September 26, 1997
Dear Dr. and Mrs. Isma'ili:
I met you on
February 21, 1992 at the birthday party of your granddaughter, Beryl,
here in São Paulo. Perhaps you remember my former wife, Maria,
and my daughter, Jennifer, who is a bit older than Beryl. At the time I
was involved with Gloria with a variety of bonds. First, she had been
the wife of Marvin, who I knew at the Department of Psychiatry and as a
student for two years before they went to Pittsburgh and also as a
friend I played tennis with, etc. He invited me to his apartment and
introduced me to Gloria and she wanted to study English with me. I
found her a complicated character (forced and perhaps false). Marvin
had told me about his lover and I was not interested in getting in the
middle of it all. As a result, I passed her along to my wife to teach.
Before they left for the United States, we invited them over for dinner
with us (stuffed turkey that I prepared) at our home.
After
Gloria's
return and her separation from Marvin, she became my student as well.
This began in about April 1991. At that time, Gloria was "depressed" (I
checked her condition with our techniques and, in fact, she was not
notably uncomfortable, but she spent hours complaining in a mixture of
self-pity and inhibited desire for revenge against Marvin); she was not
eating, losing weight (which she evidently liked, being a seriously
vain woman) and complaining of malaise. I invited her to see a film,
Dances With Wolves, at Eldorado Shopping Center in July 1991 but as
someone who had passed through similar situations more than as a friend
at the time, in that I only knew her through class and she always kept
herself guarded and distant and evidently manifested a certain
arrogance at the same time. I didn't like her much but I am a pamong, a
guru trained in Java, and we are obliged to be useful when possible if
the person desires our counsel and wants to share their experience with
us. In fact, we perform a kind of therapy and emotional support in the
acceptance of reality, which evidently was difficult for her at that
time. We have a technique called nggendong
("bearing") which involves
the adoption of the experience of the "patient" in an extreme form of
empathy and I began this in August 1991. I also noted a certain
attraction for Gloria developing but this is common in our practice and
generally the emotional ties are established without any problems and
later the confusion associated with them passes without any physical
complications. With Gloria, everything went wrong.
I was trying
to
help Gloria, but she began to treat me like a romantic prey and/or a
vehicle for vengeance against men in general after what Marvin had done
to her: in fact, it was a extensive collection of emotions and
seductive, angry and confused purposes. I was unable to resist your
daughter's impressive charms; she really presented herself like the
perfect femme fatale.
A week after
her
birthday party, on Friday October 25, 1991, I went over to her
apartment to take her to our house to watch a film, Elephant Man,
together with Maria. She met me at the door and suddenly embraced and
kissed me on the mouth in a clearly impassioned fashion. I had never
known such beauty and my experience was totally transcendent; though I
am a poet, the beauty of that moment beggars description to this day.
After a few truly timeless minutes of passionate kissing on the couch,
we went to see the movie. Afterwards, when I woke up, I came to the
conclusion that either I had never kissed before or this was something
totally different.
The next
day, I
went there and the physical part was established with her calling my
name many times in evident passion that left me on my hind legs. In my
community, we assume responsibility for our influence on others and if
she had so much love and passion, I had undeniable responsibilities to
serve and problems to spare. After the event, I remember listening to
sounds in the building and feeling that fear and good intentions are
good but sometimes they are just not enough.1
In December
she
announced that "I will not assume responsibility". I was already
committed after two months of trying to love her and evidently
suffering a great deal.2 I
felt like a fish being "played" on the hook
but also had the responsibilities of the therapy complicating my
responses.3
As you will
find
out, when I met you I was not notably impressed and, no doubt, if you
really remember me, you were not excessively impressed either. Knowing
Gloria's perspective and the psychological situation in detail, I felt
you to be profoundly self-important, cold and proud and meeting you in
person only confirmed the impression that came from studying and trying
to love Gloria and the confused position she has about responsibilities
and relationships in general. She considers herself justified (based on
what she never allows to come out) in doing whatever she wishes and
these attitudes of scorn came, in part, from somewhere important in her
upbringing and education, although one is obliged to admit that her
soul is like that too. She really is a horror in this sense. I have a
ten-minute tape made on the answering machine (from about December 5,
1991 when we were already lovers) of her talking first with me and then
with Maria that I have studied a great deal in order to fathom her
referential base, but what comes out most clearly is her total
indifference, an incredible scorn towards me and then towards Maria,
who together with Josefina Bastos and her neighbor in the building,
were her only friends at that time.
So my
relationship with her got more and more complicated and the pain
increased with the passage of time4
and, unquestionably, she accepted
no commitment with me and was with other men as well, which she
considered none of my business. She really is an almost pathological
liar when she sees some advantage and is happy to have an opportunity
to lie with someone watching to demonstrate her talent. I suppose you
can imagine how much I hated the situation. Finally, on June 26, 1992,
everything exploded and I told Maria about it, in that I could no
longer stand the pain of being treated this way.5
Five years
have passed: the pain has turned to hate and my hopes concerning
Gloria's
possible motivations have come to naught. It takes time to clarify this
type of thing in a love that is profound and confused. Unhappily, what
remains of that love is the diatribe, the bitter philippic, you can see
in the enclosed letter to Gloria that is a part of my own therapy.
