Your Soulmate is reaching out to you in dreams. In dreams we discover not just the Other but ourselves. Dreams give the lie to the idea that we are simple biological creatures tethered to rituals of attachment, food foraging, illness and death. In dreams we see visions, and we spend we rest of our lives puzzling out their meaning.
There has not yet been a human culture unaware of the numinous nature of existence. Given the choice between symbol-saturated subjects and simple objects, we go for the symbol every time. We live entirely within our own heads, playing out a story line known to us alone.
Dreams awaken us to different reveries. It is quite possible, as the philosophers suggest, that we are truly asleep in our everyday interactions and only fully conscious in our Dreams. Dreams consolidate the day’s learning with the night’s yearning, forging connections with our deepest selves and with others’ deepest selves, alive and dead. Dreams are the story our primitive self tells our grown-up, social selves.
Dreams don’t necessarily even belong to us but can be “transferred” from those around us, including the dead, and even celebrities (such as literary figures and fictional characters) with whom we have forged an emotional bond. Therefore, the content of the dream, while important, is not as important as the soul from which it originates.
Today we will work on “self-hypnosis;” a process of “asking a question”, relaxing into a “waking trance” and thinking about what bubbles up. Remember not all questions have answers, and few have immediate answers; but it is important to put the question “out there”.
If fear is our primary reaction when we want to study our deepest links with others, that has to be dealt with so that we can move forward in our Soulmate Quest. What do we fear, exactly? We are not at the “mercy” of the universe, we are its “co-creators” and we must bravely claim our birthright.
Dreams are to be welcomed; they are not simply warnings and stories but also teases, in a language we need to learn. Dreams celebrate our spiritual connectivity not just with all the creatures who have ever shared the gift of life but with ideas, group powers and abilities.
They say when we go to sleep in one world, we awake in another. Perhaps it is our Soulmate’s world. Dreams show us our possibilities as well as our fears. I once had a dream in which I looked at myself in my coffin, but it was a powerful “my soul jumps!” experience and not a fearful one. When my son was a tiny boy he described dreamed of driving a truck “and my feet reached the pedals!”
Sometimes we are such beginners we don’t even know what to dream about. Dreams have long been recognized as warnings. Our unconscious sees dangers our conscious self refuses to recognize. So it creates a worthwhile map – not to the way forward, but a method of understanding where you have been. If you are having nightmares about a love choice, this is something to pay attention to. Gavin de Becker tells us (Gift of Fear) to honor our fear, but not to be controlled by it. Move forward with caution.
DREAM OF FREUD’S WOLFMAN
The window opens of its own accord. He’s catapulted forward; waked. Outside, the walnut tree is hung with wolves Each to its branch; they watch him
Blankly. Stillness has its Consequence. They are fat As lambs ready for castration; round As dogs; white as mother’s underdrawers.
Such tails! Thick tails Perked and listening! Blue snow rumples up the bedclothes; stiffens Into plaster. This sky leads nowhere.
The child’s eyes are frozen like the window They do not close; this tree Is butchered at the crown; it will Not grow.
The wind that frosts the room is welcome Stirring like a scream and like a scream It alters what it sees. The wolves levitate.
What does it mean to have confidence in the future? We know the most attractive thing about others is “confidence.” Unfortunately, confidence can be faked, so there are a lot of people who believe that’s all it is: a shiny shop window. But if the goods don’t match the advertising, frustration and anger sets in.
We’re looking for the long-term – immortality in fact – which can be achieved by two souls in perfect synch. We want to exude not just confidence but serenity. We want to be the person it’s peaceful and re-charging to be around because THAT person is VERY attractive.
That kind of serenity and confidence comes from communing with the eternal. Yes, you’re going to have to “iron out” your philosophy BEFORE you find your soulmate. Christians satisfy themselves by getting to know God. Buddhists bathe in eternity itself. Karma is the “vibe” you send – if it is a peaceful one, it will come back to you.
Peace is the absence of strife; a sense of repletion and comfort. It is less active than joy, and people are actually afraid of it, the way they’re afraid of heaven. If everything’s already achieved, then isn’t hope dead? That’s why they stir things up by taking pokes at people. Develop a concept of “peace”. A related concept is “plenty” and another is “enough.”
