‘Awakening,’ ‘conversion,’ ‘enlightenment’ — these are all words for seemingly esoteric phenomena that exist in the realm of saints and mystics, which few ordinary people, even modern contemplatives, even respected teachers, feel they have the right to claim to have truly experienced. For one thing, to do so would seem at best haughty and at worst completely nuts.

Yet, the fairly common experience of falling in love shares all the hallmarks of an enlightenment. It is an overwhelming, radical shift in perspective, which seems to come from the outside — unprovoked, undeserved, a grace, a gift. It happens rapidly, changing everything in its wake, challenging one’s deepest assumptions about the world and one’s place in it, most particularly the assumption that one is essentially alone, disconnected from others in a fundamental way, separated from God.

Every aspect of living is touched by it. The lover’s mental and physical processes are changed, and the shift is quite visible to everyone who interacts with the affected person.

When asked to describe what has happened — how, overnight, the lover seems to have departed her usual, mundane existence for one in which laughter and coincidences rain down upon her with such force that it is hard to see anything at all that does not appear to be drenched in beauty, and yet, at the same time, she has not truly left her old world at all, but is actually more fully immersed in it — all but the most sensitive among us are left at a loss, clinging at lyrics from love songs and sappy poetry and cliched adages that can only capture some tiny fraction of the sensation.

Just like the mystic, the lover will be asked such questions as: How did you know it was really God/love? How did you know this was the Real Thing, and not just a delusion? What makes this experience different from all the other, looney, short-lived obsessions you’ve had? Can you please tell me how you provoked this, what caused this thing to happen to you? What can I do to make it happen to me? How can I be happy? How will I spot it when it comes, will I hear it, the small voice whispering to me in the night, saying I’m the one you’ve been looking for?

And oh, oh, how the lover would like to say — is dying to say.

But she finds that she cannot.

This wisdom is not to be known intellectually. It is beyond rationality, beyond logic, beyond proof. It is to be seen, felt, experienced. It cannot be owned. It cannot be attained by grasping. It cannot be found by looking.

You do not need to worry, says the grandmother deep inside your chest: when it happens to you, and it will happen to you, you will know. You cannot fail to notice.

You will find yourself, my child, someday, looking into the eyes of someone who had only weeks ago, days ago, seconds ago, been a stranger, and seeing in those eyes your own future, as clear and recognizable as your reflection in a mirror.

You will ask this person, do you remember what it was like, weeks ago, days ago, seconds ago, before we had ever met? And this person, this other person, will reply, No, I don’t.

You will not remember either.

* * *

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, reader, without whom I could not exist. My life depends critically on yours, and so I offer you this advice:

The next time you find yourself standing at the edge of an abyss — unable to see the bottom and yet sure you will lose everything you hold dearest in the fall, certain that you ought to be terrified and yet still, somehow, inexplicably, drawn forward — do not hesitate. Jump.

By the time I went out looking for a new teacher I no longer had any idea what I was doing. It was the dead of winter, my mind wasn’t functioning properly; I was a wreck. I didn’t remember what I wanted to study; I didn’t remember why I wanted to study at all. There no longer seemed to be any point. The one who couldn’t teach me anymore had said: You can always divorce your spouse, but your true teacher will be with you for the rest of your life. I was concerned. I flew back and forth. I muddled through various interviews with various teachers, some of whom were very famous, some of whom were very wise, some of whom were neither. Things were said, I was sometimes impressed, sometimes intimidated, sometimes bewildered. But in the end, after everything had gotten mixed up, the one thing that stood out to me, in my confusion and terror, was that one of them, and only one, had said to me, very simply: If you come here, I will take good care of you. In the end, that one line was the deciding factor. He had said the thing I most needed to hear at the time I most needed to hear it, and he probably did not even realize this. But in retrospect I realize that I made the right choice, even though I did not know at the time all the reasons why it was the right choice. Perhaps, actually, because I didn’t know. If I had been less confused, more rational, more confident, more optimistic, if I had tried to weigh all the factors and come to the logical conclusion, I probably would have miscalculated and made a serious mistake.

Affliction can be a blessing. The older I get, the more I see that, more often than not, it is.

* * *

I dreamt my teacher and I were out of the beach, running around in the sand, trying to collect data about the waves. The waves always receded before we got all the information we needed. The task was clearly impossible. We could never fully understand the ocean this way. There was so much time pressure, on every cycle of flow and ebb, and yet we weren’t panicked. What mattered was not that we solve the problem. What mattered was that we were out there, looking, making the necessary observations, together. And it made me so happy to know, that of all the people in the universe, we were the ones out there. I was shocked by this, actually, that we were out there alone, and amazed that he was willing to take on the whole ocean with only me.

Sitting naked on a pillow next to the space heater wondering if I have committed murder, and can it even be murder if you don’t know for sure if you’ve done it? Forgive them Father for they do not know what they do. That love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it. The mothers and the daughters and the dying, when we think of the future what we are thinking of is our children. It did not occur to me until recently that, if the choice is between killing you and killing my own babies (and that is, in fact, the choice), my greater responsibility is already to them.

I asked the daughter if she wanted to read the story or just look at the pictures, and she said, look at pictures, so we looked at them and said what they were, all the animals and the pink trees and purple trees and ladders and words, and she gives her love so freely, her mother says, but not to everyone. I went looking for Antarctica and found the beginning of time, the beginning of the new notime time, and somehow every movie I see and every concert I hear has a man dressed up in a tiger suit in it. I want that rapper’s tiger coat, I said, and my friend said he would back me up on that one. My fortune says I should reevaluate my plans for the future. My best friend says he cannot breathe. I buy plane tickets for an exorbitant price, I realize I cannot possibly use them, I don’t talk, I can’t say. I would kill you with my bare hands, I text, while sitting in a dining hall crying my eyes out and not eating the food I have gathered in a daze.

Time is the most precious thing you can have, her grandfather says. The rain. The new corset. In Quebec, tabernacle and chalice are swear words. The coincidences. The one I love so much I cannot speak to him anymore. And yet I brag about him, he made that, he did that, my best friend! I have already cried in front of so many people who don’t know me yet. There is a way in which imagining a certain future seems to prevent it from happening. There is a way in which imagining a certain future is the happening of it. To the one I may be beginning to love, I cannot shut up. You already killed me. I feel like my breath is gone I can’t breathe. I can’t believe.

The father has nightmares that someone is taking his daughter away, all night, every night. My cunt, there is no other word, is burning. But Antarctica. But the children. We are twirling around in circles with our scarves and our dresses fanning out. Ever since she was born I have never not been afraid. What is the point of doing it if you’re just going to half-ass it? This is it. This is your life. Next to having a baby, nothing matters. Why don’t we talk about the things that really matter? Death and love and intimate family relationships. Why am I so afraid that my emotion will cause you to have an emotion, that I will get inside, that I will impose?

Where did you go? Why aren’t you here? Why did you leave me? But I told you, I told you, this really wasn’t going to be okay. But I have to get more data, I have to write it up, I have to tell the story. I told only one friend about the time we both came just by holding hands. She said, that belongs in a book. Here it is. This is it. No more waiting until you can do it justice. You can’t, ever. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, that Eliot poem has been echoing in my head for weeks. How did you fail to notice that the world already ended? After the end of the world, there is another world.

The worst outcome is, you kill your opponent, better is he kills you, then, you kill each other, and best is everyone lives. But, then, I always preferred tragedy to comedy. In a tragedy, you kill each other. There is a way in which imagining a certain future causes it to happen.