That's the way it is and one just has to carry on. What else can I do?
I still look at the contribution that Gloria made to my life without
believing that anyone could be so cruel. That's the way the world is
and, unfortunately, always has been. In Java we prepare for death with
the life that we contribute. Here, evidently, that's not the way it is.
In Brazil and also in the United States and the Western World in
general, people often think that pretending a contribution is enough.
We'll see.
David Gordon Howe, Ph.D.
NOTES
1.
January 27, 1992
Gloria,
Another letter from my soul to
yours, my love. I'll try not to be too heavy. Please don't worry. I
love your scoldings but I suspect that you don't feel too comfortable
with them. I love you so much that I don't know what to
do. When you
gave me that surprise kiss in the classroom, I got dizzy with love. And
the following day, when I went by your office and you were using the
pendent and asked me, "Am I pretty?" -- Dizzy again. I interpreted this
incidents as a change in our relationship; that we are getting close
again. That you are opening up and staying here with me. What joy! I
don't know what is going to happen or what we should do, but I feel
that maybe you love me too. I am a good example of why the Javanese
feel that love and passion can be dangerous.
Being a pamong, I am trained never
to stay far from the flow of reality, never to flee in thoughts or
imaginings, never to fabricate emotions out of context, to always
remain receiving the situation as accurately as possible; but here I
am, crazy in love with you and without violating any of our principles.
How good it is! With all this discipline, I had imagined that existence
would be a serious and essentially boring thing for all eternity. With
you I feel happiness and thankfulness to existence that you are here
with me. Suddenly I am like a horse in spring! Jumping and kicking,
but, I promise, very discretely.
Oh how I adore being with you.
Working with you was marvelous, an opportunity to spend some quiet
moments with you and try to find a way to better explain why I am like
this with you. I love the way you do things, how you treat people with
eklas (giving with an open heart), strength and levity, the way you
walk, the way you talk -- I am happy and tranquil when I am with you.
But what leaves me with my mouth open is that I really have nothing to
criticize: almost everybody leaves me with pain when I see how they
treat themselves and the rest of us, but you just leave me happy to be
with you.
It left me a bit sad today when
you
said that you watched the Superbowl. I wanted to be with you. In as
much as it was 17-0 after the first half and it doesn't look like it
was much of a game, I wasn't willing to fight for the TV here but I
like football very much. I felt a protest within me that you were there
and I hare, both wanting to do the same thing. How good it would be to
explain what was happening and share the game with you. And there are
so many other similar activities. Like that game "Go Moku"; it was good
playing with you and I was not exaggerating when I said that you
learned more quickly that anyone I have ever seen. You got the gist of
it with incredible facility. The game has so many combinations that
generally it takes some ten games to reach the point where you started.
Or like the computer. I would love to teach you to work with the
computer. There are so many interesting things you can do. One capacity
that you will like is that I can protect a file, like this one, with a
code so that no one but me can enter and see it. It is a form of
security that serves very well for governments, business men and "love
letters". You would be able to keep this in the file and throw the
letter away. Or like the practice of Sumarah. You need to see for
yourself why I think it is so important.
I have to be careful about what
I
say after I have been with you. I am not excluding Maria and Jennifer
from our world, but circumstances would cause so much confusion in a
beautiful thing that I have to guard my tongue so as not to say,
"Gloria said ....... " You tell me so many things that please me that I
would like to share with them too. It's a shame, isn't it?
Sorry about yet another letter,
but
it is easier for me to express my thoughts in writing.
2.
January 30, 1992
Gloria,
Let me
try
to tell about my experience with you. Returning now to the beginning of
our relationship, when I first met you with Marvin, I remember you
being a very kind woman. I had heard a lot about Marvin's side of the
confusion and I remember counselling him to think very carefully about
the marriage and its importance.
Then
when
you got back I guess you started taking classes with Ari. Sometimes I
would teach for her and I found you virtually unapproachable. You
smiled but were very distant and controlled. I could see you holding
yourself back from any open contact. I understood. I've been through
such periods too.
There
was
something special about you. Being in your apartment I felt a
particular rasa (sense of
being) that surprised me. I remember watching
it and wondering, "Goodness gracious, what's that doing here? That's
tentrem ing manah, the high
sense of being." This was at about that
time, long after Marvin had left so it wasn't from him. I couldn't
explain it. I was almost jealous; that's a feeling state I've almost
never seen outside Java. It implies a lot of courage and openness and I
didn't realize you went that deep.
When I
invited you to go to "Dances With Wolves", I was just your teacher. As
the movie went on and on, I remember being attracted to you and was a
little surprised. Do you remember sitting before the movie when you
gave me a mint? I recall not having the slightest idea of what to talk
about and I guess we settled on comparing Brazil and the US. We weren't
really even friends at that point. I was just trying to help someone in
a situation I had passed through myself (In Java this is called tepa
slira and means understanding through personal experience).