When you are not actively looking for attachment, when you are feeling “enough”, people flock to you. It is because of that very sense of being “at peace” with yourself. Others want that sense for themselves, they are intensely attracted to a peaceful aura, which comes across as confidence, even if you haven’t got a single accomplishment to brag about. People like that are a relief…a relaxation…a vacation to be around.
Can a sense of peace be “faked”? Obviously not. Time – and it doesn’t take much time – will fast reveal the truth. Much less trouble to cultivate ACTUAL peace. How do we do that? Through the calming disciplines of mindfulness, yoga and gratitude cultivation. If we can demonstrate that we are open to joy, people inevitably desire what we have.
We are creatures of hope. If we sharpen ourselves against others as if they were cuttle bones, isn’t the absence of effort an absence of self-definition? We would just sink back into the undifferentiated mass of persons as into a heavenly cloud, all light, without defining shadow. Stop worrying! This is just “semantics” because Peace makes no sense without love and love is active. Harmony is desirable; disharmony is not. Listening to a cacophony is wearisome after the first few seconds, while harmonics, however subtle and complex, produce feelings of rightness, joy and Peace.
What if we lose confidence and serenity? Doubt is human. Uncertainty is human. We armor ourselves with our belief in the promises of the eternal.
But isn’t doubt disabling? At what point can we just relax? Most Americans think confidence comes from a track record of rewarded accomplishments. In pursuit of a soulmate, let’s imagine you in conversation with a stranger. As you’re wondering about them and trying to get to know them, you rapidly realize that spouting your resume and listening while they brag is NOT, actually, informative communication. What you really want to do is get a “feel for the other person’s “essence.”
Are they “itchy? Restless? Or are they yearning for peace? If so, you can work with that! Experiment by “relaxing together.”
Soulstice
In this the Purgatory of the year the crystal cracks the future clear The fire maple stands unleaved And stalks the bony breast of earth bereaved; The sap within the corpse unseen Boils up a ready dynamo of green; The fetal fish child stirs and yawns An equinoctial birthday dawns. This is the zero hour when Our future dances with its end This winter music, echoless Raised up the chalice that is Us He gives, we are the offerings Unto the center and the focus of all things.
Becoming a lover forges an alliance for the future. We’re not talking of two raindrops crashing into each other for sex, but a mutual declaration of interest and benefit. Spend today thinking about past alliances; not just love relationships but all alliances dreamed of, suggested, made and broken.
What hopes, plans and fears did we enter (and exit) with? What mistakes were made? The first thing that jumps out to us is that power differentials create more problems than they solve. An alliance needs to be a two-way street; any hint of “exploitation” turns it into a different kind of relationship entirely.
Alliances must be freely chosen, with consequences fully appreciated and maturely understood. How often in life is this even possible for us? Sometimes we are limited by the power of our imaginations as well as the resilience of our hearts. Alliances should also be freely exited but how often does THAT happen? How often do our passions (and perceived needs) fall short of our principles and how much shame does this knowledge engender? And then there are issues of temperament: to what extent can introverts/extroverts hope to change their stripes?
Think about your deepest and most rewarding friendships. You’re looking for a special kind of Best Friend, after all, so it only makes sense that most of the components appearing in your friendships will be found in your soulmate as well. Will you appreciate some of the same things? Speak the same language? Have the same values? Laugh at the same jokes? Share fears and dreams? Expose your worst/best? You still want all that! Because you need an Ally. An ally reliably comes to your defense, as you fearlessly come to theirs.
An ally is someone you can rely on. It means you must be honest with that person, and we all know how hard that is, especially when you can’t figure out the truth, yourself. You’re feeling your way and you need a sympathetic ear. You know you will have to be their sympathetic ear as well because otherwise what you have isn’t a partnership, it’s an autocracy. Autocrats are lied to and cheated on and they die alone. That’s not what gratifies the soul. You are looking for someone who holds the key to You and by astonishing coincidence, you will hold the key to them, as well.
