The Tower of Song

Over the years I have enjoyed listening to the songs written and sung by the now-late Leonard Cohen. At a major concert in London, England he performed a song called ‘The Tower of Song’, one of his popular writings.

The lyrics are basically getting old and seeing someone loved across the river from the Tower. The Tower of Song is a mythical place where all old singers go to die.

‘Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places where I used to play…’

‘I’m standing by the window where the light is strong… Now you can say I am bitter, but of this, you may be sure; I see you standing on the other side. I loved you baby way back when, and all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed. Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song…’

 In the background the chorus is singing, ‘Do dum de dum dum, do dum de dum dum’.

Coming to the end of the song Cohen confides to the audience, that while singing this song he experienced an understanding of the secret of what life is all about, and asks: ‘Do you want to know the secret?’

‘Yes!’!

‘Do you really want to know the secret?’

YES’

‘The secret is… do dum, de dum dum”

Why do we think there should be any secret to life, it is the second question everyone asks sometimes during their life. The first is always ‘Who or what am I?’ Both questions never are rarely answered with any conviction.

Is it not unusual that when someone turns one hundred years old they are always asked: What is the secret of a long life?’ And most answers have little depth of understanding.

Why should there be any depth, and why not ‘do dum, de dum dum’? Actually, it does not matter how long you live because there is no secret to life; everything just happens, and your body passes on. No secret!

It is only ignorance, vanity, and fear that people expect some undisclosed secret for being, such as being important or doing something great, and it is all illusion.

We come to the Earth and a body to learn and understand how to Be, and accept whatever happens. We do not have any great power to mould a world for our happiness, something we will never experience.

We are here to be and express the Light we truly are, and that does not require greatness, but just being Life.

So, why not do dum, de dum dum?


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