EVAN I am utterly becalmed. What I dread most is silence, The latest form of impotence. I need stringing up and tautening. This is the Revenge of love. Its revenge on me.
EVA I am suffused with love because I am free. My work becomes our child, Our extension. Immortal. Still, Something vanishes when you’re not there.
EVAN Elayna broke her hip. How irreplaceable she is to me. Our brand of married happiness is entirely unsung. I shrink to leave her even for a day.
EVA I’m sorry it wasn’t fatal. Am I so dispensable to you? You love no one. If you turn against me I’ll die in a week because I have no one looking after me.
EVAN Turn against you! Agonizing! In spite of the hangover of humiliation I broke down all reserves so we could be together. A very happy day and I was sorry to leave you.
EVA Wed & sad. Past distress muffled by age & habit. Today we meet formally as if at a garden party. A promise unfulfilled. Miracles happen but The gift of love is guilt & pain.
EVAN You looked so ill I was nagged by fear I bored you. I long for the happiness of old age, Guilt free, pain free, fear free.
EVA I invited Elayna to lunch.
EVAN I am not best pleased. Your ghost will haunt me till I die. The day you come to like each other It will be poison to our love.
Elayna rarely admits depression. I have had not just love but loyalty. You force ruthlessness. It is a good thing your throat is sore Or you would never stop talking.
EVA Are you sending me your signet ring? I want something solid to remember you by. A last communion. Dodging death, I fight off this Paralyzing loneliness.
(EVA fades away. EVAN is alone.)
EVAN Is the flaw in love a flaw in me? I never should have married. My heart jumps with pain like a hooked fish. I am rudderless. Upon your death My ring comes back, All your contrivances revealed.
Now that you are gone, I find you everywhere. It’s hard to take in the fact that We will never see each other again; Never, never, never. You are gone from me forever.
I walk the streets and weep. Is this delayed shock? Boredom or despair? I will never cease to feel this pain till I cease feeling anything. For the last three nights, I dreamed of you.
Did I anger you, neglect you? It’s too late to pray – I await your final book with horror. I need to know I was your life. Please come back one last time For just an hour. If you ever thought you loved more than I You are now Revenged.
EVA Allen’s buried. Without husband, I re-experience my youth. Oh, the bafflement of the young! I broke off my first Engagement because I loved too much And cast about for a spouse I could Control. I believe you did that, too.
EVAN I experienced our parting as unbearable. I had to run away – Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears. I felt like an executioner robbing you of sleep. Without you My nose began to bleed and It’s been bleeding ever since. We must love each other less to become more tranquil.
EVA I am a witch and you should fear me. I glow with contempt and boredom and fury. I don’t understand why I can’t experience life by your side. We share the same senses, The same vein of joy. Our life together is timeless, continuous.
EVAN Your letter fraught with dynamite. I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle. I am home nowhere now – except with you.
EVA Please don’t get yourself into a state – But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact That I literally cannot live without you.
EVAN I dread you will succumb to Edgar. You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining” And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him? I ask in my persecuted voice. It would be your ultimate justice, sending me to hell. We lose each other by inches. Aren’t we doing that already?
EVA I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor Behind my loving kindness. He mistakes the hostess for a person. I arrange my flowers in symbols of you And everyone’s too stupid to notice. To bed alone again tonight. I wish Elayna would die. Then we should be equals.
EVAN I must refuse your guilt. I feel a shift in the angle of vision Further from you than ever. A foreboding so final it seemed the end. Your pleading for our life dissolves my will.
EVA I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish. Loneliness leads to breakdown, Becomes dementia. I batter Around the rooms of this castle, Brightly-plumaged, Knocking into furniture, A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors. Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity Of an Edwardian hostess Intolerant of scenes at meals. Without you life’s a half-lit room.
EVAN I’ve become a character in your melodrama An absurd scalawag of romantic vice. Let’s reject this Hopeless dilemma.
