Love lost

As a human, love is one of the most essential emotions. We crave it even if we don't always succeed with it. It is the stuff of literature and music, although lately we seem to have love and sex rather confused. Love exists on many levels with the close intimacy of a partner and a deep connection to our children. We love siblings and close friends and there is even an argument that we love our pets. Certainly we see people truly grieving the loss of a pet.

In our current western society, we seem to have a sense of some types of love are lost or transitory. Divorce rates seem to suggest that we can fall into and out of love - some people seem to do it serially.

How we love as an adult is reflected in our childhood experiences of love. Solid healthy and reciprocal relationships with parents make it easier for us to do that as an adult. Chaotic childhood patterns tend to replicate in adulthood.

How do we cope with love lost, particularly when it is a loss we did not see coming. A child or partner dies suddenly? Disability hits? We become estranged from a loved one? These are all significant losses. Death losses create a loss that has a known conclusion. Disability, illness or estrangement create ongoing loss with no sense of how the story is going to end.

Loss and grief do not go away. Those that are ongoing require a daily adjustment. This is really so for those situations where we must face the loss constantly. Think of the caregiver looking after a disabled partner or the person who has become disabled and can no longer do the things that used to bring joy or even a sense of personal competence. Consider the family who has become estranged from a loved one - the daily wonder about how they are doing and whether there will ever be hope of meaningful reconnection.

The role of meditation is to be with the loss, not deny it, but know it within yourself. In an odd sort of way, it is about becoming friends with the emotion that will stay with you. This accepts the reality of it, its presence and opens up to the lessons that come from the pain. Through this, you can also enhance other parts of your life so that the story of loss does not become your only story. Having your life become a single story is a lonely place which is really terrifying.

Love

The place where my heart warms

It is where I find connection

A sense of meaning for being alive

Love

The emotion that reciprocates 

Those that receive it

Offer it back to me

Love

It is where my humaness is most alive

Where I can tell that I have connection

And place in this world that matters to another

Love

It is also a place of pain

How can I love

When the other has walked away

Love

Where do I put you in my heart

When I long to be with you

But the other still alive no longer receives

Love

You confuse me

You offer such joy

Yet also offer such pain

Love

You are an emotion of

extreme

There is no holy way with you

It is one or the other

Love

You are unpredictable

You are essential

Without you there is nothing

Love

I can find you within me

It is not only the other

It can also be with myself

Love

I need the two

The other

And the self

Love

Who will join me at the table

It is for me to find

But not all holes can be filled 

Love

There are some that sit

With only me tending

Accepting what is

© Peter Choate, 2016

Silence and self

Silence is tough. Take a second and think about the last time you sat in silence for more than a few moments. Most of us avoid silence for any particular length. We need to do something. Thus, when I ask about silence, I ask about the space where there is no noise and no activity. This is true silence - just being. The Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh puts it beautifully:

I have the impression that many of us are afraid of silence. We are always taking in something - text, music,radio, television or thoughts - to occupy the space. If quiet and space are so important for our happiness, why don't we make more room for them i our lives?

Keeping busy is a wonderful way to avoid what is really going on for us emotionally. Of course, keeping very busy is seen as a sign of success. How often have you said or heard something like, "Wow, I've got so much on my plate right now I can't keep up." We reward people who work long hours and rarely find time to take days off. It's a status symbol. Why is that we do not reward taking time to be just with who you are in order to better the relationship with self? Why is it we don't demand that time?

Part of why we might buy into the "busy" is in order to keep the self at bay. Really coming to know ourselves is tough and uncomfortable work. I recall some years ago being taught a therapy approach that required going through the therapy itself. I dove in only so far as I feared what was too far inside. Mightily resist I did. Yet I continue the journey.

When we look inside, what are we prepared to see. Silence gives us the space for the journey. So, we need to give ourselves permission to trespass our inner self to know it.

To look is to consume

To consume is to edit

In each of our gazes

We decide that upon which we will focus

By definition each gaze 

Avoids something else

Each perspective consumed 

Eliminates another view

Each turn of our gaze

Takes us away from another sight

What we see we take to be truth

But we see only with our perspective 

Wee are wilfully blind to things

We do not wish to see

We edit out

That which is painful

Change is in seeing

What we have previously unseen

© Peter Choate, 2016

Alone on the edge

The Catholic monk, Thomas Merton gave powerful lessons on being with oneself. In his book, No Man is an Island Merton stated:

“The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.”

The important lesson from this instruction is the need for us to find a comfortable relationship with the self. If we cannot come to know who we are really, then we cannot love ourselves as we lack a knowledge of self. Then we end up with some fantasy of who we are and fall in love or not, with the fantasy. The fantasy can be positive (I'm ok; I'm pretty good; I'm great), negative (I'll never be any good; I'm a loser; I always fail) or disordered (I'm the best and everyone else is below me). A true relationship with the real self sees the balance of positive, negative facets while accepting that is the nature of the true self. We just are.

Which means that we can find some wonderful places within as well as some quite scary places. In my own meditation today, I felt the scary places and could feel them in waves. There is the temptation to run, deny or tremor within. Instead, observing and discovering that scary is only one place and that it is not permanent allows fear to be tolerated. Strength is within the fear.

Like the butterfly in this picture, we can flit around and not settle or we can land and be where we are.

 I had been here before

It was a meadow

On either side the mountains

In front the forest and behind the lake

I was alone

Or so I thought but fear was with me

It stared out onto the landscape 

And saw only the fears

It was irrational I knew

I was not alone

I was with my fear, my inadequacies, self doubt and disbelief

Each was exerting a force towards an edge

I dared not approach

Yet there I was

I was alone

As fear was an external force which I could not control

It came in waves which I could hear moment by moment

Believing they were about to envelope me

And push me further to the edge

I was alone

In the most terrifying moment

Naked, raw and vulnerable

Defenceless

I was not alone

Around me, surrounding me was the universe

To which I was connected

And could not be otherwise

I was not alone

But I also had to be alone

Knowing I was safe in the only relationship I could control

I was alone but I was with myself

© Peter Choate, 2016