Not Swept Away

It is in the light of existence that we exist.

Growing up, I came to believe that I was not a person in my own right, that I was to take on others’ commands, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and world-views as my own. Their instructions, commands, and injunctions for me must become mine. I deciphered that I had no right to say, “No, those are not mine, they are yours.” But more than that, I didn’t have a right to my inherent inner strength to say No, a strength that comes from Existence itself.

I don’t know why this happened, although it had something to do with my being a girl. But it was more than that. I felt like a blank canvas, as if I had no inkling of who I was as if I did not exist. For whatever circumstances or reasons, I had not seen myself reflected in my own right, through another; a critical piece of becoming a person.

I have been trying to unwrap this since my husband died thirty years ago. Living with him was remarkably different from living in my childhood home. I realized many years later. He saw me. He respected me. He valued me. But, it was deeper and more elusive than these often-used words. I wasn’t just there, I was a person in my own right. I existed.

In his love for me, I existed.

When he died suddenly and traumatically, my world shattered. For decades, I’ve thought it was simply because we deeply loved each other. I married him when I was seventeen. Still so young. But it was more than this. My seeming basis for existing, his love, died that day.

Or, so I thought.

After 21 years of marriage, I’d grown immeasurably. During the first years of his absence in trying to navigate his death and my rocky new start, I found myself back in my young ways of wandering through life from a vantage point of non-existence.

My journey to find myself started, in earnest, the day he died.

This morning, I was sitting at the foot of my bed, still half-sleepy, half-dressed, and not even half-ready for the day. I had a night chock-full of dreams that seemed to lead me through a wonderland of curious events. Once I opened my eyes, only remnants of those curiosities remained, albeit gorgeous remnants of the dream world.

Sometimes when I am not at ‘normal’ speed in the morning, I flip on the hall light so that my bedroom is still half-dark and I can take my time between worlds. It’s a dreamy place, this place in between. As I sat on the end of my bed sleepily confused as to what to do first out of all the things that can be very first in the morning, I found my right cheek nestled in my right hand, my right elbow resting gently on my leg. I noticed it because I felt a numinous intimacy in how I held myself.

I rarely feel this level of intimacy with myself where I am still and my mind isn’t yet swept away into the demand to show up and be productive. My mind was empty of thoughts, and I “saw” myself so clearly and transparently. Nothing conjured interfered with this lucidness of self. I hadn’t yet been swept away into the day. You know, that initial, usually unconscious, impulse in the morning to ‘get on with your day?” Usually, the sweeping away into the day is close to instantaneous. I wake up and begin. The day’s river is already rushing; jumping into it sparks on its own. I don’t mean action, I mean the mental machinations that take over, seemingly without an instigator.

I noticed in this moment of lucidity that I had a choice not to be swept away.

I sat with my cheek in my hand and felt how tender it felt, how alive and at peace I was.

Holding my face in my hand, settled, mind quiet, aware of the tenderness in my touch, I felt the love within me holding me. I saw myself anew. I experienced myself, deeply. I experienced existing through my touch, my own eyes, my knowing.

This is what love does because this is what love is. It is in the light of existence that we exist.

Sometimes, in a moment, we feel it through another’s gaze, if we are lucky and that person is truly present. Sometimes, another feels it through our gaze, when we are there, with them, and not lost in the swirling of our mind.

The decades of my life since my husband’s death have been a spiraled journey. Many moments of holding myself, seeing myself, each one a little more grounded in the reality of a moment not mitigated by my mind’s machinations.

This moment, though, was different. I knew myself anew, all the way back to Source. I saw myself seeing Source, Source seeing me, and myself seeing myself. That was all there was, and it is all there is.