The Bridge Across Forever

By Richard Bach

The pursuit of your highest truth.

This book came into my life in the form of a popular 1973 movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull, accompanied by a Grammy winning Sound track by Neil Diamond.  This book wasn’t written until 1984, so go with me on this.  Richard Bach, is a man bearing the same name of the famous genius composer and an aviation barnstormer turned popular author, went from a “hand-to-mouth” life to a millionaire and back.  I, always a person intrigued by the genius behind Bach’s music, began my career in aviation as an airplane mechanic/pilot.  I  had the opportunity to perform a 'top overhaul' of an engine in an aircraft once owned by Richard Bach.  It was a Fairchild F-24 with an air cooled inverted six cylinder engine (so really it was a bottom overhaul} , and I only realized it was a Richard Bach airplane when I made my entry into the aircraft logbook.  Coincidence?  OK just a little’ using very protracted reasoning or in other words intuition.

Richard Bach espouses the idea that you create your own reality, “state your limitations and sure enough they are yours,” for example.  In Jonathan Seagull, Jonathan was a seagull that refused to be defined by the ‘reality’ his grey seagull friends insisted upon him.  He would defy those norms by transcending to a higher reality.  In Bach’s next book Illusion, he carries that thought into practice as the main character is ‘the reluctant messiah’.  Essentially the book espoused the idea that only you can form the life you are experiencing.  You can accept the reality placed upon you by the circumstance life has placed upon you.  Or you can take responsibility without seeking a messiah to save you.  I know this sounds like anti Christianity, to many who needed to escape from the church in that era.  But actually all of this comes to a crystallized message consistent with Christ’s message in The Bridge Across Forever, which is actually a true story, his autobiography .  This book is a love story.  Life together starts with, is, and ends with love.

In Bach’s true to life story he examines the ideas of soul-mate and life-mate.  Is there a one-to-one relationship?  I look with envy to those who were lucky enough to go through one life with one life-mate.  Ever wonder if through all that hard work, are you with your soul-mate?  Richard Bach and Leslie Parish come together from life experiences that include divorce.  So, maybe not.  Both were happy being single in their post divorce lives, knowing that when that life-mate to soul-mate appears they would do the right thing. 

Focusing on Bach and his inner thoughts, his logic being selfish, began with the idea that in life there is no perfect ‘soul-mate’ woman, and a soul-mate is an amalgamation of many women from past lives.  Thus he had many women in his life only to come to the reality that they were superficial relationships, lacking the willingness to experience the ‘give-and-take” lessons of life.  Leslie’s character in the book did not explore the pursuit of love but of causes.  Her career and causes filled her life.

When Richard met Leslie, it was on an elevator.  It was a coincidental moment where there was an energy, with no realized rationality.  Later the rose would bloom.  Through much conversation between the two Richard came to a ‘new reality’.  Is she the one?  Sex crept into the story which threw a new dynamic.  Will the tradition of monogamy, imply ownership of each other’s daily lives?  I call this the superficial special love that is overwhelmingly oppressive, obsessive, and ultimately selfish; fraught with all the misery that jealousy brings to the psyches and tares at the soul.   They work their way through this by facing extreme challenges brought on to them by those who surrounded Richard.  Together they each learned to bend as the rose does to the sun, toward each other.  Here is where Richard found love true love, a soulmate.  He actually found truth and what real love as opposed to special love conceived in selfishness, is.

This book, these books, this author strikes a meaningful chord with me.  There is a somewhat parallel line in our learning experiences to compliment our love for flying and belief in the value of coincidence and its cousin intuition.  I too have been married twice.  I too have felt that energy of a soul-mate.  Once with my first girlfriend. Once with my first wife.  Once with a woman I shook hands with.  I am absolutely amazed at the energy that can be felt in a handshake.  Which one is it?    Richard found Leslie, and in the book The Bridge Across Forever the reader gets to experience the process of not only finding a life-mate, but discovering this life-mate may just also be your soul-mate.

From the book:

How is it that I know, why am I so utterly convinced that dying does not separate us from the one we love?  Because this one I love today …because she and I have died (transcended a previous version of themselves) a million times before, and we’re this second, minute, hour, lifetime together again!  We are no more separated by death than we’re separated by life!  Deep within us, everyone knows the laws, and one of those laws is this:  we shall forever return to the arms of those we love, whether our parting be overnight or over death.

Before all the Big Bangs in all of time, and after the echo of the last has faded, is us.  We, dancers in every form, reflecting everywhere, we’re the reason for space, the builders of time

We are the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and over again, learning love, love, LOVE

We are alive together.

_{“A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we’re pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we’re safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we’re two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we’ve found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. ”}

More of Bach quotes:

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

 “Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.”

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.” 

“You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.”

“Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.”

“No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.”

“Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.”

“If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.”

“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours.”

“That’s why love stories don’t have endings! They don’t have endings because love doesn’t end.”

“Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.”

“You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.”

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”

“That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it, and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way is winning.”

“No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.”

“When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!”

“Boredom between two people doesn't come from being together physically. It comes from being apart mentally and spiritually.”

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

                

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/16904.Richard_Bach