It's ain't over 'til it's over. The great Yogi, Lawrence Peter Berra, uttered those immortal words, and it has never felt truer to me than this month.
Yogi was referring, of course, to the fact that until a baseball game is completely over -- the last out is recorded and the game's in the record books -- anything can happen.
This, of course, tracks well with Robert Scheinfeld's Busting Loose metaphor of playing the Human Game. Anything can happen in Phase 2, and usually does.
As a corollary to that, I would add, even if you think it's over, it might not be.
I explain this as the latest introduction to my ongoing saga with Liz, the woman I lived and loved with for five years. We have been separated for well over a year now, but our paths continue to cross in a variety of ways.
Regular readers of this column may recall my post in early January where I felt I had turned a corner in my consciousness about that relationship and big changes were occurring in my hologram. I went through some bumpy times as I sorted out my connection to Liz/me. But I felt some resolution.
Then, I ran into her at an event a couple of weeks ago, and it triggered some discomfort that I can't really explain, something that weighed on me for several days.
I finally asked her to go for a walk. The conversation that evening was deep and honest and for me, somewhat upsetting. The details are not important, because it's not about the details, really. But one of the questions I had was about the amazing persistence of our relationship. Why wasn't it over, at least in the hologram?
I wrote her the next day, explaining what had come up for me, and tried to summarize and interpret what I had created her say to me. Interpretation, a more genteel and insidious form of judgment, is the subject of another column for another day. Her response was kind and informative and proof that I was off the mark in many ways.
She suggested we might need another walk, and I agreed.
Then it got interesting.
I woke up Saturday morning, the day before our walk, to a radio program featuring Susan Piver, the author of "The WIsdom of a Broken Heart."
She was already two-thirds through the show, but the part I needed to hear, I heard. In the course of the interview, she said that what underlies all relationship is the awareness, or lack of it, that it is going to end -- it not in life, then in death. Even the most loving, long-lasting relationship in this hologram will end, at least in the physical sense, when one of the partners dies. That, I think, is the essence of heartbreak, the deep realization that life is a series of transitions.
Secondly, she talked about what a great spiritual opportunity a broken heart presents -- how a really broken heart shatters all our illusions about who we are, who the other person is, what relationship is. When we come through it, if we want to come through it, all is possible again.
I've sort of avoided self-help stuff since starting Busting Loose, and what she was talking about may sound Phase 1 in some ways, but Busting Loose is about shattering illusions if nothing else. It's also about seeing the kernel of truth in even the most Phase 1 illusions and beliefs.
What Expanded Self presented to me was that Liz came in to my hologram to break my heart open, fully and completely. The more I loved her, the more she loved me, the more complete the heartbreak.
I realized that the heart is like a piñata, you have to beat it with a stick sometimes for all the goodies to come out, like wisdom, compassion and love, the things that make the Human Game so awe-inspiring.
Secondly, it showed me that I still needed some work on the discomfort of endings, and that Liz was, in fact, the Angel of Death. I'd created some pretty traumatic "endings" in previous relationships, but I still had patterns about them, that are with me to this day. I still had lessons to learn.
So Saturday afternoon, I felt moved to ask her to watch "Wings of Desire" with me. It's about a guardian angel who after centuries of watching over troubled souls decides to take the leap and fall to earth, for the sake of experiencing the human game -- smoking a cigarette, savoring a hot cup of coffee, falling in love.
To me, the movie represented the miracle that is daily life, and how even the most mundane activities, thoughts and feelings have a great resonance, if we are sensitive enough, and raw enough in my case, to experience them.
Liz was, in fact, acquainted with the movie. She had just never been able to sit through the whole thing. But I instinctively knew that she would resonate this time. You see, Liz had long had a thing about angels. Her home was filled with images and statues of angels.
As it turns out, the movie and the message moved her.
The next day we met for breakfast and our walk. During the course of our walk, I was compelled to tell her what I had discovered the day before. I just couldn't figure out how to politely tell her she was the Angel of Death.
But I did. And she laughed. It fit her exactly, she said. She was in the process of destroying every pattern in her hologram. Then it struck both of us just how truly funny this was. You see, Liz was dressed all in black, with a top that was sort of like a cape. As we walked the path along the Rio Grande, she began flapping her cape like wings.
If you've read this far, hoping that we have gotten back together and plan to live happily ever after, sorry to disappoint you. That wasn't what this was about.
It was simply a matter of me trusting in Expanded Self to take a leap of self-discovery, to be utterly vulnerable, and receiving the support of a loving companion willing to go along.
