I yearn to feel, if that is what is truth beyond the physical. I yearn to escape my space and time, to be truly as I am, and nothing less. The paradox within me is the fight between seeming truths; I am finite, but I need to forget all the pressures of this earth and exist in whole truth.

I am a man who travels but never meets, swims but never drinks. I seek answers to my questions; what am I that is not of this world? Are the mountains and valleys of my heart the paths to joy and peace? Is there more than what I think and do? Is there less? Why do I search for identity? What is my body and what is me? What separates these two existences?

I have planned my mortal life with a few statues of inevitability along the way, but I have not planned for the years if not decades of searching that I must do. I have not left room to feel, only to do.

There is no conclusion I can draw to the process, although I have fooled myself to believe that I know all things, for I know what the beginning and end of my body will be. Since I know the endpoints of my body’s life, a and b, I have approximated its path as a straight line. I have used the fundamental theorem of calculus to approximate my life, by allowing that change – the derivative – is constant and therefore my life will be continuous and smooth. I have made myself differentiable.

But I am thinking now that perhaps it should be approximated by a harmonic function, one that sings my life to all other life, with highs and lows. But if I am to be as I am, and nothing more, if I am to be exactly me, apart from any identity I build myself, apart from any category I place myself in, then I cannot approximate my journey, for only by living it will I know the function, only by pushing through the traps of the world can I not approximate it, but coincide with it. This exceeds knowledge, this exceeds body.

If I am to know and feel both unimaginable joy, and undeniable pain to the highest level possible, then I must be my life. I must not only live it, but be it. The separation I have conceived between me, my life, and my body must be discarded, for it matters not. This surpasses logic, for logic is a tool of thought. This surpasses emotion, for it is a tool of the soul. This surpasses senses, for they are tools of the body. Whatever connection I have to these I must break, and then become these things. To be one is to be grater than any other state.

The identity is the greatest of all beings, for it is perfect. What you give it, it returns. You cannot divide it up without leaving it whole. If you take it away from itself, nothing remains for it is everything. Again, to be one is the utmost goal, for it is perfect.

I must be my body, I must be my soul, I must be my neighbor, I must be (one with) God, I must seek all things that are separated from me, and bring them into me. I must be other peoples’ suffering, I must be other peoples’ joy, I must be my mentor, I must be my student. I must be my hope, and I must be my fear. I must be my being. I must be my strength, and I must be my weakness. I must be weakness. I must be strength. I must be. I must be. I must be.

When I encounter a flame, and I reach out to touch it, I am burned, and my body reacts out of instinct, withdrawing from its danger. And so the body should react, for to survive longer, it must avoid that which hinders life.

When a person tells me that they cannot stand to love me back, I am hurt, and my mind reacts in numerous ways (and my heart, one might argue). And so the mind should react, for to reproduce, one must avoid incompatible mates.

Yet, bringing the rituals of Darwin close to the teachings of Jesus, there is a step we must take. We must transcend our evolutionary attempts, and rise to the goal of eternal life. We must tell the truth, which often causes immense pain. We must fight against fear itself – the mortal body’s quest to maintain life – in favour of eternal life, which is an incredible task, for our greatest fear is death. Unfortunately, logic is broken between these two [schools], where we must embrace mortal death in favour of immortal life.

The battle between the spirit and the flesh is treacherous, yet unavoidable. Pain is a concept that we must accept, and no longer fear. Our mortal bodies deceive us by process of evolution; in a struggle to preserve the flesh, we avoid the discovery of the spirit.

Herein is the ultimate, life long battle. We must promote truth at the cost of pain. When taken into perspective, it seems quite commonsense: We achieve an eternal, pure aspect, at the expense of a mortal, deprived state. Why then so difficult? Well, of course we have become dependent on our senses to dictate what “reality” is to us. Consequently, our “reality” embraces Darwin’s fear of pain, and we are blind to the simple transaction that we must make.

Here we must pause to make an important observation: Great men [and women] live and die, renouncing the presence of God. This fact should not cloud our minds from the truths that they speak about this “reality”. Darwin was justified by our mortal existence to write and teach what he did, and he was accurate. However, those truths apply only to the world that he knew – the mortal one. We can not afford to turn a blind eye to thoughts from men and women who do not believe what we do, for they provide excellent insight into our mortality, into our need for reunion with the Father.

The advocate of entertainment does not hesitate to cast blows at my need for production. When I deny [him], the advocate becomes ill-willed, seems to convey the idea that if I do not obey, I will be alienated from my friends who also worship the god of entertainment.

But it seems simple to me, for I quest to better myself, and I rarely benefit from consuming alcohol and nicotine while conversing with others about almost incoherent ideas of nothing. It bores me. What is my goal? For others is there any reason beyond a temporary and deceiving euphoria? Is it so hard to see that when we pursue these things, we are consciously and willingly deceiving ourselves?

