Azar

Dear Azar
I feel awkward approaching you and unburdening my heart as we have not even met and you do not
know me, at least in the personal sense, although my story you will have heard a million times. I've
hesitated for some time but, Diego has kept reassuring and encouraging me to go ahead non-thelessless
in sharing with you what I'm suffering. On your website you state how you don't support anyone's
egoic search, which didn't encourage me because no doubt that is all what this will look like, even if it
may not be all of it truth be told - I don't know. Reason I say that is because after years of searching the
holy grail of enlightenment all that matters to me is the human dimension of everyday reality - my
Beloved that I can touch and smell; not the bright light of Truth, and 'egoic' has resonance of a way of a
traditional thinking about the ego that doesn't sit true anymore. But, when I listened to your music I
was deeply touched in my heart by the humanity and how it resonated in my experience. I am king was
the first song that deeply resonated. Not even the words but the tone that resonated, turning my heart
inward in humility until there are only tears, recognizing the failure, "no remedy" and that deep
vulnerability that is to me what is the human predicament is truly about.
The next song (more recently) is "My Child" and "Whatever You Prefer"
By way of introduction, I should maybe, start from the beginning very briefly. I was born Diego,
Antonio, Leonardo Kruger to German /Spanish parents. Later my mother joined the hare krishna
people and I was named Dharmakshetra. However, after leaving that story, I dropped that name and
reverted to Diego, until I joined Subud where it was also not uncommon to change one's name if
through latihan it was seen to be correct to take a name that resonated better with one's nature. Maybe,
you know about Subud? Anyway, so, I received Conrad and also took my father's name Linde, ergo
Conrad Linde.
My parents were essentially hippies looking for new values and on the journey of discovery. On the socalled
hippy trail to India my mother became pregnant with me in Turkey and so they had to turn
around, although by all accounts he wanted to carry on despite the fact they had no money and were
lacking food and went hungry a lot. I don't know whether my father felt burdened by me as he needed
to do his journey but either way they could not work it out and they separated and I lost contact with
him. My mother was on and off mentally ill and I was either in children's homes or with people. She
eventually joined the Krishna community in France. During my mid teens I came to England where
I've been based ever since. I left the Krishna's during my late teens and for some years explored drugs
until at 21 I went to India, did a yoga teacher training intensive and re-discovered my innate curiosity
and search - owning my spiritual path and heritage, where before it was thrust upon me. Indeed I met a
woman and after we separated I was heart-broken and couldn't understand why it hurt so much which
drove me on to to wanting to understand. I was even more arrogant than I am now, confident and selfassured
before, so, that was perhaps my first initiation and introduction to my unconscious and reality
of my frailty.
My twenties were basically, continued and took their direction from there: self-development,
rebirthing, therapy, this and that and of course, always looking for love, still and again - desperately.
Towards the end of my twenties I met John deRuiter and I also embarked on a craniosacral training and
met the mother of my child. When my son, Raphael, was 1 year old she took him and left London
which left me devastated and re-traumatized. We're in my 30's now. I was unable to complete my
Craniosacral training, mainly unable to complete a 10,000 word thesis among other complications, and
maybe I just wasn't good enough for it or it wasn't meant to be, and I fell into a depression for some
years fighting to keep Raphael in my life. After 7 or 8 years with John I gave up with him in 2006. It
coincided with him being in London and for the first time not going to see him and instead going to
visit my mother on my birthday, Sept,16th, 1970. I found her on her death bed; she had been diagnosed
with bowel cancer some weeks before, but, I saw her on her birthday and she seemed good and we
spoke on the phone and she was supposed to be cared for by doctors; so, i was shocked. I was with her
as best as I could, alone in supporting her in that dying process and 48 hours later she was gone. I don't
know whether it was a rite of passage but after that I dropped the window cleaning business that I had
been doing to keep cash-flow for the last 7 years and it all felt like a transition in my life to my second
life - I hoped.
It was not a clear and immediate day/night transition but something did shift and approaching my 40th
birthday year I met Emily. We met over three years ago and I hoped and thought my life had finally
started. There was a deep longing for contact and love and to share a life together. She did not have the
same background as me in terms of the exploration in psycho-emotional-spiritual work, but she sees
herself as a pagan of sorts, and there are the basic shared values of loving nature and being a stewerd of
the planet, and the values of living sustain ably and in harmony. She works as a nanny for a family. Her
father is actually from Jamaica, but he became mentally ill and thus her mother and he separated when
she was too young to remember. So, there was some disturbance like that. The mother found another
man with whom she also had a child. But, unlike her (half)brother or indeed her mother, although, as I
said she never explicity was 'searching' (she is not the 'seeker' type/personality she did go to America
and all her traveling to me represents a looking for something, to be met in a different way, at a
different level of awareness, than the people in the village she grew up in lets say.
We wanted to get land and build a house on it and get off-grid and be as self-sufficient as possible.
When she met me she saw me as a sweetheart. My lack of worldly grounding, and money, did not
bother her at the time. She sensed i was intelligent enough i would figure it out. But, as time went by
her needs got louder and last year was difficult and she felt that she was putting her life on hold
because of me. Whereas she wanted to buy a house, to travel and go out without penny pinching. This
January she left. She says she wants a true partner and that she's run out of patience. A year and a half
ago or so, she was pregnant, but, she had an abortion. Now she says that was the beginning of the end. I
have been sobbing, weeping, and lamenting, deeply distressed for weeks ever since she left. I have
hardly been able to sleep, when I do, I wake up early and I'm gripped by another wave of
uncontrollable grief. I have no family, or friends anymore except a couple spread out across the globe
and she was my family, my best friend, companion, life-partner, guardian angel, and Beloved. The
sudden shock and isolation has me feeling the failure and devastation of my entire life crushing me. I
sob feeling like a lost child. Trapped by poverty, isolated in a place like London, no friends/family
support its crushing and I've wondered whether or how i can carry on.
