Perennial Joy

Four years ago this morning, my beloved surrendered her physical being to God.   The common refrain, “losing Dear,” while understandable, is far from my experience, despite its imprint on my tender human heart.  

To me, “losing Dear” is possible only as a consequence of a definition of life based on an illusion: that the worldly world is real.  The only ultimate reality in my life is that everything is but one thing: the All-pervading Consciousness of which all phenomena is a manifestation, including thought, feeling and action. 

I call that one thing God.  As in, nothing exists but God.  As in, there’s no you and me; there’s just God. 

What’s more, my experience (since birth, I suspect) is that the nature of God is perennial joy that is playful, loving and deep.  That nature, then, is the essence of all of existence—the way a potter’s clay is the essence of all the endless possible creations made from it.  That means that our essential nature, yours and mine, our soul some call it, is that same perennial joy.  

The purpose of life for us so-called humans, as I experience it, is to awaken to our real identity, our True Self, our soul, at one with all of existence, at one with God, if you will. 

For reasons beyond me to explain, the universe is designed in such a way that fulfilling that purpose—of consciously realizing our true nature—can take many lifetimes.  And that makes sense given how preposterous it can seem to label the worldly world playful, loving, deep given all its apparent brutality.  Many of us find it a stretch to see life on spaceship Earth as simply a school to help us wake up to our True Self: manifestation of God.  

Moreover, among the most challenging parts of this self-realization process is accepting that our every opinion, judgment and even wild-ass guess—thus all happiness, all misery—is the result of how we have defined reality for ourselves.  No one has ever pissed us off, or made us dance with delight—except the person in the mirror, given how we have defined our world.  We are so powerful.  Someday we’ll be fully awake to that reality.

I’m too much of an intellectual and spiritual pipsqueak to explain this with much depth.  Thanks goodness there are many who can, including the guru of Dear and me, Paramahansa Yogananda. 

I hope this little sidetrack suggests why the common idea of “losing Dear” isn’t my experience.  Only things that are illusory disappear.  What’s essential, what’s eternal, never.  I bet the reason I fell in love with Dear in two seconds was my recognition of her soul’s particular expression that also resided in my being—from our association in who knows how many previous lives.

Take even Dear’s body.  That it is now in ash form resting on what some call sacred ground in no way inhibits my feeling her touch and the smell of her skin and hair and breath as much today as I did for 45 years. 

Her immense spiritual presence is even more alive within me, and continues to grow, part of the intense reawakening of my soul since her death as so many of my long-held familiars (limiting expansion) take flight—some surrendered willingly, some ripped from me.  “Onward, my love,” I hear Dear say, in gratitude that her death has helped set in motion this opportunity for my deepening resilience.  

Her relationship with my friend Susan is hilarious.  Susan would likely say that, other than me, whom she’s loved since we met in ’68, Dear is perhaps her closest friend, despite their meeting in this incarnation only once 30 years ago for a few hours.  Even then, that hello was the hug of sisters, separated at birth, meeting for the first time.  Susan’s yearning for God is so akin to Dear’s, including its kindness, courage, and air rich with teasing.  Susan loves my little pink notebook full of Dear’s funny quips at my expense I’ve recorded over the years.  (I once initiated with her a conversation about I can’t remember what, and after while said, “Do you mind if we change the subject?,” to which Dear replied, “Happy to.  I was done with that subject before you began.”)  I’ll say to Susan something goofy, or self-absorbed, or wildly irreverent and she, searching for a zany retort, will roll her eyes to heaven and say, “Dear, help me out here.”  When they meet again in the world beyond this one, laughter will abound no doubt.   

Sure it would be delightful to see Dear walk in the room and, as always, meet my smile with hers; to experience one of our butterfly kisses that God hands out as door prizes for True Love; to have everything I write bow in gratitude for her penetrating eye; to hear a wisecrack that could light up a coal mine—but that wouldn’t make her any more present in my heart. 

Shortly before surrendering her physical shell to God, she reminded me, “You still have things to do in this lifetime, to fulfill why you were born, and my death is going to help you do them.”

Recognizing the illusion of loss as a manifestation of God, the One Reality, is an expression of that help: playful, loving, deep.