If I let go of my sorrow I will let go of what caused my sorrow and I don't want to lose that which caused my sorrow to be gone. Sorrow has always been a dilemma to me. Why do we feel this deep longing, this woefulness? It is not simply about the loss of someone dearly loved or about
an event that is agony. It is not about aging or life changing as we travel on this infinite journey through eternity. Though all of those may cause sorrow. This sorrow I sometimes feel is an ancient sorrow, coming from a place deep inside my soul. Like a cloud of unknowing. This feeling that hovers above me and within me. A longing so deep it could cause despair, but it does not. It simply lingers beneath the surface and calls out from time to time. The Cloud of Unknowing is the title of a book purported to be written by an English monk is the middle of the 14th century. Written for a young man who was considering a contemplative life. Chapter 44 is titled "How a soul is to destroy all knowing and feeling of its own being." In order to understand better that painful instruction takes some reflection indeed. I take it to mean that the soul is at work dissolving the myth of me and this feeling of separation that creates personal sense. Part 3 of this chapter again lends some light: "All men have reason for sorrow, but most particularly does he have cause for sorrow who knows and feels that he is." Is what? It is indeed sorrowful if he believes he is this entity identity caught in the pairs of opposites, the illusion of the senses and the delusion of the mind. But he is caught only by conditioning and relative reality. Truth always reveals the lie and the lie vanishes. It never was! Its fraudulent claim is a fiction, has no power and cannot stand! When the lie is exposed, the man can know and feel "not only what he is but that he is,[this] man can experience sorrow authentically." And exactly what is the he that he is? Life, I would venture, with one caveat. Life without a subject. The same life as a blade of grass. No more. No less. That is what he is and that is the I am that I am to be. Nothing. Nothing separate and apart from that which IS. And the sense of separation from that Is is the cause of sorrow. This is a "sorrow, when experienced, cleanses the soul.... and it thereby makes the soul capable of receiving that joy that separates a man from the awareness and feeling of his being." Awareness is an experience of the man whose breath is in his nostrils. We rise up, if I be lifted up, from the density into mindlessness, into mindfulness, into awareness. Awareness is the step before full consciousness. And that consciousness is without an object or objective. The sorrow that leads us to Joy is one that knows the emptiness that is the fulfillment of the soul. I and i are 1. There is no other. There is no separation. It is the separation that causes the sorrow. Only by practicing the contemplative life can we achieve reunion with that which we are. Sorrow is a raft that rescues us from this world. Welcome it. It is the ticket home. My sorrow will only be gone when I am one with the sorrow and it is revealed as a lie and vanishes.