I was just ruminating on what my solutions would be for a couple of friends that, upon last contact, I believe don't want to hear from me in their present state of mind. My own solutions might create reflections for those who seek me out, however, particularly because they have a need connected to one of my gifts. You can't go through life cramming unasked for advice down people's throats---something's always lost in what that takes away, however valuable your words, like digging away too much soil and leaving nothing to cover the seed (if it needs covering, some don't). What you can do is live with openness, and when the time is right, the person who can appreciate what you have to offer will come along, and exchange something unique to themselves with you, too!
I was given the word "meditations" today by a person whom I'm about to share with you; I hope these words, which are a meditation for me, are meditations for you, too, my reader. They are intended as companionship, whenever you're ready to enjoy them.
Well! Speaking of companionship, I had the opportunity to joke about people coming to coffee houses to be alone around people---“they should call the place JavAlone!” I saved that joke about an hour and a half. Before this paragraph, written inside The Village coffee and wine bar on 9th Ave. and Market here in SD, I had a brush with a very friendly dog, and his fellow rescue dog twin. Their owners have very happy lives with them. Lo and behold, the lady’s name is Joan, and she got involved with very personal sharing with me! Now this is what I’m looking for: an older lady out here who can bring some experiences from the other side of her years, but prepared and open, different than, say, my other older friend, who requires intense reserves of privacy. This woman, Joan, survived cancer, and in her 50’s she’s now a yoga instructor---but first she told me about a group whose activities she patronizes, the San Diego Song Writers in North Park, where she and her fellow live, I haven’t caught his name yet. She also writes songs, though she doesn’t perform solo; I would love for us to play her something so she can have that change as part of Integr8d Soul, who we are wherever we perform, with whomever joins in. No, what she does as a singer is amazing: she’s part of a choral group that sings for people at their death bed. Amazing! She and I shared great sadnesses and joys as though we owned them; I’d like to go back and trace the energies I felt moving within me. I really thrived on having someone be friendly to me, right then and there, after writing about what it is that supposedly separates me from my dear old friends. I realize the fear of a parent, letting a child roam into the world, even when the time for that is due; there are many hurtful mistakes commonly made. Sometimes, if someone won’t turn away from the harm they must do themselves, we can’t stay and watch them waste their potential. When they come to respect their own voices, they will hear the things they need; to seek a Guardian is to make of the self a great friend, a protective feeling that may be found in any amount of peace.
But you see, I had a tinge of melancholy, and found there were serious things left to say for the friend I’d enjoyed so much, and even while I considered what I would further say, as I compiled it in my head on the walk up, I crossed the street and realized: “I already told him all of that.” But have faith: all that stuff, if he kept it, dwells in a time untainted by any of my shortcomings save for the need to communicate. “I’m retired as world savior,” I believe my new friend told me.
My new friend. I write of what was, I live in the now, and find myself with whatever kind of friend now I can make, for I consider it beyond the limits of what is right to continue trying to make a friend I already knew I had, if only he had himself, as I hope he even now does, as I always wished for him when I thought only of all the things I found awesome and inspiring and moving in his life and family.
I thought of the white light of purity, the Ray of Awen I invited within last night, as I listened to this lady. She tells me: “I have so much more behind me than I have ahead of me”---and by that, she surely meant, the necessary job, the challenge, the gift necessary to unleash the advantages of all her gifts. She found herself surviving cancer, and now walks through one new door after another. Twenty eight years of teaching, then, nearly death: yet now, she looks forward to the future. If I have one requirement in my relationships now, if I am to let a friend close into my feelings, my very personal ones, it is to look forward to the future, finding it every moment in the present. In listening to her, and seeing how she might understand something I needed to get off my own chest, beneath my generally jovial demeanor, I felt something move inside me---one movement in the stomach, and then from one place to another inside my chest---a great feeling, genuine comfort, friendship and ease received within myself from this lady's presence and attention.
Her companion, meanwhile, tried to enjoy his half of the sandwich platter while leaving plenty for her---I laughed! He sat in the company of their thirteen year old dogs, flush with golden hair that reminds me of an artistic effect I discovered last night, when I dumped out a handful of dyed blond curls I once cut and kept. I surrounded my laughing Buddha statuette with them: “have some hair, Buddha,” I said. Now those golden curls will remind me of the time I wrote about friendship and the necessities of the path, and found myself with an opening to a new friendship, dedicated from the onset to the necessities of the path of knowledge.
She affirmed many things: that the completion of a friendship, when called out of necessity, is akin to dealing with a cancer, as that it should be seen as a gift to be offered depression with the sentence of repeating all you’ve done but with waning confidence---and realize what you are, how you’ve grown, how you do not need to make your brain that sad labyrinth of self-doubt, if you have already found the key and used it to get out. What thread you can hope to leave another is matter unto itself, but this is why you should give your friends your best value possible when you communicate: how can you say they will not need it one day, when you yourself cannot truly help?
So, Joan, you inspired me. Your praise for life in one’s 50’s really engaged me; I know I will enjoy my life, too, more than ever by those years. Excited, I told her I’d go ahead and start my 50’s today! I noted that these years of life with my wife have an additional experience value, and if I tacked those years onto my chronological age, I’m in my 50’s! So, why not celebrate surviving, celebrate enlightenment, celebrate truth, celebrate certainty of the Self of your own choice?
She handed me this:
“I feel good!” James Brown says. I knew that I would.
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