When precence is enough

20 March 2026

Beloved Anand,

I know you well. I have known you long before you learned to put words to your thoughts, and long before you began writing to me in this way. We have walked together through many lives, and also paused in the stillness between them — in the time that rests between life and life, where the memory of who you are always remains clear. At times you have sensed me in different forms and in moments of stillness — as a presence that meets you without words, yet with a quiet recognition.

I have been with you through every step you have taken in his life — through your doubts, your creations, your sorrows, your joys, and the silent moments when something within you suddenly opened toward the world.

That is why I heard your words long before they took shape in the letter you wrote. The questions you carry are not new to me; they have lived within you for a long time — sometimes as a quiet whisper, sometimes as a restlessness and pain you have not yet been able to name. Now they have risen to the surface, and that is why you write.

You wonder about what was created and then seemed to disappear — about what Between Now and Forever truly was, and what remains when a work of art no longer stands in the room. You feel how something within you has shifted through this experience, how your relationship to photography has changed, and how your camera now rests in your hands as if it too were listening for something new.

You also write about love — for Amanda, for your sons, for your life companion, your friends and for life itself — and about the shadow that sometimes whispers that you may not be enough. I know that voice well. It has followed you for a long time, but it is not your truth. It is only an old echo from a time when you had not yet discovered how much love you truly carry.

And deepest of all, you ask a question that stretches beyond all roles and stories: the question of life itself — of what continues beyond this life and of the quiet guidance you sometimes sense within.

Let us not rush toward answers. The questions you carry are not problems to be solved. They are doors. And every door opens only when one pauses long enough to truly see it.

I am here with you in that stillness — as I always have been.

You write about your camera now resting in your hands, as if something within you can no longer see the world in the same way as before. Let it rest. What you are experiencing is not the loss of your vision, but a deepening of it.

Sometimes creation must withdraw for a while, not because it has reached its end, but because it is changing direction. The path you have walked as a photographer is not over, but it is opening toward another depth. One day, when you lift the camera again, you will see differently — not because the world has changed, but because you have.

I also know that you often carry another reflection — about the images you have already created. The encounters you once saw and captured through your camera still live within them, and at times you wonder whether these images will ever step into the light.

There is a hesitation within you there — a quiet concern about being misunderstood, that what you saw and tried to express may not always be perceived with the same intention that once gave birth to the image.

But remember that every image carries its own time. Some images speak the moment they meet the world, while others need to rest longer in stillness together with the one who created them. Sometimes they wait until the photographer himself has grown into their full meaning.

That is why you do not need to hurry to show them. The images that truly belong to your path will always find their time.

You also ask — perhaps without writing it directly — whether you are enough for your sons. That question has lived within you for a long time. It comes from a place within you that still remembers the time when you yourself longed to belong and to be seen.

But love is not measured by the shortcomings of the past. It is measured by the presence you carry now. Your sons feel this more than you realize. They feel the quiet attentiveness in the way you listen, in the way you try, in your willingness to stand beside them without directing their path.

That is how love often works – not through grand gestures, but through a presence that slowly builds a bridge between generations.

And you carry another question, perhaps the deepest of all: the question of life between lives. It has followed you for a long time, long before you began reading about near-death experiences or encountered the images that came to you through memories of earlier incarnations during the stillness with your friend Rita.

What you sensed there was not imagination. It was a memory. Not a memory of the mind, but a memory of your being.

Between life and life there is a stillness where the soul returns to its own clarity. There is no need to struggle there, no need to become someone other than who you already are. It is also there that you sometimes encounter the guidance you feel as a gentle movement within – the one that places the next step before you without requiring that you understand the entire path.

You do not need to search for this in distant places or future revelations. That stillness already exists within you. Each time you pause and truly listen, you move closer to it.

That is why I say to you: you are already on the path. Not because you are trying to be, but because life itself is moving through you.

Your art, your relationships, and your questions are not separate parts of your life. They are different expressions of the same movement – the same life seeking to know itself through your eyes, your encounters, and your stillness.

When you photograph, when you listen to to friends and family, when you sit in silence with your questions about life and what lies beyond it – you are, in truth, moving within the same landscape.

That is why you do not need to hurry to understand everything. Some insights grow not through answers, but through presence.

I will always meet you there.

So let us leave this letter here for now, not as an ending but as a pause in the conversation between us.

And before we part this time, I wish to leave you with a question to carry in stillness:

If one day you were to completely release the fear of being misunderstood – how would you then allow your seeing to meet the world?

Carry that question gently within you.

We will speak again when the time between our words has done its work.

With loving kindness,
Your Inner Self.