Wearing Thin

You’ve been an eager fan. Received so much from his teachings over the years. Can scarcely believe the extraordinary benefit.

But lately, the blush is off the rose.

You’ve noticed that the message is no longer as penetrating, as deeply affecting as it once was.

Feels like you’re over it. And, that’s disappointing.

But what has been built in you is an enduring faith in yourself. Your own rock-solid.

Erosion didn’t just happen overnight.

You’d felt reluctant to break off the relationship with a magnificent guide who’d served you so well, for so long.

There’s that old question, “what’s love got to do with it?”

Well, probably a lot.

Because your teacher was your constant companion. Always at your side electronically. To encourage, support and reassure you.

Like part of your family. Only closer than blood – by a wide mile.

Each new teaching, a stunning epiphany and unraveller of so many of the mysteries present with you since birth.

How could anyone understand so completely the breadth of the journey you’d travelled?

You’d cast about for your ‘tribe’. Others like you, who felt the way you did.

Disinterested in the clap-chatter of common discourse. Sharing your distaste for small-talk as a primary currency.

But you were good at walking it alone, when that’s what it took.

Never lacking for friends and lovers. You played the game. Enacting a mainstream role, a virtuoso performance.

But when a spiritual teacher came along who was telling your story, making sense out of the incomprehensible, it’s no wonder that you were powerfully struck.

Still crazy after all those years.* Your healing adventure back to self-worth had powerfully launched.

You discovered that growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents was not your fault. You hadn’t a clue how you’d landed among them, but found reason in that rhyme.

You learned to trust your gut. Could spot an abuser at ten paces; a gas-lighter, before he’d even opened his mouth.

You began to thrive in the steadiness of your own bright Light.

You’d graduated with honors from spiritual-seeker school.

No longer in need of a mentor to answer your life questions. Or, to bear witness as he responded to the dilemmas of others.

For you recognized that each inquiry had a thousand answers. And could only be cut to cloth by the questioner herself.

So you let him go.

And you mourn that loss.

The distance between you, opening into the vastness of gratitude.

There is no other teacher but your own soul.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

T.S. Eliot

*Paul Simon