Loss is the Door

Happiness and sorrow are ripples on the surface of existence. But the depth of Being is deeper than happiness, deeper than sorrow, beyond loss or gain. The ripples of loss and gain, happiness and sorrow, represent 0.00001% of existence. The rest is an ocean of silence.

We desperately expend most of our energy seeking gain and avoiding loss. Gain only brings loss, as the wave brings the trough. Gain is temporary, but loss is a portal to eternity. Gain is relative, but loss is the way to the absolute. The absolute is the bliss of silence.

Ananda, or bliss, is as distinct from joy as from sadness, though it may bubble up through either, as laughter or tears. Bliss is not a gain, an acquisition of anything. It is the embrace of no-thing. Bliss is the profundity of loss, abysmal and without hope of regaining what has been abandoned. Bliss abandons even the story called "me," with its past and future.

With the loss of "me," what sinks beneath the joy-sorrow ripples becomes stillness, the silence of the Divine. "I" no longer seek "God," for I Am that I Am.

Now loss is abundance. Silence is luminous. Stillness vibrates with wonder. Through the grace of loss, light shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.