindharmanet/studies/coarising/, n.d.)

[iii] (https://genius.com/Eagles-hotel-california-lyrics, n.d.)