Just a week ago I was on the brink of death. I went out to the beautiful forests around our house to clear the heavy thoughts of death and destruction hanging in my mind. But instead of getting cleared as usual those thoughts became only worse; for the first time ever my beloved forest became a dark dungeon alluring me with death. My life’s work had come to nothing, my writing had hardly touched anybody and my dream of fully shared love had just about vanished from my marriage. I was finished. I could just fall down and die, find my peace lying on the mosses of this great forest. Life was just too much for me…

For seven years I have had a little woolen doll representing the White Gandalf standing on the instrument panel of my car. He has been my ideal, a goal to grow towards. Some time ago one of our kids accidentally hit him so that he fell on the floor. Only his feet were left on the panel. For a long time my Gandalf stayed thus dethroned; just some days ago I clued him back on his feet.

I am married to the woman of my dreams and I have realized that I have no means of fully reaching her pure heart. She has only shown occasional glimpses of her shining love, and those holy moments were getting rarer and rarer. She is implying that I am not good enough for her, that my approach towards her and towards Life is wrong. I am too old, too something…I am in a limbo, we are in limbo.

Then from the bright sky came a lightning. A reader of my recent books ”Alussa on ajatus” and ”Rakkauden ja kuoleman kohtaaminen” by Basam Books contacted me with wonderful words of acknowledgement. She had been deeply touched by what I wrote, she had recognized and deeply felt the truth of what I wanted to conway. I was awakened from my stupor. My Gandalf was alive again. I needed to keep up this sense of power, this sense of being worthy in my endeavor. I wanted to maintain this contact with myself and with this woman of my kind.

I had already lived through three divorces and one death of a wife. Now I was again ready to leave it all. I could not let go of this sense of truth and clarity. I could not go back to believing that my life was not worthy and meaningful. I had been heard. After a long and empowering walk in the woods I told my wife that I was ready to leave her and even our beautiful house and the farm with all of its animals. I needed to cut all of my ties to her, all my needs and desires.

Everything was up in the air, anything was possible, I only wanted to serve Life. At the same time we maintained a beautiful openness and sharing, we could both feel all our feelings and express all our thoughts in this open space that had suddenly opened between us. Once for a long time clear, honest and simple communication was possible. Open communication which we both acknowledged as equal with love.

In this empty space of non-attachment we were both willing and ready to listen to each other with respect, we were willing to sense the truth of each other, and of ourselves. When my wife was pondering the possibility of staying in our house alone with the kids and the animals she suddenly found a new sense of power arising in her heart. She called it her Gandalf, the pure power of an honest man or father, which she because of her childhood experiences had never got to feel in herself nor to trust fully in any man. That which she had recognized in me, and then given for me to carry, and for her to steer. In her hurt femininity she had mistakenly endeavored to control my male power, my Gandalf.

Around the same time I myself realized that by saying open to my wife’s emotions, and to my own, I had finally opened my heart and found the sacred feminine within my own being. I had always left it for my wives to keep – outside of myself. I was now the loving one. I was fully in love instead of being in a state of yearning to get it from the other, which always brought about new reasons to feed my deep sense of disappointment. I was finally whole, wholly a man and a woman, and beyond them both.

Still I felt that I needed to leave my family again. Until one night while we continued our sharing around this issue of divorce I first remembered the film Bridges of the Madison County, where a traveling photographer has an intense four day romance with a lonely wife of a farmer. At the end she decides for her boring but secure life on the farm. I mentioned it to my wife, who had also seen the film. We kept on communicating. Suddenly I saw a picture of a bone that had been broken and then grown back together in a twisted manner. The only way to heal such a bone was to break it up again and then to let the pieces grow back together in the right way. I described my vision to my wife and we both immediately saw and sensed what it meant for us.

We had grown together in a twisted manner as both of our own past demons, or shadows, had been able to steer the process of coming together. By getting an acknowledgment of my true worth I had been brave enough to cut the twisted bone of our relationship. That was the truthfulness of my Gandalf’s sword in action. But I had also been able to acknowledge the all-embracing love of my own deep feminine, my Lilith who had wanted to be equal with her Adam, but was banished from the paradise as Adam was not strong and loving enough to share his life with a woman equal to himself.

Thus I for my part had been able to maintain a truthful communication while we for those three days floated in the chaotic abyss of our creative freedom. We had cut the cords of our relationship, we had raised the anchors of our past and we were now both ready to find a new relationship of shared love and understanding. We were finally free to love after we had fully died to all past that had kept us so cruelly apart in spite of our deep willingness to love. The bone of our relationship was healed.

This coming together in love also showed me how I had been totally numb to the feelings of the other beside me for such a long time. As my own heart was encapsulated by fear, guilt and sorrow, which I did not dare to feel, I had been totally insensitive towards the suffering my many divorces had caused both in the hearts of my previous wives and in the hearts of my sons left behind. I was getting to feel the other side of my life’s actions just like it is said to happen in heavens after we have died. I had now died to my past and in my newly found love I had also awakened from death with renewed life-force, I was reborn without having to let my body go to the worms in between. I am the One, the loving source of all life I had so yearned to merge with. I am the Love I had mistakenly sought from so many others out there. I am ready for the abundance of this new adventure. I am ready to create on in Love. The search is over.