Dear Govinda Dasi,

Radhe Shyam. I am pretty depressed these days. Not to the point of complete
immobility, but just going through the motions. For the first time in a long time I feel
there is no real purpose to my life. I am just going through the motions, filling the
space between birth and death.
Maybe I am just feeling a down after finishing Bhakti Sandarbha, going through from
beginning to end. I enjoyed it and I was pushing hard to get it done. But I was going
to write something about it. There was actually a passage that completely refuted
Prem Prayojan, who seemed to base his argument on the sequence in which one
was supposed to proceed. Jiva Goswami says that the raganuga bhaktas don't care
for the sequence. It is fairly clear.
I don't know. There is no one I want to communicate with. I guess that is part of my
mood. I don't feel like talking to anyone. What's the point? I don't want to convince
anyone. I have no golden nuggets of insight that will help anyone. I am here, doing
what I do. So what? Why should it mean anything to anyone else.
I have been sleeping a lot. No energy. Maybe the weather. It is hot and humid. The
rainy season is rainier than usual. I miss you in a way that I can no longer define. I
feel your presence so real it is impossible for me to feel that you are not
reciprocating from afar, touching on some subtle plane of existence, but who can
say these things? If it is true, it doesn't need being said. If it is not true, what an
embarrassment to be so illusioned!
To have nothing to say. To sit in front of the screen and just reproduce others'
thoughts and leave my own to wander like short-lived mosquitoes, buzzing but not
producing any song. That is maybe why I miss you, because at least with you I could
talk about the things that matter the most to me, which is you and my now
withering and drying out, disintegrating story of Yugal Bhajan and prema and the
rest of my fantasies.
I wrote a letter that I never sent in which I listed why you were right when you said I
was condescending, or that I thought I was superior to you. Last letter I wrote, I said
that we don't want the same things. It is because I think that what I want is
superior but how can I not? That was the thing we were supposed to be agreed
upon.
But I realize that my experience of Krishna consciousness must be quite different
from yours. And even though Vrindavan today is a bit of a nightmare, I think it
would have been a nightmare to us eventually. All things become nightmares in
their own way. That is the way of the world. "If there were such a thing as pure love
in this world, it would be impossible. For if there were to be separation, who could
live?"

I talked to Alexander today on FB. He is the one who pissed you off more than once.
He was doing seva for Vrindavan Today, but he's been in the hospital for months
now with some rare condition the doctors haven't really been able to figure out. He
is really fighting for his life. Naturally he is depressed as hell and it brings out his
nasty side. The other day I finally had enough and told him, "I know your life is shit
but you have to be able to see the bright side or you won't make it."
That started us talking. He of course defended himself for being a brat. Like always,
the people claim, "We are authorized to be assholes because we speak the truth." I
said a few things to him and he responded with anti-Krishna comments. This is
probably where I started to really feel like what the hell do I bother for? I am not
going to try to convince him of the truth of Krishna. He is so full of misconception I
would have to practically write a book to deal with them all. "Why does Krishna
want me to feed him when there are starving children in the world?" I could not
believe the stupidity of that remark, and I thought that he was intelligent. "While
you eat, children are starving." "Yes, but I don't say you have to feed me."
And, "It's not like bhakti did not exist before in other religions." What can I do? I
don't want to bother. I want people to come because they have a taste for bhajan,
for bhakti, for prema. I don't know how to touch these people. I am going to pray for
him, that is about the best I can do.
And I know you think it is condescending, but I know that you had a touch of prem
and you freaked out. Or maybe you didn't and you could rationalize whatever
happened away. As soon as reason entered the picture, raga went out the door. I
know it sounds condescending to not appreciate the trials that you had to undergo. I
was trying simply to be an anchor. My distractions with other women kind of ruined
that, for sure.
I didn't have you and I thought that maybe someone else has something you don't.
It took me a long time to discover that no one else has what you had, and I killed it
by not believing it and following up. There are so many ways in which I am not the
man you want or need. Whatever you saw in me at one time may or may not be
there now, but it is not a "winner" any more. There was something more important
than my entertainment value.
I was thinking today that your husband really had those qualities. You may find him
flawed in other ways, but in the ways that you found them absent in me were
ultimately decisive.
Maybe loving someone means seeing them as a job. A commitment means a job.
But I think that the nature of this job is trying to mould the other person to fit a kind
of fantasy. In order for that other person to be truly close, there must be an
understanding that in the deepest part of their being, they are love. It too is, in a
very Buddhist fashion, a letting-go.

What we are doing now is, of course, a different kind of letting-go. You have come to
the conclusion that only letting go will do the work of the moment, and you are
always the Guru, no matter how much I resist. As long as you feel like a mother, you
will kick me away. And coming for sex is the essence of that flaw in the male. I
would like to argue with you, but I am feeling the futility of everything at this
moment, and what would be more futile than that?
I could never love you except as equals. Perhaps you are more adept at correcting
my flaws, and at least where I am concerned, your vision is impeccable except when
you are blinded by love, or lust, or whatever it is that is blinding you. At least so you
think, and who am I to argue?
But how could it be love if you weren't to join me in my fantasy of Radha and
Krishna bhakti? And if you weren't ready to say, "Yes, take me there. That is where I
want to be, in the prema jagat"?
Anyway, I realize that now I have probably overstepped my bounds and entered into
exactly the zone that exasperates you. Woe is me that I cannot let you go, even
though we truly do not seem to want the same thing. And what is the point of
shattering my illusion? How will I be happier?