I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of… Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water.
Mirabai Starr
Breathing Under Water
Topic: Overcoming Adversity
Suddenly, the sacred fire I have been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water…
I didn’t do it right away, nor was I able to sustain it when I did manage a breath of surrender. But gradually I learned to soften into the pain and yield to my suffering. In the process, compassion for all suffering beings began unexpectedly to swell in my heart. I became acutely aware of my connectedness to mothers everywhere who had lost children, who were, at this very moment, hearing the impossible news that their child had died…
Mirabai Starr was born in New York in 1961 to secular Jewish parents active in the social movements of their time. As a teenager, she lived at the Lama Foundation, a spiritual community in New Mexico that honors multiple faith traditions. There, she encountered teachers from Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, Christianity, and Native American spirituality. Influences such as Ram Dass, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Murshid Samuel Lewis shaped her understanding of interfaith wisdom, a perspective that became central to her life’s work.
Since 1993, Mirabai Starr has been an adjunct professor of Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos, emphasizing connections between spiritual traditions and the balance of contemplation and action. She also speaks and teaches internationally on mysticism and contemplative practice. As a translator, she has brought classic spiritual texts to contemporary audiences, including works by John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, and Julian of Norwich. Her writing explores the intersection of faith and loss.
The death of her youngest daughter, Jenny, in a car accident in 2001, the same day her first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released, deepened her engagement with grief as a spiritual path. Now a certified bereavement counselor, she helps others navigate loss as a source of transformation. She lives in the mountains of Northern New Mexico with her husband, Jeff Little (Ganga Das), and their extended family. Through her teaching, writing, and counseling, she continues to share the wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions.
Mirabai Starr, God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Monkfish Book Publishing Company: 2012), 63-65.
Mirabai Starr
Theme: Adversity
About This Mirabai Starr Quotation [Commentary]
Mirabai Starr’s words reveal how suffering can lead to an unexpected encounter with love. In grief, she found herself “suspended in the invisible arms of a Love” she had only dreamed of. Loss shattered her, yet in that breaking, she was “plunged into the abyss” and “resting in fire.” Her search for the sacred, once a longing, became an unavoidable reality. The vast stillness and pulsing silence the mystics describe were no longer distant ideals but immediate and all-encompassing. Rather than resisting, she surrendered—and in doing so, she discovered she could “breathe under water.”
This surrender did not come easily, nor was it constant. Starr admits, “I didn’t do it right away, nor was I able to sustain it.” But over time, she “learned to soften into the pain and yield to [her] suffering.” The grief that threatened to consume her became something she could move through, revealing a hidden capacity for survival. This was not a bypassing of sorrow but a deepening into its reality, an immersion that brought unexpected strength.
As she yielded to loss, compassion grew within her. She became “acutely aware” of her connection to others in grief, especially “mothers everywhere who had lost children.” The pain did not diminish, but it opened her heart to a love that held all suffering beings. Starr’s words suggest that while suffering undoes us, it also makes space for something larger—a love that does not replace what was lost but sustains us in our most vulnerable moments.
Context Passage For This Mirabai Starr Quotation [Excerpt]
Suddenly, the sacred fire I have been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water.
So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put that small smile on the face of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn’t want vastness of being. I wanted my baby back.
But I discovered that there was nowhere to hide when radical sorrow unraveled the fabric of my life. I could rage against the terrible unknown—and I did, for I am human and have this vulnerable body, passionate heart, and complicated mind—or I could turn toward the cup, bow to the Cupbearer, and say, “Yes.”
I didn’t do it right away, nor was I able to sustain it when I did manage a breath of surrender. But gradually I learned to soften into the pain and yield to my suffering. In the process, compassion for all suffering beings began unexpectedly to swell in my heart. I became acutely aware of my connectedness to mothers everywhere who had lost children, who were, at this very moment, hearing the impossible news that their child had died…
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