The first paragraph -

Here is the first paragraph from this book by Lou Andreas-Salome.



    "Our first experience, remarkably enough, is that of
loss. A moment before, we were everything, undifferentiated,
indivisibly part of some kind of being - only to be pressed into
birth.  Henceforth a tiny residue of the whole must strive to
avoid contracting into even less and less, must stand up to a world
which rises before it with ever-increasing substantiality, a world into
which it has fallen, from universal fullness, as into a deprivating
void."







I have mixed feelings about this paragraph.  On the one hand, I
agree.  On the other, I have always thought of death, as a birth,
an emergence into a wider, more exciting, open, all-encompassing
world.  Also, we now know how aware children are as they are
carried in the womb.  They are already part of what is
outside.  Many children are not nourished by the mother in the
womb.  They have not known a safe place.  Some children were
not wanted.  They feel that rejection their whole life.  I
have seen that over and over in Rosen.  So, why do I place this
paragraph here?   Because I think it is important for each of
us to look at what loss means to us.  How else do we deal with
attachment and non-attachment?  How else do we happily toss the
ropes to shore when we go?