TANTRIC-QUEST-Encounter-with-Absolute-Love

cardboard shelter. I didn't sleep. I watched the large, inquisitiverats. The stench made breathing difficult.During those still hours, people coughed or moaned. Theatmosphere was simultaneously serene and apocalyptic.Weight, gravity, infinite suffering could be read in each look,but at the same time there was levity and a sort of luminousresignation, which was the most moving thing of all.I had wanted to leave my clothes behind and flee. Thenext moment, I was bursting with gratitude for those whohad let me touch the depths of my fear, repulsion, andanguish. I had the impression that I'd reached whatever itis at our base that separates us from others, whether theyare healthy or sick. It is a very hard pit that we protectand preserve, often by our charitable acts themselves. Weare ready to give anything so that we don't have to giveourselves.In the morning, I shared a plate of rice with the familythat had welcomed me. I drank from their water. I felt happybut also very fragile, as though my well-being, my health,were an extremely delicate veil that was longer sufficientto make me different from those around me. I thought ofwhat Devi had said about the ascetics who weren't capableof going down into town, into life; the state they enjoyedhad become a way to separate themselves from the world.When I heard the rickshaw bell, my heart leaped. I rememberedthat my first thought had been "How am I goingto survive until tomorrow?"I was there, alive, and free of my disgust, my fear, myrepulsion, my impulse to flee, and my false pity. In onenight, I had learned more about my relationship to othersthan in seven years of practice. Reality had seen to opening121