LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Melissa Febos!
The timeless, placeless Everywhen
Dear Lovelets,
Hallo! And welcome to another chapter of Letters From Love.
Sometimes I think it’s a good idea to remind myself (and everyone else) what we are all about over here, and what we are up to.
This is an ongoing project in which we are learning, as a community, how to speak to ourselves and write to ourselves from the Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call SOUL around here) as a way of neutralizing and disarming the voices of self-hatred, perfectionism, self-condemnation, and self-attack that so many of us were taught to believe are “normal.”
One of the most astonishing things I’ve ever learned is that self-hatred is not normal. I mean, it’s SUPER normal in the culture I grew up in (it’s the groundwater!) but it is not considered to be normal in every society on earth. When the Dalai Lama came to the United States for the first time, he reported that the two things that shocked him most were the rampant epidemic of consumerism, and the rampant epidemic of self-hatred. (And if you don’t think those two things are linked, friend, think again.)
We medicate our self-hatred with consumerism, as well as with addictions of all kinds — because self-hatred creates a level of suffering that is so unbearable we will turn to any person, place, or thing that promises to relieve the pain of it, if only for a moment of high, a moment of all-too-fleeting pleasure, a moment of release, escape, or checking out.
I describe my own history of self-hatred this way: The call is coming from inside the house.
The sociopathic monster lived inside my own mind. How do you get away from that?
I have also often said that if anyone ever spoke to me the way I spoke to me, I would have had them arrested.
But how do you arrest the abuser within?
That’s what we are learning to do here. In these letters that we dare to write to ourselves (and it is such a dare, because it’s scary to be this vulnerable — so much easier to just live with the all-too-familiar monster) we learn how to drop the knives we have been holding to our own necks for our entire lives.
And when that self-hatred quiets, and the voice of unconditional love enters, all the other destructive urges quiet as well. Which is not only good for you, it is also a public service. Which is why this matters.
These letters from love matter, because you matter.
Thank you for being here, and for daring to try this with us. Something quite magical is happening here, one week at a time, one letter from love at a time. We couldn’t do this together unless you were here with us — so thank you!
Our special guest is the fierce, brilliant, powerful, talented, vulnerable writer Melissa Febos, whose latest book is THE DRY SEASON. Melissa’s letter got us thinking about the dreaded but inevitable rite of life that is losing a loved one. And so that is what my letter is about, and what we suggest as a prompt for the week, if your heart will allow it.
Let us begin, and let’s keep going.
Love,
Your Lizzy
If you’d like to write your own letter from love but don’t know how, let us hold your hand. And if you’d like to share your letter with us, just leave it in the comments section. To do so, you must have a paid subscription to Letters From Love. We have found that this safeguards our kind, like-hearted community and the intimate work we do together.
Dear Love, what would you have me know about losing others to death?
Brave little button, come on in. Pull up a chair. Take your shoes off. Pour yourself a cup of tea. Have a cookie.
Let’s talk like the old friends we are.
I won’t start by telling you not to be afraid that others will die. First of all, they will die — it is promised — and that promise is essentially, fundamentally frightening.
You have, for many years, told a story about how as soon as you heard about death, it began to terrify you. You spent so much of your childhood afraid that your family members would die. This was your chief fear, and it is the chief fear of so many children and adults. It is so common to be afraid this way! I won’t tell you not to be afraid.
But I will tell you that you are incorrect, when you identify childhood as having been “the first time you heard about death.” Oh sweetheart, pull closer to me. Let me remind you of something, for these conversations between us are often nothing more than reminders and remembrances.
Let me remind you, let me remember unto you, that you already knew everything about death long before you were born. Because the realm that you call “death” is actually where you come from.
Death is not only where you are going and where everyone is going, it’s a slightly awkward and not entirely accurate name for where you (and everyone) emanate from.
A better name for what you call “death” might actually be “home” — your true home. The true home of everyone and everything. The timeless, placeless place that is sometimes called the “Everywhen,” the eternal, the source: where all will experience a greater peace and reunion than can be found in this difficult, beautiful, precious essential Earth School experience. This Earth School, where you volunteered to come and learn lessons that could not be learned any other way. Including the lesson of letting go.
This place where you are currently living right now — or believing that you are living — is not your home, sweetie. I know you love it, but it is not your home. It’s just a loaner.
And the body that you inhabit is also not your home; it’s just something we created for you to motor about in, as you do your Earth School curriculum.
Your talents, senses, possessions, money, projects: also on loan, subject to be revoked or returned at any time.
