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A little later the wanderer peeps through the slightly open door, sees the old woman resting, and with great care to make no sound slowly opens the door and moves toward the bed, listens, and is reassured to hear slow but steady breathing.
Sitting now on a chair placed next to the bed, earlier--but quite how much earlier was not entered into memory--the wanderers eyes close and soon sleep follows.
Woken by a quiet hello and a soft stroking of the back of the hand, and then:-
I have something to tell you when you are fully awake.
The wanderer gently takes the hand and places it on the warmth of the bed cover.
Sounds serious.
The old woman smiles. More mysterious than serious, simple but little understood perhaps. It concerns connection with the process of loving.
That does sound seriously mysterious, replies the wanderer with quizzical eye and a smile.
It's just that our connection with the process of loving is both through the connection of being loved and through the connection of being loving.
So, if we should feel that the connection is broken because we do not feel loved, we are capable of restoring that connection when we ourselves become loving. ---Thats not so very easy to do you know, for we may understandably feel sorry for ourselves when we feel unloved, and the transition from that feeling to the feeling of wanting to show love to others instead can seem like an impossibility.
Then how shall we manage to do as you suggest, asks the wanderer, --do you have one of your magic tricks up your sleeve, you magician you?
No magic, just a way of looking, a helpful perception. replies the old woman.
You see--or at least we are able see if we are willing to look--the process of loving is part of the whole process which we call existence. Everything, everyone, all is interconnected inextricably, nothing is separate--all is all and all is one. This will not be obvious to us until we see the sense of it, and then this strange notion begins to shape our behaviour, our way of being, and that way of being does not divide nor seek division, nor rely upon division.
In that perception we are not separate, not alone, but all part of the whole---so the feeling of feeling sorry for ourselves shrivels away and is replaced by the feeling of being one with all which is.
The old woman closes her eyes, and tears appear in the eyes of the wanderer.
X.
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