Have you ever totally embarrassed yourself? Here's the question: What if one of the greatest enlightened masters walked up to me and posed a question - would I be too busy to answer? Would I think they are crazy? I am going to digress before going into details. Certain personality traits can either be viewed as flawed or favorable - depending. I am a woman of extremes - my astrological chart displays many opposing elements and my simian line is an indication of my conflicted nature. I have been this way forever - I'm either completely immersed in my emotions or I am clinical, rational and detached, but even while hovering in extremes, I observe - well aware of what is going on. Not able to change it, but present in the experience. In other words, even while I can be passionately in love, I wouldn't do something crazy like lie naked across someone's porch. I mean poetic things have been done in the name of love, but I keep mine restricted to my stories. And even when I am detached and living in my mind, I check in with my heart and feelings. I channel the HUGE emotions into my writing and draw the jewels from the fodder (if there are any).

Now, as my friends know, I was living in unrequited love for a while... I was either in "oh woe" that he will never love me, or enjoying the friendship and channeling the feelings into poetry and my other work. Recently, however, I realized that I could not do the gray area dance and I would need to take a break from the friendship I had with - we'll call him Frank But, I thought he would appreciate the few poems and a story I had written. In the story, I attempted to capture an essence of his vulnerability. A week later (yesterday) I attended an event and while Frank was civil - even friendly - to me if I approached him, essentially he tried to hide and I even think I heard him ask someone for refuge which about horrified me.

I realized that based on his past history with crazy, compulsive women, I had been tossed from being a close friend into that category of scary. And it caused me to wonder. I have known unconditional love for my children and parents and closest friends, but from Frank I learned so much about loving without expecting anything other than friendship in return. Loving him because of his beautiful soul and ignoring the behavior stuff. Listening without judging. I was grateful to Frank for the inspiration and occasional coffee companionship. We never slept together so it was simple and lovely and suddenly what was simple and lovely in my mind to him appeared creepy and out of control. Other than sending him a few effusive emails I had never done anything inappropriate. Anyway, I am no enlightened master, but it made me realize that we perceive our lives based on our reference or past history and if something beautiful and miraculous comes along, we may not see it or understand it at all because we can't recognize it. It doesn't fit anywhere so we don't know how to hold it. It only inspires me to continue on my spiritual path so that when one of truth and love's many sisters walks in my door - disguised or not - I will still recognize it, or at least be open to learning a new language to begin a communication with it.