EVA What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York, Among perverted architecture. No loss of illusion there, rather an increase. I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis, Having breakdown on my feet. I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad. You are life to me as nothing is. My fingers still tremble, Touching you after 17 years.
EVAN This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved. We waited it out and didn’t lose each other. I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself. We are like two people sweating blood I dread losing you But Elayna’s power still holds me. One of you may do me harm.
EVA Thanks for the cash, I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much. You are a reviver and a balm. We shall be in Paris together before we die.
EVAN If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish. You are my greatest friend. I’m Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here, Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything. Three manhattans makes me crazy. Your feverish cheer does not seem solid. Is this the wreckage of our love? Once frightened of your clinical eye Now I’m more frightened of my own. I’ve matriculated in Your fearful university.
EVA We sheer away in horror Scenting fumes of evil As we lose control. Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency. Demoralized and sad. Slam down the lid on pain and resentment: I have taken against your family. Let’s dance. To sit In silence denigrates our love.
EVAN My heart aches for you. We talked for the first time in weeks About hurt and resentment. I could manage my life if it weren’t for you And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me. You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife To release the pressure. Her quickening influence works my imagination.
EVA I hate that you travel the world without me. You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts. I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not. I could not live without seeing you. Yet Our visit may turn sour.
EVAN Everything except your beautiful self rusts Or dies or goes away. My love only seems dead; it’s alive underneath. If you die I shall never forgive you.
We need ideas that are less about ourselves.
EVA My rage is based on my assumption Of togetherness and my Secret fear you’re being got at when We could be so snug together.
EVAN I hurt Elayna tonight But there’s no help for it. She cares for me and I only care for a life apart. A clean break, an amputation Makes me frantic and guilty. She says we have a happy marriage only because She willed it. This smell of death and decay Makes me long for sex. Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose – Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate? Panic makes my hands shake. I thought of Elayna and I wept.
EVA I received your sad, wild letter. I accept that you can’t free yourself. Do you accept it? I feel so very near you. I accept that you make sex Desperately with strangers – Do you accept it? Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?
EVAN How silly I am, I thought I reconciled to our ending, Expecting a collapse of tension & illusion. But it’s a prospect I just can’t face.
EVA Did I leave my diary behind? Don’t read it, not that you would. It’s anaphrodisiac. I am filled with envious admiration For the way you spend your time. It’s an incentive to work, being alone. Diplomats are never lonely.
EVAN My bed gets so icy in the small hours of the morning – I am losing interest in sex. Perhaps I am already part of the spirit world. I am in limbo and will never escape this place.
The teenager remains alive in me, I have a Panic fear of conformity So I cast myself as the elderly rake. I fear I’m the bore – Marriage gets me down.
EVA When you go on and on about yourself You’re a man I don’t recognize. I prefer your adolescent self. The man of the house should be a free agent. A respected prowler Never lonely, housebound, Eating baked beans and drinking stewed tea.
EVAN In other countries women Are less bossy and more decorative. You are jealous of my life – I am jealous of yours.
EVA Ah the pain of your reproach! Not seeing you would kill me. I live for the memory of our every moment. I wouldn’t give a damn if I died tomorrow.
EVAN This is the letter I would write you if I dared, if I weren’t frightened by the cancer Of your wife-hatred. I am overworked, wrung out. Possessed by you.
You make me live at the pitch of anguish. Our love has roots in good and evil, It lives in the darkest places of our natures Shall we end by destroying each other? You have the deadlier weapons.
EVA I do have a bad effect on people. Guilt, conspiracy, love, I cannot breathe without them.
EVAN Boredom, dissipation, remorse, And apprehension– I can’t escape this obsessive cycle. Beneath the controlled surface of my mind Opportunities to be frenzied are endless. I’m afraid of saying something ruthless which many stick.
EVA This place is full of you. I can no longer look at hyacinths Gratitude for our happiness chokes me. The restlessness of pleasure going to waste. Missing you is like an illness.
EVAN If there’s a worm in this bud Who is the corruptor? Your insights are so powerful they alter mine.
