Today’s Reflection is about the pattern that connects it all.
A yearly retreat of my spiritual practice community, Training in Power, 8 days long, just finished yesterday. I have been going for several years now, and each one has been a transformational experience, yet each occurred differently. After all these years, I think I am beginning to realize what the “real deal” of this event is truly all about, and wonder why I didn’t see it earlier. Apparently, I can be a slow learner sometimes.
“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.” – Erica Jong
Thank you British Airways, for delivering me a message I apparently needed to hear at this particular time, and in this particular – and very annoying – manner. When one is ready to leave India and come back home, to his beloved person, his beloved dog, and his beloved students, there is nothing like a cancelled flight to evoke the shadows of the past. “Now you see it, now you don’t” can be a painful way to teach one about life and love. Especially during the growing years.
There was a friendship that faded into the past, some years ago. Paths diverged, the connection attempts were not returned, and as a believer in reciprocity, I had to let go. It took quite a long time, with lots of painful thoughts and contemplations and “maybes.” Letting go of friendships has always been so for me. Yet building the present and the future on the nostalgia of the past does not, and cannot, work. And then, a recent conversation with that friend brought everything back. Underneath the disconnect of the past five years or so, the connecting pattern is timeless.
The unconditional steadiness of dogs’ love has been praised by many over millennia. I know. I have had one beside me, for over 8 years, who knows how to do it intuitively. Tobi has been an incredible gift, especially for one with the “now you have it, now you don’t” pattern of the past. Learning to open up and trust that I will always have it is a precious lesson to have around. No conditions. No small print. The next phase of this lesson is to trust the fact that humans can be like that too. I ended up meeting a teacher for that too.
“Someday after we have mastered the winds, the waves, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.” – Teilhard de Chardin
2012 is starting under the theme of Reclaiming Love Back. And it is only February, which means it is going to be a rich and interesting year.
A sunny week to you all, inside and out.
