The Day of the Beloved

Bonnie tapped Beloved's big toe. This was her affectionate sign that the massage was over. She closed the cap on the oil bottle. Beloved's eyes were closed, and he did not open them to acknowledge her as he usually did. She waited for a few seconds to see if his customary sign of a wink was to be given. He laid still and Bonnie noticed that he seemed to be distant and somewhat depressed. She wanted to call out to him, to cheer him in some way, but she didn't know what to say or do, so she said nothing and gathered up the massage supplies and left the room.

Beloved had been withdrawn for over a month now. This was the longest phase of this kind of mood that she had ever seen Beloved display. She had experienced Beloved in this kind of mood many times over the years, but this mood had another quality to it than she had ever felt before. She had seen him in moods of disappointment, moods of indignant anger, moods of physical and emotional weariness, but his present mood had a quality she had never seen Beloved experience before. It was a mood of apathy. She felt that Beloved had given up, and she couldn't understand why or how. She knew that Beloved was upset because of his disagreement with 'The Mother'. For days after the exchange with 'The Mother', he was beside himself with criticizing Her.

Bonnie was glad that 'The Mother' had left the island for good. She always suspected that 'The Mother' disagreed with Beloved in some big, fundamental way, and she was happy that Sudra and 'The Mother' found themselves to be close companions and went their own way. Bonnie didn't like 'The Mother's' wild ways; she felt that 'The Mother' only pleased herself and couldn't be trusted to put Beloved first. Bonnie liked Sudra but considered her an ordinary person, not spiritually worthy or important. She had heard through Venus that Sudra and 'The Mother' had traveled to India and had just returned to the small town that they were all living in. Bonnie also longed to travel again. Beloved showed no interest when she suggested going to the sanctuary in the states. He did not call on her to model for any shoots, and all his photographic work had come to a halt. He was not writing either. He didn't want to see anyone, and even with his favorite daughter, Mada, he was aloof. Mada was unable to bring a smile to his lips. The both of them felt helpless to bring Beloved out of his mood. His doctor had been informed, and it was recommended that Beloved should take anti-depressants. He had accepted the prescription and faithfully popped the pill each day. Bonnie didn't see any change and wondered if a higher dose would help Beloved.

She was at her wits' end of what she could do for Beloved.

Beloved had felt anguish before. He expected to feel it again. It came with the job of serving the evolution of the enlightenment of everything.

He always felt the resistance to his work. A certain amount of resistance was healthy in the inevitability of opening. He was not feeling either resistance or anguish; he was feeling nothing. "I don't care, that is what I feel . . . if you can call that a feeling," he thought. "I've come up against great odds and persisted. I've made my way to be heard, felt, and received. It has not been easy. I have made my stand and will always stand here. They must come to Me to be served; they must recognize Me."

Beloved's own words felt hollow to him. He felt away from Himself. His words, work, and life felt unreal, like he was just a character in a farce. His passion for his mission escaped him. Without it, everything felt hollow. He was tired of this world and was tired of everything. He welcomed release, but it was not forthcoming.

In difficult times, Beloved sought to be with His heart in the privacy of his temple, where he spoke to His heart—the She of He. He stayed away from the temple and allowed no one to approach or enter the temple even for cleaning. He had not been to the temple since his parting with 'The Mother'. "How could I have been wrong about her," he asked himself, "all the signs were there. Didn't I give her everything she needed to do the work and live a comfortable life here on my island? How could she not understand me?" This conundrum bothered him; it consumed him and ate away at his life. This quandary settled around his heart like a hurricane; he could feel no peace or joy. The eye of his hurricane offered no respite from the storm; it was only a place wherein he was stalled, and while he was surrounded by the energy of movement, he could not feel the way to move out of the storm. The place where he lived felt dismal, and everyone that lived with him also took on that quality. All entertainments they offered him felt to be a sad parody of the life they were living. Life felt to be an embarrassment, but he could feel no shame in his perfect understanding. His great claim was to understand perfectly, so why these dead-end feelings that he knew, oh so well, were connected to the mystery of her disappearance? He was complete without her, so why did life without her leave him feeling disconnected from everything? "Damn you, woman!" His internal life with her was denied to him. She was not present within him whenever he needed or wanted her to serve him. As she had left his island, it felt to him that she had also left the place where they lived together in the privacy of his heart. He was unable to receive her there. Life had become lifeless. He was unable to move from the isolation of his island that was adrift in the eye of his hurricane. He was surrounded by the nothing of himself and it penetrated to the very core of himself - in the place he had always felt he had lived with her. Now there was no one there where there was once a rich life of internal play and intimacy. He had never felt so alone before, and this kind of aloneness was so lonely that he—himself—didn't even exist in it.