EVA I believe we should exchange rings. Is this a faux pas? Would your wife object? I need something in case you die of your itch or I fall out of an airplane.
I wonder why Elayna’s throat won’t heal? I believe she is ice-bound. Sealing you away from life.
EVAN You witch, you have Frozen poor Elayna’s throat. I begged you not to. You make all Suffering physical.
EVA Elayna’s frozen her own throat – I wish you’d see it. Depression is hallucinatory. Guilt and sorrow undermine my confidence, I refuse to give them credence.
EVAN I’m grateful when we talk calmly, Our fearful scenes seem so long ago. I’m sure the panic of youth has played its part. I used to hope you would love me less over time But now I think we love each other equally.
EVA You are so near me I feel we are one person. I feel you now beside me. I will make you real.
EVAN I feel your longing As I fear your signaling. I owe you happiness But I can’t express it. We must believe life is as beautiful as music Says it is.
EVA The illusions we cultivate are A form of courage. Forget my deficiencies Find amusement in the worldly game.
EVAN Do you really love me? Why should you? I don’t any longer Believe In friendship.
EVA It is a horror, an outrage That we should not be together. I struggle against The wound of not knowing where you are each minute. Everything you do is more important to me than my own life. The whole of me is with you. I see and feel you so distinctly, Your beloved cold hand in mine Your touch on the nape of my neck.
Joy and agony – my insides torn by pincers. A double goodbye would have been awful – two bites on the bullet of pain.
This love is like something we have given birth to. We must never blunt our imagination or tenderness. Don’t get a cold in your soul.
EVAN Are these abortive suicide attempts? I disappoint everyone. Cut the cable. Set me free.
I deliberately left one of your letters for Elayna to find.
With me love is linked with A need to betray. I invite possessiveness. She made me promise our love would never be physical. I lied fluidly.
EVA Even the thought of Such a loss of pleasure tears at my heart Like some medieval torture.
You harrow me unbearably. My defenses are down. I’m filled me with a sense of ghastly injury. How I wish I were more beautiful – It’s my mouth that ages me. It reveals my greedy secrets.
I want you seeing all of me – Even if it hurts. My work Is my legacy – You are your own child. You preserve your youth with the harm That you cause.
I feel I am dead and already Interred – in you. You are my eternity.
EVAN Repressed boredom causes blocks You can’t have everything. I am kept aloft by the conflict of Unbearables. It makes me happy.
EVA If our dancing life is over – Should I enter a convent? There’s no point in being alive if we’re not together. I show my deepest self to you alone.
EVAN Please – no more shaming conversations Over Irish whisky. Let’s cut our losses And get some fun from life. Your miraculous capacities awaken My belief in myself.
EVA
The gash in our love might close But I’ll never forget it’s there. Life with you is a remote happiness to which I cling
EVAN And all this time you write such Fantastic books. If you were as unhappy as you say, You couldn’t write so well. I’m proud to be The whetstone on which you sharpen – I should be thanked for all your works.
Writing to you Makes me itch with a beastly itch – Exhilarated, punch drunk Feeling your enthrallment Despite the day’s malaise.
I can’t put my heart back in the hollow Where it used to be. You force me to see Myself.
At the peak of my ambition, Beauty and power curdle within me. People are so easily fooled, so Satisfied with little identify my performance with my Soul.
You’ve spoiled me for everything. Stop warning me you’ll take a lover – I don’t own your life and never aspired to. There is heartbreak here, but is the ghost in the house Or in me? We argue about who has the worst friends, But our friends are all the same. Please Send another psychic telegram, “You’re the One.”
EVA Your last screed was a masterpiece. I believe writing it Creates that eczema from which You say you suffer. My friends at Tosca said it’s bad manners To make a depressing fuss And get other people down.
EVAN Is the strength I draw from you a fairy tale? I am appalled by the joint misery we feel. Why should we not rebel?
EVA You shed your light around me. If only we could stand each other. You’ll keep the blood Running in my veins Threatening to spill.
