In the garden stone figures mock us and memorialize us. They can be reassuring or uncanny as if secretly intuiting our states of mind. We put them there to remind us – of what?
Lovers make promises to each other. We do it spontaneously, offering ourselves on the altar of our own desire. We solidify our vows publicly in paper, legal filings, photographs, video, topiary, marble, even stone.
What promises can we make and what promises can we keep? Do these promises allow space to evolve over time? At least we can answer that last question with a heartening “yes.” Our promises are not set in stone. We are not our statues.
Soulmates are in tune with each other. We can feel each other’s evolving spirit, sometimes before the other even can. We know when the petals lose their glisten, when the wings droop.
Did we make a promise to be “perfect”? We know this is not possible or even desirable. The only real promises we can make are to be present, to be honest, and to treat the desires of the Beloved Other as Sacred. But we all have boundaries and we must be honest about uncovering and examining those.
Some can be broken and re-set, some can’t. Does that mean a Soulmate can be temporary? We are temporal beings, but someday we will meet on the eternal plain.
#HAIKU: The Statue
Rose-choked; Tagged; Sentenced by time I stand Mute. Freeze! I see you! Who has won?
Because we’re afraid of snakes, we attract the deadly columbine. We can’t recognize danger and we don’t know how to summon real assistance.
In the language of flowers the Columbine means “Anxious Folly. Resolved to win.” Our folly prevents our winning.
As for snakes, there are many of snakes we depend on in the garden. But every now and then a poisonous one wanders by. How do we tell the difference?
How can we win when we poison ourselves? It’s to lessen that anxiety, to get back to what we assume is “baseline.” But it isn’t. We just haven’t found our baseline yet, and by mimicking the baseline of others we get farther and father from ourselves.
This is why recovery from addiction involves finding ourselves. We can’t find a soulmate when we don’t know who we are.
Our toy-box of pleasures is quite pathetic, but that’s not our fault. We are wired for addictions, with a biological view to turning such basic pursuits for food, mating and recreation subconscious so we can use the front of our mind to think about other things.
You can tell addictions are destructive (and not all of them are!) if they crowd out human flourishing and ruin sharing and our ability to share. “I want to feel pleasure with you” becomes, “Let’s cycle through my tragic past of suffering before I found you.”
Not good. To get out of this mess we cultivate the gift of change, of evolution. We will share and learn to tolerate discomfort. Hold tight. Often the addictions gained their grip over us because we were seeking to escape change or discomfort! The good news it, it’s never too late.
The better news is, this re-discovery and re-creation of the self is one of the life-transforming experiences to share with a soulmate and if you have no soulmate yet, here’s a crucial step to getting yourself ready to present to the world as the Real, the Essential, the True You.
Always look for help. Set up a program and a feedback system for accountability and efficiency and spiritual support for the inevitable withdrawal that’s coming. It’s only giving birth to your stronger, better, best self. You know it’s time.
HAIKU: The Columbine
Gambler’s inferno Dissolves will Slavery Wrecks pleasure- Luck? Loss? Choose.
The Pond may reflect what it sees, but we know it has depths. There are things in there, moving around, looking back at us, possibly making calculations about us. The pond is deep enough so that we could swim – and never touch bottom. When we look into a mirror, is the mirror looking into us? We know the answer is always Yes as long as we have a Soulmate. We function as each other’s mirrors. World within world; bubble within a bubble; our vision alters. We learn from each other what Truth really is.
Truth lies just beyond our vision, but luckily our Soulmate provides eyes in the back of our head. The Truth will out. The Pond waits quietly, knowing someday it will repossess. Hidden creatures study us as we study them. We remember what it is like to dip beneath it surface and gaze back at the blurry universe – blurry now – where some breathe air. Goldfish will nibble at our skin while spiders tangle in our hair. Someday we must acclimate to a different ethos. Appearing in your spread, The Pond means Judgment is coming. It can be good or it can be bad: it is up to us.
Because that’s what we’re scared of, isn’t it? We know how we make judgments: Interestingly, in our everyday life it seems like “judgment” is constantly changing. There’s appeals, and reconsiderations and every now and then some “delivered and done” decision is disinterred and we all publicly agree: “That was wrong.”
So, like a lot of “finite” things, “judgment” is a “concept”, just like the theory that if you keep dividing a distance in half you’ll never reach zero. We’re afraid of “bad” judgments, that’s the truth; because we judge ourselves harshly: “Why can’t you do anything right?”
And we are cognizant of a Group of Others – lets call them by their true name – bullies – who are actively seeking tender vulnerabilities they can exploit. Once they realize what a mess we are won’t that be the Final Judgment we can never recover from?
We are a fearful species. And a lot of our fears, it turns out, are hardwired. Behavioral experts pointed out a hundred years ago that children are automatically afraid of things like snakes and cliffs but not speed or electric light sockets. Fear isn’t rational.