And then, when I first began to follow suit, I created for myself a goal that could more easily be reached while intoxicated: more physical euphoria. This occupied me for a long time because it was [conversely] difficult to obtain. Yet, even after only a few minor successes, I became bored of this as well; there was no reason, no benefit to be borrowed from the temptations before me.

Yet, there is laughter on the dark side. Isn’t laughter a pure thing? Unfortunately not. But I am tempted nonetheless to pursue joy, to pursue happiness. Perhaps this is a righteous goal approved by God. If so, then we fall because we have settled for a sweet candy that tastes like watermelon, but have failed to taste true melon. We have drunken ourselves into believing that we have found true happiness.

I know this to be a lie, for when I am engulfed [by] the shifty pleasures of this type, I seek to be rid of them. True joy must be free of guilt, and guilt I am not free of. For this reason I feel doubly stupid when I indulge in these things, for not only am I deceiving myself, but I also know very acutely that I am accepting the deception.

But are we anywhere at all? Why can the man not be amused by childrens’ games? Why can the man not be content to sit in fields for hours, doing nothing? Why must we have goals? Why do we not meditate hourly?

And there can be no refuge, for the world has stepped quickly through the gateway of industry. We are all too obsessed with par, never allowing ourselves a thought against the power, the green competition. But perhaps we should resist. We should know ourselves. We should know ourselves. We should know ourselves! At the very least – and an all-encompassing, fullest least at that – we should know ourselves. To know thyself is to know thy neighbor. To know thyself is to know thine enemy. To know thyself is to know thy blood. To know thyself is to know thy God.

Who will stand for change? Who will revolt? Why will no one revolt? Is there use in trying to change the masses? Or should I simply change myself, and let my brother shrivel amid the cinders of society?

Progress, evolution, they are not the answers to our betterment. Darwin is wrong. Intellectualization, faithlessness, they are not aiding our essence. Voltaire is wrong. Sexuality, cerebral mechanics, they do not bring light. Freud is wrong. Grace, mercy, zen, enlightenment, tranquility, humility, agnostics; these things hold water.

Jesus, Ghandi, Buddha, Mohammed, they are right in that there is more to us than what we can see, or ever mortally know. There are layers to our planet that we will never realize. There are gates through the boundaries of time, holes through the walls of our minds that we will never discover.

I seek to know myself. I seek to hear myself when I do not speak. I seek to love myself when I am broken. I seek to feel mankind within me. I seek to know purpose, to know drive, to know love. I seek to see everything for what it is. I seek to know everything in its place. I seek solitude. I seek true community. I seek understanding. I seek simplicity.

And in this slowing world, becoming more populated and less personal, in this slowing world do we cry to feel something, anything at all? Is the great mass of humanity sinking into a norm of un-affect?

Or is it just the first world society that is being plagued with stereotypical associations to action? Have we left our proverbial hearts behind in a speeding race to the technological high-ground? Are increasing numbers of failed marriages indicative of this sacrifice?

And depression, ever growing in its spread over our peers and kin, is it possible that our cry to feel has driven the individual down the slide of hopes and dreams, to a place where feeling succeeds, but is manifested in self-pity, worthlessness, meaninglessness, and isolation?

Yes. The search for irrational, illogical reactions has ended triumphantly in the negative spectrum of emotion. Why? Simply because it is easier. Our nature implores it, for without true meaning, without a set of guidelines to follow in life, without aspirations, our fight for love and empathy has no motivation. The hate, the lust, the slander, these dis-virtues are simply brought to us through our own idleness, almost as if gravity is pulling each of us – an unending force – towards self-destruction, and the destruction of community.

So, then, the numb world grows cold and remains motionless, and with it, we become drunk on consistency, on hollow laughter and surface sex. We numb-en, and our cry to cry is answered with stale tears of loneliness, of detachment. And we weep, if for no reason that to feel something stir in our empty selves, to remind ourselves that there is a realm still within us all that semi-defines our classification or organism, of our being human.

The world advances forward, sacrificing feeling, or the time to feel, we realize the void, we sink into depression to fill it.

Expression is that great force that motivates me. When I dream, I dream of large populations understanding and revering my work, but not only this, each is moved by these things, whatever they may be.

Physics attractes me because I can see creativity at its forefront, and a great creativity in a midst of science. The contrast of these things attracts me, for I feel that I understand both, and I have a great love for both. The patterns of creativity of God are both attributes of God, contradictory but one and the same.

The piano-forte attracts me for its ready expression of passion, of conveyance of deep, deep anguish and misery, in a beautiful way, of the human plight, of the severed telephone line to the Father. Again, it is amazing the allowance of creativity from an instrument based on the mathematical and physical laws of this universe.

Where physics is an art grounded in math, the paino-forte is a math rooted in art.

Inspired by Wayne Jeffrey, D.M.A.