Iris - Goo Goo Dolls

Happy Friday tout le monde ! An extra post this week as I have a little time on my hands and I try to post when I'm really feeling a particular song. In recent days I've had cause to think about one of the great, consistent threads that runs through all mystical traditions: reincarnation. One of the great occult secrets is the recognition that the personal ego does not exist - it is phoney. We have individual traits but these are better understood to be different aspects (or incarnations) of what Hindus call Brahman - the player of all the parts.

Emerson in his essay 'Nature' (1836) summed up this experience more beautifully than I will ever be able to:
"We return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."

Meister Eckhart was excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 1328 for his 'herecy':
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

I've felt for a while that when we feel a strong connection to someone else, even when we may not know them well, it is a connection forged by this unity with all things, and across all time. And is it possible that the love we feel is an echo or harmonic of that relationship from a past (or even future) life? Its an explanation that I like !

So I was on a train this morning, listening to music and pondering these things as I often do when this song came on: Iris by Goo Goo Dolls. According to my iTunes I've owned the song since 2008 and I've listened to it over 50 times but for the first time, this morning, it completely blew me away.

And I'd give up forever to touch you
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
And sooner or later it's over
I just don't wanna miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in my lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
*********************************************

Originally released in 1998 it is a classic case of the slow-burn, sleeper, hit song. It certainly passes the all important live test and is currently at #37 in the UK chart having peaked at #5 in recent weeks. Certain of my ugliest prejudices were brought to the fore when I learnt that the reason for this re-emergence was a feature on Britain's Got Talent. You'd have to be very hard-skinned not to be moved by this performance though !

Finally - If you want to know who I am, or who you are, or who anyone is - this book is the best explanation I've found: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - By Alan Watts