The Duel
Europe without you Was a funeral feast. I recall the procession of your letters Far better than The stream of luckless suitors Trying to distract me. Virgins aren’t distractible. Your seductive missives stalked me. Your fatal ploy was that nude picture Adam lonely in his garden. I came right home. I well recall the ceremonies Of that night! Your shyness My perfume Our ignorance Your penis Soft as a Messenger dove that folds To a familiar hand – Then wild and hard as A riderless horse. I did cry out as the candles burned. I swear there were some moments when We actually saw each other. But if this magic sword cuts both ways Why was I the only bleeder? They peeled me off Dropping me down miles Of antiseptic hallway – A princess in a bucket. It could have ended there But at your school I haunted you A chilly-breasted demon. My daytime incarnation seemed mature: I fooled you; We chatted as you prepared the skin. I bit down hard and Tasted only Suture wire. You wrote and broke off Our association. The years groaned by Like convicts chained We served our terms with no time off For bad behavior. Lust had luster, Excrement had ecstasy. The castaways the whirlwind Flung upon the sand Were calm, polite – We knew our way around. That look you gave me! Our unborn children shivered In their sausage skins Suddenly aware Their time had come. The tale was done The frog-mask Shivered off We saw: The you of you The me of me – Masks Unmirrored – Scars Unscored Virgins not but Innocence Restored.
Healing Rituals – Are you a believer in magic? Do you dream of restoration, of nostalgia, of lost youth? The world is a garden. In our Garden, just as the light begins to fade, we observe Tea Ceremony. For the last three thousand years, an infusion of yellow chrysanthemum, wolfberry and honey clears anger and stress and quiets heart and brain. The tea is drunk from translucent porcelain cups with delicate gold tracery. Hot water is repeatedly added until the delicious floral scent is gone. Darkness falls, and we bow to one another before departing. If we can bear it, we touch each other’s hands.
We Cannot Diagnose Ourselves – Healing and diagnosis alike come from the lips of another. It has been scientifically proven that plants respond to kind words. We yearn for the laying on of hands, for the intricate ceremonies that pass us from one stage of life to another.
Challenge – We CAN heal ourselves – in fact, some would argue that the “medicine” will not work unless we “accept” healing spiritually. We need to feel “worthy” of restoration. What are we punishing ourselves for? Open your Dream Journal and think deeply. They say you are only as “young” as you feel. Are we only as “healthy” as we allow ourselves to be? Forgive yourself. Accept change. Contrary to your fears, change keeps us young.
Danger – Healing cannot occur in an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-blame, but many of us are STILL “blaming” ourselves for unlucky genetic, social and medical outcomes. “Fundamental attribution error” consists of blaming individuals for group effects. We are all caught up in the machinery of temporality. Never forget that we are souls who happen to have bodies, not bodies who happen to have souls.
Opportunity – “Restoration” is such a glorious promise that the early Christians found themselves ensnared in decades of argument about PHYSICAL resurrection. How would it work in cases of burning and dismemberment, exactly? It is easy to laugh at these painfully ridiculous theological conflicts. One is reminded of St. Joan of Arc’s response to interrogators at her trial who asked if angels appeared naked – “Do you think God cannot afford to clothe his angels?” Accept the power accorded to you by the universe. Accept the strength of your own mind, the control of your attitude, and step into the Miracle Bath offered you by the world’s oceans.. Healing is not just possible, it is a life-force in which we can all participate. Jesus came to us as a healer.
Models & Mentors – “Healing yourself is connected with healing others” – Yoko Ono
“What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” – Haruki Murakami
Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” ~ Catherine Rippinger Fenwick
“We are healed of suffering only if we experience it to the full – Marcel Proust
“Maybe the dragons in our lives are princesses” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Mantra – “I heal”
Meditation:
#Haiku: Inheritance
You were born with Enough: The right to Breathe Speak Learn Work Eat Love Heal Live
Addiction – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence usually recognizes when we are trapped, and our dreams send distress signals.
There’s No Escaping Addiction – But we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. They threaten us when the “treat” is withdrawn.
Challenge – Open your Dream Journal and list your “Necessary sources of supply: substances and activities you can’t live without. Are you co-dependent? (Addicted to people.) Who? If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new gratifications. See what happens! This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us from the cliff-edge. Open-mindedly try all “freeing’ methods until you seize the one that works for you.
Danger – There is always the chance that we will lose our autonomy. We may want to change, we know we SHOULD change, but we CAN’T. We need outside help. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, threat-filled recreational behaviors. We then have the choice of refusing to listen – giving up our relationships to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches tell anyone who listens that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. Numbing themselves is the way they “choose” to die.
Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST. It is a spiritual obligation to live this life as an enlightenment opportunity. Are you familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live”? It means sharing honestly with others. That means studying your consumption, and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God, to check on the hardiness of your Soul.
Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you” – Seth Adam Smith
“All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings” – Ellen Burstyn
“Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell” – Carrie Fisher
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”.
– Robert Collier
“The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker
Medicine – Do you dream of hospitals? Doctors? Shamen? Magic pills? Do you ache and shiver? Are you afraid? One of society’s proudest boasts is our seemingly magical ability to cure illness, or at least palliate its effects. Your dreams say you yearn for healing, that you recognize you need help.
Challenge – How do we develop the confidence to choose the “right diagnosis” for what ails us? When do we request a “second opinion?” How can we stay on the “right” course, or even assess the “rightness” of any course, considering all our past mistakes? We need “heart strengthening.” Listen to your heart. What do we wish to ask? Who do we wish to be? Where are we trying to go?
Danger – Can we tell the difference between a “strengthening” or “harming” path? TV pharmaceutical ads list grisly side effects for pills tackling vague malaise. How can we overlook these? Perhaps the ultimate “danger” is ignoring the warnings our malaise gives. What does “I want to be young again” really mean? We are all mortal. We have just so much time left to plan. To “become”.
Lucid Healing – A lot of research indicates that when we ask for healing in a dream, we exponentially increase our chances of it happening. In your Dream Journal, set an intention. Write out exactly what you want to happen.
Dream Therapy – Is there any reason you can imagine why your psyche would cling to this pain, this illness? Are you ready to release this demon? Before you go to sleep, settle the intention in your mind. Imagine you are burning the pages of your dream journal and those words rise up, written in fire and imprint themselves into your body. In the morning, when you wake up, think and write about your immediate feelings and memories. Repeat as necessary!
Opportunity – Some people are more confident following an “experts recommend” course exactly, others adapt and customize as they go to achieve a path that feels more personally designed. I look for joy. Joy is the moment when planets and moments all click into alignment and we feel we accepted as a beloved child of the universe. Let’s unclog our ears, remove the plank from our vision and simplify our world to recapture the moments of joy experienced in childhood. Hunger, confusion and uncertainty were part of it, but a trusted loving, guiding force rescued us over and over again, prompting us to respond with a love as generous as we can summon.
Models & Mentors – “Hugging is good medicine” – Karen Salmansohn
“Medicine is the art of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease” – Voltaire
“Medicines cure diseases, but only doctors can cure patients” – C.J. Jung
“Medicine cures doubt as well as disease” – Karl Marx
“The arts are as essential to everyone’s lives as clean food and fresh air” – Renee Phillips
Where we explore our dream together, uncovering meaning and enhancing psychic and spiritual growth.
YOUAREASEEKER– You are self-defining. You are on a quest. You wish to experience to the fullthe nature of having a self. You are becoming alert to the possibilities inherent in your particularmomentary incarnation and you wish to explore them.
DANGERS – The danger of self-regard is that in turning our eyes inward we miss important signalscoming from other people and the world around us. Yet “retreating inward” is a vital path to self-knowledge and growth.
CHALLENGE -The solution to this challenge is to set a Spirituality Schedule to reflect our needs andinterests. Appoint time to be absolutely alone, for meditation and reflection. If you cannot find a room toyourself, a closet will do. You can sit in the meditation position or assume any position that allows youto be comfortable enough to become physically forgetful. Concentrate first on building a life that allowsboth inner and outer growth. Surround yourself with people who respect this decision.
OPPORTUNITIES– This is a journey. Accept it. Begin a journal with 1. “I” and write down yourmeditation thoughts and desires. Tis can be a poem, a fantasy, a checklist – whatever pattern occurs toyou as supportive of your desires. Make a list of goals. Push shame away. This is about YOU. Of courseas you evolve, your goals will evolve, and your journal will reflect that. When you have completed yourTime Alone – ten minutes to an hour – whatever works for you – pat yourself on the back. What anachievement! You are started on a path of making changing Nightmares into Dreams and making dreamscome true.
Get a notebook. We are starting our Dream Journal.
