The Gap

Copyright 2009 by Stefan Bolz

As long as I can remember, I longed. I longed for love. Never for fame or fortune or riches or cars or my own sailboat. No. I longed for love. It was on the flight back from a recent family visit to Germany that I found myself asking the question of how to bridge that gap inside of me between the part that always longs and the object of my longing. It seemed impossible. My first memory of longing was in first grade when I fell in love with a girl in my class who lived across the street from my parents' house. I remember we went on a school bus trip and I sat next to her the whole time dreading the moment when we would step off the bus and part ways.

That was my first memory. I longed ever since and probably longer. Longing became my second nature. I was never alone for long for longing and the fulfillment of it became who I was. A couple of months ago, in one of the sessions with Julie, my therapist, I saw the image of me standing on one side of a great canyon. On the other side, far in the distance, I knew was the love that I longed for. I have had inklings of being on the other side lately. Usually for very, very, short periods of time I experienced the freedom of not having this almost constant tugging, searching and not finding, finding and finding out that whatever I thought I found was not what I was looking for in the first place.

The gap between me and ... love... these two diametrically opposed states of beeing seemed impossible to bridge; and so was the distance between where I stood at one end of the massive canyon and love on the other side. There was no way of getting to the other side. The gap stretched out for miles. It's depth was only imaginable. The only thing that connected one side of the massive canyon to the other was a rope. It looked frail and thin and slippery. There is just no way, I thought to myself.

Next thing I knew I suddenly found myself hanging from the rope, smack in the middle of the canyon. I realized in terror that there was absolutely no chance for me to make it to the other side. Neither would I ever be able to go back to where I came from. My fear of letting go of the rope was equally overwhelming. So I just hung there. My hands cramped around the now slightly slippery rope. "What would happen if you'd let go", Julie asked. "I don't know. I'd fall", I said, my mouth filled with sawdust.

At one point I just couldn't hold on anymore and my hands opened. The split second of anticipation of my fall gave way to the strange sensation of hovering suspended in the air for a while and then slowly sinking down toward the ground. It felt as if I was carried. Carried and held at the same time. Next thing I knew I lay on the ground, very comfortably in the grass, looking up towards the sky. I saw the right side of the cliffs where I stood before and the left side where I thought I needed to get to. The rope was now not more than a thin thread floating in the air high above me. As I lay there very peacefully it came to me. It was suddenly clear as winter sky that I would never be able to bridge the gap. Ever. Not in this life time nor all the lifetimes I still had in front of me. The gap would always be there and there was just no way that I could ever bridge it. But neither did I have to. The thought came so quietly as if it had to sneak into my mind behind all the devastation and fear and an overwhelming sense of doom. It stood there undisturbed by all the raucous shrieking. It's presence was strong but gentle, quiet but loud as thunder. I don't have to bridge the gap. That was it? The statement had little meaning to me as of yet. The thought that I could not bridge the gap but did not need to bridge it either had very little impact on my conscious mind - until the moment it opened itself up like a flower in the morning sun unfolding and unveiling its full beauty and fragrance and depth to me, overwhelming me with joy and hope and a sense of deep, deep comfort.

There is a line in the movie "The Matrix" when Neo, waiting for the Oracle, watches a little boy bend a spoon with his mind. Neo asks the boy how he does it. The boy tells Neo: "Ask not how to bend the spoon. Just know that there is no spoon." While I laid on the table in Julie's practice in Accord, New York on a Friday morning around 11AM, it occurred to me that the need I had felt my whole life, this longing to be complete, was a trick. A very inventive one but still a trick, a slight of hand, a smoke screen to prevent me from accepting the one simple truth about myself that I was and am and always will be complete. That there was no gap, no search for love, no distance between me and what I had longed for all my life.

The presence of the thought in my mind radiated waves and waves into every dark corner, illuminating my being with millions of lights. Its loveliness was complete, its care and comfort simply not of this world. 'There is nothing to do," I thought to myself. No process, no journey, no overcoming, no challenge, no tests no accomplishments. Just the simple acceptance of what is already here.