A celebration of our separateness.

An audio and video version if you would prefer: https://youtu.be/xc3vlOTIMsk

I was recently asked if I was a non-dualist, or whether I’d attended non-dualism workshops before and if I believed in this concept.

The irony of this question annoyed me and made me laugh all at the same time. Here was a living, breathing, separate person embodied in a separate form asking me if “I” was a non-dualist. I knew what she meant and I was being a bit stubborn and annoying by not playing the game, but it did hit funny.

I think my humorous annoyance at this question was on multiple levels, like nearly all feelings. My distrust and judgment of the spiritual movement. I’ve had to try and get over this as it’s not helpful or encouraging. As I’ve been learning that encouragement is the most helpful way forward. I’m being much more “on the mat” these days. Also, the fact that two people are having this conversation is great and kind of the point of us all being here. A fear also, as I still cling to my physical form and all of those I love. I love the physical as much as I love the metaphysical. These forms I love and cherish also hold an essence that is only felt, and can be felt after these forms have gone. How wonderful and scary is that.

It feels like winter has just arrived in the UK and I feel the darker, more introspective nature of this time. Death, decay, and a diminishing of light. It’s an obvious time for looking inward, and a natural melancholy sometimes enters me. It’s not all dark, as now I light more candles, and a more cosy, warm feeling also comes with this time. It’s like all things—it brings both, all at the same time. We are such nuanced and complex creatures that we have this ability to feel multiple things all at once.

I was feeling the physical separateness from my deceased dog Dolly—how my mind still cannot comprehend the fact I will never see her little physical face again, or hold that little body in my arms once more. I’m ok with this, but I cannot quite explain how little sense it makes in my mind. I know this to be true, but I cannot quite accept and understand it. It’s actually both: I can and I can’t. My feeling is that the mind can’t and is not equipped to feel the emotional loss. Yet we try to find it there. Only something else can feel this and know it, and it’s not the mind.

These thoughts led me to thinking of all the mothers out there—how children are such a powerful example of the impermanence of this place. As a man who has never had children and can never be a mother, I can only feel into this. The depth that I can feel into this surprises me. I feel I must have some soul knowledge of this. Or maybe it touched into my own feelings of loss of childhood. So many questions my mind cannot answer.

As a mother, you start by holding this miracle of a newborn baby. I can only imagine how this must feel. I feel immense joy, love, and presence when around newborn babies, and they aren’t even mine. It makes me feel like I would just crumble into dust at such a moment—and maybe all mothers do—as from that moment they are something new, something unknown. Formed over the last nine months that the child grew within. Then you watch them grow—now no longer the baby, now a toddler—and you have to let that baby go. Then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5—all perfect at each stage, never to be seen again. It can be felt and remembered, but it has gone. I’m not trying to depress anyone here, but as I write this I can feel into the loss so much. I’d love to know if this resonates with the mothers out there. I’m sure it has been written about many times before, but here I am trying to express something I can only feel into.

Fathers feel this as well. I listen to a show called Quite Frankly and Frank the host once said he hated the thought of reincarnation. Absolutely hated it. He made me laugh at the time as he explained it in a humorous way, although I could feel the truth and pain under his words. Why would he want to start again, as he loved the family he already had? He loved his wife and daughter so much that the thought of having another sounded awful to him. I loved his honesty and I loved his love.

This balance between the form and the formless, to let go only to receive the next gift, is what life is all about. It’s painful, confusing, and rushed at times, as we seem to miss so much. The loss we can’t even feel as we have to move on to the next new moment. The joy and pain that’s felt by being separate—I wouldn’t have it any other way, and yet I will one day.

Rudolf Steiner laid out the concept of Lucifer and Ahriman, two opposing forces/entities. One side pulling us to the light that can blind us, and the other taking us to a purely material world. These opposing forces are doing their job so that we can find the middle. However, this is only information, good information, but this is how it feels to me as I sit here writing. We are the middle. 

I love humans, and I love that I have been given this separate form to interact with others, to share, to love, and to ultimately lose. I will lose everything, so I will love it all while it is here and now.

So to anyone who is in my life—I love you more than I even know.

MC