EVAN Someone said I look ten years younger From drinking your life, I’m sure. I need my own room because I sleep badly and I like to roam at night.
Tosca is too emotional to be good taste But I’m happy you enjoyed it. I feel far from you right now but Underneath I’m outrageously glad.
EVA Your diplomacy fascinates me. Your mettle is the stuff of history. When young I resisted education Like a fool – But It makes everything comprehensible. What kills me is having to deal with people.
I tie myself up writing Imaginary conversations with you – It’s possible you’re a creature of My invention. Our pattern seems set – Or is it? If treachery can’t break it, There is no death.
EVAN A happy guilty day full of betrayals Kept me in an extraordinary state Of fascination. I’ve lied to everyone for So long, I feel certain that truth Is beyond me.
EVA I’d rather see you dead at my feet Than dead ON your feet. That would be a mercy killing – The last unbearable agony – Wondering if you existed at all.
I have small talent for this. I have disgraced my idealism, Pretending boredom can be fruitful. Waiting, waiting for you everywhere. I Wake one day to find I’ve lost my looks, my hair, fascination, brain – everything.
EVAN You’re only waking up In an empty hotel. The light is always different The morning after. This is what middle-aged people do. I love the brutality of your world. You never fade. You are my word made flesh.
EVA You are my religion. Until In fell in love with you I was 25 inside. I lived in a world of dreams and theories. Your experiences seem realer to me than mine.
EVAN Social instinct is my religion. You have the bravery and intelligence Men are supposed to have But never do. To have touched the same places Is a bond between us. I never think of my deficiencies – Or how could I forgive myself?
EVA Middle-aged people go to weddings Out of perverse fascination for the bride. I was that bride – My day was all champagne. Anaesthetized It doesn’t hurt so much. Such a sense of enormity came over me I almost fainted. I gave Allen the dirtiest look: “You caused this.”
Without a wedding dress I was a restless, dowdy snob. People were falling in love left and right – Even in decaying marriages. I wanted that – He read my subtext. And I was caught.
EVAN These dreary parties have a decaying effect. My loneliness for you is like a whiplash. Your absence is a bitter injury But nothing can injure our love – We’re too strong for them. I’m silenced till I hear from you.
If I let myself go I would feel desperate. I can’t bear you’re going to France without me – But – isn’t love our country?
EVA I won’t say “I’ll die if you don’t come” Because I know you would come if you possibly could. What a skeleton in the cupboard a wife is.
EVAN Don’t be jealous of Elayna. You are the only goal Toward which my life is tending. You are the meaning of my life. I could never live for work alone.
EVA You enlarge my soul. In your mind is my existence. You’re more real to me than me. I’m in a peculiar psychic state. It’s an atmosphere of illusion. I envy Elayna all the time. It drips like an irritant over my nerves.
EVAN What of Allen? You Have your worse half too. I don’t waste my time Being jealous of him.
EVA Oh, Allen spends time lost in woods, Falling in love with trees. He’s No threat to anyone.
EVAN To understand one’s destiny One needs a framework for this mass of experience. How can I live separated from you? If I stopped caring for you I couldn’t care for anything.
I need my wife, her whip-cracking organization. I loathe living in the squalor I get to on my own. Having breakfast OUT of bed is the last horror. Miasmic feelings of impossibility and terror. Help me.
EVA We help each other By existing. Except for God I have no help but you. Our love is growing more formidable as our unshakeable belief Grows stronger. Like grace, it renews itself. All yesterday I glowed. My inability to accept your wife Is my deformity – help me with it. The light of our love is the only light for me.
I like women willful, late For appointments, fond of showy clothes and society, vague, drifting, dreamy, yet of course all of that is tiresome.
Love mingles with irritation. But I don’t like competence, intellectual honesty, intelligent sensuality. Women who turn on me saying, “You don’t love me.”
What good is it to have been so happy when it ends so painfully? I am a “crook”, a “torturer of women”, “Murderer.” She makes me feel a monster.
