A Secret for Benny

I am going to tell you a secret.  

Truth does not need you to be its champion.  It will stand on its own, an endless ocean, and if you are lucky, you may become a sailor. If your goal in seeking truth is to share it with others you are wasting your time.  It is quite likely that no one you love and very few strangers will see it with you.  They will not grasp but the smallest piece of your honesty and even then they will believe in it instead of knowing it fully.  Also, they will fight you.  Many will fight you.  But as for truth, once you have uncovered enough of it, there will be no pain in seeing it alone.  And you will give effortlessly, because it is the only thing to do.  And you will never receive.  Never.  This will be the most natural state of things that you have ever experienced.  Trust the intelligence that vibrates through the most hollow caverns of your being.  There and only there, can you hear the voice of God.

We Do Not Need to Run From What We Love to find Solitude

I do not write to you as a friend, but as a voice to be heard for the sake of all that we both know is good.  

The more we awaken into being, the less possible it is to take anyone with us.  We are alone, which is only feared by the incomplete; those longing for the outside world to provide them with a point of arrival that will never come.   But I have seen so many turn this wisdom into loneliness, and how odd that it should ever be that way, because truly alone and lonely cannot occupy the same space.  They are natural opposites, unrecognized by one another.  Michael and I had a short email exchange this morning which brought to light many points that I believe you are struggling with fiercely and not in regards to me, but only in yourself as they pertain to everything you love and to everything that you find yourself unbearably attached. 

Sent: "Dear Michael,

I have been thinking a great deal about the kind and deeply helpful words you have offered me and I have used them to grow patient.  And as someone who shares so many words with others, I know not to assume that you live untroubled, without hovering over and occasionally being swallowed by the greatest sadness.   Your insight was born from this sadness (and then beauty) which is perhaps greater than my own.  When I told you that you have many friends who love you and would help you any time you asked, I did not mean to threaten your solitude.   I only meant that I understand you, that I respect you, and that I would and will protect your solitude, because as you already know, it is the most precious thing that you possess.   And so I am telling you something that does not need to be uttered but silence and words are indistinguishable when they arise from the same inner stillness, and I prefer to create.   I am aware and aware of you, and I thank you.

Love,

Jess"

Reply: "fuck solitude! destroy mine it is rooted in self. god lives in relationships.  i love you.  :)"

Our solitude should not push us away from the people we love.  Our constant work to let them go, to recognize their impermanence and the ways that we must remain separate, will send us floating back to them, lighthearted and free, and ready to embrace their light.  The foolish conflicts that may arise between friends may seem difficult to address.  And no doubt they will ruin us if we betray our commitment to solitude.   But to deny love is no accomplishment.  Our attachment to love is something to be worked through, by acknowledging that it is in us in whatever way circumstance may demand that we acknowledge it.  Perhaps we must be on our own to realize.  This was my need, and a journey that I must continue for now and to an unknown end; a journey that I am eternally grateful for.  But to you I might say something different, because I think you have yet to realize that the dreams you feel you are living everyday will remain incomplete without love; you who gain so much from choosing to love and allowing yourself to be loved.  There is nothing that keeps you apart from this love, other than yourself and your fear, and perhaps ideas that you trust but do not understand.  And you told me once that things take time to become complete...and that you felt that very slowly all that you loved was coming back to you where it belonged.  But things will take more time than we are allotted, and that divine completion will remain just out of reach until we end, if we do not do what is necessary for ourselves.  It is not always appropriate to do it alone.  There is so much that we must do alone and hopefully, we may 'practice' with those who also wish to do, and those whom we love so deeply and that love us so deeply that we are sworn to protect each other's solitude and when we have forgotten, all we need to do is remind each other.  I am surprised that you, of all people, would need to learn that being alone does not mean being away from the people you love, because you, in a certain respect, cling to people tightly.  And it is for this reason that you abandon them, and simultaneously abandon yourself in your effort to find personal power.  It is a wise move and a bold one, and so full of error.  And in desperation you seek relief through brief reconnection or new connection, that can only be as helpful as it is honest, which is not entirely.  And dear dear Rachel my words are meant to be useful and not to cut and you are free to do with them what you will.  Do not fear your love or your dreams or any way they may combine themselves.  And do not let your life pass you by so you become a sad story.  We will not always do things well, and we cannot expect this of anyone; not the ones we love and not ourselves.  But love is far more solid than the passing moments and our whims only hold so much truth.  And you do not have to face yourself alone, because so many are here, loving you.  

Jess       

Sorrow Is the Gift We Cannot Name

Dear Loren,
I hope that there is no heaviness in your heart and not from lack of reflection but from a well of it. 
This change in times may be passing you over, which I can only say would be the best of all possibilities if you really meant it.

I cannot pretend to know the purpose of sorrow. 
I imagine, if there is one, we are incapable of knowing its face. 
To find definitive purpose in anything would be a great game of pretending. 
But it is not on principle that I come to this conclusion; I have observed that purpose is a distraction from everything inward.

The gifts of sorrow have no name. 
They strip me down to the naked place I came from.
I approach sorrow as if I am its first inhabitant.  I know nothing.  I claim nothing but faith in its process.
 And if we do not trust the process, we have condemned ourselves to hell. 

