Ever since my Christianity failed me, I've been searching for a new spiritual idiom.  Here's a recent one I thought up that I really like. 

They say that there are four states of matter;  solid, liquid, gas and plasma.  Are there really just 4, or do we only know about 4?

What if a new state of matter is composed of what we know as the spiritual?  Maybe it's what's left when the conjectured Higgs particle is removed.  Maybe it's all the dark matter in the universe, as opined by Philip Pullman in his "His Dark Materials" series.  

Imagine a universe suffused with a spiritual sea.  Every individual who has ever existed came from the spiritual sea.  The part of the spiritual plasma residing in an individual is almost completely cut off from the spiritual sea by the incessant noise of sensual experience.  This allows for new experiences and growth of the spiritual sea.

 

When the noise of the senses ceases in death the spiritual plasma, enhanced by a lifetime of sensual experience, returns to the spiritual sea.  There, there is no individual but perfect sharing in a unified consciousness.  This is a concept which I see as similar to the extreme joy of the traditional concept of heaven.

Individuals constantly precipitate out of the spiritual sea into the temporal and evaporate back into it, like the rain.  Chaotically, bits of our spirit join bits of others' spirits and this raindrop of reincarnation falls into the temporal world as a new individual.  The cycle repeats and the spiritual sea grows. 

Yeah, I made this all up.  But I really find it believable because of all those times that thoughts and inspirations have come to me, and I can't think of any of my own experiences that would have given me such insight.  I think those times mark occasions when the raindrop of spirituality, that is me, somehow extricates itself from my senses and communes with the spiritual sea.