Jung tells us that in your dream, you are everyone. You have dreamed of an Eye. The Eye is You. YourEgo is under threat. What does this mean?
STUDY YOUR SURROUNDINGS – Who? What? When? Where? And Why? We will begin mapping the people around you to determine whether you are in a growth or destructive environment, and building better patterns. Open your Dream Journal.
WHO? List the people around you and try to capture their chatter, their effect on you. It isn’t necessarily what they say directly to you, it is how they feel entitled to speak, it is what you are forced to hear. Sometimes we “correct” these oppressive effects with the conversation of dramatic personae in screen, literature & song. We flee into art to protect ourselves from the cruelties of existence. List these characters also – your heroes and villains – and what you like and need about them. We are going to assemble a ragbag team of defenders and collaborators for Dream Group.
WHAT? When you list what they say, note how that makes you feel. We are going to assume control over these emotions.
WHEN? At what time of day or night do these characters attempt to assume power over you? What is your state or rest or readiness?
WHERE? Where are you when this is going on? Work? Home? Friends’ place? Café? Bed? Inside your locked heart? Where do you feel safe? Where are you most yourself?
WHY? How did you get here? What was the plan? How has that changed? What’s the plan now?
CLOSE YOUR BOOK – Close your eyes. Let’s end with a meditation.
Welcome, Sunflower! You are Thirsting for Light and the Light is Thirsting for You. Do you dream of other-worldly events? Parapsychology and out of body experiences? Flying and underwater breathing? These freedom dreams of otherworldly mastery tell us much about who we are. In Goddess Oracle, the sunflower represents our spirituality – a Sunflower Goddess reaching out for connection with something others might insist is not there. But we feel – very strongly – that it is. Who’s right?
Sunflowers Turn to The Light and So Do Goddesses – Hundreds of years ago Blaise Pascal argued that we have so much to gain if the supernatural is true, and nothing to gain if it isn’t, so that the calculus is simple. When you act as if the universe was richly designed by a Carer who promotes Goodness and rewards Love, you create the ideal conditions for human flourishing, whereas, as we all know, and has been conclusively proven scientifically, pessimism about outcomes dramatically lowers future benefits. Certainly, one could argue that our communications with each other are fraught with mistake and misapprehension, but that’s an argument for increased effort and insight and hardly a quitter’s mandate.
Goddesses Cultivate the Sixth Sense – Some people are born color blind – others are tone deaf – so it’s perfectly possible some are unable to access the extra dimensions. But the lucky goddess few – know that there is a universal resource to be tapped into when we can maneuver ourselves to the “right wavelength.”
Goddesses Follow The Sunflower Path – What is our mandate? Focus on increasing your ability to tell health and growth potential from sickness and disease enhancement. This will help you find the right path and the right people. Goodness never seeks your diminishment and constriction – the ruthless pursuit of human power does that. Test all wavelengths for generosity, balance and liveliness and contemplate what is beneficial in the universe. Bask in the flow of reassurance, resilience and recovery that intense spirituality provides.
Goddess Challenge – Fully explore your fears with a view to answering Immanuel Kant’s timeless question, “What can we hope?” Jesus focused his ministry on healing and met virulent rule-focused pushback. He found himself in a frenzy of status-seeking coupled with denigration. His life as well as his words teach us that the “Letter” kills, but the “spirit” gives Life. It is up to us to find and nourish that spirit. Once you can feel the “angels” – i.e. virtues – around you – (I picture them as nosing deer!) your fear subsides.
Goddesses Never Surrender Their Ability to Scent Danger – No journey can be free of risk. Trust requires us to follow where we cannot see the path, and so sometimes we lose the path. Sometimes we realize our guide looks to capture & constrain, not enhance & liberate. We must maintain our ability and reserve our right to recognize this so that we can reverse course before the cliff edge, telling malignant spirits “You no longer represent me” and to seek out a healthier program of progress.
Goddesses Enhance Opportunity for Everyone – We are never alone. All around us are pilgrims struggling with the same things we’re struggling with. Sharing and caring knits us together. The American two party political system benefits from stirring up hatreds to protect themselves from change. Don’t accept it. We are not each other’s enemies. The possibilities for friendship and connection are huge, but hatred and anger lead in only one direction.
