"If I may be permitted to say so, the most fortunate experience of these past twenty years has been the selfless love I have received from my wife, Liu Xia. She could not be present as an observer in court today, but I still want to say to you, my dear, that I firmly believe your love for me will remain the same as it has always been. Throughout all these years that I have lived without freedom, our love was full of bitterness imposed by outside circumstances, but as I savor its aftertaste, it remains boundless. I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart. Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and brightness in my heart, and filling every minute of my time in prison with meaning. My love for you, on the other hand, is so full of remorse and regret that it at times makes me stagger under its weight. I am an insensate stone in the wilderness, whipped by fierce wind and torrential rain, so cold that no one dares touch me. But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you."

> Sometimes a fit of longing is so acute you feel your lungs cracking, as if a creature inside wants to break out of you. It feels as if you’re dying. At such times, you have to move about in order to escape from the creature.

> If it’s daytime you go out to the courtyard. You walk and walk and walk. For hours. Until you calm down.

> But what if it happens at night? You have no place to go, no place to walk, no place to move. You have to sit in a chair. The doors are locked. Those are the hardest hours of the voyage around my cell.

I am grateful to learn about this new term ‘Open-Individualism’. I see it is somewhat similar to Hindu philosophy’s ‘Tat tvam asi’, which I love.

Might I implore you to start an apprenticeship with grief? I think what this society needs most at this time is people who see the beauty in indigenous ritual processes and actively participate in them in their communities.

“In this culture we display a compulsive avoidance of difficult matters and an obsession with distraction. Because we cannot acknowledge our grief, we’re forced to stay on the surface of life. Poet Kahlil Gibran said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” We experience little genuine joy in part because we avoid the depths. We are an ascension culture. We love rising, and we fear going down. Consequently we find ways to deny the reality of this rich but difficult territory, and we are thinned psychically. We live in what I call a “flat-line culture,” where the band is narrow in terms of what we let ourselves fully feel. We may cry at a wedding or when we watch a movie, but the full-throated expression of emotion is off-limits.” — Francis Weller

I learned about having an ‘apprenticeship with grief’ through the work of Francis Weller. He writes:

“I’m not sure how or when I began my apprenticeship with sorrow. I do know that it was my gateway back into the breathing and animate world. It was through the dark waters of grief that I came to touch my unlived life, by at last unleashing tears I had never shed for the losses in my world. Grief led me back into a world that was vivid and radiant. There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness, some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable and what is most exquisitely alive. Through this, I have come to have a lasting faith in grief.

This book is also about restoring the Soul of the World. Bringing soul back to the world means perceiving the world through a deepened imagination, one that is capable of experiencing our intimacy with the surrounding world of finches and dragonflies, creeks and woodlands, neighborhoods and friends. Everything possesses soul. It is our myopia, our one-dimensional attention to things “human,” that leads us to see the world as an object, something to be controlled, manipulated, and consumed. The earth is a revelation, offering itself to us daily in an astonishing array of beauty and suffering. What is required of us is living with a level of openness and vulnerability to the joys and sorrows of the world. Taking in the beauty of the land as well as the great rips and tears in her skin requires a psyche attuned to the living world and one engaged in the ongoing conversation with all things. Soul returns to the world when we attend to the rhythms of nature, when we nourish our friendships with time and attention and in our daily participation with repairing the world. How well we do that will determine the fate of our communities and the planet.” — Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

I found a great introduction to his work in this podcast: https://charleseisenstein.net/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story...

You write: “To think otherwise is simply naive, and suggests one has had few encounters with true malevolence.” Do you think maybe it is possible that there are experiences or insights where others’ suffering has taken them down roads that you might not have had the opportunity of having been down yet? That is what it sounds like to me, when you write the above.

I understand your point. ’…separating some individuals from the rest of society’ to me sounds like what ‘Nonviolent Communication’ originator Marshall Rosenberg calls ‘the protective use of force’:

“The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury or injustice. The intention behind the punitive use of force is to cause individuals to suffer for their perceived misdeeds. When we grab a child who is running into the street to prevent the child from being injured, we are applying protective force. The punitive use of force, on the other hand, might involve physical or psychological attack, such as spanking the child or saying,

“How could you be so stupid! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

When we exercise the protective use of force, we are focusing on the life or rights we want to protect, without passing judgment on either the person or the behavior. We are not blaming or condemning the child who rushes into the street; our thinking is solely directed toward protecting the child from danger.

