Passing through the valley of the shadow: visionary art and poetry

Passing Through The Valley Of The Shadow is visionary art combined with poetry.  The music provided by YouTube and Bill Canino combine to do a really good job along with the images.

The art is an expression of a quest for an understanding of 'Being' and what it means to find oneself 'Being'.  After all, here we are all headed to the charnel house. Don't you have a few questions?

Upon the realization that life itself is a deathtrap some ask themselves "WTF?  I mean how is it I have to die?"  Before long the materialist answers no longer provide a satisfactory answer to the questioner who knows in his gut that life is not meaningless but that a life that ends in death is indeed ultimately meaningless. Not the living of the life, but life itself must be seen as diminished in value if it must end.  At this point spiritual options are able to step in and fill in the gaps and unsuitable limitations the materialist paradigm places on the human ability to encounter, describe and experience reality.

  
Religion has given spiritual knowledge a bad rap. Religions provide answers and the one who receives the answers is supposed to 'believe' them. I've found such a program not only useless but harmful.

On the other hand the spiritual path is not a group venture.  We do not approach the Holy City as a happy singing bunch of identical cloned saints.  Instead the Spiritual journey is solitary and the encounter with the spiritual is personal and the reason for this is so that you can 'hear' if something is 'spoken'.  Following are some words for the seeker from the Buddha:

  "Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.

If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool." 

From Chapter 5 verses 60 and 61 of The Dhammapada Translated from Pali by F. Max Muller.

The purpose of the spiritual quest is a quest for the knowledge of the meaning of ones own existence.  Once that knowledge is acquired one is able to proceed without fear.  This is not the same as belief in a standard theological answer.  Yes you will believe the knowledge, but only because you know it is true.  That is not the same as religious belief which is mainly comprised of answers someone has given you to questions you have asked. Such a practice is like cheating on a test except you can't pass that way.