Changes

Let the Tower fall

Photo by USGS on Unsplash

Once upon a time, I spent 10 days in silence at a Vipassana meditation retreat. A white-robed guru/sage sat on a raised stage at the front of the airy white hall and over the speaker system a voice intoned, changes, changes, changes.

Some changes come with a bang. They’re the Tower in the Tarot. Sudden, cataclysmic, consciousness-blowing, pattern revealing, life-changing changes from which there is no return, no comeback. What was is gone can never to be retrieved. Over.

Over forever.

I have a friend going through a separation that he did not want. This man yearned for real love. Where’s the love? he would cry to himself, to the sky. I think maybe he didn’t know what love was, is. That there are many leaves on the love tree. That love is celestial and ordinary. Like river stones. Anyway, the love he lived in slipped away and he was urged in a soul seeker way to quest for a deeper meaning.

So now, he is reeling from grief, anger, sadness, loss. He spins from zero to 100. He’s struggling to stabilize. There are five grandparents trying to help. He’s juggling self-pity, bemusement, and guilt. But mostly grief. He’s expecting to feel normal in the midst of turmoil and of course, he cannot. In amongst it all, he has to move an actual house on the back of a truck to a temporary location, until the sale…