I once loved a man differently than anyone else. This man was called David Brown. 6 years ago, David took his own life. Since then, he comes to me regularly, offering support, reassurance and guidance – through dreams, visuals, feelings, intuition, in my prayers and meditation, in my Reiki practice, and once through the gifts of a medium. Recently, he came into a guided process I pursued at Lifestyle Meditation (my workplace). This time was impactful in a different way. David was a disciple of Self-Realization Fellowship, of whom the founding guru was Paramahansa Yogananda. During the process, the teacher suggested that we flank ourselves with loving people from our lives, past or present. On my right was my lovely and loving son, Caleb, and on my left was David. I always wear an angel pendant around my neck that David gave me, which has taken on extra significance now that his spirit has departed this earth plane – he most certainly IS an angel that I call on frequently, consciously and otherwise. At the front of the meditation classroom on the shelves above the teacher’s head is a small, framed picture of Paramahansa Yogananda. In a moment, I felt a dynamism moving around and through me: David through Yogananda – David in spirit, beside me – David in me and as represented by the angel pendant – a triangular pattern of power and impact.
I remembered how angry I was at “Guru”, as David called him, for taking David away from me when we were 23 and he’d decided to follow a monastic life in California. I remember how angry I was at God back then. How could you take him from me? How could you rip this love from my grips – just pluck it from my life with such ease? Do you not care about ME oh God? I was heartbroken. It was my first conscious experience of deep heartache. I thought I would die from the gravity of the emotion and spent 2 days in bed, crying to the somber sounds of Pink Floyd and getting high in between in an attempt to subdue my despondency. As Gilmour & Waters crooned the words “comfortably numb” into my ears, I longed for just that state. I was sure the pain would last forever. I was sure I no longer had a reason to live, having lost what I thought was my grandest experience of love.
What I didn’t realize back then is that true love does not assume a holding pattern, isn’t exclusive, doesn’t hoard, or stow itself away in a preferential connection. True love is synonymous with freedom and with God – God is Universe and the Universe cannot be captured in a single embrace or arrested into a private moment. Rather, the Universe weaves its energy infinitely into the present, never living in the past or future. The Universe is present in each lesson that brings us closer to God – to love – to ourselves – and sometimes those lessons are painful because that particular pain is necessary for our highest soul evolution.
Trying to hold on to love is like trying to hold on to the ocean. An exercise in 
futility that leaves you a constant “failure”, even while the ocean itself beckons you at all times to come into it and be surrounded and supported by its majesty. The reason I experienced so much pain back when David left for a monastic life is because I thought I was entitled to hold on to the ocean, as though splendor can be possessed.
Today I flail around almost as equally as back then inside of lessons about romantic love. I am NOT actualized in this arena, but I know that love does not belong to me. Today I know that God didn’t “take” anything from me when David left. In fact, quite the contrary is true. There are 3 poignant, holy and auspicious occasions that really stand out to me with relation to how God GAVE to me in relationship with David:
First, God gave to me by David in the flesh, imparting for me lessons about the unconditional nature of love, for which David was a vessel of delivery unlike any other I’ve known. Then, God gave to me by David’s absence, imparting for me, once again, lessons about the unconditional and omnipresent nature of love – could I set David free, thereby expressing love in its truest form? Finally, God gave to me by David’s departure from this plane of existence, imparting for me lessons about the limitlessness of love. Love energy, much like energy itself and as we all learned in science class, can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed in form. Like the ocean, mine and David’s love never began or ended – it always was – our physical beings afforded the manifestation of this love that’s inherent in all of us. David’s departure from his body only served to expand our love because his expression is no longer contracted into physicality. I now connect with him on a wholly spiritual level, which, in itself, is completely limitless.
In consideration of these momentous lessons on love and freedom, I find myself perceiving once again a triangular dynamo of power and impact.
To say that I “loved a man differently than anyone else” at the outset of this piece is a bit of a fallacy because love is consistent and persistent, like the ocean. It’s only the form of love’s manifestation that changes. As humans, we tend to prefer one form over another – our attraction to a particular form is the recognition of our own selves – a mirror image of love made manifest – AND an opportunity to go deeper. Going deeper involves being triggered into all the places inside of us where we have blockages to love. These triggers show up 
as our struggles and challenges in relationships. So here we go peeps: EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE for it is an invitation to truer, deeper and freer love.
My invitation that came in the form of one David Brown was always an invitation to true love: the kind that assumes no holding pattern, but rather the kind that is interchangeable with freedom. Even while it’s taken me until far beyond the expiry of what I knew our love to be here on earth, I am eternally grateful for that invitation that reverberates through time and space.
May love always set us free.