by jeff brown
a different direction and find their purpose in
their creative life, in their work, in their individual
spiritual practice. Everyone’s soul-scriptures are
unique to their own journey. The important thing in
life is not whether we find the “one” but whether we
find the path.
And then I began to cry as I felt into the implications of what I had just expressed. In one way, it was beautifully uplifting. There was hope for all of us, even if we never found a life partner. We were all here for a reason—we just had to find ours.
But in another way, I sensed that I had just penned a reflection of my true destiny: perpetual singlehood. There wasn’t going to be another beloved. My path lay elsewhere.
22
Forgivings
As I went deeper into the story, it became clear that the writing of the book was inseparable from my own healing and growth journey. In order to find words for love’s stages, I had to become an inner detective, unearthing and sifting through more of my own unsolved mysteries. The levels had no end.
Although there was always more to discover, I was also pleased to recognize how far I had come on my journey. Those of us who are doing consciousness work are often so preoccupied with healing and expansion that we fail to notice how far we have traveled. As I worked the wall, I was in quiet awe of the wellspring of insight I was discovering within. Not simply about relationship, but also about one’s individual path. Little had I known that while focused for years on the rigors of my inner work and the pain of our separation, subtle wisdom was ripening in the recesses of my being. The fruits of my soul’s labor.
To support my creative process, I became a regular meditator, something I had often shunned on my journey. Sometimes I would go back to the cave of remembered dreams, meditating on the memories of our time together. I would linger with a singular memory for hours, plumbing its depths for subtler insight and clarity. The deeper I went, the more insight I brought to bear on the writing of the book. Each memory was a microcosm that I could never grow tired of exploring—even a decade later. And I imagined I would feel the same way, until my very last breath.
One day I came back home and wrote:
You can connect from all kinds of places—energetic
harmony, sexual alchemy, intellectual alignment—but
they won’t sustain love over a lifetime. You need
a thread that goes deeper, that moves below and
beyond the shifting sands of compatibility. That
thread is fascination—a genuine fascination with
someone’s inner world, with the way they organize
reality, with the way they hearticulate their
feelings, with the unfathomable and bottomless
depths of their being. To hear their soul cry out to
you again and again, and to never lose interest in
what it is trying to convey. If there is that, then
there will still be love when the body sickens, when
the sexuality fades, when the perfection projection
is long shattered. If there is that, you will swim in
love’s waters until the very last breath.
I thought back to Sarah, the way I was continually captivated, surprised, fascinated with her—from our very first meeting. From the moment we looked into each other’s eyes, and that bridge formed between our hearts. There was nothing I could do to create or will that into being. It was God’s gift. From the very beginning, ever-present.
I scribbled:
It goes to show you.
You can look for relationship
but you can’t look for love.
Love finds you when it’s ready.
Expectations
While attempting to ground my inquiry in real life, I spent a fair amount of time with a number of couples I knew. I dialogued with them about their relationships, inquiring into their challenges, their breakthroughs, the nature of their love. They were all remarkable, in their own way. Every relationship was a world unto itself. They touched me with their determination, and with their commitment to love as spiritual practice.
One night, after a long dinner with two couples I loved, I came home inspired to pour on my bedroom wall...
However love arrives at your door, it is always a
brave path. It is like taking a long walk in a deep
dark forest and never quite knowing where your soul
will land. It isn’t for the faint of heart, nor is it
ever to be taken lightly. Real love is heartcore. You
have to be tenacious. You have to be innovative.
You have to be willing to drop to your knees time
and again before its wisdom. And you have to forge
the tools you will need from your own imaginings,
as very few who have walked the path before can
describe the terrain. Most fell into quicksand soon
after the romantic phase ended.
Relationship is always a spiritual practice,
even when we imagine it otherwise.
Not only is it a spiritual practice, it is the most delicate kind. I thought back to Sarah, and how much skill it would have taken to navigate our challenges, our patterns, to keep us woven together. A masterful trade indeed:
It is ironic that the greater the love, the more
fragile the patchwork that holds it together. You
can pull on practical love weaves and they just get
stronger. But soul love tapestries are more fragile.
Holding them together requires great imagination
and a willingness to mend the seams time and time
again. And regular needles won’t do the job. You
need special tools to reconnect indistinguishable
threads of the same heart weave. It’s not a trade
for the faint of soul.
But what a beautiful heartloom awaits those who
can remain devoted to their co-creation.
The next morning, I tried to excavate more gems from my inner treasure chest, but something was in the way. It is amazing how ever-deepening one’s emotional process can be when it comes to great love. You heal one layer and feel free, before the next layer appears, sometimes years later, demanding your attention. Here she was again.
