Spiritual Impulses in Rock and Pop Music Lyrics
To me, Shelter from the Storm highlights the contrast between the material world with all its struggles and suffering, and the realm of the immortal soul. The latter invites us constantly to enter.
I count Bob Dylan's Abandoned Love among his love songs that invite to a spiritual perspective. The love to be abandoned may be earthly ties and the ego.
Bob Dylan’s Shelter from the Storm, to me, signifies two fields of life: on the one hand, our well-known world of opposites, struggles, and desperation, and on the other hand the world of the living soul. I see a path described in the song from experiencing the borderline in our physical world up to a new state of being, based on the immortal soul.
This video interpretation of Leonard Cohen's Avalanche sees the song as the Divine Soul within speaking to the human seeker.
Listening to Leonard Cohen's Avalanche, I used to feel uneasy, at the mercy of a power beyond my scope. Now I see it as crucial advice on a spiritual path.
Dylan received a lot of criticism for his Christian period. Here, we look at “Saving Grace” from a spiritual perspective – a song released in 1980 on side two of “Saved”, the second album of the so-called “Christian Trilogy”. Its predecessor was “Slow Train Coming” in 1979, its successor “Shot of Love” in 1981.
It was not long ago that I became aware of the spiritual context of Bob Dylan's Senor - even though I had regarded Love in Vain from the same 1978 Street Legal album as very spiritual for a long time.
Love songs are well suited to relate to several levels of understanding: from erotic references to the longing for a companion, a soul mate, up to inner processes of soul and spirit that use worldly love merely as an analogy.
It is a crucial moment for a seeker to realize: Nothing in this world can satisfy my deepest longing. I have reached the border - time to embark on a new path.
In Love Minus Zero / No Limit, Dylan abstracts from the trials and tribulations of human relationships, and points to a higher level of purity.