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the clearing.

you’ll be lonely for people until people make you lonely; that’s one way to solve it, even if it’s not what you had hoped for.

it feels strange walking up to the counter and realizing your claim ticket is not the same as the others’. you don’t get the usual assortment, gleaming containers of light in a milk basket. you get all of it, in every form, in everything around you. the light of creation can all be yours (for free) but only if nothing is yours (that you, yourself, remain free).

there is the certainty (beyond these five senses, beyond human logic) that all is unfolding for the good. you notice that other people’s deepest secrets and urgent pleas, private conundrums and many questions, wants and needs, hopes and dreams, dying thirst and ravenous hunger –the unending minutiae of it all– are not what nourish you, even as they are laid ever so gently, like prayers at your feet. these offerings, while humble and true, are not reverence. they beg for devotion, providing none.

you’ve lost the desire to be needed. to be wanted is dull. you understand now that holding vulnerability and witnessing pain, meeting others in the exact places only you can help, these privileges are not the same as being met. intimacy is still a warm, special place where you stay hungry and unseen. you can live there and love there, invisible in the dark, still holding your own hand. it’s ok. this is the darkness where seekers find God. your loneliness shares in the loneliness of God. this sudden clearing in your own consciousness is where you meet the divine within and the divine without, again and again.