Rupert: The child or friend may be lost but love is never lost.
Think of your relationship with a child or loved one. The objective elements of the friendship are changing continuously, that is, they are always being lost. But what is it that remains throughout? It is love or friendship.
When our companion or child leaves for a trip or even when they simply go into the next room, we have no objective connection with them. But do we feel that something is broken or lost? No, the true content of the friendship remains. Love remains. In fact all relationship is defined by this quality alone.
Two objects can never meet. Two ‘people’ can never meet. What we call a meeting or a relationship is only the shining of this shared love.
In fact it is my experience that when a loved one departs, love shines even more brightly than usual. All that remains is the pure love in which and as which we truly meet.
The same is true of the great parting called death. The apparent other is no longer apparently outside. They now reside in our heart as pure love, which is in fact where they always resided. Why would one feel sorrow or regret in such a case? The particular means of celebrating that love, which we had become accustomed to over the years, may no longer be available, but the love itself will be present and available, as always.
In fact, death is simply the dissolution of an object, a person, in its source and substance, which is love. So death is not the problem. It is identifying ourselves as an object, as a fragment, and thereby identifying an other as an object or fragment, which seems to obscure this ever-present, all pervading love.
Our friend is the face of this Love. Their parting is the gift of love to itself, as was their presence.
In fact death and love are one and the same but from two different points of view. Death is for the person what Love is for the Self. Therefore, we never lose a friend.
If we do not mistake our loved ones for entities in this life, we will not mistake death for separation. And how is it possible not to mistake our loved ones for entities? By not mistaking our self for an entity.
I do not mean to suggest that when a loved one dies, we walk around with a smile on our face all the time. No, there is a melting of the heart at such a time, a tenderness, an openness, loving memories and possibly an acknowledgement that some issues were left unresolved…these are the residues of love, not the suffering of a person.