The Power of Love will take you to the Moon and back. The Power of Love will show you a strength you never knew existed. And the Power of Love is what makes miracles manifest.
This is from November 2009 and is the final in a 4-part series on grief, written in the weeks after my spiritual teacher, Ramesh Balsekar, died. At the time, I was still living in the south of India.
HOW DOES IT FEEL?
In the last weeks, I’ve been in a lot of pain – a void – a loss – a transformation. There are a lot of feelings around being alone in this grief. Sometimes anger arises – at no one in particular; it’s just there. I’ve had unexplainable moments of bliss, ecstasy, as well. Whether or not they’re related or not, I don’t know. I just feel really open and raw.
I had to undertake a strict recovery program, which I’m still on. (Note: This means that I had to put myself on a more regular eating and sleeping schedule. Going through intense grief is a transformation that requires a huge amount of energy and is totally disorientating, and eventually calls for an attempt at finding a new rhythm so the body systems don't get totally whacked out, which happened to me anyway.)
I don’t feel ready to socialize much – it’s hard to socialize when you’re unsure if you’re going to cry or blurt anger or get ecstatically high all in the same conversation. Better to be alone… but it does feel like I need my friends to know what I’m dealing with.
On top of the heart-break of death, I also had three severe slips/falls in the month of his death, and I really have had to take extra good care of myself. (It appears that physical accidents occur more regularly to those who are grieving. This could be attributed to not being grounded, the soul wanting to follow the person who has died or left. I wrote a bit on this in Part One - The Guru Dies. It can also be attributed to the body taking on some of the emotional pain through 'accidents.')
Some folks have said, why don’t you talk to your other sangha members (fellow students of my teacher) to share your grief? Well, just because someone was/is a disciple does not mean they are in the same place as me. Maybe they aren’t as sensitive. Maybe they are distracting themselves. One fellow student told me to "just stay really busy," which is good advice, but the Truth is, I need to express myself. Whether anyone listens, or cares, or feels some of the same feelings, doesn’t matter – I just need to give myself the space to grieve and MAYBE I’ll get some comfort or reprieve by releasing it.
While I do spontaneously remember satsangs and moments of laughter, realization, and intensity of my teacher Ramesh in the flesh, the grief is different than merely losing the person...
The grief is also about the passing of a phase of my life – a chapter – in which I was a disciple – a devoted one filled with bhakti – in which I’d flown faster than the speed of light across the world, guided by the power of love and devotion, to express my gratitude and respect to this Master.
A time period where I endured some scary, scary shit in Mumbai to be near him (events surrounding the Bombay terrorist attacks of November 2008). And where I spent one of the hardest travel months of my life in June 2009, with no air-conditioning and the monsoon delayed three weeks. I felt I would explode from shakti and tapas, humidity and tension, but I knew that THIS WAS IT. These were the final days, the final talks with Ramesh, and I was determined to stay…
These memories, and many more, are in me. They are being alchemized, transmuted. They are in my blood, my bones, and more than “spirituality,” “enlightenment,” “realization,” or “advaita” (non-duality), to me, Ramesh, in the end, evoked in me THE POWER OF LOVE.
The Power of Love will take you to the Moon and back. The Power of Love will show you a strength you never knew existed. And the Power of Love is what makes miracles manifest.
The amazing thing about the Power of Love is that it cannot be manufactured. You can’t put it on your credit card. You can’t ‘do’ anything, for Love does it, to and through you.
Thank God for the perfect Guru, the perfect mirror. Thank you for this experience, for this fulfillment of seeking. I trust You, God, that the tears will end in Your time, not ‘mine.’
As the tears barrel down my cheeks…
I LOVE.
HARI OM TAT SAT
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