My year ended with the strange task of breaking up with someone I was not in a relationship with.  I watched him cycle through states of mind that I have experienced myself in his shoes.

One mind, or one dimension of the mind, begins to strategize, planning and scheming in a cloud of pain and loneliness that borders on manipulation.  This mind is so focused on finding the right buttons to push and all the right words to say that would make another person do what it wants that the well being of the other person is lost from attention.  Not that it ceases to matter.  The strategizing simply pushes it out, but it still exists.

Is there anyone or any part of any being that would not value and treasure the well being of another, all things being equal?  Beneath any machinations of the mind is nothing but pure love.  One way of finding this place of pure love is to try eliminating each desperate coil of thought that grows in the wake of loss.  More powerful is the simple mediation: I love you anyway. There is nothing… nothing… that cannot fall under the umbrella of “anyway.”

The hardest “anyways” are:

• You hurt me on purpose?  I love you anyway.
• You don’t love me?  I love you anyway.
• You don’t want my affections?  I love you anyway.
• I caused you unforgivable pain?  I love you anyway.
• I cannot tell you face-to-face that I love you?  I love you anyway.
• I will never see you again?  I love you anyway.
• Nothing will ever come of this?  I love you anyway.
• Mercury is retrograde?  I love you anyway.  (I’m kidding.  I threw that one in for fun.  If I can write and defend a doctoral thesis when Mercury is in retrograde, I can do anything.)

At the end of all this, when the mind has exhausted itself with excuses and reasons for shrouding the pure love, one cannot help but plummet into it, and the first thing one discovers is that no ‘I’ loves.  Only love loves.  There is no personal investment in the love you feel for the other person.  It does not even feel like a feeling towards someone.  Rather, one’s pure awareness is simply privy to the existence of the other, and as it holds the other in awareness, the well being of the other is cherished and desired.  Without words.  Without strategy.  With only some silent movement like an incessant current pushing eternally towards the sea of infinite, deep, all encompassing well being.

Another dimension of the mind, which seems to take over after all strategizing has failed, is engaged in creating elaborate mental images of the other person and the situation.  So much of this imagery is based on assumptions.  When in pain, the last thing one is inclined to do is keep an open mind.  An open mind is more often the privilege of states of joy.  In pain, we want to know everything, and what we cannot know, we fill in.

The stickiest assumption of a mind in pain is that one does not matter to the other person, and they do not love you.  My mother recently spent numerous days in the hospital helping a dear friend through her long recovery from surgery.  Other than nurses and doctors, my mother was the only person attending to her friend.  Her friend was so medicated, however, that she did not remember that my mother had ever entered the room much less cared for her every need for days on end.  My mother was deeply hurt.  Her ongoing pain associated with feeling invisible to others was powerfully triggered.  The situation was somewhat healing though, because the invisibility was not the consequence of hatred or indifference but of morphine.

Which brings me to the third dimension of mind, anesthetizing.  When strategies have failed and we feel unloved, we look for anything that will numb the pain.  We look for morphine.  Ironically, whatever we find to serve as morphine (often anger, resentment, and dismissiveness at this point) makes others invisible to us.

These three dimensions of thought (strategizing, projecting, and anesthetizing) close the heart to the pure love at the core of the other person.  One finds strength only to the extent that one can maintain these barriers.  The moment some gentle wave of pure love comes along, and the barriers shimmer, the fear of deep pain takes over.  What offered strength begins to reveal a well of great weakness and fragility.

I would rather dive into that weakness and fragility and swim in pain and fear than lose my connection to the pure love (either within myself or at the center of others… same thing though).  I know I would not have to drown for long, and I haven’t.  Lord, I haven’t.  Two very precious relationships in my life ended in 2010, and though both endings brought sadness, my heart was strong.  Much stronger than I ever expected.

You want to strategize and manipulate me into being your girl?  I love you anyway.

You think I must not love you?  I love you anyway.

You prefer anger and resentment to friendship?  I love you anyway.

There is nothing more powerful and strengthening than to gaze upon the person you love, transcend everything between you, and simply… simply… love them.  Perhaps that is the essence of enlightenment… the realization that you cannot help but love everyone no matter what they do (or what you do… or fail to do right).

In the quiet of the evening, just before bed, think of someone whose spirit calls to you.  Notice everything between you.  Feel it in your mind and in your body, the clouds and cobwebs, the steel bars, the closed doors.  For every mental image, thought, or feeling that arises, understand that love may nevertheless flow.  Whatever seems to block its flow, dismiss it.  Tension, aversion, rejection, indifference?  Do you really know their heart?  Allow your awareness to encompass them, and hold them in tenderness.  Give them warmth.  Turn your attention to one thought: how they are doing.  And find in your being the desire that they be well.  This is not an intellectual desire or a wish from a distance.  The desire is what arises or awakens when you recognize the sameness of your being with the other person.  It is the product of the deepest touch.  Many nights I’ve fallen asleep in this as though disappearing into a healing cloud of light.