A Timeless Spring.
I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do teaches all the universe.
~ACIM 54:19
Recently, I visited my friend Mark’s mom, Arlene. Mark died while he was running a few months ago. He was a 56-year-old, fit, conscious father of three, and Arlene’s only son. As you can imagine, his death was earth-shattering.
“My world has stopped,” was the text I found from her when I woke. I dropped onto the corner of my bed staring at the words in disbelief.
We sat in her high-rise apartment, drinking coffee, and looking at photos while reminiscing and sharing insights about Mark – what he meant to her, his character, and the strong bond they shared. I filled in the gaps with collagen stories of our friendship in High School, how we reconnected during our investigation into non-duality, and how this sparked a friendship of the Heart/Mind, called Citta.
As we did, I grabbed a pistachio macaron and scanned around the room, admiring the beautiful objects along its walls and edges – gravures, watercolors, sculptures, and the Lalique pieces that I recognized from my years at Bloomies. The George Washington Bridge was in the figure-ground beyond her balcony.
“There was a time when I thought all these things had value,” Arlene said. “I even tried to give some of it to Mark a few years ago, but he wasn’t interested. Now, it all means nothing. I don’t even know any of it is here.”
I was awakened by the reality of her observation - that objects are simultaneously and continuously reborn - animated - as we become available to engage with new meaning, when we can navigate the world with new eyes.
Arlene’s “world stopped”. She was no longer interested in its objects or objectives - was experiencing the world through a veil of grief … lost the sense of herself as its subject.
This is how perspective works - we see what’s most important, what we believe, and what we most desire. We see what we want to be true or what we don’t want to be true. We see what we want to prove and what we want to disprove. Regardless, when we are gripped by belief or disbelief, the effect is the same:
… amplification, separation, and loneliness.
A few days later, as I walked through my home fluffing pillows, lighting candles, and putting the finishing touches on the table for my party that night, I was aroused by the objects that adorned my walls and shelves – objects from our travels and precious experiences that held within them trustworthy, and often painful pearls of wisdom.
I touched the statue of Ishtar (and was reminded of Oppression), which was placed on the Anthology of Jane Austin (Suppression), and then looked above at the Tonga depicting Buddha’s Awakening (Liberation). I understood that they came together to tell a story - an ancient, Eternal, Holy Story of Lament and Awakening - one told in many languages and ways, and which contained many characters, all of whom appeared different, but who had much in common: the sacred dance of birth and death - Genesis and Thanatos.
A sense of wonder rose inside to ask, “What would it take for all of this to mean nothing — a loss of faith? A loss of hope? A loss of memory - of interest?”
A chill went up my spine. Cancel! Cancel!
Sympathizing and comparing with Arlene’s pain objectified and dishonored the devastation of her reality. What this moment was asking for was empathy and compassion - to allow grief to quietly rest and then to remember the feeling of devastation in my body - to remember its effects on the transfiguration of hope, faith, and desire when it comes to:
the Objects in my World,
my Thoughts about Life,
and the Subject of this life called I Am.
Hope is the desire to become what you believe.
If we believe that what we desire is not here, then we spend most of our life (hoping) looking outside this moment to be realized; or, as in the experience of grief, we spend most of our attention trapped inside this sorrow of what is no longer possible.
Hope is embedded within the child physically, spiritually, and soulfully.
When we’re separated from them - when we’re unable to protect them, or when our child is harmed or dies - we’re shunned from faith, kept in a constant state of hope (for what is no longer possible), and lose interest in the world.
When children are harmed - those physically alive - born onto the earth, and those unborn but metaphysically alive within our inner psyche - we lose the vision to see a better world.
You can see the import of this singular understanding – how our child carries a wound that has the potential of hope embedded within it, and how disconnected we become from its healing effects when we lose touch with our (inner or outer) child.
We are no longer forgiving. And when we are unable to forgive, we put our faith in the objects of our beliefs - we worship the models that we want to sustain us and become over-identified with the body of ideas that have no sustenance or nourishment. We hurt ourselves.
And, when the objects around us lose all meaning or when that meaning is misaligned or maligned in ways that impede one’s freedom to choose, we lose our sense of meaning to others and no longer embody, are accountable to, or participate in life. We do not care for ourselves.
We are alive defending the life we lost, but something inside dies, feels broken, depressed or demands justice - limiting our empathy and compassion and keeping us from wonder and awe. We weaponize our despair.
Perhaps this is what Xenophon, the great Athenian Economist and Strategist meant when he said, “Grieving for the dead is madness, for life is for the living”.
We mourn the dead because we love them.
Because this love caused an awakening of presence in us that subdued all fear – soothed us, and made us forget and forgive. But the gravity of grief is great when the ones we love are gone and fear is once again unattended, and when we believe that the love we felt was taken from us - that the life that made us so alive and vital, gave us value and worth.
No longer empowered by “what” we can trust, these thoughts no longer serve us. That’s when confusion, anger, and betrayal rise, and when resentment awakens, and when reason demands someone or something or some behavior to blame. Because this pain of not having them near and this feeling of being emptied of their love, is too much to bear - so much that we must give it over to another.
The way I was struggling today as my dear friend shared the uncompromising chaos and fear surrounding her Auntie’s death, and why and how it affected everyone around that was called to be witness to her passing.
Every encounter with death, when we resist, is a double-edged sword.
In this way, death forces us to think about our morality and mortality – our lives, our choices, our experiences, and our beliefs. Once aware of these relationships, nothing can disturb us.
This doesn’t mean that your heart stops aching, or that your body isn’t seeking, or that your eyes are not in disbelief, or that the mind is able to be calm, or that life will not feel hard.
These things are happening and are very real and visceral.
But now, aware, we can be still for it, allow all the emotions of disbelief, anger and anxiety to wash through us - to hold, cleanse, and forgive, bring us to the well of our being. However, we must travel through grief before we give it over to God, rise again, and be restored.
Isn’t this what is calling to the world?
… to be passionate with this sacred life - this holy moment of lament? We don’t know when we are going to leave this earth. In this way, we’re all the same.
When we forget our sameness, we are doomed to wander in discontent, follow others, and seek answers in models that do not include ourselves or dis-include others, circumventing compassion in favor of comparison.
When we remember, we see ourselves as we are, without preference, and we become vibrant and vital to the awakening of others.
Not directly by preaching, but indirectly by embodying the qualities that make us Eternal.