Then we
started
seeing more of you, both in teaching and socially. I began to like you.
I could see that under the stiffness there was a very kind and caring
person. I started taking over cookies and things to try to cheer you
up. I was worried about you: you weren't eating. There were no other
motives or intentions. How many intentions can you have in taking a
woman pancakes. You remember when I came over and virtually stuffed a
pancake down your throat? You almost gagged and I thought you were
going to die, you looked so uncomfortable trying to swallow the thing!
I wanted to help but I'm afraid I was a little crude about it.
Then
came
your birthday party (October 14 or thereabouts) and we didn't get a
chance to talk. So the next day (Sunday) I called to ask how you were.
After
that
I think the relationship changed and suddenly we two were having more
contact. I was now attracted but trusted my training to keep me in
line. I felt I could relieve some of your confusion and give you a
ready shoulder to cry on. I must admit that my feelings began to get a
bit confused at that point. You kind of scared me though I was
increasingly warm about you. I found that I really liked having you cry
on my shoulder and that the reaction was not very objective.
Then
came
that night when you called and asked us to go over to watch Elephant
Man. Ari was tired and grumpy and did not want to go. I have always
felt that when a friend calls, you have to go if you can. I did not
have any special intentions at that point, though if you wanted to cry
on my shoulder I would have been happy to let you. Then you gave me the
biggest, most wonderful hug in the world, which turned into the most
passionate kissing I've ever known. I'll never forget it! I felt like I
was in a dream or something, like walking under water. Suddenly the
relationship was amorous and the passion I felt was enough to make my
ears pop. I had never contemplated such a thing ever happening. Who was
I after all? And then suddenly we were together on the couch. I
wondered if you were just in need of a man's attention and if you were
really responding to me at all. So I felt off balance for quite a
while.
That
Saturday when we first made love, I didn't know what was going on. I
felt like "She can't feel this strongly for me. I haven't done anything
but bring her pancakes." You called out my name many times and I was
stunned. "You are here with me?!? What's going on??" I was so
unprepared and scared I didn't know what to make of it. You were
unbelievably passionate but a lot of me was just listening to the
building and wondering what on earth was going on and what kind of
trouble I was getting myself into. I wondered what you saw in me
because you seemed to have a much deeper response to me than I had ever
imagined possible.
Then
came
the second session on that Saturday morning. God it was wonderful. That
was when I started to feel my love for you open up and knew I was
involved beyond any friendly gesture. I think I was still telling
myself we were just friends but my feelings weren't saying the same
thing. The love I found uniting us was unbelievably high and strong and
our love-making was incredibly beautiful (resmi). Speaking of
love-making, back in my youth I had a fair amount of experience. That
was in the pre-Aids, "free-love" period. But making love has always
been an uncalculated thing for me. I don't think about it and never
know what's going to happen. Most of these experiences (except for
Pia) had been rather dull and mechanical. There was no feeling shared
and there was no special quality in the sex as a result. Just exercise.
With you there was what I told you about, the "echo". I don't think the
word really communicates. What I meant was that you were there within
me and I could feel you coming across the union of our bodies and
entering into my being. How I love you! It feels like we share the same
soul and are a single point in time.
I lost
what
was left of my neutrality at about that time. I had been thinking of
our "affair" as a way for you to safely release some of your built up
energies and then we would go back to being just friends again.
However, the world that opened up at that time was incredible. I
promise someday I'll tell you about the experiential shifts and changes
that happened, but only after you've gotten some experience in Sumarah
practice.
I was
not
sleeping at night. I was bad-tempered and a little confused. I was
betraying my marriage but my marriage had never been anything like this
in terms of depth and real meaning. The marriage was not based on love
but rather on companionship and reliability. I remember that after
Pierrina I was rather afraid of passion and was more interested in
someone to keep an eye on me and let me get on with the job.
However,
beyond the mood swings, there were lots of much more important
alterations going on that stunned me. My heart opened up and suddenly
it began to have feeling in it, something I hadn't felt in about twenty
years. I became extremely critical and decisive about my living
situation. That was when the decision came to move which I pushed
through with an energy and determination that shocked me.
As for
your
"seductiveness" and the "sexual confusion", I don't have all that much
experience in these things (at least not by contemporary standards),
but after some twenty relationships before I met Ari, I am certain I
can tell the difference between sex without love and sex with love. One
is just empty activity: you end up wondering why you bothered. The
other opens all the doors of heaven and leaves you singing to yourself
and wondering why people sleep so much and stuff like that.
Now
about
when I said, "If I were free I would want to marry you." It may have
sounded like I was hesitant or something. The problem was that I
couldn't remember the verb for saying I would "ask" you to marry me. I
didn't want it to sound like I assumed you would want to too or that I
wished to impose anything on you. I love you too much to want to push
you into anything. That's just the way I feel.
I
remember
once you were talking to Josi about your maids and she asked, "You're
not going to try to steal my maid are you?" Then she looked at you and
me kind of strange. That was when I realized you had talked to her
about us. But I am not Ari's maid. If our love is this deep, I think we
have to look at it in these terms and see what we need to do to serve
it and each other fairly. I'm not proposing any solutions; I just find
that I get awfully blue when you're not near me. Did you enjoy the
pancakes?
