As the shock subsides, peace arises. Last night I read some chapters from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. If we are to believe the extensive labyrinth of the afterlife according to the Buddhist tradition, you are somewhere in the Bardo for the next 39 days Mark.Your presence is fading from my house. I don't even want to try to summon you back. How selfish to try to keep you tied to me. I've set you free now to dance over the sparkling treetops, young, agile and carefree again.
Sadly our time together feels like a dream, a beautiful romantic dream that I had; it doesn't seem real. If I didn't have the evidence, your clothes and shoes still strewn over my floor, I'd swear I'd fantasized this entire episode of my life.
The photos I've framed help me to remember you, to sanctify our love, to preserve and cherish it forever. Looking at your photos I smile and feel warm. I talk softly to you as I pass each one, my soul touching yours as our eyes meet again. My heart feels tender and sweet now. It is truly exquisite.
There are no more What Ifs.... no more If Onlys.....
Mourning is over and I will move on with life, keeping you safely caressed in my heartspace forever.
There will never be another like you in my life Mark. And to have loved each other like that was a rare and precious gift for us both. But you've moved on and I am still here, cursed with the affliction of that gift. I'll never settle for less than that pure, powerful, ecstatic and mutual love again.
The fire in my heart is burning brighter than ever now.
Beware whoever dares to come close, you will be set alight.
In "The Psychology of Romantic Love" Dr Robert Johnson explains the fallacy of our romantic notion that there is another person on this earth who can fulfil us beyond our wildest dreams, a person with whom we can experience this wild and ecstatic love for which we yearn. But real people are damaged human beings and will never be able to provide or live up to that ideal for us.
Beware whoever dares to come close, you will be set alight.
In "The Psychology of Romantic Love" Dr Robert Johnson explains the fallacy of our romantic notion that there is another person on this earth who can fulfil us beyond our wildest dreams, a person with whom we can experience this wild and ecstatic love for which we yearn. But real people are damaged human beings and will never be able to provide or live up to that ideal for us.
We are continually being disappointed if we seek divine love in our human relationships.
The ecstatic love we deeply yearn for can only be found in our ultimate connection with the Divine.
"I tear at my shirt with every breath
for the extent of joy and ecstasy of being in love
Now he has become all my being and I am only a shirt."
...Rumi
Yoga and meditation practice will settle back into my life soon, perhaps when I return to work on 4th January. I am even considering doing a three day yoga workshop with Glenn Ceresoli in mid January. Not sure why...not thinking very clearly...will investigate my motivation before I decide if it might be useful.
"I tear at my shirt with every breath
for the extent of joy and ecstasy of being in love
Now he has become all my being and I am only a shirt."
...Rumi
Yoga and meditation practice will settle back into my life soon, perhaps when I return to work on 4th January. I am even considering doing a three day yoga workshop with Glenn Ceresoli in mid January. Not sure why...not thinking very clearly...will investigate my motivation before I decide if it might be useful.
These past few months had spun me out of the orbit of my spiritual practices and into a tangential dimension of ecstatic love and union with another soul. The mystical aspect of this union was evident from the moment we met.
What isn't evident yet is the impact of your death on the rest of my life, the lesson to be learned and the reason it had to happen...
4 comments:
I am sorry for your loss, if anything I feel companionship, I mourn too, for the passing of my dad who went in April of this year. I wish I could say the mourning is over, but for me it is not, it continues, dont know if it will end or when... but I find that doing what you do, remembering him, looking at pictures, praying for him helps.
When my dad died I also read the Tibetan book of the Dead to him, when I finished, a bee that was flying around in the house (strange enough) hit me on the head, then she or he died on the floor... I heard that the bees are a symbol of reincarnation and I knew right there that it helps the dead to read them this book... especially now, in the first 39 days like you say.
Sending you healing light :-) may Mark be happy and in bliss wherever he is
I'm so very sorry, N.
Hugs.
I feel your fulness, know that emptiness encompasses all this. The 3- day yoga workshop may be just the spark to light those glowing embers.
enjoying the unknown & the known. So fragile yet so strong.
Dear Sally Jane...,
Wandering Angus will be with you always in your heart and mind and no one can ever take that from you. Falling as you have from such an intensity of close to overwhelming love you have caught yourself.
Rest in the love of the Divine for it is this love that is immutable.
Then, to quote Robert Johnson, The Psychology of Romantic Love, "We need individuality and we also need relationship to a particular person. We can't have one at the expense of the other; no man can be fully an individual unless he is fully related"
So, Sally Jane take care not to rest solely with the love of the Divine and allow human love into your life when it feels right.
It's unlikely ever to set you're heart on fire as the passion Sally Jane and Mark Abbott held for each other, none the less a " small heart fire" of human love is much easier to manage than the marvelously intoxicating ecstatic full force heart fire you've shared with Mark Abbott.
One can only say, better to have loved with such intensity and passion, than not to have loved at all.
Namaste
PS May the journey in the Bardos of Mark Abbott lead to a less painful next incarnation so you both re-unite into each others arms in your next life.
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