I’ve been pondering this statement lately: “THIS moment is EVERYTHING”. It’s been top of mind for months. THIS moment is EVERYTHING. It essentially means, if we can stay in the moment, we can see and be everything we want to be. If we don’t post out hopes in the future or replay our past like a run on sentence in a movie loop… If we can just keep our focus much closer to today. And much closer than a few hours or minutes from now–but right now. If we can stay right here, right now… we can know everything there is to know about this moment and where we are… and relish it. Did you hear that collective world sigh? Yeah, me too.

 

You know how we go “if only I had…” or “I should have…” or “Once upon a time I was…” or “I wish I could…” You know how we do that? It’s almost as though the past is this glamorized awesome thing that we can never relive and the future is this glamorized awesome thing that once we reach it, everything will be right as rain.

 

Very rarely do we go–“I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be in this moment and I’m blissful about it. I have everything I need right now. Look at me! I’m breathing clean air! Look at me! My lungs work! Look at me! I have a roof over my head! Look at me! This moment is exactly perfect!” How often do we do that? Exactly. Not a lot. I’m guilty too.

 

So What Happens When Our Past Plagues Us?

 

I bring this up because my past has been plaguing me for the last few days. A very specific and significant relationship I once adored being a part of. There were some really heart wrenching and soul depleting aspects to that relationship. There were also some really amazing, skin blushing, soul stirring, life changing aspects of that same relationship. It ended just as badly as we’ll all assume it should have. I can’t say for sure there was any significant amount of closure to it. The good parts linger around in a corner in my head like a bunch of ghosts in a huddle. The awful parts do a similar ghost huddle in their own brain corner. On any given day, I can tell which side is “winning” my attention by which thoughts are most prominent. Let’s be clear here, it doesn’t happen often. But when it does happen, it sucks either way my thoughts play out.

 

How Can THIS Be? I’ve Cleaned!!!

 

Believe I’ve done more than my fair share of cleaning and inner work to deal with that long gone relationship. I’ve written gobs and gobs of open wounded poetry. I written those private letters meant for nobody but me, which spilled out every single way he hurt me bad. I’ve cried for days about all I let out, printed each letter and burned them for good measure. I’ve blamed myself and him. I’ve had some trifling, petty moments kee-keeing at all the ways karma has played out righteously in his life. I’ve danced repeatedly with the idea of reconciling. I’ve found my way to that very peaceful forgiveness space where I allow all things to flow exactly the way they are. I’ve loved him from afar. I’ve rooted for his success. I’ve found my aghast face at his choices. I’ve prayed for his #awesome. I’ve given more than would seem logical under the circumstances AND I’ve put my foot down exactly as much as was logical for the circumstances. After all the exhausting numbers of things that have played out in my teeny little head, I SHOULD be about over the reminisce tap dance by now. I SHOULD be somewhere different with my thoughts. I SHOULD have already put that corpse in its coffin right?

 

Ummmm.

 

It turns out, it doesn’t always work that way. I’m learning, the process doesn’t always happen the way that we prescribe it should. I was always told that it takes about half as long as the time you were together to fully get over a person. We were together on and off for three years. If you carry the 1, times that by 1.00000, subtract 2, divide that by the square root of 3 and then add something math-esque to the equation, “the rules” say that 5-6 years later, he shouldn’t even cross my mind at all. Right?!

 

Now.

 

Because I am on this beautiful journey I’m on, I try not to judge myself too harshly or look at my thoughts, feelings and emotions as though they were a stupid person or a plague. I try to look at things from the place of open life lessons. Things happen to teach me something. Even my thoughts happen for a reason. When specific thoughts persist, I rightly assume there’s a lesson attached to their existence. This particular series of thoughts is especially complicated because I can’t really admit out loud that the person in question was (or is) that great of a person. I teeter around in the notion that my even thinking about him with subtle pleasantries is actual blasphemy. He’s all wrong. Especially for where I am now. ALL WRONG. It was one thing before. But now. Jeez. While I’ve been over here scrubbing my life with peroxide and Mrs. Myers lavender all purpose cleaner, his life has gotten way, way, way, way more messier. Like he needs a full team of industrial strength life housekeepers. Meanwhile, that’s none of my business. I’ve grown bored of kee-keeing at his strange life management and misbehavior. I’m at the point now where I want to lend him my Mrs. Meyers already.

 

I spent at least two paragraphs setting this post up about being in the moment. So why in the HELL am I writing a post about my past? That don’t even make no sense does it? No. Also, yeah. I’m not fully clear about the bigger picture here yet. I have some ideas on why my thoughts are where they are. When I meditate about it, a few themes come up worth sharing.

 

Theme Un:

 

Our past is meant as a learning tool. We revisit our past to gain lessons to use in the present. You know that thing we know about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Yeah. People do that when they don’t learn prior lessons. They’ll keep making the same mistakes until they have the presence of mind to learn from them. So while the present is paramount, where we’ve come from is like foreshadowing.

 

Theme Deux:

 

LOVE don’t die cause we want it to. What I’m learning now about actual LOVE is that you don’t get off the hook of LOVING someone just because you’re no longer together. Just because you’ve both moved on, doesn’t mean you stop caring or wanting what’s best for or of them. We all have a process that attempts to rid us of bad feelings that persist, but the authenticity and truth of the matter is, if you really LOVED them, you always will in some way.

 

Conventional “Wisdom” Sucks.