3.
March 19, 1992
Gloria -
Yesterday I
was worried about you and was happy when Yara gave me a reason to go by
and see how you were. I had called earlier but you were out. You looked
terrible. I slept about 3 or 4 hours the night before fearing you were
not well (you looked awful when you closed the door) but it didn't look
like you slept at all. Please forgive this long letter, but I think it
is time for me to give you a little update about my state with you and
the way I interpret our relationship and our love (I'm pretty sure that
that's what it is though you don't say much). Please, let me give it
another try.
First,
let
me tell you a little more about me and where I am coming from (what I
base my perspective on). A great deal of my perspective comes from my
family but most of the more articulated aspect comes from Java and
Sumarah. Fundamentally, both my family and the Javanese perspective
share a concern with forming and maintaining long-term relationships
whenever possible. This is a service orientation: we do not try to
dominate but to give what we can to others and hope that they will find
us useful enough to stay with us and return some of our love.
Concerning
my participation in Sumarah, thousands of Westerners have gone to Java
to study Sumarah with some staying for many years. They go and find a
strange and beautiful culture with intensely loving people who are
always paying attention. Westerners ask questions and try to do the
practice, often finding that their inability to control what happens to
them makes doing it very difficult. The tendency is to become attached
to your deficiencies in the West: most people don't even want to go to
the trouble of confronting themselves, let alone reality. I was
different. Suwondo, my main teacher, always complained that I never
asked any questions and that somehow I already knew what we were doing.
In fact Sumarah was very clear and familiar to me; I had created and
done a similar practice starting almost ten years before with the main
differences concerning the things you'll be seeing below that are much
more broadly understood in Java than they are in the West. I am the
first and, to my knowledge, still the only Westerner to have been
admitted to the brotherhood of pamongs
(guides) and am fully empowered
to teach and lead and adapt the theory used to explain our practice and
also the first to have led a group of my own in Java. Most pamongs are
men but there are some women too. I'd guess there are a about a
thousand of us to serve more than 30,000 people who come to meetings
and such.
At our
farewell dinner (I'd
say about 80 people were there) when we were going back to the States,
one of the elder pamongs, Sri Sampoerna, warned in his speech: "When
you return to the West you will be as if a stranger in a strange land.
Everything will be strange and difficult for you." Suwondo had another
perspective on it and said he was jealous: "Things are too easy for us
here in Java: our people are lovely and we cannot suffer enough to
progress quickly. I wish I could go too."
Pamongs are
famous for being direct and honest in part because we are totally
spontaneous and in part because we often serve the same function as a
therapist. However, we don't work on an intellectual plane but rather
we try to receive the person's full sense accurately and then work down
to details from there in as much as it is necessary to develop an
understanding of what is present and bring the person out of whatever
confusion they are lodged in. We often say things that people don't
like to hear but we do not do this unless it comes of itself. One does
not bring on a disturbance if one can avoid it and one does not claim
that anyone's understanding of a situation is very important: what is
important is the other person's experience and that they understand
well enough to be able to let their confusion go. In your case, as you
will see below, provoking unnecessary confusion by challenging your
sense is almost sinful. Your basic sense is perfectly all right --
though you sometimes get confused about where things are coming from --
and is far higher than the local being really supports.
In
Brazil I
was basically just observing, watching and waiting for my reception of
the situation to call me to do something or other. I was still working
on the book, though at a painfully slow pace until this January. I had
a group here but our practice is not really very well adapted to a
place that is so filled with confusion and hostility. I was hoping that
someday I would find a way to bring it here more fully but without any
great optimism. Imagine my surprise when you came along and everything
was suddenly upside-down. Our relationship suddenly made everything
else unimportant. There you were, so lovely and open and courageous
(whether you knew it or not). And here I was, astonished to be
struggling through the process of being in love -- sleepless nights,
abrupt mood swings, the song, the poems, the tears, changed habits
(like losing interest in watching TV or reading the newspaper), diving
back into my past, resuscitating and making peace with old memories and
relationships, returning to work I dropped many years ago, seeing
everything in you and you in everything (I was afraid I would start
getting pimples again too) -- and finding that I trusted someone
completely. Unbelievable.
Let me
now
comment on you a little bit. You have said that you like what I say to
you but with the implication that either I'm sweet-talking you (just
saying things you like to hear), deluded or don't understand what's
really going on. No one has ever doubted my sincerity, good sense or
good faith in saying anything, at least not for very long. Both in my
family and in Sumarah we make an effort to remain straight with others.
We may duck issues that will cause unneeded confusion or to serve a
larger purpose, but we remain open in our relationships and make no
great effort to hide our responses if others care to look carefully.
About
the
way I see you, you remember when I said you are one of the two most
beautiful women in the world. You looked at me like I must be crazy or
was just trying to fool you or something. I meant it and I still do.
