Ha!  I’ve wanted to write about this for years … and I have no idea what to say!

I just stared at the sentence above for ten seconds and started laughing.  Usually when I write, I have a vague idea of what I want to accomplish, but not today.  My words will be deeply within “I don’t know” and quite possibly irrelevant to many folks.  And I don’t care.  Something is pulling me towards this topic and who am I to resist?

I’m looking at my coffee cup on Anne and Ihor’s dining room table.  They’re my B&B hosts in Toronto.  I know things.  I know that there’s “coffee cup” here, and right beside it “no coffee cup”.  That’s the way the entire world works, isn’t it?  Well, maybe.

Some folks say that the universe is endless.  What in God’s name does that mean?  How can there be something where there’s no inside and no outside?  More on that later.

Being an inquisitive type, and totally enamoured with Google, I launched myself onto the Internet to seek answers to this mystery of life.

Where does the universe end, and what is it surrounded by?

“I think everyone should try to be the next person who comes up with the theory everyone ridicules, just like half of the big names in science in the past.”

“The Hindi Upanishads say that the universe is infinite.”

“Peanut butter”

“It’s anyone’s guess.”

“I recommend you find a nice spot away from the city and the lights, have a cup or glass of your favorite drink, look at the night sky and reach your own conclusions.  Who knows?  You might find a new perspective, a new glass for humans to look through.”

“The universe is expanding into nothing.  Can our brains comprehend nothing?”

“Mindblowing endless nothingness”

“It’s totally irrelevant.  It as nothing to do with your happiness or personal progress.  Waste of precious time.”

“If the universe is defined as everything that’s exists anywhere, what could be beyond it?  What is not a thing?  Is a thought, a ghost, a soul, a spirit or a god a thing?”

“Perhaps beyond our universe is just an infinite amount of other universes occupying an infinite amount of space.”

“We humans just don’t want to accept something that never ends in any direction.  That’s because our entire lives involve things with beginnings and endings.”

“Kinda crazy thing to comprehend, huh?”

“The universe ends outside of the Milky Way, and then it becomes Mars bars.”

“Everything has to start and end somehow and somewhere.”

“Nobody knows, and that I know as a fact.  Please don’t write back with some scientific answer.  There is not one.  The End.”

***

All righty then.  Contemplating the end of the universe feels like a Zen koan.  Unanswerable by the rational mind.  So what can I let go into that will allow me to sit peacefully with endlessness?  What has no beginning and no end?  Is there a state of consciousness that is timeless and spaceless, eternal in the sense of being beyond time rather than “a very long time”, everywhere in the sense of beyond the idea of locations rather than including all locations?

Is it possible that the infinities that I occasionally touch within my mind mirror the infinity of the universe?  Is there something in my head that indeed has no beginning and no ending and is totally consistent with an endless universe?

Gosh .. I guess anything’s possible.  What would my life be like if I let these unformed thoughts escape from their corral and pour through the fences I’ve erected, to embrace an unknown that mostly I can’t conceive of?  What would be unleashed in me if I welcomed such freedom despite the likely admonitions of my fellow man and woman?

Perhaps I’ll set off to find out.