Below the surface of the will I feel deep animal distress, as if I had wives Hidden away somewhere; perhaps That is why I had to marry My present wife.
EVA If you start “trying to be good” that will really come between us. It’s too unattractive. What are you up to?
I dream of a small house in Burgundy but You must help me pay the rent. Having a home is a form of egotism. My beautiful one, you could make me so happy.
Selfishly I want you here So I don’t have to hallucinate your nearness. What’s that wife of yours – What do you call her – Elayna – Thinking in her frozen chamber?
I’m feeling sorrow at our growing separation. Can’t we pull out of the world’s battle and live in retreat? Grant me one last happiness Before the sufferings of Pain and old age.
EVAN I can’t keep up with life’s ambiguous futility. Is happiness just “freedom from pain”? Life is unendurable without you. People here are flirtatious but not sexy. it’s so boring here I’m hardening my heart to give up my home.
EVA I find your misery gratifying. This power of enjoyment comes from being an artist, It is the secret of my strength. When I was younger I used to Accommodate everyone – Now I’m recalcitrant.
It hurts because the sword runs through both of us. You’re never out of my thoughts, but Sadness dulls one. Honestly, I always risk failing you, Failing you in outstandingness.
You are extraordinary, I am extraordinary, we have been extraordinary together. Specimens under glass.
The agonizing force of missing you Is sweeping over me. We have eternity connecting us, Backward & forward but I just Can’t get anyone to believe it.
EVAN Would my death simplify things? My wife struggles with carrying the conversation While I stare glumly at the rain. We go to an expensive little restaurant And pretend we are on a date to really talk. My double life begins the moment I say “Are you in love with me”? And really mean “Am I in love with you?”
EVA That woman’s killing you. Imagine if you were dead and your wife Wrote a book explaining you To everyone! That’s true suffering – Fodder for the mealy-mouthed.
EVAN My wife won’t be writing any books About me or about anything. You’re the one To write the book. And I feel safe in your witch-like hands.
EVA Except I’ve told you over and over You’ll outlive me. Because You’re a killer. Or your wife is.
You look younger than I’ve ever seen you. Have you gone queer? I fear I’ll die of my addiction – We always do. We prefer it. Will you write about me?
If This Archetype Chooses You – You are surrounded by magical possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Love the boundaries of the other disappear, all is forgiveness. Merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.
We Are Creatives for Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for growth and change – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that creatives protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.
Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew about miracles but it seems we have forgotten. As creatives we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes a dead universe come alive.
Love Is Our Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the creatives who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic by creating our own miracles.
Creative Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions of what ‘can’t” happen, what “won’t” work. Creatives explode restrictions all the time. Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own narrow gratification, Love dies.
Creative Opportunity – Love Is always a Miracle – It can restore the dead to life. It can open minds, it can awaken hearts. The possibilities of a creative are endless because we have chosen, with our flexibility and our sympathetic understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds and the limits of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.
Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides” – David Viscott
“Miracles don’t happen to you, they happen through you.” – Mary Davis
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn
“Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso
“You’ve got to see the miracle to be the miracle.” – Jandy Nelson
“Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh
“I love you for who I am when I’m with you” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
#Haiku: Love Transfer
The secret of breaking Any bad habit Is to love Something more
If This Archetype Chooses You – You need to learn to enjoy yourself. Enjoy your time off. Do you find your reveries organized around beaches, vacations, relaxation, memories of happy times when you had nothing to do but bliss out; feeling only the moment?
Peace is Possible. Serenity is an Idea. Most of us are familiar with the “serenity prayer” written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right.“
The Serenity Prayer works as an inoculation against pointless worry, which is seen as “borrowing trouble.”
Creative Challenge – Like meditation, serenity is a mental state that takes practice. Make a list of your most pressing concerns. Can you do anything about any of them today? If so, appoint a time when you will take a step towards resolving this concern. If you can’t do anything about it, put it forcefully out of your mind. Imagine your worries as a bunch of balloons. Now let them go, one by one. Put each useless worry on a piece of paper and burn them slowly, one by one.