The assumption behind the protective use of force is that people behave in ways injurious to themselves and others due to some form of ignorance. The corrective process is therefore one of education, not punishment. Ignorance includes (1) a lack of awareness of the consequences of our actions, (2) an inability to see how our needs may be met without injury to others, (3) the belief that we have the right to punish or hurt others because they “deserve” it, and (4) delusional thinking that involves, for example, hearing a voice that instructs us to kill someone.”

I’m not sure if you’ve seen what goes on in American prisons, but judging from the documentary ‘13th’, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. To me, the Prison–industrial Complex is incredibly inhumane.

Reading both Marshall Rosenberg and Pia Mellody helped me to understand why people can be violent, to try to ask questions instead, and to be less quick to judge others when they are using excessive force.

Marshall Rosenberg starts one of his books with:

“Nonviolent Communication evolved out of an intense interest I had in two questions. First, I wanted to better understand what happens to human beings that leads some of us to behave violently and exploitatively. And second, I wanted to better understand what kind of education serves our attempts to remain compassionate—which I believe is our nature— even when others are behaving violently or exploitatively. The theory that has been around for many centuries says that violence and exploitation happen because people are innately evil, selfish, or violent. But I have seen people who aren’t like that; I have seen many people who enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being. So, I wondered why some people seem to enjoy other people’s suffering, while other people are just the opposite.”

In another he writes:

“My preoccupation with these questions began in childhood, around the summer of 1943, when our family moved to Detroit, Michigan. The second week after we arrived, a race war erupted over an incident at a public park. More than forty people were killed in the next few days. Our neighborhood was situated in the center of the violence, and we spent three days locked in the house.

When the race riot ended and school began, I discovered that a name could be as dangerous as any skin color. When the teacher called my name during attendance, two boys glared at me and hissed, “Are you a kike?” I had never heard the word before and didn’t know some people used it in a derogatory way to refer to Jews. After school, the same two boys were waiting for me: they threw me to the ground and kicked and beat me.”

I would like to express my gratitude to you for this exchange. I enjoyed your responses, and having been able to engage with you.

The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of “acceptance,” hasn’t so far had much application in my case. In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason.

To me, this is the best bit from the article. Having gone so far down the road back to health when all the world tried to tell me it could not be done, it is very clear to me that one's thinking, and the actions that grow out of that, is critical to the ability to resolve the problem. I wish him well and I hope the above bodes well for his ability to think clearly and therefore see clearly whatever the necessary steps are for him to make the journey back to the land of the living.

it's beauty, it's a lukewarm waterfall.

it's a warmth that washes

over us, intense.

consuming, penetrating

until we yield.

and in that silence, we let go.

grief is beautiful because it's a gentle descent, where in that abyss is a hand that lifts us; like a infant just now born, being wrapped in warm cloth, and given to its mother.

i have an intimate relationship with grief.

i see it coming again to visit, and i know it will be one of the last feelings i will experience as i arrive.

it's only "strange" because we are not as familiar with non duality as we are with duality.

grief is a chain that unbinds. it's a 10-Ton weight that makes you lighter.

i guess it's time for bed.

“It was glorious to see—if your heart were iron, And you could keep from grieving at all the pain.“

“The Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love

There is another entrance to grief, a second gateway, different from the gate connected to losing someone or something that we love. This grief occurs in the places often untouched by love. These are profoundly tender places precisely because they have lived outside of kindness, compassion, warmth, or welcome. These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. We often hate these parts of ourselves, hold them in contempt, and refuse to allow them the light of day. We do not show these outcast brothers and sisters to anyone, and we thereby deny these parts of ourselves the healing salve of community.

These neglected pieces of soul live in utter despair. What we perceive as defective about ourselves, we also experience as loss. Whenever any portion of who we are is denied, we live in a condition of loss. The proper response to any loss is grief, but we cannot grieve for something that we feel is outside the circle of worth. That is our predicament—we chronically sense the presence of sorrow, but we are unable to truly grieve, because we feel in our body that this piece of who we are is unworthy of grief.”