When sorrow firmly grasps our throat; when it squeezes until our fear of death is actualized, let it be.
And be the unmoved river boulder, shaped by water's fierceness.
Our submission is the least passive of actions.   
It is, divine honesty. 

And here we find ourselves elevated into knowing.  With answers we did not expect and secrets that we cannot share.  And if you fear the loss of this sacred wisdom your mind is playing tricks on you.  It is whispering with a withering momentum, into a reality you use to trust.  Notice how it calls you.  And do not ask for what purpose. 

You have suffered enough. 
And now you know, that pain and purpose are those silly games we play; Their devastation real.  Their wounds received as truly as the soldier receives his injury.  But the fabric of their stories, once a web of iron, fade into a tapestry of cotton. 

And you are elevated; watching life play you out.

And perhaps you know this already, in its fullness.  I know at the least that you have known it before. 
But this is a reminder to not waste any time not knowing it fully.

If you fear more than you claim to and if you are lost more than a declaration of independence from me will allow you to admit to yourself, have faith in the process and observe it deeply.  You are not too busy and your heart is not too hectic.

And of all people, I know you are capable.

Jess

Letting Go of What We Must

To my loved one,

I would never want you to betray your alignment with life.  It is, after all, the only source of true love and our shared commitment to this alignment has been the reason that our love has run so deep and been so profound. 

Over the past few days I have been wondering what could be said between us.  

I think many things, helpful things, if we were ready to say them.  But you are not and the pain I feel reading this makes me feel that I am not either.  I accept this and it hurts, terribly.  

I do not know much about love either.

I know that what you have said here reflects our lack of communication, because you feel asked of in ways that I have not asked.  You feel that I feel I cannot farm without you or not live without you?  I know the sadness of the past has been confusing.  

Rilke said:  "I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people:  that each protects the solitude of the other." When I think about true love between two people conquering all, this is what I think of.  It does not look like commitment and as my father said it is not passionate or messy.  I am sorry that you find yourself in the clutches of guilt and avoidance.  If that is all you can see when you think of me, no doubt there is a need for separation.  My decision to keep my distance from you has not been based on anything but this same need for separation.  If I cannot enjoy I must accept and if I cannot accept I must stop.  This is, the hardest thing I have ever done.  This experience has brought to light, the most unexplored destructive patterns within both of us.  The only 'mistake' I can imagine you making in any of this is to ignore what is happening when that pattern arises in you.  I feel you teetering on the edge of that.  I have been teetering too...and gone over.  You were not ready for that; you could not find the light in me then, of course.  The ability to love on that level is one that we cannot choose.  It must be gifted to us, and it is a beautiful consequence of moving in perfect alignment with life.  Last night I was thinking about you and I realized something.  I wanted to call you and tell you about the blossoming romance between Joseph and me.  I noticed that this is a habit that I must let go of and it is not important.  And I explored the feeling more and found something else in myself.  "I love you like I love the sun.".  You said this to me one morning last semester.  This is how I love you.  This is how I will always love you.  I lay in bed and thought about not talking to you for 60 years and realized that I would love you the same at the end of that time.  And that on the eve of my death I would have words for you and they would be "Thank you for being.  I love you like I love the sun,".  That will never change for me.  And if you are not there at my side when I die, I will still say those words to you.  And that will be enough. This experience is not tragic or a mistake.  It is an opportunity, an opening. I truly believe that you will 'stay the course'.  On the most human of levels, I find the incredible warmth of comfort in that thought.   

I love you,

Jesse

The Loss of our Beloved

I have recently had to part with someone I love very much.  When we last spoke, there were things left unsaid and unexplored.  I told my loved one that the time to speak was now.  They were not ready, and we parted ways, aware that the time to speak may never come.

Lately I have been surrounded by people who have recently been separated from a loved one through the end of a relationship or even death.  I have witnessed an incredible sense of urgency in these people and in myself.  This urgency, this energy, this desire to fix and mend, is often directed towards the situation instead of towards our own inner restlessness.

This morning when I woke up, the first thing I wanted to do was write my loved one about the failings I had discovered in their relationship to time.  Their fears, their missteps had become clear to me, and with the greatest love for them I wished to share this immediately so that they may become free of it.  And maybe I will share it some day, even soon.  But I realized that I had not addressed my own failings.  My email, because of the incredible desire in me to speak to my friend, would have been desperate.  However faintly I could sense this desperation, it was in me.  I realized that my focus should be inward.  And so this letter to my blog is me stepping back, letting things be.

What did I mean when I told my loved one that the time is now?  I meant that the time for "knowing" is now.  The time for alignment with life is now.  I made the mistake of thinking that my ability to move with life depended on my loved one.

In this world it is 'normal' to see other people, other places, other circumstances as the source of our joy.  For me, only when I have been forced to stand still in the face of loss, have I been able to see that the source of all the joy I have ever felt, is my own inward stillness.  And I have not just "been able" to see this.  I have been left with no choice, because to carry on any other way would mean choosing to live in hell.

There is no denying that my heart contains the deepest sorrow.  It is there, inside my chest, with a weight that feels immeasurable.  And it will come and go as it pleases.  I am here to watch it wax and wane.  To nurture it with a gentle touch and a well of patience.          

I am here breathing in and out.  I don't know why, but I am here.