And all the people and animals that you love — all of them are on loan, too. (And how lucky that you get to ride out this experience with them, short though it may be! But is it short, really? Or is it perfect?)
This planet also on loan — and everything in it, also on loan.
Time itself is on loan too, sweetie. Time, which we had to invent here so that you could all have this Earth School experience — this is the most temporary loan of all. But time is also not all that there is in the universe, nor is it the universe’s most precious creation, no matter how hard you may try to clutch at it.
This might be a good time to remember what your friend the Buddha taught about the five remembrances:
Remember that you are of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
Remember that you are of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
Remember that everything that is dear to you and everything you love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape these changes.
Remember that you are of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
Remember that your actions are your only true belongings. You inherit the actions of your body, speech, and mind (otherwise known as your karma). There is no way to escape your karma. Your actions are the ground upon which you stand.
That’s really grown-up stuff, honeyhead! Sounds a little scary, right? And it reminds you of a cartoon you once saw of the Buddha and Jesus at a religious icons’ convention. They are about to go on stage to pitch their big ideas, and Jesus says, “I’m going to teach the people that everything is love. What have you got?” The Buddha takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, and unfolds it. It says: “Life is suffering.” He slowly folds up the paper, puts it in his pocket, and walks away abashedly.
But both are true, honey.
Life is suffering, and all is love.
The Buddhists don’t flinch in the face of the reality of suffering, and that’s why you admire them so much. But those five remembrances are not meant to fill you with grim fear. They are meant to release you. Because what they constitute is remembering — merely remembering that which your soul has already and eternally known to be true. Remembering the reality which you cannot fight against, and therefore don’t need to fight against. In surrendering to that which is true, including death, you will have your awakening.
And remember what else the Buddha said: “The path to awakening is joyful at the beginning, joyful in the middle, and joyful at the end.”
How can it be so? How can life be so joyful even as there is so much suffering, and everything and everyone will be lost?
Joy begins by living in accordance with the reality of the deal of this plane, my love — not in objection to it. Your joyful acceptance of reality is what shall brighten the journey of love — a journey that you, my adventurous spirit, wanted to take. You signed up for it. You signed up for the full curriculum. Your soul would not have missed the ride of life and death for anything. All of it, even the parts that feel so scary to your dear limited mind.
Your mind is almost always afraid of loss, my child, but your soul never is. This is a great remembrance for you.
Remember what you came here to feel, to see, to touch, to love, and to release. Your soul does not doubt or regret one bit of it. Even the losses. Even the deaths.
Given that you cannot control any of this, and given that you elected to be here to have the curriculum of “life on life’s terms” — to have the experience of learning to love and let go — what choice do you have, really, except to love even bigger? Let that be another relaxing remembrance. You are here to love — and love, as you well know, comes from the eternity, the place of endless offering. Love survives both life and death.
Your friend T.S. Eliot had it right when he said, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate.”
That is what death is, my dear. It is the unknown, remembered gate that leads back home.
While you are here, sweetie, don’t get lost in obsession about death or anything you cannot control; ask instead who you can love. Start with the people in the room. Oh, are you the only person in the room? Perfect. Start there. Love her. Every person needs love, at all times. Love the one you are with. Love her.
Then expand your love to Pepita, which is not difficult at all.
Now expand your vision and your love more. See the Lovelets. See this community. See Margaret. See Melissa. See the names of all the people in the comments section . . . names that have become so familiar to you, names that don’t even need faces behind them for you to feel how deeply you know and love them. Because you do know them. You know them from the Everywhen. You know them from the place you call death, but that is really the source of all life. Love them. You don’t even have to leave your house to do it.
But when you do leave your house, take that love with you. Love is the generator of all the courage you will need for the rest of this experience, no matter what suffering or losses may come.
Love this experience, my child — that is the great answer for you. Get what you came here for. Don’t lose heart now, when you have come so far. There is so much more we want to show you. And some of the showing will be in the taking away. There is so much more we want you to feel and experience. There is so much more YOU want to feel and experience.
And Love — us, our endless warmth, our bottomless force — that is what will carry you forward, and then, at the perfect moment, carry you and everyone you love through the unknown, remembered gate of death, and finally — you remember now! —back home.
Let’s keep going.
Prompt
If this week’s subject feels too heavy, remember that you can always, always pose this question instead when you write your letter, and see what theme emerges for you: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?
If you’d like to join me in reflecting on the experience of losing a loved one (or more generally, the concepts of mortality and the Everywhen, you can start here: Dear Love, what would you have me know about losing others to death?