More To Life Magazine

The crystal, starry skies across the Northern hemisphere hold a mystical secret.  In the dead of night, before the dawn breaks and reality comes streaming in to the dreamy worlds of Earth’s sleepy inhabitants, Mother Nature displays her unearthly showmanship with a circus of lights.

Looking up, those who have made the spiritual pilgrimage to experience this magical wonder, bare witness to the old, familiar sky, morphing before their very eyes into something seen only in fairytales. The sky becomes awash with serpentine ribbons of green, curtains of blue and glowing sheets of red, intertwining in an elegant wave of colour, shimmering like sunlight, delicately reflected in a dancing river of darkness.  The glowing streams of bright lights settle like mist over a meadow, halting for a moment, allowing their onlookers to take in the breathtaking abnormality of the event, before casually waltzing once more between the stars, still twinkling, visible amongst the entanglement of ghostly lights. Red shots of lightening shoot across the atmosphere and up beyond the sky, seeming to return home, back to the ethereal land they emerged from.  Then, without warning, the lights fade. Darkness pervades,  and the show is over until next time. Without a doubt, the Northern Lights are a feast for the eyes, for the mind, and for the spirit.

Although the experience of seeing the Northern Lights can equate, for some people, to a spiritual experience,  the Northern Lights, otherwise known as Aurora Borealis, (or Aurora Australis in their southern counterpart) can be explained by scientific principle. Scientists believe that the phenomenon is caused by charged particles from the sun, carried by a solar wind, entering into the Earth’s magnetic field. The particles then collide together, causing solar storms. In turn, the storms create what is known as auroras, which appear in our atmosphere, the night sky, as huge beams of light.

In this age of science and technology, scientists claim that they have many of the answers to questions that once burned unanswered in the hearts of people all over the world. We no longer live in a world where myths and historical tales rein true in our everyday understanding of the world around us. Rather, we depend on thoroughly thought out hypothesis and tried and tested methodology to bring us conclusive results, definite answers, which then shape how we each experience and perceive the world around us. Of course, with scientific breakthrough arrives the opportunity for us to take control of situations and manipulate what we are faced with. We only have to look around at all the modern science surrounding us each day to realise that we have became extremely dependent on the world of science and technology and its power to conquer circumstance. Without scientific conclusions, there would be no proven medical advancements, computers, cars, or indeed any logical basis for the majority of things we experience daily.

I can’t help feeling, though, that our advancements are breeding a kind of arrogance amongst humans, who were once mere cavemen, intuitively rubbing sticks together to make fires. We are continuously learning factually, in place of this intuition, taking new things on board with not a glimpse of doubt. Mankind craves the power to manipulate fate. Look at global warming as an example; all this time we have been coming up with fantastic solutions to our everyday dilemmas, making faster cars, cheaper flights, more factories, constantly generating more power to mankind, but at the same time, naively destroying our Earth, our only home.

We have forgotten how it feels to be human, beneath the ego of our advancements. We have neglected the simplicity of our existence. Amongst all the laws of legislation, rules for all manner of things which we have enforced upon each other, lies a power which has always been, and always will be transcendent in a way we can never be- the wild, unpredictable forces of nature.

If I stand in an open field, alone, my long hair allowed to rest upon my shoulders, it will begin to move in the breeze. If I decide that it is making me cold, cover my head and put on a hat and scarf, the wind will quiver the material. The wind exists as a separate entity to me. I cannot capture it in my hands, I cannot roll it up and hold it, I cannot manipulate my vision see it, and I cannot cower away from it, and that is what makes me feel human. I co-exist with nature, in beautiful simplicity.

The Northern Lights are a natural occurrence, incapable of being induced. We cannot predict when they appear, or how long they will last- we must wait for them.  They serve as a reminder that we can’t control everything with science and technology- there is more to life than what we have created. Like a mighty goddess in the sky above us, the Northern Lights force us humans to fall back into our places when we wait at her beck and call to witness her transcendent natural beauty, at her discretion. Experiences like seeing the Northern Lights are not always merely scientific- they allow us to feel human once more. We can connect with what it means to be at risk, to be vulnerable to the universe, to be spiritual, intuitive beings who cannot always pioneer their own fate with their own intelligence.

By Lisa Davies