The Divine Spark
Looking at a beautiful scene, a magnificent painting, eating a fantastic meal, or listening to a wonderful piece of music all have the same affect on the audience: that of bringing a sense of wholeness, of oneness and of contentment. In each it seems, for the barest moment perhaps, that we connect with the genius of the creator of the item and they allow us to share in their gift. For many that is a moment of inspiration, of enlightenment, of supreme happiness or indeed sadness.
It is often held that the extremes of emotion, the passionate emotions, are so close as to be the same. In a moment of sublime happiness we can inexplicably feel sad and, indeed, vice versa. Humans are emotional beings and our lives seem to be a search for that ultimate emotional state which some can find, some search hopelessly and some give up far too soon and spend their lives in a grey existence. Some seek to gain this state artificially through thrill-seeking or drugs in their various forms yet all of these are, ultimately, doomed to failure and the seeker has to seek more and more for less and less. Others find
this in their religious fervour, in their creations, or in their loves.
This quest, to fulfill - for want of a better word - the soul, has been the end goal of humanity throughout history. The continual search for perfection, to hold and hoard beauty is the end goal of all civilizations. Unfortunately, most fail as they don't understand that the end goal is not perfection, but to be able to link to something wholly and completely. Whether or not that something is perfect, complete or even something that some other agrees with. Each being is individual, each has their own end desire, their own Eros: the divine love. In the Ovid myth of Cupid and Psyche we find the divine love, Eros (in his true Roman form of Cupid - not the baby cherub of later times but the hard, frightening, terrifying creature that the Greeks and Romans knew, and the later Romatics managed to find glimpses of). In this myth, the divine love, the total extreme passion, is the lover of Psyche, the soul. It is as Psyche seeking our Eros that we go through life and it is as Psyche that often our wish to have more and better, we lose what we have and