I got in the car and drove to Elora. When I arrived, I went back to the river where I had released our beautiful picture. There was something there for me, something I needed to see. I could feel it in my bones. I sat by the river edge, remembering us. As the river raced by, my memories raced past, bringing me closer to an awareness that I had long resisted. The word “expectations” kept rising up to the surface. There was something in that word that wanted to be unlocked and confronted. I suddenly remembered the crone’s words: “Love doesn’t fail us—it’s our expectations that fail us.”
I stayed there for hours, trying to get below the word to see how it interfaced with my journey.
Nothing came clear.
Late in the afternoon, I walked back up the cliff to go home. On the trail, a young couple walked past me, completely oblivious to my presence, laughing and holding hands. The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties, the man about ten years older. They could have been the same ages as Sarah and I when we first connected.
I felt emotional as they passed, not so much envious but more curious about how they would hold their love together. I turned back around to walk behind them for a few minutes, not too close but near enough to feel their vibration. A sweetness filled my being.
After a few minutes, I came to the sign for Lover’s Leap, the place Sarah and I had prayed after reading that plaque—the pain of true love lost. I turned off and walked to the ledge, gazing at the river below. Is this the last thing the Aboriginal Princess saw before she jumped? Was the sun this magnificent on that fateful day?
What about me? What had I expected? What had Sarah expected
? How did our expectations influence the outcome? What can any of us expect from great love in an unawakened world?
I sat down on the rock edge, and closed my eyes. I could feel myself resisting something, something I had been hiding from for years. It was time to uncover that missing piece.
I imagined myself as she, the Aboriginal Princess, standing on the cliff edge, riddled with so much pain from the loss of the beloved that death seemed comforting. I imagined myself flying through the air, seeking salvation on the rocks below. I felt my heart quicken, as though I was there then, a woman eager to join her beloved in their eternal tomb.
I flashbacked to a moment soon after Sarah and I first met. We were walking beside Boulder Creek, at one with everything. I looked over at her, and saw this beautiful girl, more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen, but so young by contrast to the aged quality of our love. And I, of course, was not much older. For a split second, I heard myself say inside, with clarity, “This can’t work yet.” Then I immediately put the thought away, covering over the tiny voice of knowing. I didn’t want to hear it—my expectations were too overpowering.
Pictures of Possibility
This memory was the tipping point in my awareness. I was instantly catapulted back in time, not in a sentimental way, but in a way that was uncomfortably self-admitting. I closed my eyes and watched the film that was our relationship through different eyes—the eyes of someone whose own expectations had played a role in pushing the connection away. Perhaps if I had backed off and expected nothing, we would have remained connected until the time was truly right.
I remembered how impatient I had been with Sarah’s emotional immaturity, as though impatience could catapult her to the next stage of readiness. I remembered how strongly I insisted she move in with me, even when it was clear that she had some hesitations. I also remembered how urgent my energy was around marriage and babies, somehow overlooking that she had to want this too. Goodness me, if the love was eternal, why was I in such a rush?
I retreated from writing and spent the next days inquiring into my motivations. There were obvious influences—cultural conditioning, my egoic need to be a husband and father by a certain age, the desire to give my Bubbi something to be happy about, a fear of abandonment that kept me grasping. But it went much deeper.
At the heart of my push was my lack of faith in happiness. I somehow didn’t believe we had much time. We had to be together, to get married, to create life now, with urgency, before something or someone tried to take it all away. Weathered soul that I was, I had so little faith in a love that grew stronger over time. I knew we could enjoy glimpses, but I was doubtful they could last. I felt I needed to rush in and make it happen, secure the connection, before it got stolen from us while we slept.
Some part of my cynicism was naturally lodged in my life history, but it was also grounded in good ole common sense. Even in our most courageous moments of openness, Sarah and I recognized the radical gap between the degree of vulnerability we were experiencing and the survivalist vibration of the world. There was a reason that we kept talking about moving to a mountain top, far away from the maddening crowd. With our hearts so completely open, every bit of worldly harshness felt too much to bear. Along with that, we were both opening up to startlingly new dimensions. What to do with these dazzling new worlds? How to protect them from our young, unformed selves?
And, as much as it pained me to admit it, perhaps the truth is that we are not always supposed to spend our lives with those who most deeply touch our soul. Where did that expectation even come from? Granted, some great loves do manage to sustain themselves throughout a lifetime—and I have every faith that more will as we evolve in awareness—but many don’t. Perhaps they were never meant to. Perhaps those who separate should simply be grateful for the blessing that came, without tainting the memory with overblown expectations. Perhaps any step toward great love should be seen as a great success in this still armored world.
