I am indebted to Josh Cohen and to Sally Morrison who contributed
material for this conversation.
She's one of my favorite people. I
mean
she's one of my all
time
favorite people. No kidding! Given the opportunity (ie given the
chance
and given her invitation) I'd rather be with her than with
almost anyone else I can think of on
the planet.
She's my
friend.
She's my confidante. She's my
coach
(at least in certain areas of
my life)
and I'm hers (at least in certain areas of her life). She's a
hero
of mine. She's a muse.
She's someone who revels in
being authenticfor the sake of
being authentic.
After we say goodnight and I'm
drivinghome,
I often don't remember exactly what we
spoke
about - oddly the
details
don't seem to be crucial. Yet I find myself
swimming
in an
experience
of having
opened
it all up, of having been
completelyknown, of having let it all out, of having let it all
down, of having been totally
loved
and appreciated. I know
nothing
like it. I know no one like her. And when I
consider
which people I
get
to be with this
way,
it's everyone like a
possibility
(that's an "Of course!") but it's her and only a handful of others like
her in
reality
(that's
the truth).
There's an area we revisit again and again in our
conversations.
It's an area I flesh out for her. It's the same area she compliments
and
completes
for me. The area I'm referring to is the area grappled with in the
question"Where are you located as a
human being?".
It's a
question
which for me provides a key to how people regard what's
possible
for
human beings.
But it's more than that actually: it's a
question
which provides a key to how people regard themselves as
human beings.
And if you've ever
been around Werner,
it's a
question
which has been coming up a lot
around him
lately, the
answers
to which are almost never what people volunteer (ie are almost never
what people come up with) initially - which is not
atypical of almost all of the
inquiries
people grapple with
around Werner,
by
the way.
There's a certain distinction which for me goes
naturally
with this particular
question.
It's a
razor's
edge distinction. It's a
scalpel
precisely wielded along the
thin line
between
the way
we
ordinarily
live life, and living life
transformed.
I'm not suggesting she represents one side of that
line,
and I the other. That's too confining - not to mention it's too
caricaturing. Each of us at different
times
(when we tell
the truth
about it) occur for ourselves and for each other on either side of that
line.
What I
love
about her is I can be both with her from
time
to
time,
and she can be both with me from
time
to
time.
Authenticlove,
it would seem, has a lot less to do with having the same interests as
each other (regardless of what they are) as it has to do with having
the same acceptings of each other (regardless of
who we're being).
Getting
back to the two sides of that
line:
it requires a certain inspiration (or if I'm by myself, a certain
enlightenedpoint of view)
to see that how I occur for myself in here (as a
mash-up of bodily sensations, emotions / feelings,
thoughts / memories, and attitude / state of mind) isn't
who I really am,
regardless of the fact that I've lived most of
my lifeas if it is. It's her inspiration that has me be
out-here
where the
action
is, as the
context
for it all in which
Life itself
can
show up
- and more than that, has me
commit
to
being out-hereas my natural
Self-expression
(without this ongoing
commitment
I'm sprung like a rubber-band to re-interiorize myself
again and again and again
over and over and over).