Notes from the Space In Between
Nothing has changed.
And yet everything is different.
Seven months ago, something broke. Not loudly at first, but thoroughly. A rupture that scattered certainty, identity, future, and meaning. What followed was not a clean separation, nor a dramatic ending, but a long, quiet descent — into confusion, longing, surrender, and the unfamiliar territory beneath hope.
This is not an essay about a reunion.
It is an essay about what happens when truth stops being something you look for, and becomes something you live.
The Dark Night Is Not Romantic
The dark night of the soul is often misunderstood. It is not poetic despair. It is not spiritual drama. It is not a badge of depth.
It is disorientation.
It is the moment when the stories you lived by stop working — about love, about yourself, about meaning — and nothing immediately replaces them. It is when effort fails, belief collapses, and even spiritual frameworks begin to feel hollow.
In that place, there is very little to do.
Only to stay.
What remains when there is nothing left to cling to is not insight, but exposure. Raw being. A life stripped of interpretation. It is uncomfortable precisely because it cannot be managed.
And yet — this is where something subtle begins to happen.
Not a change.
An allowing.
We Did Not Change — We Allowed
Looking back, it becomes clear: nothing essential changed in either of us.
What changed was the space around what already was.
When the noise fell away — the narratives, the self-protection, the projections, the expectations — something had room to breathe. Love did not need to be repaired. It needed to be unburdened.
This was not about becoming better versions of ourselves. It was about removing what was not true.
In that space, we lived apart — geographically, practically — yet moved in uncanny synchronicity. We read the same books without planning it. Similar words appeared in different poems. Insights arrived independently, yet mirrored. Sometimes more was said in silence than in language.
At first, this closeness felt like limerence — intense, consuming, disorienting. But we stayed. Not by clinging, but by not forcing resolution. We trusted the process without demanding a destination.
That distinction matters.
Truth as a Verb
At some point, it became clear why fixed answers no longer worked.
Truth is not a noun.
A noun asks to be possessed. Defended. Protected. Believed.
A noun creates sides.
Truth, lived fully, behaves like a verb.
It is something you do — moment by moment — through presence, honesty, responsiveness. Truth as a verb does not guarantee consistency. It requires attentiveness.
Like a river.
From the bank, the river looks the same. It has a name, a course, an identity. But step into it, and every second is new water. The current shifts. The temperature changes. The light moves. You cannot hold a single drop.
Life is like that.
Love is like that.
Truth is like that.
The moment you say “this is the truth” and try to keep it, it begins to die.
Beyond Belief, Beyond Religion
We spoke about Buddhism. About spirituality. About how much resonates — and how easily resonance turns into structure, and structure into rules.
Every religion points toward something real.
And every religion risks obscuring it the moment it becomes something to follow rather than something to experience.
The same is true for philosophies, identities, even insights like “there is no one truth.” That too can harden into belief if held too tightly.
Perhaps the clearest stance is not choosing another framework, but remaining uncommitted to conclusions.
Not cynical.
Not detached.
Simply open.
When We Met Again
When we finally met again — briefly at first, then fully — there was no explosion. No drama. No emotional reckoning.
There was recognition.
As if time had folded. As if the seven months had been both immense and irrelevant. We spoke freely about what happened, about our marriages, about pain and growth — without tension, without blame.
We did not return to what was.
We met where we were.
What surprised me most was the peace. The absence of urgency. Love without grasping. Intimacy without agenda. We did not need to promise anything to make the moment real.
That is when it became clear:
this journey was never about fixing a relationship.
It was about learning how to be with reality without demanding it be different.
Nothing Has Changed
Externally, life looks similar. Responsibilities remain. Distance remains. Uncertainty remains.
But internally, something fundamental shifted.
Not because answers were found — but because the need for answers softened.
Truth now moves.
Love now breathes.
Meaning is no longer something to construct, but something that appears when space is made.
Nothing has changed.
And everything is different.
Epilogue
The Space In Between
What remains after all this is not a conclusion.
It is a space.
Not the space of absence, but the space that exists between certainty and not-knowing, between closeness and distance, between holding and letting go. A space that does not ask to be filled, explained, or secured.
This space was once painful. It felt like loss, suspension, waiting.
Now it feels different — not because it changed, but because the way of standing in it changed.
The space in between is not a problem to solve.
It is where life actually happens.
Here, love is not owned. Truth is not fixed. Meaning is not imposed. What exists is presence — responsive, awake, unguarded.
This is not a vow.
Not a direction.
Not a future.
It is simply an orientation:
to meet each moment as it arrives, without shrinking it into certainty or stretching it into fantasy.
The space in between remains.
And for now — that is enough. We are enough.
#weareenough
“True freedom comes when you no longer need life to be a certain way for you to be okay.”
– Michael A. Singer
In Conversation With
This essay stands on its own, yet it exists in quiet dialogue with several strands of thought and lived inquiry.
Readers interested in adjacent explorations may find resonance in the following works and traditions.
Spiritual Memoir & Inner Descent
On crisis as threshold rather than ending
- When Things Fall Apart — Pema Chödrön
Personal crisis not as failure, but as an opening into groundlessness and compassion. - After the Ecstasy, the Laundry — Jack Kornfield
On integrating awakening into ordinary, imperfect, relational life. - The Book of Awakening — Mark Nepo
Daily reflections on presence, vulnerability, and lived meaning. - Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse
A literary meditation on direct experience over doctrine, and the futility of borrowed truths. - Dark Night of the Soul — St. John of the Cross
The original 16th-century text on spiritual desolation as purification and deepening. - Dark Nights of the Soul — Thomas Moore
A contemporary psychological exploration of descent, loss, and transformation.
Love, Attachment, and Conscious Relationship
On the paradox of intimacy without possession
- How to Be an Adult in Relationships — David Richo
Love as presence and responsibility rather than possession. - John Welwood
Writings on spiritual bypassing and conscious relationship — especially the tension between spiritual insight and unresolved emotional life. - Mating in Captivity — Esther Perel
The paradox of intimacy and freedom, closeness and separateness.
Truth as Process, Not Possession
On perception that renews itself moment by moment
- Jiddu Krishnamurti — collected talks and writings
Truth as a pathless land; perception without filter or authority. - The Untethered Soul; Living Untethered — Michael A. Singer
Surrender as a lived discipline — releasing inner resistance while remaining fully engaged with life. - The Wisdom of Insecurity — Alan Watts
On floating rather than grasping; living comfortably with impermanence and uncertainty. - Letters to a Young Poet — Rainer Maria Rilke
“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Martin Heidegger — the concept of aletheia
Truth as unconcealment — an ongoing revealing rather than a static proposition. - Zen Buddhism — Beginner’s Mind (shoshin)
Meeting each moment freshly, without accumulation or certainty.
Non-Dual Awareness & Contemporary Spirituality
On recognizing awareness itself as home
- The End of Your World — Adyashanti
What happens after awakening — disorientation, integration, and living from clarity. - Being Aware of Being Aware — Rupert Spira
Direct investigation of consciousness as the ground of experience.
Synchronicity & Resonance
On meaningful coincidence and parallel journeys
- Synchronicity — Carl Jung
An acausal connecting principle — understanding meaningful coincidence beyond cause and effect.
A Note on Influence
These works are not sources in the traditional sense.
They are companions, mirrors, and echoes — part of a wider human attempt to speak honestly about impermanence, love, and the courage required to remain open when certainty dissolves.
This essay does not aim to resolve these traditions,
but to stand momentarily among them — attentive, unfinished, and alive.
Space in Between Worlds 
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