Now, if she ends up running off with the bass player, I may be singing a different tune. But for now, this is as good as it gets.
Yogi was referring, of course, to the fact that until a baseball game is completely over -- the last out is recorded and the game's in the record books -- anything can happen.
This, of course, tracks well with Robert Scheinfeld's Busting Loose metaphor of playing the Human Game. Anything can happen in Phase 2, and usually does.
As a corollary to that, I would add, even if you think it's over, it might not be.
I explain this as the latest introduction to my ongoing saga with Liz, the woman I lived and loved with for five years. We have been separated for well over a year now, but our paths continue to cross in a variety of ways.
Regular readers of this column may recall my post in early January where I felt I had turned a corner in my consciousness about that relationship and big changes were occurring in my hologram. I went through some bumpy times as I sorted out my connection to Liz/me. But I felt some resolution.
Then, I ran into her at an event a couple of weeks ago, and it triggered some discomfort that I can't really explain, something that weighed on me for several days.
I finally asked her to go for a walk. The conversation that evening was deep and honest and for me, somewhat upsetting. The details are not important, because it's not about the details, really. But one of the questions I had was about the amazing persistence of our relationship. Why wasn't it over, at least in the hologram?
I wrote her the next day, explaining what had come up for me, and tried to summarize and interpret what I had created her say to me. Interpretation, a more genteel and insidious form of judgment, is the subject of another column for another day. Her response was kind and informative and proof that I was off the mark in many ways.
She suggested we might need another walk, and I agreed.
Then it got interesting.
I woke up Saturday morning, the day before our walk, to a radio program featuring Susan Piver, the author of "The WIsdom of a Broken Heart."
She was already two-thirds through the show, but the part I needed to hear, I heard. In the course of the interview, she said that what underlies all relationship is the awareness, or lack of it, that it is going to end -- it not in life, then in death. Even the most loving, long-lasting relationship in this hologram will end, at least in the physical sense, when one of the partners dies. That, I think, is the essence of heartbreak, the deep realization that life is a series of transitions.
Secondly, she talked about what a great spiritual opportunity a broken heart presents -- how a really broken heart shatters all our illusions about who we are, who the other person is, what relationship is. When we come through it, if we want to come through it, all is possible again.
I've sort of avoided self-help stuff since starting Busting Loose, and what she was talking about may sound Phase 1 in some ways, but Busting Loose is about shattering illusions if nothing else. It's also about seeing the kernel of truth in even the most Phase 1 illusions and beliefs.
What Expanded Self presented to me was that Liz came in to my hologram to break my heart open, fully and completely. The more I loved her, the more she loved me, the more complete the heartbreak.
I realized that the heart is like a piñata, you have to beat it with a stick sometimes for all the goodies to come out, like wisdom, compassion and love, the things that make the Human Game so awe-inspiring.
Secondly, it showed me that I still needed some work on the discomfort of endings, and that Liz was, in fact, the Angel of Death. I'd created some pretty traumatic "endings" in previous relationships, but I still had patterns about them, that are with me to this day. I still had lessons to learn.
So Saturday afternoon, I felt moved to ask her to watch "Wings of Desire" with me. It's about a guardian angel who after centuries of watching over troubled souls decides to take the leap and fall to earth, for the sake of experiencing the human game -- smoking a cigarette, savoring a hot cup of coffee, falling in love.
To me, the movie represented the miracle that is daily life, and how even the most mundane activities, thoughts and feelings have a great resonance, if we are sensitive enough, and raw enough in my case, to experience them.
Liz was, in fact, acquainted with the movie. She had just never been able to sit through the whole thing. But I instinctively knew that she would resonate this time. You see, Liz had long had a thing about angels. Her home was filled with images and statues of angels.
As it turns out, the movie and the message moved her.
The next day we met for breakfast and our walk. During the course of our walk, I was compelled to tell her what I had discovered the day before. I just couldn't figure out how to politely tell her she was the Angel of Death.
But I did. And she laughed. It fit her exactly, she said. She was in the process of destroying every pattern in her hologram. Then it struck both of us just how truly funny this was. You see, Liz was dressed all in black, with a top that was sort of like a cape. As we walked the path along the Rio Grande, she began flapping her cape like wings.
If you've read this far, hoping that we have gotten back together and plan to live happily ever after, sorry to disappoint you. That wasn't what this was about.
It was simply a matter of me trusting in Expanded Self to take a leap of self-discovery, to be utterly vulnerable, and receiving the support of a loving companion willing to go along.
Now, if she ends up running off with the bass player, I may be singing a different tune. But for now, this is as good as it gets.
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