Let me explain. For us "beauty" isn't like at a beauty contest. What I
am referring to is a kind of "rasa
(sense) ranking" which has a number
of components including: 1) the soul defining the person's basic
character as well as the amount of communion between person and soul
and the consistency between the one and the other (I'll say no more
about your soul: just leave it to me.); 2) physical sense and presence
(i.e., How well does the body express the person's basic being with
others? How much humility does the person have, that is, does he/she
allow others to freely decide if they appreciate him/her rather than
imposing a position on them with some sort of "Aren't I cute"
self-promotion? How completely is the body occupied with consciousness?
How well does the person know and accept him/herself?) -- in this you
are very, very strong; 3) the kind and amount of energy invested
outside of narrow personal interests [What rasa do you share with the
people around you? How much are you willing to freely give (eklas) to
others as in generosity and charity (lending money to a neighbor
despite the risk and not having very much yourself, becoming a fiadora
for a friend, helping a former maid's daughter having a hard time,
things like that)] or in worrying about rights and welfare
(contemplating the corruption at your office. What is happening with
the new director? Is this all right or what is really going on?) or
patiently investing more in relationships than others are either able
or willing to return (this often results in an imbalance where the
other depends on you to do their share for them, like when the people
at your office rely you to do their work while they go to the dentist,
travel for the weekend, etc.) -- in this you are extremely strong; 4)
the amount of flexibility the person has maintained for answering
natural calls for specific behavior (i.e., when nature requires some
specific act, can the person depart from normal patterns and supply it?
-- This has a lot to do with spontaneity and what comes out when you
make love, no further comment at this point.) -- in this you are very
strong; 5) the sacrifices willingly assumed in doing so (such acts
often go against the local and/or personal sense) -- in this you are
strong, though you cry a bit quickly sometimes; 6) the amount of
reality investment the person maintains (How much does the person
depart from the actual situation in his/her appreciation of existence?
In this you tend to err on the safe side, i.e., you accept a more
depressed vision of reality than is accurate. One consequence of this
is that you limit your communication with your childish essence, the
little girl I love so much and see so infrequently, the one who wears
the pendant, bounces up and asks, "Estou
bonita?", who kisses me on the
cheek and who puzzles about the similarity of the vowels in our names.)
-- in this you are not as strong as I wouuld like to see you, but it
requires trust and your environment has been rather deficient in
inspiring faith of any kind; 7) the kind of relationship maintained
with the other senses of being (What rasa do you share with plants,
animals, rocks, the ocean, the mountains, spirits and all?) -- in this
aspect you are not as strong as you might be; and 8)
socio-cultural-familial degree of difficulty (How hard is it to effect
this expression here, i.e., how hostile is the environment? A lot of
Oriental women are incredibly beautiful but it's a lot easier in that
context, they have much more support from the people around them.)
-- Brazil's secularism, materialismm, poverty, absence of common
culture, unjust legal, governmental and social system,
institutionalized abuse (the jeitinho
attitudes), generalized
indifference to and distrust of others, and lack of reliable
institutions or relations of any kind means a very high degree of
difficulty.
After the
vestibular we worked on together, do you remember when I wrote:
-
Oh how I adore being with you. Working with you
was
marvelous, an opportunity to spend some quiet moments with you and try
to find a way to better explain why I am like this with you. I love the
way you do things, how you treat people with eklas (giving with an open
heart), strength and levity, the way you walk, the way you talk -- I am
happy and tranquil when I am with you. But what leaves me with my mouth
open is that I really have nothing to criticize: almost everybody
leaves me with pain when I see how they treat themselves and the rest
of us, but you just leave me happy to be with you.
This is what
I
was talking about. You are fantastically beautiful, Gloria. It fills my
heart every time I see you and if you ever doubt it after all this
explanation, I'll probably try to find another way to explain it (maybe
if we work out a score for you in each of the "beauty" items and then
do the same with other people or compare them to a population average
or some such). How do you think it feels to love somebody so much and
never have them believe what you say or to have them always looking at
you as a threat or some such?! Believe me, I'm not.
But
let's
look at where you are coming from -- which is a part of what makes you
so hard to communicate with -- as well as putting relationships in
general in Java's larger perspective.
Your
perspective on relationships comes from your experience and the
experience of others around you: after people live together for some
years, they get tired of each other, their feeling weakens and dies and
eventually they fight and/or separate because the shared sense does not
answer their needs. Your marriage went like that along with so many
others that we know of (perhaps including mine). This does happen.
However, in
Java we have a rather broader perspective on what happens to
relationships or "unions" (This is where we get to the kind of
information that was lacking in my understanding before I went to
Java). The way we describe them focuses on the depth of exchange and
trust and feeling present in the union. The first level is "union of
desire" (perkawinan ing keinginan),
a physical and psychological need
for the other that is primarily expressed through sexual desire. This
union is mostly present in the lower chakra through sexual desire and
the upper chakra in the form of imaginings and fantasies [we generally
work with just three chakras, the lower (genital) in the lower abdomen (janaloka),
the middle (heart) in the chest area (hendraloka)
and the upper in the
head area (guruloka)].
