Seeking Jordan will be available in hardcover March 15, 2016. You can pre-order it now from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.

by Matthew McKay

In the Heart of Pain

Pain is a path to truth. It refracts light to reveal things not otherwise seen. Pain reveals the invisible ties, the vast network of energy that connects everything. In the heart of pain and loss is love. By running from pain, we run from love. By avoiding pain, we lose the pathways to connection. In the heart of pain is a moment when the universe—and out place within it—finally becomes visible.

The Witness

Every soul is a witness. We see at first our own life, where we can be the elemental observer without thought or emotion. We witness through a cloud of feeling and cognition, but it obscures the simple river of experience, the flow of what can be seen and heard and touched. We collect—images, events, stories. We hold, individually and collectively, light touching the Tigris at a wide bend, the feeling of wet clay spinning on the first flywheel, the sound of wind susurrant through an ancient corn field.

Every soul is a witness. First for the self, and then for the other. The other needs to be seen; the love and pain mirrored, known. The soul is incomplete, untouched, its work caught in the limits of the “I”—without a witness.

The witness sees every fall, every getting up—deepening what’s real because there’s more than one of us who carries it.

god’s Evolution

Each universe leaves its mark on consciousness. And on god, the sum of all consciousness. Each universe is a step in god’s evolution, as consciousness collects what was learned in order to create the next big bang.

What is awake, learns. god is awake. god is every conscious soul learning. God is not perfect because we aren’t perfect. God will never be perfect. God creates in order to learn. Each new universe is inhabited by a bigger, more conscious god.

Cruelty

At a certain point, as a universe expands, the distances become too great for relationship, for cohesion and connection, for objects to have influence on each other. In that environment, cause and effect dies, and consciousness cannot grow.

The distance between incarnate souls, as that between stars, is subject to strict laws of entropy. The distance between souls will expand, due to cruelty and damage, until there is a complete loss of relationship, of connection, of influence. Such souls are then alone, flying like some lost planet through the dark.

The distance between souls expands as cruelty breaks attachment, as it destroys emotional gravity. I that environment, consciousness can no longer grow because love is impossible.