Sitting on a tree stump alongside a trail near the lake, memories of time spent with a dear friend returned vividly to mind. Walking quietly and reverently along the trail with him, absorbing the glowing exhalation of nature. Talking about dharma with an innocent, elated hope in a beautiful future, with trust in the way of things. Inspecting leaves and berries as though we lived in the forest. I missed him so much.
Following those memories like a swarm of angry wasps was everthing that brought those moments to an end, events I have scarcely touched with my thoughts for their tenderness and pain. We all have them. Things we cannot think about. Mental images we cannot allow to take full form. When they surface, even the good memories get stored in some holding cell awaiting the day when I can contemplate them without grief.
I am approaching a time when I can address the grief more truly and deeply. Enough time has passed.
Looking out into the network of trees and ground cover, sitting on the same log where I once draped my bliss-filled body beside him, tilted back my head until I was upside down, and touched the leaves behind me in wordless luminosity, I prayed. Open this up, this knot of buried torment, and let it unfold and be gone and done, and let me feel the beauty again, fully. Wake me up again to the beauty I saw in this person when I was unafraid of anything, when I trusted the universe, when I felt taken care of by the divine, and it didn’t matter what he did or where he went, because all I thought about was how his well being mattered to me and made me happy. Remind me of the days when I prayed for him to meet someone who could love him in ways that I could not. Remind me that I asked for that, and let the excruciating pain be uncovered and dissolved. I asked for a catharsis.
A few hours later, an old friend called pleading for help. Her life was falling apart. I drove her to a park where we talked. Somewhere amid the long conversations about thought and energy, she mentioned that she had met his new partner, and his new partner had joined the sangha where I once belonged. Ouch.
The knot of torment opened and began to unfold. Ah, there it is, laid out bare in front of me, raw. For the first time in many months, I could look at it and experience it. And it really hurt.
I just let it hurt, and as the hurt blossomed, I looked inside it, and very slowly, the sting began to ebb, and I sensed the good things, the very good amazingly wonderful things, enshrouded in it. I remembered all the times he held my hand and told me how much he loved me, and I remembered all the times he said he would always be there. The memories flashed through my mind without effort, not as reassurances. I didn’t need reassurance. Simply, I hadn’t been able to accept those intimate connections when I saw him as a source of pain. But now, I could feel my heart opening.
Late into the night, I held the painful memories lightly, continued to look at them cautiously, and prodded them gently. Why did it hurt so much? I couldn’t get around it. Mental images I wanted out of my head. I couldn’t get around them! So painful.
I prayed again, asking the universe to help me find the path out of that suffering.
Two seconds later, I found myself ruminating about the fact that my housekeeper took my sewing machine without first negotiating a sale price. That bothered me. Suddenly, I realized that I was ruminating about the sewing machine in the same way and with virtually the same intensity as my former love’s partnership. With my housekeeper, that is just the sort of thing I know how to let go. I know how to stop worrying about things just like that. I can relax. I just remind myself that people cannot really cause me harm. Everything that happens to me is governed far more by my relationship to the universe than by dog-eat-dog rules of survival or the seemingly mechanistic contraints of the apparent physical world. This is not my philosophical worldview. This is my repeated observation.
I was also reminded of an exchange with someone I once knew in which I asked if he had forgiven me for a wrong. He had not. I imagine the wrong was simply something he could not put out of his mind. The capacity to rise above those things that stick in the mind is a crucial element of forgiveness. And, that is something I am really good at. I know how to forgive. I will forgive every time. Seventy times seven. I think forgiveness is the heart of grace, and grace is the path to our divine nature. Forgiveness touches and inspires me. I never realized how much forgiveness is related to healing the hurts we experience in relationships. They are very similar processes.
Both of these passing trains of thought allowed me to understand the nature of my painful memories and map a pathway out using skills I already had. Forgiveness, letting go, and overlooking people’s mistakes, these are relevant to healing the sort of buried pain that hurts every time it enters one’s mind. They are also things I have learned to do well in some domains of life, but I hadn’t applied those skills to my buried pain. My wandering mind was the very voice which spoke the answers to my prayers.
Listen to “your” thoughts when you’re seeking guidance. Even thoughts you seem to have originated yourself could be answers to the question you just asked. Sometimes, the divine speaks to you in your own inner voice.
As the knot of pain unfolded, I felt a presence I had blocked out, a connection I had stifled. Like nerves tingling after a limb falls asleep. There you are again! I reached out and imagined holding his hand.
The next thing that arose was the perinneal frustration that had plagued me throughout much of our relationship. Our bond was so intense that simply holding hands was immensely difficult. How can I put this? I wanted to throw myself all over him. All the time. I was insatiable. But I wasn’t really what he wanted. Holding back was excruciating. Feeling him tense up when my desires did not coincide with his was excruciating.
Oh dear, I thought. How do I handle that? Then it struck me. I had just spent more than three hours telling my old friend, the one who called me for help, that the stirring of energy within is something we can simply allow to flow. I had just told her over and over again, all night, that the physical realm was not the crux of our interpersonal experience, but rather the energy itself was our collective reality. I had discovered this lesson before. It is the sort of lesson I’ve had to discover many times, because it’s something that requires practice, the formation of a new habit.
So I just let it flow. It poured out of my heart like water gushing from a broken dam. It brought immense relief to my heart, and suddenly, naturally, I began contemplating how he was doing, wishing him well, wondering if he was happy. Just plain caring about him without such a preoccupation about how it might hurt me. I woke up again to the beauty I saw in him. And it didn’t hurt.
I write about it in order to remember the process, because I know it’s something I’ll need to practice. When the universe conspires to heal you and brings you across a great distance from one state to another, log your journey and give yourself the ability to retrace your steps. It is a path you may have to walk several times before you’ve worn the trail enough to slide smoothly from one end to the other.