Generally the couple's passion isolates them
from the rest of the world and they think of themselves primarily in
terms of themselves. They tend to be quite selfish and exclusive about
one another. The heart chakra is usually present in the union but it is
not primary. This is the kind of relationship that tends to be very hot
for a little while and then burn out as the couple gets bored with one
another. Couples that marry on this basis generally go the route that
we know so well from our own experiences and those of others around us.
If a couple gets stuck in this first level of union, this is virtually
inevitable. They do not share enough to satisfy in their experience
with one another and there is a need for less hedonistic focus and
fewer demands for the continuous sacrifices of romantic love: "Come
show me how much you love me again." However, there is a level of
continuing insecurity based on the relationship's narcissistic nature:
each is using the other rather than sharing with them, "Are you really
with me or are you just looking at yourself in my mirror?"
The next
level is
"union of feeling" (perkawinan ing
rasa). This is when the couple share
a deeper affection and is centered in the heart chakra. At this level
the couple are no longer driven this way and that by their sexual need
and desire for one another. Their desire to control or dominate evolves
into an interest in being with the other and the selfishness often
turns into a more objective concern in the other's real needs. At this
level, sexual desire becomes less prominent: sex becomes an event of
note but its expression is more or less limited to its own context
rather than being present all the time. The energy formerly tied to sex
is then available for other activities and generally goes toward more
attention to the other's needs in a broader less possessive sense:
"What do you need my love? How can I make you happy?"
The
next
level is "union in life" (perkawinan
ing jiwa). At this level the
couple comes to experience each other as the their primary reference in
viewing existence. One cannot imagine life without the other. Sex is
both more beautiful and less dominant at this level since most of what
is communicated through sex is already being communicated through the
heart chakra. This is the kind of relationship where one of the couple
dies and the other often quickly follows. They are mutually dependent
and frequently define themselves in terms of the other, often using
terms of affection that take in higher levels than the relationship
itself. For example, in one couple I met a few months ago who have been
together of some forty years, the man frequently calls his wife
"mother" because that is the depth of the sense he feels with her: she
is not just a wife, she is much more to him. Very beautiful though not
very common here. The couple often have an easy, childlike aspect in
their relationship with one another. The emphasis moves toward viewing
the relationship selflessly, "What can I do to serve you? Am I doing
the best I can to serve your real needs?"
The
next
level is "true union " (sejatining
perkawinan). At this level the whole
world becomes the being of the love itself. This involves a complete
surrender of self to the other and the service of the love that unites.
At this level the personal sense ceases and the shared love comes to
define the sense of both. Sex becomes both sublimely beautiful and at
the same time not notably separated from everything else in life; it is
just another way of sharing like so many others. The couple comes to
view the world through the same eyes. Their feelings become a broad
common sense that includes the whole being and the need to serve and be
with the other generally goes into something more spiritual and
profound: "I love you so! What must I do to serve you, to give you
peace and to always be with you?" At this level they no longer see
their love as being limited to the other person but as a sense
expressed in the world around them and made possible by the world
around them. They are grateful for the opportunity that reality has
given them to be together and treasure it with all their being,
savoring every moment of their union. This is also when they begin to
see their partner's presence in what happens to them. It's kind of like
someone treating you well because they are fond of your friend; they
are extending their affection for him to you and you feel his influence
in the relationship. However, this comes on a more general level: you
see and feel the presence of your beloved coming to you through
reality. The beloved is not physically there but their love is somehow
producing and guiding the situation.
Let me
now
discuss our relationship in these terms. The Javanese talk about
relationships sometimes coming from nature's reuniting a deep love.
That is the way I see you (it's kind of like my experience with
Sumarah: everything about you is just so dear and clear and familiar).
The incredible experiences and changes I have passed through in the
past five months all support this. For me the relationship has gone
from a union of desire to a union of life in this short period.
Unbelievable: this kind of progression generally takes many years if it
happens at all. At first I felt you primarily in the lower chakra
with jolts in the heart and upper chakra. Typical of a union of desire
and romantic love but with an absolutely incredible intensity (for
example, my heart chakra went from 20 years of being a depressed and
cold region to an open and warm sense). I felt I was being flooded and
renovated by the love of you. Since then the love has led me through
many more changes. I now feel you primarily in my heart chakra and it
is constant and comfortable. You are always with me. That is how deeply
I trust you, dear lady.
The
sexual
aspect is now very well delimited. I am no longer driven the way I was
but when you start hugging and kissing me I kind of lose control, in
part because our sexual "communication" does not transfer to anyone
else; my relationship with Ari does not touch on anything that we have
shared in our love-making and I do miss you very deeply. Sorry. I'm
okay afterwards. I don't suffer from frustration now. Like the other
night, I just watched you go in the door and felt like, "Do what is
best my love. I'm sorry this got so confused." My biggest desire is
just to be with you in any way that is possible.
