Mike, because I learn so much from you and trust and respect you so much I am always surprised that our parallel experiences occasionally twist and turn in a way where I do not understand you at all. I don’t think I feel abandoned by you, even on my worst days. I know what you mean when you say Jane saved your life by helping you find the courage to leave. I imagine you feeling terribly trapped in a home that felt like it was suffocating you, every day. And you stayed for a while, out of guilt? Obligation? Fear? I have been there before; Loren calls it “giving in”; When you sit in someone else’s sickness, although it torments you every moment, in order to take care of them. It drives you not only into pain but into unconsciousness. How can that be good? Of what use are you to anyone if you are as confused by your aching as the person you are loyally trying to help? I am not asking you to have “given in”, to have stayed and worked things out. I don’t want that, but I want you to know that taking care of each other doesn’t have to cost us anything. For people that are looking to know themselves, the allure of martyrdom can wrestle with the inexperienced. But this behavior is an incorrect shadowing (or a misinterpretation) of those great people who found themselves before us. I still do not know what you meant when you said that honesty is not of the highest value. I will tell you what I mean when I say that it is: When we move through the world, operating from the deepest, most genuine parts of ourselves (or in other words when we live honestly) ‘taking care’ of the people around us is a natural consequence. It does not take effort. It is the only thing that makes sense for us to do and it actually gives us energy because it strengthens our submission to the flow of things. “To give is better than to receive” is not a moral saying. It describes the state where there is no wanting for the self. Why is there no wanting? Because you realize that you already have everything you need. You are whole on your own. And you see, all around you, how people keep themselves from this very simple, very natural state. You see how people hold themselves down. It becomes very clear and it’s a very natural thing to do to point them in a direction that may help them climb out of it. You may know what I mean and feel that you cannot ‘achieve’ (as you might put it, haha) this state, which I am assuming still looks to you like goodness, like the opposite of selfishness. It is selflessness in a very literal sense. It is to be without self. Or to be without believing in self. And it has nothing to do with a choice to be good. At some point the choice to be good becomes a barrier to your connection with ‘god’.
I know I said things boldly to you on the phone and I hope that my own softness did not escape you. And believe me when I say that I think of you and feel soft. Your pain is my pain and whether I would wish that or not, it always will be. When I appear to be impatient with you it is only because it is clear to me that you are off course. It is still hard for me to understand why you or anyone would find avoidance to be the least painful solution to your losses. As I said before, the avoidance of these issues has created a murky mess, far more painful than the truth could ever be. But choosing to face things is not about feeling better (although that is coming). It is about choosing life over staleness. I am so happy that you “abandoned” your family. I am so happy that you found yourself, even when it meant somehow letting me go. You are mistaken if you think that I am being brave; No I am only being honest. This is my only wish for you; that you will stay close to your soul. Which is why I ask you now, why you would go through all of that pain only to turn your back on yourself again? When you feel pain, smile at it. Are you sure that it hurts? Mike, you do not have to fear it; Honesty is the least frightening of places. I am here for you, whether in your mind you have abandoned me or not; and not in order to be good or to take the high road over your low (and I do not believe that things are this way) but because this is the way that the moments are unraveling. The moment is where my loyalties lye. And for that reason you can feel confident that you will always have me.
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