And since we are a social species it only makes sense that at least some of our fears would be “social” in nature. But here’s the rub: defensiveness ramps up anxiety and most – if not all – of obsessive behavior is engineered to distract us from anxiety! We’re pigeons pecking at ourselves! So we’re not doing ourselves any favors by getting hysterical about “what other people think.” Better work on maintaining our calm and maintaining our wellness program. Remember, soulmates can save each other.
Haiku: Devourer of Hearts
Scaling hearts For final judgment: Soured hearts Desiccate; Tantric hearts Burgeon
The Poppy = SUCCESS “The Lovers” “Successful in your eyes”
The Poppy signifies oblivion and eternal sleep in the Language of Flowers. This source of heroin and morphine will definitely obliterate your personality, despite protecting you from pain. Does that sound like success to you?
The greatest pleasure of Soulmates is creating a world all our own, with its own rules and reality. If our Soul Unit is a success, we are a Success. The harsh judgments of the outside world, operating as it does casino-like with few winners and a vast “majority” of losers, fade in impact.
All that is required for joy is that we must be a success to each other, and we must be a success together. This mandates constant soul-searching as we step through life’s landmines, both singly and alone. There is no more restful peace than ultimate confidence that someone’s got your back.
Haiku: The Lovers
Falling upwards Into you My other wing, my second Clapping hand
The Tree = ENLIGHTENMENT “My Beautiful Twin Sister”
“You can if you think you can”
Trees knit a garden together. Thy hover over us the way we remember helpful adults from childhood. They are the elders of our loving garden family.
To be “awakened” is to experience life as it really is. Lots of people are repelled by this notion. Why bother to wake up when the news is so bad? Remain in the happy dream state brought to you by the Sackler family or some other pharmaceutical conglomerate, or by your favorite source of baseless propaganda.
That lasts as long as you can afford their product. As every rube discovers, Happy Dreamland’s price keeps getting steeper until one day, you can’t pay it at all. Then you are awake and desperately uncomfortable, whether you like it or not, and the life around you has gone to shit. And not the helpful, fertilizing kind.
A common approach to Soulmate-seeking is to try to find someone to join you in Dreamland, or to aggressively shop for a Dreamland you want to join. What these people don’t know is that Soulmates create their own world together; and this is a process that can’t be rushed. Seeing yourself and life as it really is begins by being very uncomfortable, but enlightenment comes eventually, and it promises real peace.
The first improvement is to stop complaining about other people and all the things you can’t fix. Look at and into each other. And then it hits you – that simple thing we always “knew” because we’ve been told over and over: Love is the answer. (“Why Live?” is the question.) Take a walk… together. Look at the stars…together.
Stroll through an art gallery…together. Every joy is multiplied and magnified and now the question is, Aren’t we lucky? Well, aren’t you? And the gratitude for the chance to live for even a moment in this spectacular universe comes pouring out.
MY BEAUTIFUL TWIN SISTER
Twenty months Made you the boss But my twin just the same I gazed adoringly Into your dark power. You braved everything Always being first; Parting airspace with your muscle To improve my flight – you Schooled boyfriends Husbands, children Teachers Bent whole administrations to your will. For my benefit you Deconstructed history, Logic, told me Who to read and what to think; Volunteering for a better world. Protester, Marcher, you Learned Amslan Just to empathize; Conquered mountains Just for fun; Shifting derailleurs, snowshoeing Surefooted through so many Frosty seasons. Inside You were just like me; Scared, hesitant, fragile Pushing yourself out there; A revelation of Impossible courage Giving me a lifelong template To admire.
Illusions are VERY attractive. We WANT them to be true. In my childhood Superman leapt tall buildings in a single bound – all us kids could recognize the fun, the power, the joy in that.
Limitations are unpleasant. We can work to expand them, or…we can dream. Every culture warns the dreamer against getting lost in fantasy. The Tulip is a historic emblem of delusion – impoverishing generations of otherwise intelligent Dutch merchants in a fruitless gamble. Now the Tulip warns that you may be counting on something – or someone – that is false.
Our society has been fueled by misinformation ever since Edward Bernays, founder of modern advertising, wrote his book Propaganda in the 1920’s. Since then legal beagles have defended the right to “puffery” and “spin”, even to saying something manifestly untrue; “miracle pills!”
Advertisers are very honest about manipulating us through wish and fear. We are eager to buy the illusions that seem to promise a warm social life, a happy home or radiating beauty. Lately misinformation has taken a distinctly evil turn as billionaires base their fortunes on convincing us that pollution isn’t dangerous, the climate is fine, science is untrustworthy, the election was stolen and oligarchic rule is what we really want.
The question to consider is, what is our benefit in believing and propagating obviously harmful facts? The rifle-toting man who broke into a Washington DC pizza parlor thought he was a heroic savior of children. He’s now serving a prison term.