Since, a couple weeks ago I'm feeling a little more settled. But, then there was a bodily felt experience
of seeing that I WAS responsible for letting her go through with the abortion. I did shirk my
responsibility in standing in a clear YES, supporting and reassuring her. At the time I felt I was not
really part of the decision-making process. And we were living here in a bed-sit flat, me without being
able to promise that I could look after us materially, with the fear that, she already hated it here, and the
lack of space, that she would hate me or this situation even more and possibly up and leave with my
child also, again as before with Raphael; so, that trauma played out in my unconscious.
The torture of regret is unbearable. Its only in this time with her that I have seen clearly my need for a
foundation; for family as a base in the simplicity of ordinariness. I'm not looking for enlightenment;
just for an ordinary human life. And she offered that. But, I lack what I've struggled with for years,
that is to create a basic security in the World and being able to provide materially, not just for myself,
but what to speak of a family. It tortures me that she now feels very disappointed, to the point of
bitterness and hatred, having wasted 3 years of her life with me (she is 38 now) and before any more
goes a wasting, feels that she has to fall back on her own resources, and needs to "take control of her
life", further reconfirming and crystallizing the painful sense of separateness in the process, even while
I am confirmed in my story of abandonment. It feels tragic loss of our potential. I know she truly loved
me once, which tortures me yet even more and having put up with what she has my love only deepens
indeed with a sense of responsibility and wanting to make it up to her if nothing else. I don't know how
to let go, or whether it's even right and proper of me to do so. She doesn't have a framework to put this
in context or the language to be willing to see our story deeper. The initial thrust of our love is what
gave her the strength to remain "committed" and her will power of which she has like no-one I've ever
met. A willpower that used to be willingness but has turned into willfulness. So, I'm left sat in the
powerlessness and helplessness of not being able to do anything about it, except choicelessly let it tear
me up. Her love has died but I can't turn the tap of my love off. She says I don't love her, that I am just
afraid of being alone. I agree, its true that I am afraid and don't want to be alone, but that doesn't mean I
don't love her. She doesn't believe I do. Perhaps, she thinks if I did, I would have done things
differently and figured my life out?
This was a recent sms/ text I sent her:
Everyday waves of grief take me deeper into the pain of remorse and regret.
At the heart of which are the purifying waters of "I am sorry"
At the heart of which I discover a wellspring of fresh, true, original undying love - my indestructible
innocence
I want to address and redress your feelings of disappointment.
Emily, I know you and I love you.
We want the same things. Two hearts are better than one.
Through two hearts we discover the one HEART
I have wanted to write to you except I'm overwhelmed by depth of feelings,
impossible to pin down into words just yet
I'm also very much participating in the world of action
with a continued yet emboldened desire to create changes on the outside too
the sun is shining here as I stand, and wish you were here. In a way you are
Whole-Heartedly
Conrad
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Perhaps it sums up where i am and indeed the situation. I would do anything to win her heart back
perfectly matched by there being nothing that impresses her or touches her heart. This week I was in a
medical trial situation with a possibility of earning £4000 if I was invited to stay on, but after a week I
was not in fact invited to stay on. It was quite a shift from being in the emotional process of the last
few weeks to be couped up in there. I discovered "whatever you prefer" which I transcribed and attach
for you to see and I had to hide my face as my heart was welling up. Coming out of there after a week,
it was like my heart had held its breath and I openly wept on the way home as my heart came back to
life, also with the disappointment of not being able to carry through, feeling like a failure yet again,
having fantasies of what that money could have done for "us" maybe... and feeling alone and knowing I
would be going to my empty flat.
Emily, still has a key to my flat and while i was away came to pick up some remaining bits and pieces.
But, on returning I found not only did she pick up things but she also returned a gift saying she couldn't
accept it. On a letter i left, sharing some of my realizations and insights she scribbled that she would
leave it for my benefit, for me to re-read - no mercy - killing me with her sword, her raw rage.
Her Brother and his wife had sent me a Christmas present as if sent by their two little boys. I had
resisted receiving it, because it arrived belatedly, after she had already moved out. So, it sat there for
weeks wrapped up, waiting to be returned I guess. But after my last session there was a shift in my
sense and commitment to the family (tribe) in a way that represented me being a man standing by her
as a man in and with her family, rather than being a sulking boy wishing her to stand by me, when we
went to visit her family, ( which was the essence of the letter that I left for her that she scribbled on),
and as a consequence I felt energized and from a deep heart-felt space felt to receive their love via the
Christmas present and to reciprocate by drawing a card as if to the little ones, thanking them and the
parents really(of course), including two Kinder eggs. Emily, did pick that up as if to pass it along,
presumably. That was the only heartening thing I could take from coming home and witnessing the
result of her visit.
And that is where I am now. It's 03:15 and I should draw it to a close. Hopefully, you get a sense of the
depth, urgency and intensity of my current and indeed life-long suffering. I feel utterly hopeless and
defeated. I don't know how to create a single thing. Non-doing at the level of Being is one thing and
fine sat in a "Satsang", but in contrast with the need as a personality in the Worldly sphere to get up
and make things happen. Yet, I'm still despite my age unable to. My fate both perplexes and
increasingly frightens me. Time is fast running out and I would like to do both myself and life justice,
so, its not a perpetual wasted life of suffering and then death.
Thank you for hearing me. Hopefully, maybe, I will hear back from you in due course with some
comment, advice and wisdom from your own experience.
Warm Regards,
with gratitude &love