Was reading last night and this particular chapter reached its hand out and grasped my heart. Like it was my own essence. I knew it so deep, I couldn't even stand it.
The Invitation; Chapter 'Finding Our Way Home'. -OMD
"I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments."
"Tell me about a moment of real solitude, a moment when you were with yourself and felt yourself at the center, a moment when you could feel the world, the stars, the galaxies spinning around you."
"There is a tension in living fully, what often feels like an opposition between our longing for the solitude where we can find our own company and the desire to be fully and intimately with the world. When we learn to live with both the desire for separation and the longing for union, we find that they are simply two ways of knowing the same ache: we all just want to go home.
Some days, solitude is impossibility. Caught up in the activities of daily living, I ache for my own company and am filled with a sorrow that makes me weep when I cannot find it.
And, at other times, I do too much and run too fast deliberately, unconsciously hoping to avoid the cool and steady gaze of myself, the gaze that sees clearly what is within and around me. Sometimes I don't like what she sees, don't like the company I keep when I am with myself, and want to pull away from this woman that I am. So I fill the empty moments with with TV, or work, or a book, or time with another. It takes courage to be willing to meet myself over and over again, seeing in my own face more beauty and grace and ability to love that I had hoped for, more judgement and impatience and need than I had feared. I forget that it does not matter how far or how fast I move, but only how much of myself I take along for the journey."
"My mothers fear finds a small corner in me, but I resist the idea that I will be with another only to avoid being alone. Surely, the ability to truly be with myself does not exclude the willingness to fully be with another. I do not seek isolation. The longing for another remains even when I am able to be with myself, although it is smaller, a whisper that tugs at me gently. Even there, in my place of solitude in the wilderness, I found myself at moments wanting to turn to someone and share my awe at the brilliance of the full moon on the still water, the delight of watching the otters playing on the edge of the stream. But the loneliness was bittersweet and bearable because I knew myself and the world in a way I sometimes do not when I let my life become too full of doing things that do not really need to be done."
"Once in a while, trying to find the end of the thread of what wants to be written, I will do a writing exercise that involves finishing the statement "I don't want to write about..." Over the years the statement is most often completed this way: "I don't want to write about the loneliness." For years I thought the loneliness, the longing for the other, was a weakness, a sign that I had not learned how to be with myself. And there have indeed been times when I have wanted to be with someone simply to cover the ache of not being able to find my own company. But I have come to accept that no matter how much I am able to be with myself, no matter how much I like my own company, I still long to sit close to and at times merge completely with another in deep intimacy. This too is coming home. The completeness of self is found when we can be alone and when we can bring all of who we are to another, receiving and being received fully."
"This is the sacred marriage: the coming together of two who have each met themselves on the road. When two who have this intimacy with themselves are fully with each other-whether for a lifetime or for a moment-the world is held tenderly and fed by the image they create simply by being together. They can be friends or family, lovers or life partners, or simply two strangers whose lives intersect for a moment. They may be telling each other stories, or making love, or sharing a task, or sitting in silence together. It doesn't matter. If, having met myself in empty moments, I am willing and able to bring all of who I am to another, receiving all of who they are, then we are truly together. In that moment, in the image our being together creates, we are the manifestation of life holding, creating, and feeding life. This is the fullness of the homecoming for which which we all long.
These moments, these sacred marriages of two, bring each person back to themselves more fully. When I was younger, the excitement of proximity and the heat of passion combined with an uneasiness with myself often meant that I lost myself when I was with another. When I was with someone who caught my imagination with possibilities beyond friendship, I found it hard to know what I wanted. I was aware only of his wanting me and was drawn by his desire.
Now that I am more able to be with myself, I seek those I can be with completely without losing myself. And when I listen for and follow the quiet but deep impulse to move toward someone-moving only as quickly as I can while staying connected to this impulse-I find sweet ease in my body and an infinite tenderness in my heart. And I recognize what I have longed for in the nameless ache that has been with me for so many years. The tension eases between my desire for personal freedom and independence, my desire for the solitude of my own company and my longing for deep commitment and intimacy with others. I find, in our time together, more of myself. And I find, in my time alone, more of the world."
Not spoken from my heart or written from my pen. But expressed as if it were my very own blood pumping from my own heart. Felt. Shared. Embraced.
-MLB
