How far must we deviate from ourselves?

How long must we abandon ourselves?

Since the moment we first chose to do so

We abandon ourselves in birth.

And if we do not rejoin ourselves over the course of our lives

We rejoin ourselves in death.

We must die to ourselves In order to be born

And all life is a process of being re-born to ourselves.

And what of emotion?

Emotion is the tether

Emotion is the link that remains when all else is lost

Emotion is the only remnant of the true self

Which we abandoned in order to be born here.

Emotion is what leads you back to you

All things done on this planet are done to escape emotion.

Every cigarette smoked

Every lover gained

Every book read

Every bite eaten

We even find our way to spirituality because we are desperate to escape the way we feel

But then we find that the only way to find joy and to set ourselves free permanently,

Is to walk into the eye of the storm

To be so ready to die as a result of our pain

That we stop running or escaping

We stop trying to feel better

We stop trying to change the way we feel

And instead,

We walk right into the eye of the storm

Ready for it to swallow us up

Even daring it to

For the first time in our lives, we do not abandon ourselves,

Because for the first time, we do not run from the way we feel

We do not try to use positive focus to move away from ourselves

We do not use alcohol to suppress ourselves

We do not use a lover to protect us from ourselves

Instead, we move towards and into our feelings.

We don’t ask them to change

We don’t want them to be different

We are simply in and of and with them

And because of it, we are completely in and of and with ourselves

And something beautiful happens…

After practicing the art of being with ourselves again and again

The universe reveals itself in its entirety

There is a hole inside all people

A deep emptiness, wanting to be filled up

But what is that emptiness?

That emptiness is grief.

Greif is the baseline emotion for all people incarnated on this planet.

But what is it that we are all grieving?

The answer is the loss of self

We lost ourselves in our birth into physical form.

We abandon ourselves when we separate ourselves from that which we truly are

From source

Like a stone dropped into still water

The ripples from that original transgression

Travel outward

After the original separation from our true selves,

We re-live that separation again and again

Separation from the womb

Separation from the breast

Separation from our parents

Separation from friends

Separation from lovers

Separation from our children

And eventually, separation from life itself upon our death day.

We suffer the original separation throughout the duration of our lives.

We suffer to the degree that the desire within us

To be whole again

Is strong enough

To draw us back to ourselves.

To draw us back to source

Because Source and self are one and the same.

Greif is at the core of all of our lives.

All of us abandoned ‘ourself’ to come here

We broke into a billion pieces

We call them by different names

I am Teal

You are John

Or Mary

Or William

Or Emily

All pain and suffering on this planet, is a ripple

Cast off from the original stone

Of Separation

All human behavior

Is seen accurately through the stages of grief

The entire emotional scale

Is in essence, the expression of a grief process

When we are separated from other people

And feel as if we have lost them

As they leave us

As they die,

The grief we feel, is none but a reflection

Of the original loss of ourselves upon our birth

And we will lose our loved ones

As long as it takes

To reunite

With ourselves again

This grief process that is occurring within all of us,

Is the grief process of having lost a loved one

And we have all lost this loved one

We have all lost ourselves

We could not be born unless we did

And so, this grief is shared by us all.

We are united in this grief

And yet, we are torn apart by it

This grief process now plays itself out upon the world.

It accounts for all of our actions as a species

We are utterly powerless at birth.

We deny what has happened to us

We feel utterly isolated

We become angry

Because we are so scared

We start to bargain with our parents

And then we bargain with the world

We fall into depression

Because nothing can make the hole inside of us go away

And one day, we either die because of it

Or we find acceptance.

To find acceptance for the separation

And to set ourselves free from the prison of it

We must go straight into the eye of the storm of grief.

To be reunited with ourselves,

We must let ourselves grieve

We must let ourselves grieve for the loss of ourselves

And in every following thought and word and movement

We must make a vow to never abandon ourselves again

We must make a vow to be completely with ourselves

In each and every moment of our lives

Without needing ourselves or the way we feel

To be different