This inquiry proved creatively rich, inspiring me back to the wall with writings to share:
We have a natural tendency to assume that
a remarkable chemistry between two souls is
confirmation they are meant to be together. In the
heat of profound feelings, it seems counter-intuitive
to imagine ourselves separate from our beloved.
But chemistry and longevity aren’t necessarily
companions. Just because we feel earth-shatteringly
alive with someone doesn’t mean they are supposed
to be our life partner.They may have come for a
very different reason—to awaken us, to expand us,
to shatter us so wide open that we can never close
again. Perhaps they were sent from afar to polish
the rough diamond of our soul before vanishing into
eternity. Better we surrender our expectations
when the beloved comes. (S)he may just
be dropping in for a visit.
Is the kettle on?
I spent weeks probing into the question of expectations. At first, I was hard on myself, both for projecting expectations onto Sarah, but also because I had spent so many years focused on what didn’t happen, without celebrating what did. She had come into my life and opened me like nothing ever before. Our connection had transported my consciousness and given me new eyes. I had become a different human—a better human—and seen things very few humans do. Even from the separation, I had learned profound and valuable life lessons. I had learned to keep my heart open amid great pain. These were great feats within our current human consciousness. Isn’t this cause to rejoice? Sure it is.
We must be under no illusion that all soulmates
are meant to last a lifetime. Some are only meant
to last a moment. That brief soul-gaze with a
‘stranger’ at the grocery store that reminded you of
your own essence was just right. That unexpected
weekend encounter that sent your spirit soaring
was perfect. That great love that walked away
after cracking your heart open was just what the
soul doctor ordered. No matter how long they last,
profound connections paint pictures of possibility in
the sky, expanding your lens for all eternity.
My hardness toward myself soon turned to compassion. In many ways, I had been too hard on myself for too long. It was time to give myself a break. Surely I had done my best with the challenges before me and the tools I possessed. Even if I had been flawless, we still may have fallen apart. We had neither the ability nor the foundation in place at that time. We had been given a glimpse into something beyond our present level, and it was nearly impossible to sustain it. Everything had unfolded exactly as it should have.
And yet, at the same time, there is something of value to say about how one prepares the space for great love. One thing that had become clear is the value of emotional healing work, both in one’s efforts to prepare for love, and in one’s efforts to sustain it. This is not to say that love cannot enter our lives when we’re emotionally unhealthy—it had certainly entered mine in the heart of a troubled landscape—but it is to say that it can be helpful to do some work to clear our debris in advance. When we don’t do it, it becomes difficult to recognize love, to attune to love, to hold love safe...
Clearing our emotional debris has many positive
impacts. It creates more space inside for love
to enter and it gives us more energy to see love
all the way through. Unresolved material is like
undigested food—it blocks the channel and prevents
new nourishment from entering. All bunked up, we
may not even notice love when it walks through the
portal. Releasing our emotional holdings cleans our
lens, allowing us to notice love when it comes. With a
dirty lens, love is blind and we are blin
d to it. And
working through our issues expands our awarenest,
providing us with the tools we will need to manage
our triggers and patterns. Of course, love will bring
up new challenges from their burial ground, but
with more awareness of the processes of pattern
recognition and healing, we stand a better chance of
staying out of our own way. If you aren’t aware
of the stuff you came in with, you are going to
have a hard time managing the new levels of
material that the love excavates.
This is the actual New Earth. It isn’t a place
where we imagine that merely watching our wounds
will actually transform them. It isn’t a place where
we confuse dissociation with expansion. It’s a place
where we jump right into the heart of the emotional
material, shaping it like clay into a newer, truer lens.
Real presence is a whole being experience.
Compassion-eyes
After spending a few days nursing that line of inquiry, I went for a long wintry walk throughout the downtown core. It had been a long day of writing. I was so immersed in the love journey that I could almost feel Sarah knocking at my front door mid-afternoon. I even went to the door to check, quickly realizing there was no one there. Maybe she was knocking on my heart from the inside out.
Snow was falling lightly, blanketing the city in a white embrace. I stopped at an all-night café and sat by the window with my latte, turning to watch the white flakes as they drifted down from the sky. I watched them change form as they landed, transformed into something else when they merged with the earth. I remembered what it was like to change form with Sarah, and wondered what it must have been like for her to change form with me.
I thought of her childhood in Colorado. A volatile family, a young girl with a tree fort as her primary protection. It was no wonder she fled our union. She too had no template for kind relations.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine her in her humanness. At first it was very difficult. Because of the nature of our connection, I had not really seen her in this way. In my eyes, she had always been elevated beyond the worldly. Even when she sabotaged our connection, she still wasn’t human to me. She then became the devil, the lowest of the low. Either Goddess or Devil, ne’er the twain shall meet. A familiar thread—I had her on the same polarized projection path as I had myself.