As far
as I
can tell (you don't exactly talk a whole lot, you know), you are in
love with me too and if it is anything like as strong as my love for
you, you are apt to be more than a little confused. However, your sense
is split between the lower and the upper chakras, which generally means
a great deal of thinking (and probably dreams or fantasies) as well as
a terrific amount of dammed up sexual energy that has no effective
outlet at the moment. Sexual energy cannot really be satisfied or
released through the upper chakra: the energies involved are far too
powerful to be captured in thought. Once you get the heart chakra
opened up again, sexual energies can be released through that level of
interchange (involving faith and trust). It is a great relief. If you
trusted me more it would help, love.
Oh
well.
That's the best I can do for the moment. I sure hope this will resolve
more confusion than it creates.
4.
June 30, 1992
Dear Gloria,
Our
relationship must count as having been one of the most inspirational of
all time in terms of letter writing (at least on my part). Please try
to find the time and patience to read this. I hope you've read Tealt
Leman. God knows it's important enough to me so that if you really want
I'll try to translate it for you or something. This one should be
easier to follow since you know all the characters and situations
already.
I
sometimes
feel that you have fabricated some aspects of our situation as a way to
punish all of us for what has happened in your life. However, I
honestly feel that the beauty I see and feel in you goes so far beyond
this element and that it must be interpreted, in as much as it has
contributed at all, as a self-liberating motivational base allowing you
to do what is needed in a deeper sense by serving rather confused
emotional purposes. I do not feel that some sort of unconscious
emotional vendetta is defining your actions, Gloria, but that there is
something far nobler underlying the confusion you so frequently enter
and come out teither in a seductive sense of "Now I am yours, my love"
or the angry "I want to be alone, you fool".
Concerning
Ari's finding out about us, there can be no doubt that if you turn a
light on and off enough times (as in our on/off relationship), people
will notice and it was eventually going to dawn on Ari and everyone
else that something was going on. In addition, I never even attempted
to hide what was happening or what it was doing to me. From the very
start I began complaining, "I don't know why you are limited to having
one deep relationship, one wife in Brazilian society. In real
civilizations this is not a problem but here it involves such an absurd
amount of confusion and shame that I can't believe it." That was one
way I was expressing my feelings about the situation. Another came in
that my relationship with you gave me the strength to confront her on
many of her long-standing chata attitudes and behavior and begin the
process of trying to remake that relationship on a healthier basis.
Maria
loves
you too, Gloria. She said that one of the things that she felt in the
situation was not jealousy of you relative to me but of my intruding
into her friendship with you. She said to say that she is
"disappointed", but her approach to the problem has always been just
what mine is: "Please God, guide us to do what is right."
You
told me
that one of the things that hurt you most about the situation with
Miguel was that he told you everything and you warned me not to do that
with Ari. Last night Ari and I had a long talk about you and what had
happened. I suspect I took a different approach than Marvin did and the
results for both Maria's and my own feelings about the situation are
much better. I told her how deeply I love you and that if I had had my
choice, I would have wanted you and Beryl to move in months ago. I
protested that I have no problem loving two women deeply, independently
and differently and at the same time. After all I am a Muslim and this
is in our tradition.
I also
explained about your feelings of guilt and your resolute decision not
to do what had happened to you to someone else. Of course you did in a
way but that is a different story. What I wonder Gloria is if you are
structuring your behavior around a self-distructive attack on your own
dearest relationships (I hope I am at least dear to you) in an attempt
to show that no one really cares for you unless you do precisely what
they want. Was I being tested in this regard in this latest incident
and the many other times you have been so inconsistent with me?
On
Friday I
couldn't tell if you were telling me that you specifically didn't want
the entanglements of a lover relationship, or if you were telling me to
go to hell and leave you alone. I interpreted it the second way at the
time but later, as the tears came down, some of the things you said
made me feel that maybe you hadn't meant to be quite so cruelly abrupt
about cutting me off as a friend as well. You had said I could come by
and see you if I wanted, but I was so hurt by the intensity of your
rejection that I wasn't really paying attention.
Gloria, I
honestly don't care about the sexual aspect of our relationship very
much any more. What I love is you. Sexually you are great. This last
time was better than the previous one but we were still sort of
mechanical one with one another and the feeling certainly did not reach
up to where we were back in December. Even so, you were an absolute
dream, though I guess I don't like being rushed. I particularly enjoyed
the lighter aspect of our conversation, where we were making some fun
of the situation we are in and how awkward it makes us feel. Lovely and
healthy God knows.
However, my
primary interest, no matter what happens, is to be your friend. I am
willing to go through all manner of confusion and make rather profound
sacrifices in my own sense of pride and rightness but I refuse to allow
you to think that my behavior with you has ever been based on anything
but true love for you or that you mean anything less than you do to me.
Now
for
another of those unbelievable aspects to this relationship that I
promised to tell you about someday. I guess there are some in Tealt
Leman about my childhood memories of your sense but this one happened
recently. I was down in my office lying on the floor and feeling your
presence (and anger) with me. Your spirit put me into a catatonic
trance for an hour and a half or so to the point where I could not even
find, let alone move my body. My attitude was that if you wished to do
this, it was all right with me. You are my prime counsel, my deepest
sense of being and you have the right. However, eventually pain in the
legs brought me back and you had to let me go. From my notes at the
time (May 2). "She apparently has the power to put me in a trance but
lacked the know-how at that point and was unable to quiet the pain in
my legs else I'd probably still be there. That woman has a nasty temper
sometimes."
