Back from Exile

Today, I am returning—after months, yes, it has actually been months—away from The Tremble of Love, the historical novel inspired by the life of the Baal Shem Tov, begun over a decade ago and finally completed this past November.  

I am re-uniting not just with The Tremble of Love, i.e., with a "project", but with its essence, which is one with my essence.  This book is a sanctuary, a holy place and container of Love.  It is a vehicle of Infinite Love and is infused by Sacred Presence. 

Ye,t in this interlude which has just passed, I have doubted the book's worth and how it might fare in this world.  I have entertained a troubled mind as my guest, a mind troubling over the book's fate and my own.  Surrender was replaced (albeit relatively briefly) by control, willfulness, and the familiar intruder, doubt.  

I prefer Surrender, which is not to say I do nothing.  It is to say that the doing emerges from connection to my Soul's call rather than from my mind's and ego's "reasonable" arguments and mandates.  Not that those two, the mind and ego, are evil, just limited and, God Bless them, ignorant of the bigger, deeper picture. 

Just a few moments ago, reading about mysticism, the inner mystic breathed an immeasurable sigh of relief.  Reading about what is concealed, I am reminded of a hunger I have known since a girl: the hunger to know the Truth, the hunger to see beneath appearances.  I knew even as a girl that there was—that there is—more to this life than what appeared to be going oo and more to people than what their appearances and even behavior belied.   I saw a tiny inner flame in the girl who spit on me after her mother threw beer cans at her, and I knew it was the flame of love, of her inner goodness. I tried to tell my parents, Holocaust survivors who could not tolerate that point of view.  They warned me against this way of thinking, heaping on its dangers.  They warned of the harm I would bring upon myself and even "my people," were I to believe in the goodness of people who "hate us."  I became confused.  

Why do I write about this just now, I wonder?  

Maybe because that, too, is a story of exile, becoming exiled from my own knowing and eventually forgetting that knowing, but never entirely.  There is a pain that accompanies this kind of separation.  It may not be clear as time passes and consensual reality wafts over it, what the truth is from which one has separated oneself.  But the ache, the deep discontent, the unexplainable sadness or sorrow, indicates the separation.  At least that is true for me.  This is not to blame anyone or even consensual reality!  It is to welcome unity and as Kabir says (paraphrased):  Come back. Come back, Wayfarer.  No matter how many times you have lost the way, come back, come back.  

This morning I am back.  This morning I am holding not only the book I have written with the grace of God, but also my own heart like a trembling bird drawing warmth from my cupped hands, preparing to take flight and to return to its place at the core of my being, both at once.