To the Heart in Solitude

(Letter to the Self - After the Storm. The moon looks lovely tonight.)

Gel print by ME :)

Dear Heart,

I would like to tell you that, since ancient times, this has been the way of life. The heart has to break to be opened again. Courage has to be soldered as you learn to get back to the dance again. The “I” is tricky. It will show up like a stubborn child, or a grumpy adult who missed their morning coffee. Some days it wants to be the hero, the winner, the one who gets it all right. But the grace, dear heart, is in learning to rise like the dawn. Soft, quiet, and full of childlike wonder, no matter what came before.

You will act like a hurricane while, in your heart, longing to be the loving breeze that washes over the sweltering heat. There will be parts of you from different timelines, all wanting to integrate into a beautifully crafted human being.

Let me tell you, you and every soul who crossed your path is the main actor of their own story. Everyone lends each other their light as they go through the battles of their own. You can’t save all, but keep loving people in their glory and their fall. You will falter, fall, and hurt them more, unaware of what each knows of you. Your deepest wounds will become jesters in times of strife, tempting you to soldier on and bridge the gaps. The wounds are yours and yours alone to question and heal. In your solitude, you will become radically free.

You will keep making mistakes. Some familiar, some new. Life has a way of circling back, not to punish you, but to offer another chance to pause, choose differently, and gather your courage. Each season asks something different of you. And still, you can rise.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easy. The mind will play its tricks and make you believe time is on a treadmill. The very essence of what you believe in contradicts the history of time. The podcasts you played on loop, of the great masters saying everything is an illusion. You aren’t the body. You aren’t the mind. You aren’t the identity. You are a tiny particle of consciousness, maybe… What a travesty it would be to lose the essence of it all as you get sucked into the structures of mortality.

What if you are a figment of imagination dreaming, and not wanting to wake up from this ephemerality?

Have courage and bask in the fertile soil of solitude.
Give your presence to the birds, the trees, the skies, the canvas, and everything that cannot speak.
Learn the language of silence and the art of the universe.
The oceans do not question the storm swells, nor the pregnant rivers as they flow into the sea.
Learn how the trees help each other without keeping count of rights and wrongs.
Make paper cranes out of your hurts, and offer them to the Gods

What a joy it would be to see you come alive in your aloneness.

Go become abundant in your self. Let the questions rest easy in the creek by the woods. Let your heart flow once again. Go where the wild geese go.

Truth needs no microphone.
It rests, quietly, in eternity.

Love and grace wait quietly at the door to welcome you back as you return home.

Yours truly.

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My letter is inspired by the original series by

Elizabeth Gilbert

. I highly recommend you to read the letters. There is so much tenderness in each of the letter that is shared every week. Writing is my way of catharsis. Not because I’m in constant turmoil but because life, in its fullness, comes with weather. And what would it be without storms?

I wrote a little poem after a long time. The other poem that I am thinking about is The Guesthouse by Rumi.

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At the altar of silence,
I place the words back,
sewing them tenderly
into the fabric of time.

I wrote this in a quiet moment after my meditation tonight. It began as a note to myself, and ended up feeling like something I wanted to offer forward.
A pause between storms. A soft hand on the back. A return.

I hope it finds you where you are.
And if it does, may it keep you company.

Things that tugged my heart :

• My tears didn’t stop when I read On Writing by

  Anna Gát ✨
  . This is a lighthouse kind of essay for resilience.

• I listened to this episode of Joanna Macy on Onbeing once again.

• A koan that I have been reflecting upon: A Zen master asks, “Show me your Original Face, the face you had before your parents were born.

As I try to discover the virtues of monastic silence especially in the personal life, I hope my silence is filled joy and cheer :D