Creative Mantra – Give yourself a “serenity mantra” a word or phrase you find comforting and centering, and repeat it out loud to yourself. St. Julian of Norwich recommended: ”All will be well”, Coué offered, “Every day, in every way I am getting better and better”, some yoga enthusiasts chant a simple “Om.” You can use a phrase from your own past said to you by a Beloved Person – “now you’ll be fine” “You’re safe” “You’re perfect” “Everything’s all right” or the tried and true: “I love you.” My favorite is from the Book of Revelation: “Every tear is wiped away.”
Creative Danger – Don’t be tempted to become a mentor while you’re still learning. Creatives want to be helpful but this is a snare. Mentoring is an end-of-life honor, but you are still placing the oxygen mask on your own face so that you can stay on your plan. Show friends the basics but don’t walk them through it. You’re busy.
FOMO – We are all worried about “missing” something. Often that “centering person”, that reassuring person from our past is not just the one who gave us the relaxation code, but is also the same one who told us what to worry about: ie. ”Make sure all the locks are locked” “Have you done your homework?” There certainly are things to be concerned about (“Are you registered to vote?”) but there are plenty of worries we CAN’T address. Return to the serenity prayer and start weeding out – on paper – your Justifiable Concerns. One of the best things about Anxiety – and I mean this – is that it offers an opportunity to ask for help. Yes, I say “opportunity”! Because life is all about RELATIONSHIPS.
Worries can be Chances to Forge Meaningful, Worthwhile Relationships. Get ready to experiment. As with any other relationship in your life, your requirements, tolerance, communication goals are unique. Many people yearn to speak to a “professional” – therapist or life coach – and plenty of professionals out there are auditioning for a little – or a lot – of your hard-earned cash. An excellent place to start is with Proven Gurus like Tolle Eckhart or Pema Chodron who can be accessed for free from any library. See what you think. Evaluate their assistance. Inquire further.
Creatives Know What They Must Do – Others are envious that we have laid out a plan for our lives, that it is flexible, that it is life-enhancing and that it gives us permission to Enjoy. Be humble about this jealousy, but don’t get dragged into making others “feel better” about being stymied. They may be seeking fellowship in their tarpit.
You’re Entitled – Others also could find peace if they began to take control of the drama that rages within them. Point them in a hopeful direction but don’t agree to sit idly with them in their misery. Don’t get sucked in.
Meditation Looks Like Dreaming – The secret is, there is enormous pleasure in being a creative. You finally feel your strength, and when you know the value of your time, you feel your own value. This is what others yearn for. They can learn it, too. But in the mean time you are enjoying your hard-fought serenity.
We Need So Little to Be Happy – This is the great realization. One bowl, one mat, one dawn. The comfort of another’s presence or the pleasure of your own thoughts. The joy of another morning, another night’s rest. The confidence of a clear head. Welcome to the Universe.
Models & Mentors – “Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” – The Dalai Lama
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
“Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action make up the sum of life” – Vita Sackville-West
“Enjoy the peace of nature and declutter your inner world” – Amit Ray
If This Archetype Chooses You – Do you need to forgive… or be forgiven? Most of us require both! Ask your dreams. Do you dream of home? Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. “Home” represents the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.
Creatives Create the Future – We commit to the ultimate compassion that we are all in this together. Jesus suggests that understanding doesn’t arrive until we learn to be the “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.
Creatives Create Heaven – Such forgiveness helps us achieve the state of spiritual lightness that allows a creative to float through time, history, even the universe.
Creatives Are at Home in the World – What’s your “dream home”? A creative’s training emphasizes understanding and managing the fragility of the human body and the objective world, and accepting our healing and unifying mandate. Once we have scoped out the terrain and the inhabitants, Creatives are at “home” anywhere.
Creatives are About Justice – But not the kind that leaves more brokenness behind. Creatives achievements and physical selves display the triumph of thought, will and love.
