Valentine’s Day has just passed, followed closely by the last day of Chinese New Year , also known as Chinese Valentine’s Day.
Love is all around.
My birthday had also just passed a week ago. New Years’ was a short month and a half ago.
Most people would be in the “high” of these new beginnings and celebrations of love and time.
But I am not most people.
My divorce has just closed, after three years of legalities. I was hoping for a sigh of relief.
The months before Christmas were not any kinder. I found myself one day suddenly feeling emotionally broken.
Covid has been ravaging the world. I have endured, just like everyone else.
In sum, the last few years had been consistently hard, there seem to be no pause, no reprieve for healing. One blow and then another.
No rest for the wicked they say.
My hands are unsteady as I write this. My eyes, straining to hold back the tears.
I write because I cannot speak it. I cannot speak it because I do not wish for anyone to hear me cry.
Vanity. Ego. The list goes on….
I have all the failings of a mortal because I am. The higher the climb, the harder the fall. It is not the falling that hurts. It’s the stopping.
And everything stopped.
Just recently, I have believed myself clever, strong, brave. I even named my company Anahata — which means unbroken ; because of all that I have had to endure I rose, I did not break. Then.
But not anymore do I think myself clever. Not anymore do I think myself indestructible. No longer do I feel brave.
If I were to admit, I feel emotionally empty, hollowed out, drained, and most of all hopeless. I am no longer at ease.
When I feel that way, when the thought of what had happened comes into mind, it fills me like a numbing cold that goes from the back of my neck down to my legs. Like an anaesthetic of torment had been injected again and again. My breath catches as my heart races. My eyes instantly want to well up. But I won’t cry “why me?”
What is it ?
What is this that has gotten hold of me from the inside that even with my mental training I had fallen prey.
I never thought it would happen.
I thought myself worldly. I thought myself clever. Little did I know that I was prey. The vultures had been circling. Waiting.
I had passed the years of divorce waiting for it to end. Allowing myself to keep the strength up waiting for the ending as relief. Thinking I can start anew.
When that came, I was disappointed. I was in shock. But I gathered. I managed to carry on.
All this time, I never felt alone. Not really. I had the consistency of love that I never thought would surrender. I never thought would change.
How stupid. When change is what I know to be the only constant.
I didn’t think it would happen to me.
I did not see it coming.
When loved, I glowed. I felt secure. I felt beautiful and powerful. I felt that I could overcome anything.
Little did I know.
One blow then the next and then another.
Before my birthday, everything had gone. I had been ruined, drained dry of any security by the circling predators. One after another. In my panic, in my fear I fell.
Without refuge, without support, without a torch to show me a way out, I can only summon my mind to ease my way.
It is what I do. It is what I teach. And I write this because I want to confess, that even Teachers fail.
I am a bearer of Light.
I know this.
I also know that in order for me to understand and to lend aid, I have to be able to comprehend the sufferings and hardships of others.
People who know me, a few, would think that everything I have , had come by easy. They see the gloss on the outside. They see a girl that has everything handed to her.
But here is the truth — what is given can be easily taken away.
And so life still had lessons for me. This time, in a sequence of very hard painful ones that have shredded me from the inside on all fronts.
I thought during the course of my divorce I had endured and survived an inhuman amount of torment, isolation and loss.
I was wrong.
Life likes to teach. Especially when you least expect it.
And so on bender knees, I knelt when the lessons came.
One after another. And then another. I found myself in disbelief of their inhuman want to not only bleed a person dry. They want you for every ounce and drop of blood until there is only dust. Even then, they will not stop.
I now see the cruelty of the modern world, specially how in vulnerable situations one can not identify the predator in hiding. I can now comprehend more forms of suffering. I cannot say anymore “ I do not understand”. I cannot say “how did they let this happen?”
So.
I had been the lamb that was led to slaughter.
But I am not angry. I am sad. And most of all, I do not blame.
What I feel is — afraid.
Scared to death actually.
My saving grace is my one belief.
Life is beautiful.
Beauty is life’s way of showing you, only by contrast what you have and then lost is to be cherished.
Love and humility is learnt when what you had taken for granted, expected more, is then suddenly taken away.
Like a girl standing in the middle of a tornado — only in The Eye can you see the calm.
And so what is it that allows me to write this, say this.
It is my unshakeable belief in Light.
Within myself, only when everything had been stripped can I only draw forth the Light and hold the faith. Only then can all things become clear as my own eyes that had been fogged see. Only stripped to the bone of all security and defences can I, and will I, kneel to acknowledge the power of Life.
Light.
I call the light at every moment of my conscious mental state to hold the space for me. I call the Light to bring forth what is mine. I call the Light to ease my passage as I have surrendered to my lessons even as I acknowledge that there is more to come.
I always call the Light.
And in the act of calling, is the strength.
