A Broken Heart
Rob
Tears are my friend of late.
I can't help but allow them to flow gently down my cheeks. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother wiping them away. I love the feeling of their soft paths drying on their own time.
There's something beautiful about walking along a side walk with tears rolling down my face, about the softest of tears cooling my cheeks as I check my mail box. There's something precious about tears rolling out from my eyes as I press hundreds of pounds from my heart or as I cycle on a stationary bicycle. Sometimes the tears land just perfectly on my knee.
Life is so utterly heart breaking right now. To breathe in my life right now is shatteringly painful. This very breath wells tears into my eyes. Why?
This is all just too precious, this beautiful radiant moment is so precious. I seemingly can't stand how much I love life. On one hand there's no "thing" about life that stands out right now, it's just this beautiful field of life that breaks my heart. On the other hand, it's seemingly just about anything that can pierce through my heart. Sometimes its someone's eyes, an heart felt invitation, someone protecting themselves, a song dancing within my heart...
Part of me wants to possess, to hold on to this dancing immediacy. Part of me knows I can't hold any of this. To do so would close me down to the very love and vitality that hurts with such beauty. I think this dives into the heart of what is so shatteringly penetrating. My heart loves this moment with a gasping unconditioned embrace, and there's the part of me that wants to hold on, to possess something when ultimately there's nothing to have here.
The impermanence of this life is just so penetrating, so uncompromising. I can feel just how fast and fleeting this life is. I'm 30 now. I'm utterly shocked by this fact. I never thought my life would last this long. And yet I can still feel the time of the transcendent in my bones, this is all going to be over in just a few moments, just a few blinks of the Kosmic eye. Rob will soon be gone. I take form, I change, I dissolve and pass away.
In the meantime, the only thing that matters is to Love. To articulate my Love's Kindness in every gesture that animates this body-mind.
Kindness, Kindness, Kindness.
Kindness not born of convention, but a Kindness that knows only the beauty of this moment and the precious opportunity to dance from Love's timeless unconditioned source.
Does anything else really matter? Does anything else truly hold this depth?
Access: Public
broken
June 2008 
- sometimes a broken heart is an open heart..
thank you for sharing Rob.. this is a beauty full read indeed.
love & joy.. tara
Hi Rob, you write very well and I suspect that what you have written is not really a lament but a glimpse of wisdom.
The answer to your last two questions, if they are not rhetorical, is an emphatic “YES!”
Seek and you shall find!
:-)
The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must destroy it's symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all things up into itself, there your soul must stay.
~Meister Eckhart
Bless your open heart.
namaste
Your vulnerability to life is breathtaking.
I know and appreciate the feeling of just letting the tears fall. Like when I read that your doctor called you a fatso. That really did it for me! Thank you for sharing your Heart. Hope to see you soon, Rob!
feeling your energy in this post; so beautifully and painfully written - thank you for this - in so many ways!!
Little brother, How did we McNamaras come to experience this magnitude of blessing? my heart cracks open this beautiful sunday morning reading your post as I recognize my own moments of profound recognition of beauty and love… like reading your letter yesterday. may we root in knowing that the dance together continues even when death takes us to another form. thank you thank you thank you for your imprint on this world!!!! love you! -love, kno=)
I absolutely LOVE you all!!! ~R
Thank you for sharing this glimpse of heart and depth, of life beyond the mind Rob…
Brillaint… and authentic.
Peace,
~ Shawn
I feel I'm at the threshhold ready to make the leap into awareness, having been there before but always pulled back by our mistaken belief in 'reality'…. you are such a delight, a blessing and a leader……. thank you for entering my life! Love you!
Thanks mom, relax into that “leap.” Settle deeply into the emerging awareness. The leap is this release, it's a surrendering to what Is, it's This right here, “just this.” That's my bias :-) Oh, and thank you for giving me life, I wouldn't be in your life without you! Big love mom…
This quote from St. Francis de Sales came to mind as I read your quote:
“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength”
This concept first became palpable to me on the Aikido mat, where it's UR application bled through into my UL experience and cycled back out through LL ; hoping for a new structure in the LR.
You are my newest reminder that this truth still lives out there. Blessings.
Rob.this is so deeply touching. Thats the power od deep emotions and its even deeper than mere emotions. Its about loosing face and risking the broken heart in the face of the consciousness we apppear and disappear.
I am now 53, and beleive me…the tears never disappear. The more the evolution of finity and infinity is going on the more intensive it gets!
Expressing real pain, sadness, expressing the shocking awareness that we all will die, that life is limited cycle in al the bhardos and every cycle in life has a beginning and end.
Thank you so much to express a big YES to all the tears too.
Albert
Hi Rob I just came upon your post. I have been doing the crying smile thing lately too. I am 31. I can't believe it either. I have sharp pains all the time of my short time aching beautiful so I just cry, while driving, while listening to George Michael (okay well…) but really. Thank you for posting this, your words are brave and open. Bless you.