Separation and Attachment

Today is hard. More grief. Sophie our dog has been suffering for several weeks now and took a pretty dramatic turn for the worse last week. Today we received news that she has cancer. It’s aggressive. Sophie just recently reached 16 in human years which makes her lifetime that much more extraordinary – given her size, that makes somewhere very close, if not older than 90 in dog years!

Anyone who’s been haunting this planet for a decent length of time has dealt with this sort of event. What I find most interesting is how it lands for me and the significance I find in it.

That significance and my grief surrounding this news and the impending separation seems directly related to my attachment to this amazing 4 legged teacher. This grief seems just as sharp and gut wrenching as what I have been experiencing with the passing of one of my uncles.

How can this be? What is it that drives this inexorably to the surface. It demands expression – tears, snot filled tissues, moaning and wailing. The release seems temporary, with brief respites of amazing calm in between bursts of sobs that break forth from what seems to be the very core of my being.

Yet in the midst of this intensely human experience, how is it that this amazing calm – something unbidden, arising from a hidden well of peace – seems to reside in that selfsame core from which my grief is welling up from. This is incredibly mysterious and familiar at the same time.

It seems I am coming to know myself as the paradox I’ve heard and read about. Most recently in a conversation between
Deepak Chopra and Marc Gafni: One of the “Future of Love” tele-series broadcasts by Integral Life. In the conversation, there is reference made to concept of coming to know ourselves as a paradox. Apparently an idea that is discussed in Chopra’ 1996 book “A Path to Love”. While I have yet to read the book, the ideas discussed resonated within and it was a moment of awakening for me.

That conversation and my current read “Soul Mates” from Thomas Moore have gripped my my attention and imagination. Within these sources, I am hearing more confirmation of my own path of mystery and unfoldment. The subtle clues that have provide a compass heading for my life. It’s only recently that I’ve found others have been talking about this sort of thing for millenia. No surprise really that there is a rich storehouse of teaching available to me for the asking.

Moore writes about the magical qualities of Soul and Soul based relationship. He points out that soul based relationships can occur between many different people in all kinds of circumstances. These are not limited to the notion of romantic relationships, but rather can indeed span the  breadth of our experience with relationship.

Attachment as it turns out according to Moore is the work of the soul. It is separate and distinct from spirit, Eros or the motive force of our lives. This is a subtle and very useful distinction for me: Spirit and Soul.

As I reflect (soul work) on my path, I can see that soul work has indeed been an imperative for me. Something I must do, deeply compelled, at times without regard to the consequences, bordering or perhaps slipping over into irrationality at times.