Good mourning
Immersion in life has left a thoughtless silence. Nourishing connections, dancing, painting, drawing, clear thinking, and straightforward communication. I feel grateful for having spend my time with a close circle of loved ones offering each other intimate joy, mindful wandering and the liberation that can be found in untying emotional knots. I am also tired because of all the impressions, less sleep and getting used to intensity as a normal feature of life’s experience (ha!).
In the midst of the cocreated warm social bath, I try to be aware of my own tendencies. Here and there I notice resistance when it comes to the reality of certain unfulfilled needs; when it comes to full embodiment of my vulnerability, of my inability to shape the world precisely according to my demanding needs while sensitively acknowledging those vibrant needs at the same time. While feeling joyful and connected, sadness rises. It is a longing to be seen by a distant beloved that, in my little private experience of reality, mirrors those parts that I haven’t taken full ownership of. The joy of the weekend provides passage to mourning. Mourning is important to set myself and loved ones free. The other is not merely a projection - and it is okay to long for intimacy.
Always in search of the answer to the question what love truly is, I lean into situations that challenge me to make space for both diversity and intensity of connection and resonance. Intimacy can be a synonym for the word ‘trigger’. A shared space that is easily filled with, or even blown out of proportion due to personal projections. A space that is easily restyled into a familiar emotional landscape, structured by what I think I want, undermining the fact that reality actually accommodates all perspectives and perceptions and that which is most vivid in myself may not be what has been socialized as a priority. Love is much more spacious and attuned, I am sure.
What essence is left of me when I allow myself the risk of annihilation, when I am not tamed by fear, when I allow myself an unrelenting look into the eyes of the frozen, fleeing and fighting animal inside? As a child, we grow up so deeply interdependent that we ostracize authenticity to secure attachment needs on the short term. We do this because it is life threatening not to. A baby can’t survive without care. Death anxiety, the root of all our demons. Years later, we can decide to consciously and mindfully take the risk and shape conditions in which we are challenged to overcome, or at least face, death anxiety. A full embrace of reality, we might call this presence, renders confrontation with vulnerability inevitable. Moving through the grand and subtle emotional storms, something indestructible that transcends the confinement of ego identification is lived. Untied energy in motion, all-encompassing, integrated mind included.
My eyes wander across our terrace. I feel that same mourning again. My heart misses the intimacy of being utterly one with nature. I have projected death anxiety upon others and upon the natural world around me. Understandably, but it flattens the intensity of life. Intimacy, whether that be social, spiritual, creative, or otherwise, is the ultimate joy of life. Exposure to natural elements will disintegrate my body, but this porous embodied being-here also mirrors the depth and breadth of being undeniably at home in an expanding instead of contracting universe.
Thoughtlessly my hand creates shapes. There is nobody overlooking the process, the process is the expression of life’s I-overpowering potential.