Of Love, Life, and Death

An Open Letter To My Dear Ex-Best Friend

Here is my journey in finding myself to be one with myself, but before I begin, let me remind us where we have both left.

It has been two years since our cycle disconnected. During the two years, silence has been the only last retreat I had because anything else within our cyclic life had spectacularly tumbled down. But before I threw some shades over all of you, I realised that I should have looked into myself, because who was I anyway? A little soul of anger and rage, glazed with betrayal and defeat.

So for these past two years, I found myself travelling out there and about, but soon I realised the further away I travelled, the more the distance retracted me to nowhere else but myself. In other words, the past journey was substantially no other than finding myself to be one with myself. So in such a way, I could find love and compassion. The two that just awoke from a deep sleep, and found a way of understanding life — of past, present, and future — and to one circumstantial extend, death.

One truthful remained between us that we undeniably loved each other. But what is love? It is nothing but an immense yearning to include the other as a part of yourself.

Whether you are in search of love, sexuality, and companionship, we all in search of relationship to be one with someone or something else. So rather than understanding the essence of life itself. We tend to seek answers and expectations from others because of the belief to find someone else to complete yourself never comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Whether we are looking for something or desire to be one with something or someone has become the essence of life. Therefore we are longing to be happy, and complete. Aren’t we all thinking longing is a journey from point A; that is ourselves, to point B; that is whatever the outcomes may be.

But the thing is, it is always a journey outwards instead of inwards. A journey that desires to point B will never actually reach out the end, but in process, it evolves to many directions and expectations. So we become blinded and shallow — not to others — but ourselves. The fact that being one with our true selves is the key to understanding happiness. This is how I started my journey to finding myself.

Do you remember the times when we used to be one? We cheered and laughed, swept and danced. We were a complete cycle of the reality of our creation. I was you, and you were me. The six-years cyclic life found us comforts, joys, ecstasy and somehow ended up hurtful and tearful. The friendship we built, there were more illusional than rational, more intoxicated than enlighted. So I have seen enough of it, and I want to move on another new cycle.

As all of you witnessed the pathway I walked on, of love, life and death, they aren’t always seemingly on my side. A series of unfortunate events had hit me hard. From broken loves, many death occurrences of the loved ones, and life failures.

So, I began to question the existence of the three within me. I think it happens to you too. When a sudden death of the loved one left you in long grief, Loss and sorrow cast over your path, and then you started to question your existence. When many past relationships ended up worn and broken, you also began questioning your existence. When your life found a series of failures, you found yourself of nowhere to go, then again you started questioning your existence.

What is the purpose behind all of it? Firstly, I turned to the religion in finding the answer. So I began my path on something familiar — the faith of my birth.

You and I are the inherited products of the Abrahamic religions. Our parents had given us such a subconscious force what of becoming our birth religions. No one asked us, in our favours, what we should hold in our belief system. In other words, we just followed what they gave us. It was an ungifted gift we bear.

But the beliefs of Abrahamic monotheism have just made me lose my touch with reality. Sin and virtue, heaven and hell, good and bad, redemption and damnification, they just pulled me away from the truth. You have to choose either north or south, east or west. But doesn’t north exist because of the south, and south to north, so does east to west respectively?

The two poles aren’t after all in opposition, but with all their forces, completing one another. Abrahamic religions teach us to be right in their terms by pulling us away from our connection to the universe. A settlement of such belief-system is the obsession of the world’s dominant religions while overlooking the needs of one who genuinely wants to understand what god — or gods — is.

Here we are, stranded In the western world we live in, the concept of existence also comes with a consequence. We always understand it as a purpose. Then here I was, standing so close to the sacred mount Fuji, as the cold wind lingered through as the last trace of spring danced in the air, I broke in tears. Who was I daring myself in questioning the purpose of life? From the lookout rooftop shelter, clouds were hanging low on the mountain. The crystal clear view of the soft snowy peak slowly disappeared. There’s nothing immortal in such thing we call life. So is seeking one’s truth. It will one day come to the light end.

A year later, here I was on my yoga mat, after months of dawning meditation, I learned from my trips in Bali, only in one breath I found the purpose of life. That life is the purpose of reaching out completion. When it completes, it moves to another dimension after dimension. In that respect, death is nothing more than an invention imagined by those who live their lives in their corrupted, obliviousness.

So, here I was, breathing out death itself, and as I breathed in, I realised that I should look for no purpose of life because life itself is the purpose.

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Originally published for Medium