 

That saying, “if you want to get over someone, get under someone else” is a farce. I know so many folk who live that statement as though it were one of the 11 commandments. With a few exceptions I can’t name right now, it always plays out exactly like a train wreck. You get over someone, by getting over them. By taking time to heal and deal with whatever it was that made that relationship end. You own your part and forgive the whole lot. Getting under someone else is just a distraction that always plays out with each next “under” until you get “over” whatever caused that one relationship you keep trying to get over to be over. Duh.

 

Contrary to popular belief, LOVE isn’t a numbers game. It’s a life undertaking. It’s a journey. We couple with people for loads of reasons, but the most authentic reason is to merge our energy with another’s. To become MORE. We may couple with people in the realm of “reason, season, lifetime”, but if you really think about it, each relationship taught you something MORE about you. If you left that relationship better than where you started, well.

 

Forget Everything I Just Said.

 

I say all of this to say, if it’s true that you have really “fallen” in LOVE, then you can’t actually fall out of it. LOVE isn’t a thing you sit in. It isn’t disposable or convenient or temporary. It’s the very fabric of who we are. Just because somebody pisses you off enough times to run for the next planet, doesn’t mean whatever divine connection you had leaves with you. That’s just denial. Leaving only creates distance. There will still be a place for them in your heart. You will still care about their well-being. You will still watch in horror as they make the same mistakes with others as they did with you. LOVE doesn’t die. If it’s true LOVE, I’m thinking maybe it simply evolves as we do.

 

I know, I know. Every relationship guru on the planet (dead and alive) is rolling over in agony right now. I’m also fairly confident that most of the spiritual gurus on the planet are doing a slow clap right now. Look. I’m no expert on “the rules”. I don’t have a book out called How to Get Over a Significant Love (who broke your heart) in 10 Minutes or Less. I’m sure loads of people would want to read that exact book, but I’m definitely not the one to write it. My journey and my teachings are about authentic healing, spiritual upleveling and becoming MORE. I do all of this by living my life as authentically as possible and sharing what I learn in the process. I yearn to understand all the idiosyncratic ways I exist with the same gumption that I want out of them. I’ve learned that stuff doesn’t just happen to make me queasy. It happens for a reason. I’ve learned that ignoring whatever is following me, only makes it follow me more. Facing it, however, either makes it go away or find it’s place in the continuing conversation.

 

Convention Still Sucks.

 

Convention tells us that relationships and spirituality are two completely different animals. Relationships are of the heart and spirit is about religion and Sunday morning sermons. Convention says that the way into a loving relationship is to play a bunch of mind fukcs on folk to manipulate said folk into loving you. Convention says that when relationships end, that should be that. On to the next. Convention says that everybody BUT you is an expert on you. Convention likes to dictate folk “out” of confusion, leading most folk into a labyrinth of thorns. Don’t take my word for it. Look around. Convention is folly. I don’t listen to convention. I listen to TRUTH.

 

The TRUTH is, LOVE is a spiritual undertaking. LOVE is what spirit is made of. No matter how “secular” the connection in question, if you truly connect, spirit is involved. Convention can’t dictate spirit, but spirit sure as the all mighty is in everything. I’m thinking a part of my journey is coming to understand this. Coming to understand the true nature of relationships and why this past one plaguing me is actually significant.

 

So It Is.

 

I’m in my LOVE phase of my “Eat, Pray, Love” journey, if you recall. Maybe this “memories” lesson is about making peace with the love what once was, so I can be at peace with whatever LOVE happens next. Maybe it’s just purging. Maybe they’re just thoughts. Everything I’ve learned thus far has been pointing me exactly to where I’m designed to go. It certainly hasn’t been a straight line. AND I certainly have no idea from moment to moment, which step is supposed to happen next. It can be nerve annoying at times. But everything always seems to play out in the realm of my greatest good. I can only assume this little mental escapade is no different. To judge myself about it is a little like telling GOD to shut up. No thanks.

 

Which sort of brings us back to the point of this post. I’m very clear about what I want for my life. I’ve become much more clear about what the LOVE of my life looks and feels like. There’s no face yet to that look and there’s no physical body to that feel. The essence is there though. In order for me to be wide open to receive what my heart desires, there has to be similar openness to allowing my past and the many lessons therein to have their right place.

 

I mean, come on. You don’t learn how to manage a flood simply by setting up road blocks and avoiding the flooded area until flooding season is over. Some people do that. Some of those people probably wrote Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Things don’t change with road blocks and blatant avoidance. People may stay safer, sure. But safe isn’t actually how you grow. Facing stuff and learning from it is. I’m thinking, working WITH nature, instead of against it, is a better bet. Simply saying what’s past is past and forgetting about it, only to repeat it again, doesn’t sound all that natural. It sounds a little stupid actually. Living outside of convention is trickier, sure. It takes some tinkering, creativity and getting wet up to our necks with flood waters sometimes. It takes facing our fear and our pain. It takes some comfort zone reconfiguration and trusting GOD and the process. It takes forgetting what you think you know about yourself and discovering something else entirely. It takes NOT pigeon-holing LOVE to fit neatly the way we think it should. It takes believing with our whole self that whatever is happening in this moment is exactly what it’s designed to be. You don’t have to like it. You just have to let it.

 

So. We’re back to the ghosts of my relationship past. Or are we? I ain’t no fool. Toni Morrison wrote quite poignantly in Beloved, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” I ain’t trying to resurrect no dead bodies. Common sense has become more than common for me. As has spiritual dignity. Both have their place in our day to day authentic life adventures. That said, I’m fairly certain my whole point in writing this post is this: What we often attribute to love and our relationships isn’t what LOVE actually is. Past, present or otherwise. Let that sink in to your mid neck region for a sec.

 

The moral of this story? Who knows. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “your presence is EVERYTHING” blessings. Love, -e-