Mystery, Love, and Letting Go

How do I love, and let go?

How do I hold the intention in my heart to have someone in my life, and release my attachment to how the situation unfolds? To the outcome?

How do I care deeply, and remain grounded in self referral?

It seems like its all about the questions these days. I guess it always has been.

I’ve been in the thick of this question for the last few years – the love and let go quandary. When Kathleen and I separated, of course, I initiated the letting go, but then I had someone else to hold onto. More recently, when Cypress and I split up, my future was much less certain.

Now I have met someone that I absolutely must remain unattached to. The circumstances demand it.

My intention is to have this person in my life, but our situation may prevent that. I find that my heart is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. At one apex of its parabola, I’m deeply attached to the outcome of our romance, while at the other, my heart wants to turn its back. I want to find the place in the middle where I can love deeply, without attachment to what happens next.

As in the self-referral quandary, my ego becomes entangled with the dilemma. If our relationship fails to materialize, my ego will take a bruising. I’ve already started to create the story line, and now I’ll have to re-script it! More challenging for me is to let go of the memory of our physical connection: how do I wash the memories of an intense sexual relationship from my heart?

It occurred to me this morning during meditation that I don’t have to wash any of it away. All I have to do is let go of my attachment to the outcome, and I can just love this woman regardless of what happens between us. My ego can let go of its stifling questions: was I a good lover? was I special? Did I push to hard? Have I made a monumental mistake? My heart can find freedom in the knowledge that together something powerful passed (is passing) between us, and that is enough. If that’s all, then that is what is meant to be.

My worry has been that if I set my intentions – to love and care for this person – and then let go of any attachment to the outcome, that somehow I will predetermine the conclusion. But to not let go is to fight the entire universe, because the entire universe is spread out before me like so many stars in the night sky, but with no single pathway predetermined. How could I know what comes next from such possibility?

Every moment we step into that mystery. The future is nothing more than a infinite field of possibilities. Wanting to know what the future holds is really just me clinging to the past, to what I’ve already known. Letting go of outcomes is like embracing the myriad possibly before me all at once. Its frightening. Its painful even. But its also exciting.

How do I love, and let go?

How do I hold the intention in my heart to have someone in my life, and release my attachment to how the situation unfolds? To the outcome?

How do I care deeply, and remain grounded in self referral?

By not being afraid. By trusting my spirit, my soul, to guide me. My acknowledging my ego and its questions and fears, but not allowing it to control me.

We have no choice. This is how the universe is organized. Past, present, future. Only the present is real. The past is simply emotional responses derived from our ego. The future too. Feel love in the present, but not an attachment to what it meant in the past, or might mean in the future.

Both past and future are mystery. And possibility.

I just keep telling myself that over and over again.