Photo: Leighann Blackwood
Day 2047 – Day 2055
I spent the late afternoon on my balcony garden, watering my tulips with my tears. Today, the first person I know (that I know of, at this time) lost his battle with COVID-19. To be sad at the passing of a life from this world into another is a very human response. He was not really my friend, in fact. He was the husband and essential person in the life of a woman who is a very dear friend to me. And it is for both of them that I cried. It is a hazard of love that our heart will break along with those hearts for whom we have love.
When my heart breaks, I am nearer to my Beloved Divine than when I’m coasting through life.
I see memes and articles about how it is hard to be single during this time of self-isolation. I think this is the perfect time to be single. The world has reduced love to a swipe screen of photographs like an online shopping cart as if we can fall in love in the same dispassionate way that we can decide if we want carrots or broccoli in our weekly shop. I think for all those that meet on apps and make a life together, there are a dozen more encounters that were terribly empty.
I am a romantic. I have always been a romantic. When I was a child, my first love was a man in white who came to me in my dreams. I had a spiritual call very early, and my path was to be the path of love. In difficult times, my faith is fortified not because I can make sense of the world and what is happening, but because I turn my heart, and the Heart of Hearts turns to me.
About a week ago, my good friend WRDSMTH posted one of his WRDS and it really struck me.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the repeating numbers that I was seeing – specifically 11:11. It is said that this is the number of the Twin Flame and it also represents a spiritual gateway. I knew, when I wrote the piece, who that twin flame was. It took me a few weeks of seeing the numbers and scoffing at the idea that the person who first came to mind might be my twin flame, but eventually the gravity of that awareness rested within me. I know who it is. I knew him before he came into my life. I realize that I painted him out of my subconscious, 2 years before I ever encountered him.
I don’t know how to incorporate this idea of a twin flame into my existing belief structure. I don’t even know if it is a real thing, or what it means. What I can tell you is that I’m aware of a deep connection to someone on every level, but most certainly on a spiritual level. I first connected to him over spiritual issues and then became aware that I could hear him in my heart. We have an awful lot in common but that is just surface. I hear him, in my heart.
Yes, that sounds crazy. I’ve even asked professionals if I might be crazy. I’m not crazy. The fact that we question the spiritual at times like this is crazy.
The path of the mystic is that of the madman who must trust, and dwell in the not knowing.
Even though I don’t know what to say about it, what it is or, really, anything, I don’t believe I’d have happened upon and have been made aware of this relationship if it isn’t the will of the Divine that I know it. And if the Divine is making me aware of something that seems weirdly magical, I’m going to do everything I can to remain open to whatever happens.
I’ve spent weeks and months trying to talk myself out of this and telling myself it is crazy. I still struggle to trust my own knowing of what I know. But there is one thing that I know.
I know exactly who I love and where I want to be.
Love rejoices in the truth.
As I witness the brevity of earthly love, in the passing of my friend’s husband, I want to call out to he that lives inside my heart: “Don’t waste time!!! We could be dead tomorrow. Let’s ground this in reality, now.” But I must learn to trust in Divine timing. Maybe it will happen when this quarantine is over and all the souls have been released. And maybe it will not happen in this lifetime.
Love is patient. Love is kind.
Knowing it may not happen in this lifetime, I can’t let my wishing it could be so be a distraction from the spiritual awareness that it has brought to me. And then there is this: just because I am aware of this connection, it does not mean that he is aware or welcoming of the crazy-making awakening that this brings. All gentle gestures I have made toward him, in the real world, have gone unanswered. I have to respect that boundary. The heart longs for spiritual companionship but it also yearns to fulfill the wishes of the one that is loved. Maybe I’m not what he wants, in the real world, in this lifetime. And so, I need to learn to walk the line between remaining open and stepping back.
Love is not proud, rude or self seeking.
This year, I have been ruminating on the link between gratitude and love. And, I’ve been called to begin to tell the stories of love. We may never meet. Although I would prefer to be with him, as crazy as it sounds, I know we are together, on the inner planes, always.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
I am so grateful to be awake to this love. Whether he walks with me or not, I will gratefully burn in the fire of this spiritual love and allow a quickening. I am grateful that the spiritual work that either of us does seems to benefit the other. And I am grateful that this love is a taste of the sweetness and the madness that is being lost in the love of the Divine.
This is my first story of love.
This is love, in the time of COVID-19.