At
times I
wonder if you are jealous of the simple love I feel for you, the
absolute surrender I maintain to you and for you and my willingness to
accept all manner of twists and turns in the relationship with tears,
yes, with anger, yes, but with no hint that there is any limit to the
love I feel for you. Is it possible for you to go down through your
confusion and touch on and share the love I feel for you? I don't know,
but I do know that as long as you are involved in so much confusion,
simple, direct feelings like love do not stand much chance of being
noticed. Love is essentially a relational level expressed in a physical
sensation in the body itself and the way you relate to being itself.
Your linkage with your body is so muddled at this point that I wonder
if you would recognize love even if it were present.
You
frequently go into a long discourse about what a nice guy I am. Gloria,
I don't consider myself a "nice" guy. I have been a fighter all of my
life and nothing has changed. If you want the truth I'm a lot more
intense than your father or Marvin are. However, just as their
intensity is upper chakra (the storming intellect based on very little
except self-promotion) mine is lower chakra (the saddened sense of
finding so much disappointment in people like them throughout my life).
I have confronted many of their type and am not impressed with them.
You seem to mistake upper chakra intensity for strength. What these
characters forget is that people do not forget how you treat them and
they give a person like that a little corner of reality that is all
his/her own -- nobody else wants to be with these manda chuvas
(despots) anyway so they seem to get their own way. My reaction to such
characters is just to let them go through me in the yin sense of
yin/yang like I did with your father's rather aggressive response when
I offered him the Swiss army knife -- in our terms this is fighting
fire by remaining in the water. They are eventually forced to confront
me in the real world because I refuse to be drawn out of it to confront
them in their own distorted sense.
I am
also a
bit "chato", but my insistence
does not have to do with getting my own
way: it has to do with finding out what is going on. I don't demand
much but honesty and clarity from anyone, but when I don't get it, I
will ride them forever until they come clean with me. Perhaps you
recall my little note when you first decided to call it off and I wrote
something like, "Eu poderia estar
pior mas eu honestamente não
sei como. Eu me sinto como um journal velho jogado fora na rua e sendo
levado pelo vento para so Deus sabe a onde." It hurt Gloria. It
hurts
now too. When I am in pain with someone I love the way I love you, I am
fearless about trying to find out what the hell is going on and to
bring the problem out into the open where you can see the love I have
for you no matter what the confusion involved on your side. I never
want you to forget the dignity and honor I find in you as a person.
Am I
right
to feel such mistrust of your therapist? Does she have the intent of
maintaining the dependence of a paying customer by keeping her from
sorting her life out such that the various components contributing to
it are seen clearly enough as to not require constant revisions and
reworkings? God knows you are a sublimely complicated being for various
reasons, but given the positional and/or institutional trust your
therapist has with you, I wonder if one could not have hoped for more
in terms of applied results rather than continuing analytic confusion.
Your therapist no doubt sees that you are reworking your past by
redefining the situation involved in it again in us. You have changed
the cast of characters but the basic context remains the same, only
this time it is you who is in the role of intruder. Do you see our
relationship in these terms? Are you attempting to prove that in fact
nobody is true to anybody and that your relationship with me and Ari
just shows that it's all just a game that you play knowing that nobody
is ever really on anybody's side except their own and that everybody is
constantly changing the rules to suit themselves?
I know
my
feelings, Gloria. With all the mind-clearing activities I have
practiced over the years, I also know that they are not based on the
standard worldview present in Brazilian society. My feelings come
before their interpretation, Gloria, and they are what they are whether
I like them or not. My feeling for you goes beyond any I have ever
experienced for anyone, Gloria, and this is why I don't worry too much
about interpreting it: "I don't fret or worry". This is why I have so
much faith that eventually you will begin to see my love for you not as
some form of entrapment, not as another tyrant trying to conquer you
and take control of your life, but as an expression of my devoted
respect for you and my loving concern for your real well-being.
5. For example, I had the
following dream:
March 3, 1996
Last night I had a vivid,
colorful,
majestic and lengthy dream with Gloria in which I explained the basic
situation to her very clearly and carefully. I felt like I was talking
to a retarded child or some such. I told her that I have devoted my
life to "Seeking provisions for death during life" (Golek sanguning
pati sadjuruning urip) and that I am very wealthy in the Natural
sense
as a result, in that I have confronted and opened my Being eternally
with all the various aspects and realms of existence and stand open
with them. I said that this is obviously not much of a concern here in
Brazil in that everyone is basically devoted to hedonism (golek penak)
but that in Java we see it as being the only real issue in many senses,
in that we are all going to be dead before long. I hugged her while we
were lying on a bed but told her that I both love her and hate her and
that, in as much as she has betrayed me and hurt me so much, I would
have to punish, "burn", her clean so that the love would be properly
expressed again for both of us this time. I then said that after she
was burned clean I would provide for her forever in my Being which she
would then be able to share with no problem for either of us.
