Felt so "dead" this morning, I couldn't force myself to work on the Manning novel. Instead, took a drive North into a rainy, gray landscape of hills and expensive homes, hunting for something. Back in Spokane, I used to drive into scab rock areas, seeking out roads marked as "Primitive" so I could enjoy this feeling of ... what? Today, I realized I'd been hunting a specific "feeling". Some call that feeling a spiritual feeling. Modern religious people continually seek new churches ... they wish to get that spiritual high. They want to be moved. Popular music brings modern youths to those "spiritual" moments, just as the symphonic music moved me to tears a couple of weeks ago. Others have sought god in the wilderness and many have had experiences of transcendent power in a natural landscape.
Atheists, like myself, are no different. We like to feel "spiritual" experiences too. The fact that atheists can have transcendent experiences separate from the idea of a god is one proof that all highly charged emotional moments have nothing to do with god or gods or goddesses for that matter. The one is an idea; the other is a purely physical sensation.
The thing I keep in mind when I think about "religious" experiences is that all highs are universally accompanied by lows of a depth equal to the intensity of the high. In my experience, cycles of highs and lows signal an imbalance of feeling. Moderation in all things is the antidote to emotions run wild. Now, that said, will my urge to complete the Manning novel return or has Jorge Tomas reached another dead end?
"Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Vantucky
With the Memphis blues again?"
Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/stuck-inside-mobile-memphis-blues-again#ixzz2vDcFcRGI"
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