Why is violence such an attractive answer? Forget stockpiling bear mace and bullets to abuse your fellow citizens. We need some other way to soothe our raggedy self-esteem apart from clinging to grifters and liars.
On the other side of illusion lies reality. We need to take a look at it, savor it. Often it’s a kid tugging at our clothes begging us to stay, focus, share; not lose ourselves in a fantasy world.
The need for illusion prevents us from finding, seeing and keeping a Soulmate. We must work to make reality less terrible, so that we don’t become dependent on illusion as a pleasure source. Illusion rushes in when life seems meaningless. Joining groups of honest seekers directing their paths with love can save us. When we are surrounded by love we will attract love. Check the philosophy of the group you hang out with. Is it “Let’s you and him fight?” or “Let’s seek joy for all.”
GOTHIC NOVEL
A woman alone is open – gaping, Button hole without a button hook. She carries her muff held stiffly Out before her like an offering Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers Slit the pause like razors. This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur. “I prefer the window up, thank you” “I prefer it down”. She lights a Sobranie to remind her Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen Lean forward, reading the initials On her morocco case.
You will never rub the edges off each other, says the Orchid – and that is a good thing. You don’t want to. We’re not here to “bland out” or diminish each other. We are here to enhance and free each other.
We pay homage to each other’s special qualities. Naturally it helps to know where each other is headed but not even the Self really know that. Ultimately, we are mysteries to each other.
We must be each other’s Map and each other’s Mirror. The challenge is to accept and honor each other’s strangeness; singularity. You were drawn together for a reason. Sometimes it prickles and we feel ourselves shrink, or even withdraw. That is the rhythm of the tango we have undertaken.
Many Soulmates welcome costume and role play to try to express the range of interests, the force of questions, the eagerness of exploring and adventuring we will always have. The key is to be aware of the rhythms of advance, retreat, resist, re-fashion, re-remember. Expect these. They are necessary to our continued growth. Our relationship is a greenhouse and we must check constantly on the health of our tiny plants. Fill air and soil with love and…release.
In the Butterfly Pavilion
This evening you said you wished I was more conventional. I bowed my head. I did not speak. Outside the animals leaned together, Holding breath To hear my answer. The cats-tongue ferns Swelled up like swords, pushed out the stink Of possibility while The rabbit-blooded lawn curled back: Sows littered in the cyclamen Phlox flamed Dwarf stars Broke free Spew molten ore Across a sky now Darkening to night. Nighttime is my kingdom. I fold my hands in my sleeves and Wait.
We find ourselves now in an endless pandemic, a New Normal caused by our aggressive human interference with our planet’s wildlife. By a miracle the same pharmaceutical companies that have been competitively bleeding all of us dry have come up with a vaccine that seems effective at keeping most of us out of the hospital. Wouldn’t want to kill the golden geese!
But it doesn’t work if you don’t take it and, wonder of wonders, a substantial number of Americans have become suspicious of the medical establishment! Since insurance companies have been advertising for years that healthcare is “our choice” based on “what plan we can afford” I for one am not surprised.
This is the only possible end result of a gated health care system that actively despises “Public” health as “radical socialism”!
So where is our Soul & our Soulmate in all this, our little, fragile, mortal, human body that drew the “medical intervention” card only this morning? “Medical intervention” is represented in the Tantric Garden by the humble foxglove.
Foxgloves contain digitalis, the building block of cardiology care. Where do we stand on intervention? We may create a “perfect world” with our Soulmate but does that mean we can let no one in? A moment’s thought convinces that we must keep the freshening breezes of this world blowing as long as we are in this world! “Help” will always be needed and hopefully, offered.
Can we learn to trust the Helpful Intervener? We don’t want to create a love nest so fragile it is threatened by any outsider. Instead, we want to make certain we avail ourselves of every good advancement and improvement opportunity in our oh so imperfect world.
ALYSSUM
What wound is this? Flowering? Flowering? I wake at two am Immobilized – A curvilinear clamp Half hoop clenching My right side. .
It could be the strain of Fishing for a future Hooking sky through a Porthole window or I could be over-organized. The Doctors dismissed me in My mother’s name. “You dare to be angry? You dare to grow old? You are a false alarm.”
I say a prayer to the great night heron, that Pregnant thief of dreams – Solitary hunter calling to collect me. Dream he rises To unleash the silken sinews Of submission from my torn and Tethered wing – Feathered like a revelation Stippled like the phases of the moon Birthing spirit, coming Coming, coming In his cloud of fire.
A Clinging Vine can’t support itself. We ruthlessly exclude weeds from our garden, but if a vine flowers prettily enough there is a danger that we may tend to let it run until it has squeezed itself around our hearts.
