Polarities of Here and Beyond

By Sushant Shrestha

Friend, you saw the dance but couldn't bear the dancer

Writing of polarities while splitting from yourself

Your words map the territory you couldn't inhabit

Between the sacred heights and human depths

You spoke of resting at the point of surrender

But couldn't rest in your own humanity

Seeking liberation in concepts and constructs

While your body yearned for a simple breath

I too have walked these razor edges

Between spirit's call and flesh's need

Trying to transcend what needs embracing

Spiritualizing wounds that asked for tears

You wrote of cycles, seasons, dancing poles

But missed the wisdom in your breaking

The sacred teaching in your darkness

The spirituality of being broken, being lost

Now I understand—what you called polarities

Were not puzzles meant for solving

But the very texture of our being

Holy precisely in their unresolved state

Your death teaches what your words could only point to:

That spirituality isn't rising above our human state

But falling deeper into its embrace

Finding God in grit as much as grace

There is no point of perfect rest

Between ambition and surrender

The dance is in the stumbling

The wisdom in the wound

I used to think that understanding

Would somehow set me free from tension

Now I know the tension is the teaching

And my stumbling humanity itself the path

Friend, you saw so clearly how the poles dance

Through mind and heart and hand

But couldn't bear to be the dancer

Couldn't trust the wisdom of your pain

Now I hold your words like broken mirrors

Reflecting truths you couldn't live

Finding in your final teaching

That being human and flawed is the deepest spiritual art

Here in the mess of my existence

In the polarities you mapped but couldn't bear

I light a candle for your journey

And embrace the sacred dance of being here

There is no beyond that negates this human heart

No spiritual truth that makes pain obsolete

The polarities are not meant for resolution

But for living, fully, wildly, brokenly complete

Your words remain—a map of wisdom

That cost you everything to write

Teaching me to honor both the heights and depths

And find the sacred in surviving

It is a new day now

So I will let my anger toward you subside

I swear we would have made it through the night

If you only knew you were not alone in your pain

You spoke with such ease and left without a goodbye 

Rest now, friend, while I keep dancing

Between the poles you named so well

Finding in this human journey

The deeper truths you sought here and beyond