“The Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive

There is another gate to grief, one difficult to identify, yet it is very present in each of our lives. This threshold into sorrow calls forward the things that we may not even realize we have lost. I have written elsewhere about the expectations coded into our physical and psychic lives. When we are born, and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, and the stages of adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome, engagement, touch, and reflection. In short, we expect what our deep-time ancestors experienced as their birthright, namely, the container of the village. We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth and communal rituals of celebration, grief, and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred. As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land “Once upon a time, we knew the world from birth.” This is our inheritance, our birthright, which has been lost and abandoned. The absence of these requirements haunts us, even if we can’t give them a name, and we feel their loss as an ache, a vague sadness that settles over us like a fog. This lack is simultaneously one of the primary sources of our grief and one of the reasons we find it difficult to grieve. On some level, we are waiting for the village to appear so we can fully acknowledge our sorrows.”

- Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Who is ignoring anything? The terror comes from the contrast between one's keen personal awareness of the precious and fragile nature of this "oasis of beauty", and the systematically reckless, violent disregard humanity as a whole shows toward it.

    Spring and Fall
    
    to a young child
    
    Margaret, are you grieving
    Over Goldengrove unleaving?
    Leaves, like the things of man, you
    With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
    Ah! as the heart grows older
    It will come to such sights colder
    By and by, nor spare a sigh
    Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
    And yet you will weep know why.
    Now no matter, child, the name:
    Sorrow’s springs are the same.
    Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
    What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
    It is the blight man was born for,
    It is Margaret you mourn for.
    
    – Hopkins, 1880
    
    
    A Little Litany
    
    When God turned back eternity and was young,
    Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
    (As under the low arch the land is bright)
    Peered through you, gate of heaven—and saw the earth.
    
    Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
    Built you about him for a house of gold
    To see in pictured walls his storied world
    Return upon him as a tale is told.
    
    Or found his mirror there; the only glass
    That would not break with that unbearable light
    Till in a corner of the high dark house
    God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.
    
    Star of his morning; that unfallen star
    In that strange starry overturn of space
    When earth and sky changed places for an hour
    And heaven looked upwards in a human face.
    
    Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
    Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
    And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
    Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.
    
    Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
    God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
    Or your tall body climbed the ivory tower
    And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.
    
    – Chesterton
    
    
    Love
    
    Love is a short disease, a long desire,
    A strong and lasting healing; love is like
    An angler landing fish, a hand at lyre,
    A roadhog flogging home his motor-bike;
    Love is a deep unsleeping thing, leaps time
    And steeps amidst eternity for rest
    And love is like three candles lighting rhyme
    And metre I am making for the best;
    An Alleluiatic sequence shows
    A little of love's eloquence that lasts;
    Love has three lights, one to another glows,
    A third proceeds between: naught overcasts
    True love because it knows that it possesses,
    Being possessed, a zest above distresses.
    
    – Bradburne, 1971

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

[3] http://www.johnbradburnepoems.com/

[4] http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/love

[&] http://vimeo.com/michaelbradleyjr/mombe

The above quote reminds me of this quote by the mystic poet, Rumi: "Deafened by the noise of wanting and desire you are unaware the beloved lives in the core of your heart. Allow the noise to silence and you will hear her voice."

I have this quote written in the first page of my Moleskine planner, where it states "In case of loss, please return to:". I think what this quote means is that we often experience the world through our perceived identity. But it’s not a definite perception, it’s more of a changing figment. Its sometimes difficult to just sit back and relax, we have all these wants and desires. But beyond this noise, there lies in the core of our heart what some refer to as our natural state, unmodified and unbound by the mind. We all have moments when we forget about ourselves like when we sense something of beauty: when we cry for ten minutes in the dark of our room and the neck of our shirt becomes soaked with tears and then we go to our backyard and look at the night sky, or when we see an authentic interaction, true forgiveness, natural compassion, warm understanding. A state where we feel at an effortless ease. This state is the ‘open secret’, readily and always available to us, unfortunately, all too often we are "deafened by the noise".

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it.

I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter - bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart."

"Oh, that is your trauma."

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse — The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused — nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says _No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel_, not seeing That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

> For one, redescribing a symphony as a 'silent void'

Doesn't read that way to me. Vibrant life has become a silent void, and the pain of seeking that past is a melancholic symphony