There is certainly a place in a Garden for a Clinging Vine, but we must think in terms of the supports first, the antique arbor, the sweetly unpainted shed, even, as V. Sackville-West liked to do, sending climbing roses up the trunks of apple trees to provide a profusion of springtime blossoms. Is our Vine beautifying our Garden, or subtly dragging everything ground-wards?
Everyone, everywhere, is in “unequal” relationships. But the powerful try very hard to pretend they aren’t. Why is it so humiliating to admit that we depend on other people? Rich people and aristocrats of every stripe have voluminous social codes designed exclusively to deny the fact that they require support; in most practical ways they are as helpless as an infant. History often appears to suggest that it’s more admirable to act like a monster than to admit inadequacy.
Interdependence is the acknowledged goal, but some gifts are rarer than others, certainly they’re more highly prized, which may give some partners an inflated view of their own ”value.”
But market negotiations, like shallowness and lack of commitment, spell death to the romantic Tantric bond. To maintain vibrancy, to power the circuits of passion, a vigorous self must flourish. The give-and-take of our differing power sources versus our dependency needs will fuel a super-relationship. What blocks this ideal state?
Youth is the time we experiment with being all things to all people while we fantasize about getting our “requirements” met as effortlessly – read “unconsciously” – as possible. That way we will never have to confront them, test them or question them.
Maturity usually forces us to face the facts we have been dodging. We may begin our Soulmate dance with the hope of total sharing and equity, but we will wake up one morning and confront life’s truth; this relationship is not equal and never can be. As we gradually accept that we each have separate gifts and interests (I am never going to want to clean the garage) this growing understanding could evolve into fear, even paranoia – as we tell the world – and most importantly, convince ourselves – we can no longer ‘survive” without this person.
In true Soulmate connection, the mirror image of this fear evolves on the other side. This scary dynamic can lead to a Dark Night of the Soul where partners will be tempted to proclaim “freedom” with public displays (bickering) or covert offensives (cheating financially, sexually, emotionally.)
This never works – only destruction lies that way, but some of us whose bones tremble with memories of youthful abandonment conclude that “scorched earth” is preferable to publicly admitting another has invaded our very soul. This Dark Night must be lived through; in the fire, you will become the flame.
The “save” always lies in honestly reaching out to each other and fully confessing to The Terror. Believe me, if you’re feeling it, they’re feeling it too. On the other side of this dread you will truly become One.
Old Masters
With age lubricity Darkens into sweat; We face each other Across the cooling dinner, Night by night Stiff as andirons Masterpieces best seen by candlelight To hide the cracks, Well-meant improvements by Another’s hand. A well-matched pair. Gardens edged perennially with stone Are called unkillable; One fountain singing This tune only. What oracle? It didn’t look this way Going forward Backward is a different view.
I think I caught this from my mother, She played the crone in Wuthering Heights; Who preaches doom In guise of cheer. All I request is light enough To read my tarot; instead I’m fated Recycling tea brewed From murky bathwater. These leaves are dark and do not speak. I shiver with cold and you With anger; a well-matched pair, a Brace of disappointments. There’s still too much We can’t admit.
“Hope is the thing with feathers.” -Emily Dickinson
Hummingbirds are impossible. They can fly backwards, forwards and upside down. They can move their wings in a figure 8. The blinding whir of fast-moving iridescent feathers creates the “hum” that gave them their name. Hummingbirds have fast metabolisms and must lick nourishment all day long.
Hummingbirds are carnivores, and they migrate long distances. Their feet are used for perching only, not for hopping or walking. They are strongly territorial and have been known to chase hawks away. They don’t expect a medal for it either. I’m guessing a hawk would be seriously unsettled by this dive-bombing ruby and have the sense to leave. If hummingbirds can do all this, what’s our excuse? As I say, hummingbirds are impossible.
Love is an energy and as such is subject to many of the laws of energy. It can be wasted, it can be vitiated, it can run down. But when Love meets its Soulmate the two loves join together to become a Force that invigorates the Soul, that essence of our personhood that is immortal. Each of us is a single wing, and working together to lift each other up we are likelier to soar.
Some theories of reincarnation suggest that we don’t so much remember past lives as “recognize” aspects of ourselves in history. Psychologists call that recognition more a process of identification and learning. I propose another idea; which is that souls recognize each other. This is what lies behind those magic moments we “suddenly” share with others, where we “understand” without knowing how we got there. It feels instinctual that a connection has been formed.
We need to live as if the present moment is eternal because that is the true path to immortality. That means dialing up the love and pushing away the fear, along with the mad scramble towards the future.
What if we were enough and we have always been enough? Your soul has been waiting to speak to you. What might it say? What does your partner’s soul say? What do your souls say together?
HAIKU: The Hummingbird
don’t you dare underestimate me am I small or are you oversized?
Alysse Aallyn 