In the Tibetan Bön tradition, two people can see the purpose of a relationship and precisely how it will unfold, including its beginning, middle, and end, upon first meeting that person.  In Tibet, they make a point of honoring this. They make peace with how the relationship will unfold, before it even begins, and they aim to fulfill its purpose. Then, if and when they part, they part with a sense of peace and warmth.

When I first met my ex-boyfriend, I told him this. After the words left my mouth, I looked deeply into him.  I was lying on my bed, and he was sitting on the carpet near my bookshelf.  Though we had only just met, I saw everything. The deep love, the intensity, the closeness, and also its strange short-lived nature, the unexpected turn of events, the loss and sadness. I saw a paradox of co-existing opposites: profound contentment and intimacy running as deep as marriage, coupled with terrible anxiety and a sense of alienation. I saw the whole thing, as if there were two of him, or two very different relationships with the same person, and I shuddered, and I could not look him in the eye.

Why I put that out of my mind, I do not know. But it left me with the question of purpose. The hidden perfection. Nothing ever really goes wrong.

A few nights ago, I wrote about imperfection and losing that “all is right with the world” feeling, the challenge being to find peace in this moment despite what happens, despite memories, regrets, or lost hopes. Resting with imperfection and allowing it to just be.

That same night, in the middle of the night, I drifted awake, not completely but almost, and on the edge of waking, I felt a very light, loving presence say, “Just wait! You will arrive at a moment in which you see how perfect everything was.” As though I were stuck on one thread in the tapestry and had yet to pull back and see the full pattern.

Already, I see a hidden perfection emerging.

After a year of unemployment, I was introduced to a Native American psychologist in town who heals emotional suffering in children and adolescents using story, myth, and metaphor. We immediately formed a deep connection, and he offered me a paid clinical internship. In addition to conducting psychological evaluations, I will provide therapy under his supervision.

He began training me one month ago. I am learning a lot about the children and adolescents I’ll be working with. Most of the children have had severe trauma and abuse. Many have lost family and friends. Some have lost their home. Every day is a struggle with overwhelming pain, grief, and anger.

Their stories remind me of my former love. The first time we ever spoke, he told me a great deal about his past. His childhood was filled with severe abuse, neglect, and loss. His story came out over the phone unbidden as he shared, for reasons he could not understand, things he had never told anyone. I felt a connection with his past. I could always see it in him.

Throughout our relationship, the enormity of love and compassion I felt for him was beyond description. I loved all of him.  My love for him was bigger than me, deeper than me, and overwhelmed my heart. We were fond of wondering why that love was so strong. That love was there before we met and persists to this day.

Now, even though our relationship has ended, in my training I often imagine sitting across from a boy enduring trauma and abuse. A year ago, I might have imagined seeing more suffering than I know what to do with. I might have felt helpless, or I might have been reminded too intensely of my own past suffering.

But now, do you know what I see? I see the early beginnings of a man who, one day, someone will love with all their heart the way I loved and continue to love my ex-boyfriend. I see someone capable of being strong, resilient, and independent, like my ex-boyfriend, as well as loving, tender, and generous.

And my heart explodes with love and compassion for that boy just as it does for my former love. Exactly as it does for him.

He trained my heart. For that, I feel the deepest gratitude and reverence. I turn my mind to him, put my hands together at my heart, and bow deeply, whispering, “Mahasiddha.”

Even the alienation that I felt towards the end, when all the warmth and closeness seemed to evaporate, replaced by the empathic perception of surface selves disconnected from that deeper, silent space within him, it would be easy to think that things went wrong there, but actually, they may have been perfectly right.

One night, I described my perceptions to him. I said that I sensed two parts to him. One part was a chaotic cloud of thoughts and desires, fleeting selves that seemed to have no solidity. Those selves felt so unfamiliar to me, as if I hardly knew them, or they hardly knew me. The other part was that vast space within him, wordless and peaceful, and ever so real. That part was intensely familiar to me from the first moment we met. He said that part of him was “the real me.”

I will never forget that, because it was the part of him I had trouble sensing with my ordinary eyes or my ordinary mind. It would be easy to dismiss my perceptions of his true self and see only the surface selves, but he made it that much easier for me to trust my deeper perceptions.

Now, I can imagine taking all of the turbulent, cloudy surface selves of the children I see and looking right past them to the deeper, truer self. In Buddhism, they call this one’s “Buddha nature.” Already perfect. To see the Buddha nature in someone has a healing effect, they say, because it helps them to see it too. And even if they do not see it, that is not even the point. You see it, and you realize how everything they are, absolutely everything, is a gift in some way.