An Uncommon Bond by Jeff Brown

Author:Jeff Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-9808859-5-8
Publisher: Enrealment Press

14

Broken Closed

Once I stepped off the plane, my determination to detach began to wilt. It was one thing to say goodbye in her presence, quite another to accept goodbye in her absence. Waves of darkness began closing in around me. Stripped of the magical shroud of enchantment worn by lovers, I came crashing back to earth as I had known it. The world felt like an empty, meaningless place.

That night, I lay awake in a burning pool of anguish, as reality had its harsh way with me. There is no doubt that the soul and the body are inextricably linked. I tremored and shook all night, as my body registered the ending of my once-in-a-lifetime soul love. It was as though a cosmic umbilical cord had been severed, one that had been nourishing our twin-ship for all eternity. I woke up in the morning untethered and adrift in an ocean of despair. Now what? Where do I go after God? Clearly I had made the greatest mistake a warrior can ever make. I had let my shield down so low that I couldn’t raise it back up to protect me.

Truth Time

I felt deformed in her absence, stumbling through my days in a bloodied haze. The depth of pain was beyond imagining, as a soulnami of suffering flooded my consciousness without respite. Everything, everywhere, hurt. Instead of fighting my way to the surface, I soon found myself resigned to my own demise. It felt better to let myself die than live with this loss. My lifeline had already been severed.

I began to look for ways to anesthetize myself. In support of my efforts, Daniel did what male best friends do. He brought me self-altering substances—pot and whiskey in generous doses. Sadly, pot and whiskey together make strange grief-fellows, taking me further into the angst.

In the hope of numbing me further, Daniel began bringing his spiritual books with him every time he popped in with the drugs. Sensing that my suffering might create an opening to his ideas, he would sit and read to me. He called it “Truth Time.” At first the timing was perfect.

Before we got to it, he would lead me on a mindfulness meditation. I closed my eyes and focused on my pained breath. Then he would invite me to watch my feelings float down the river: “Don’t identify with them, just watch them leave the screen.” And it would work. The more I watched them float, the further I got from my torment. And sometimes more than feelings floated away. Sometimes I imagined Sarah floating away, getting smaller in the distance.

Then he would read to me, slowly, with equanimity, in the calm, measured tenor of non-duality teachers. For a number of nights it was the perfect antidote for my tortured heart. I would close my eyes, slow and deepen my breath, and savor the fleeting feeling of calm. It became the one thing I looked forward to at the end of most days, a momentary spell of relief from my chronic state of torment.

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