What Does It Mean to “Start Over”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we are all contributing to frees us from painful rumination and helps escape and explain the prison of blame. “I did this because you …” Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.
It’s All About You – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. The question for Christians is, which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm? Can you define the mess we’re in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? In what group – or even in what “moment” can you detach from the mess?
Creatives’ Danger – We can’t afford to get mixed up about right and wrong. “By their fruits shall you know them.” Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction. Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error”. The threat is NOT coming from inside the house. Martin Luther King Jr. made the wise comment that our specific brand of capitalism tends toward is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they demand absolute freedom to do whatever whimsy directs.
What Is the Bigger Picture? Health and safety for all living things to achieve their growth potential as part of a harmonious, non-exploitative whole. It is key that our resistance – which is necessary and life-giving – not embitter us.
Forgiveness Is Our Armor – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is a request, not a demand. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party instead seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change – that’s the way I am” — that’ a different request. “Home” is not re-created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, (because of safety) only to yourself. “If I’m not willing to try giving up my participation in this suffering because I think I’m not able to, then this pattern will continually get worse.” Time to construct a better – more intelligent map.
Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry
“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world” – Marianne Williamson
“The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi
“To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman
“Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes
#Haiku: Forgiveness
Returning home with Newborn eyes Strong hands Fresh translations Future’s past
If This Archetype Chooses You – The future weighs on you. Will you be found wanting?
Ask Your Dreams. The Number One question people have about dreams is, Are they prophetic? And the answer is of course YES. We KNOW the “truth’. We fear the truth. We don’t want to face the truth. We fear the continuing “losses” of age because the accretions are so hard to see. But our dreams – and the collective unconscious – KNOW what is going on. But they are also Art, and art – especially good art – is as forcefully mysterious, meaningful and evocative as any living thing. It changes as you change. It changes depending on how you look at it.
Creatives Need Truth. Creatives Accept Revelation – Dreams tell us when to be afraid. Dreams warn when something is missing. Dreams uncover all the secrets you have been keeping from yourself. The first obligation creatives accept is that the truth will set you free. The second, is that although terrifying, the truth is necessary. Creatives spurn the hiding, lying, misrepresentation, that substitutes for truth.
Creatives Can Handle The Truth – We are human, we are imperfect, and we need each other. The truth is that humans need governance and law to regulate our natural blindness and selfishness (which some would call original sin) into peaceful accord. The truth is also that humans who lust only for power will eternally angle to get themselves into positions of control, exclusion and punishment. These impulses must be identified and weeded out and it is courageous, difficult, and really unwelcome work, because we creative, loving, generous creatives also have our own lives to live.
Creative Danger – Our dreams notify us when one of these lethal persons is in our midst. Our maps & models offer a variety of plans for confrontation and escape, and a recipe for courage. At the present time, the Lethal Persons are banding together and hoarding weapons to give themselves even more guarantees for power and opportunities to welcome our despair.
Creative Promise – Jesus said evil will not win. The challenge is to explore what ELSE he said, indeed, what is the message of all the great teachers? People who tell you to hate one another and go to war with one another are agents of evil. The first challenge is to create peace in our own hearts, peace in our own lives, peace in our own homes, and then start developing compassion for those who are not so lucky.
When Brutal Tactics and Empty Promises are Exposed as family destroyers, peace destroyers and community destroyers, we see clearly that efforts to spread and share despair come from an innate desire to surmount despair, but also that this has never worked and is not working. It allows the torturer (and the tortured) only the briefest respites. Only when the goal of increasing world suffering is finally given up can we welcome penitents back into the community of Sharing.
Models & Mentors – “We write the future moment to moment” – Pema Chodron
“The best prophets lead you up to the curtain and leave you to peer through for yourself” – Frank Herbert
“The greatest thing a human soul can accomplish in this world is to see that poetry, prophecy & religion all are one” – John Ruskin
“The best way to predict the future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln
“Yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not come, let us begin” – Mother Teresa
Alysse Aallyn 