The Blessings of Life

“Words are windows, or they're walls,

They sentence us, or set us free.

When I speak and when I hear,

Let the love light shine through me.”
- Ruth Bebermeyer

The past eight months has been an unprecedented period of personal and spiritual education for me. The recent, intensive learning began in May (2024) when my partner was plunged into long-term care due to paralysis. My partner lives with advanced stages of Parkinsons and dementia.

The preceding eight months has been one of purification. Home life with my partner of 25 years has been stripped away. My physical home was stripped away (I have relocated into an apartment). Much of my work activities were stripped away, as I devoted all of my energies to helping my partner transition into long-term care and selling our home. What remaining social life I had, outside of institutional settings, was stripped away. There was little left. If there had been any facades, any coverings or veils, that my ego was still projecting, these too had been stripped away. I was ego-less. Not ‘without’ ego, but with less of it. I felt helpless, vulnerable beyond compare, and with no control over all that was unfolding.

As I begin to emerge out of this period, some precious insights are starting to crystalize into beautiful gems. First, there is an awareness that unlike any other time in my life I know nothing. I do not know what anything outside of me is for. I do not understand anything outside of me. I cannot even be sure I can explain what anything outside is for or even means. Second, there is an awareness that all of it, all that is seemingly around me, people, places, events, means nothing. It is ALL meaningless. Third, and perhaps most precious, is an awareness that I no longer need to strive to understand anything outside of me. I no longer need to strive to make sense of, or find meaning in, anything outside of me. All I need do, if anything, is accept all that appears to be unfolding outside of me.

The preceding awareness has been tremendously freeing. I can certainly acknowledge all that is unfolding outside of me, but now I give myself permission to not have to make sense of it or understand what it is all about. It simply is. As a dear soul friend has often shared with me about that which he experiences unfolding outside of him…all I need do is acknowledge “Oh, that just happened.”…and move on. No judgement; no thought beyond what just happened. Just an awareness; and then a letting go.

Until now I have written about what is seemingly going on outside of me. What about the inside? What about all that is going on inside of me? Well…there is little to no difference. The outside if merely a manifestation of what is going on inside. It is equally helpful to be aware of what is going on ‘inside’ as ‘outside,’ but it is equally meaningless and pointless. All of my inner work over the years, while valid and a stepping stone to present-day awareness, was, in itself meaningless and pointless. I don’t mean that the inner work was not worth doing, but that, in and of itself, it was meaningless and pointless. It was only what I projected on the inner work that had any meaning or point.

Even my meditation practice has not gone unaffected in my awareness. For several years I have allowed less and less structure to lay over my meditation practice. Yes, I continue to sit daily in stillness, but I have moved almost entirely to a meditation practice of ‘allowing’ no structure or set way of doing things. If there is a goal, it is simply to be still and allow my thinking mind to come to rest. This practice of stilling the mind is, in an of itself, like all other illusions. However, it differs in one very important way; at least it doesn’t create any other illusions of myself, or anything I may perceive to be unfolding outside of me.

These ‘dark nights of the soul’ are precious gifts. The preceding eight months has allowed me to deepen in my trust of life and Spirit. So long as I surrender to the unfolding, the TRUE gifts of life will reveal themselves to me. But so long as I hold back, so long as I refuse to go in to the dark, I walk away from my healing. There is light in the dark. The darkness is not there to consume me; it is there to set me free.

Robert Meagher has been ordained as an Interfaith Minister and certified as a Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT) Therapist. Robert is the Founder and Spiritual Director for Spiritual Guidance and Co-Founder of the Center for Human Awakening.