So here are the remaining issues after 15 years of musing this one.
(1) The belief it meant something for real. Here is the alignment of planets the night we met. Saturn, Moon, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Venus, Mars and Mercury -- the solar system in a line. Obviously absurd to suggest it means anything, but we hold onto beliefs. I felt instantly that we had met before in past lives, that I had waited my whole life to meet her, I felt she would not live long: she didn't. My last words were that I would see her in another life. I felt I would wait until then. We have our beliefs that sustain us long into the dark after the lights are out and the party has ended and everyone has one by one left.
2.1) First approach: try and get over the "love" first by looking for someone else. But the old memories persist, no one is the same, and we can only try and deny how we feel. Started this one even while I knew her.
2.2) We may persist in trying to get over them by continuing to hold onto them. It isn't over I'm not going to face the pain. We can find reasons, we can find beliefs to support us. Most powerful is the argument of True Love. Long argued in this blog years ago. How can we love again? If we do love again then it wasn't True Love, if we wish to preserve and honour that experience as True Love then we can't love again. If we feel that it was True Love and we can't imagine ever feeling like that again, we can provide a very strong argument to just get stuck and not grow and move on with what we have. An argument to swap the Future for the Past. I started this one in 2000 and then again after her death in 2006. I won't argue for or against the True Love arguments, only just acknowledge that such beliefs exist and focusing on them will help get us very stuck. The way on is elsewhere. What would our love want anyway?
2.3 ) Then we may get really serious about this denial. Love is an illusion, no one needs it, we can live without it. What is love anyway? If we can only find a way to live without it we can be free from all this nonsense and pain. Jesus, Buddha, monks, many all find this way: surely it exists. We might get scientific (as I've heard a monk argue): it is only chemicals in the brain; or, as a biologist, it's just an evolution to encourage childbirth. In both cases it is an addiction to force us into reproduction. What real satisfaction lies in biological preprogrammed impulses that are imposed on us by our body? I began this one in 2008.
(3) Tried them all. Five year later in 2013 I had succeeded in turning down all temptations to relationship and love, and escaped all sexual desire and wish for partnership. Needing someone was an illusion and I was free from the time wasting. A friend did an ancestor ritual in Gaya in which he included "my muse" without telling me. A third of the way around the globe I felt a physical chord snip--as if by scissors--to my top right. I told him, he told me; seems there might have been a connection: so I was free. But a seed remained, something wasn't quite right. There was denial still.
So 2015 things turn around I decide to explore back up the path, to reengage with where I was 18 year ago. Thanks to CRJ guiding me toward those now distant, almost forgotten, feelings I see an obvious flaw in the argument. If I really didn't need "love" them why was I at first seeking it, and then running from it? Indeed I was awake all night and running from it the night I met her: I was afraid because I was out of my depth on day one. If it is just an addiction, or an evolution (which it may be) this doesn't help me *now* because I was seeking it. And this leads into the proper way to get over them.
The door out, involves going through the door in. There are feelings, there are experiences that are part of the case, that we cannot and must not deny if we are to be a good detective and progress with the case. They are painful, they may be joyful, but both cannot be denied. It is in those feelings that we find our Self. Run away and we avoid our Self. Live in fear of them and we hide from our Self. But if we think we are free it is a myth because our every action is governed by what we are running from. Our freedom is a trap, and the punishment we fear is actually our freedom. We must one day face it.
And yes it does feel like punishment. And we look at what was so beautiful that has turned around to hurt us and we can't believe the injustice. While other lives in joy we who almost tasted that joy now experience a brutal punishment. That punishment is for not yet understanding how to get over you. If we learn this we have the greatest prize of all. We can love without fear.
Call it karma, perhaps, but those experiences good or bad are ours and we must have the strength to be ourselves and experience what is ours, take feelings on the chin, weather the storm, stop and enter the door to see what they really are, and come through it. In Buddhist language we must cross to the other shore. On the other side is our true Self free from these difficulties. It won't kill us, its not even real, it is only a conversation of feelings with our self, but they are part of our self and we do ourselves an injustice if we don't face up and listen to them. We like to think we don't need to listen, or stop for these things. We are bigger than that, why should I stop, I AM myself already, self contained and invincible, who am I stopping for? We should stop because that is our greater self calling! This self is yet incomplete, like a child trying to run away from home, it will hurt. They call this immature self Ego.
So finally the mystery that still eludes me. Buddha speaks of non-attachment. This means no more than having the ability to say "tonight I'm getting over you". To have that ability is enlightenment. But if we have that ability what is being in love like? If we like love, we don't like losing love, and if we don't like losing love how do we "get over you"? Pretending we don't like love does not work! (See above). And trying to train ourselves not to like love does not solve the problem, it simply avoids it. Quite how we do it is a mystery still, but all avenues that try to avoid the problem, and avoid going through the door of pain are wrong. We do like love, we do seek it, and we do find it goes wrong sometimes. Who knows why, but if there are answers we need listen to our big self for them. This is the last remaining door that we must go through.
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