Models & Mentors – “The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper”- W.B. Yeats
“You need not work to become spiritual – you are spiritual. You need only to recognize that fact” – Julia Cameron
“The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love” – Marianne Williamson
“Happy people build their inner world – unhappy people blame their outer world” – Dalai Lama
“The power of God is with you at all times, through the activities of mind, sense, breathing, the emotions , doing all the work, using you as mere instrument” – Bhagavad Gita
Do Goddesses Worry? Are we anxiety driven? Haunted by nightmares and worst-case scenarios? Do you wake up gasping and trying to forget what you’ve just experienced?
Goddesses Are Prophetic – Nightmares mean you’re paying attention. Being a goddess doesn’t mean you’re controlling events, it describes the type of human you aspire to be. Life is scary, but we need to grow, and growth requires we learn to cultivate risk if we are ever to expand and venture outside our comfort zone.
The Number One Complaint About Becoming a Goddess? – Fear management. You will be a target. The only way to manage fear? Become a Goddess. In other words, accepting the Divine Mandate is growth – you are the green pushing up through concrete. You really have no choice.
Can Goddesses Be Damaged or Destroyed? Certainly! In a world of mediocrity, we dare. That make our takedown an inviting goal for jealous demons.
Study risk intelligently. Are demons symbolic? No. I’ve personally met several. They are worthy of study. Where does your fear come from? If from an outside force, study him. No point being “afraid” of “foreigners” if the man telling us to be afraid has a reputation for befriending people and then fleecing them. If the fear comes from your gut, treat it respectfully. Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. (Public Library)
Managing Fear:
Don’t rely on rumor and innuendo
Dangers must be proven Real
Dangers Need to be Historically verified by data: “How likely is injury?”
Assemble likely risk-avoidance strategies that have performed well for others in your situation.
What exactly is your situation? Quantify.
Know who your allies are
Be prepared to alter strategy to maximize success and to learn from mistakes
Goddess Training – Goddesses study, identify and rise above the challenges. Learn to make sophisticated risk assessments and pick your battles cleverly. To do that, goddess need a Purpose.Your Immortality if offered in exchange for you operating as an enlightening force in a dark space.
Unexpected Benefit: Fair-weather Friends Scatter. Friends respect and want the best for you, but the relationship must be reciprocal. You agree to have each other’s backs. But some “friends” are attracted only by your light and when that is threatened, they either hide or assist the attacker. Know the difference between a Team and a Gang. Gangs work to suck power from individual members and concentrate it in one individual. Teams work for the success of all. Coach can’t win if the team doesn’t win.
Goddesses Enjoy the Test – Goddesses relish testing their and mental physical abilities constantly against life’s games & mazes
Goddesses Transform – The physical pleasure of meeting the moment cannot be overstated. Soon the training itself becomes a rush of joy. When you are making love to the universe you can feel the universe loving you back. This is what immortality feels like.
Can Goddesses Be Defeated? – There are no defeats, there are only lessons. Everything is practice for The Greater Contest.
Won’t You Ultimately Lose? Truly, we all die, some sooner, some less dignified. As a Goddess, this is where your purpose upholds you as you transform into your Immortal Incarnation. What this will be, none of us knows. Study your models. What allowed Nelson Mandela to be “captain of his soul” after more than 20 years in brutal captivity? Are we just bodies? Or are we also souls? Are our souls so easily defeated? Can we also train, test and transform our souls?
Remember – a caterpillar’s “defeat” is a butterfly.
Models & Mentors – “Extreme Fear can neither fight nor fly.”
– William Shakespeare
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear”– Mark Twain
“If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will return stronger” – Deepak Chopra
“We’re more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.”– Seneca
VIRGINIA I should never have married you. Women see the worst of men, how cruel they are at home, how they believe in ranks and ceremonies, how they demand praise and management. We bring out what’s bad in each other. We should live separately.
LEONARD Virginia, I admit I have been a brute. I told you that before you married me. I have faults, vices and beastlinesses. I am lustful, a whorer, a gazer after women, a vicious man who has loved the refinements of vice. I have seen the filth of the brothel, know that it is filth and still I’ve lain with the ugliest whore. I have been selfish, jealous, and cruel. You are the most beautiful, most magical among women. Yet I must have you, and not some inferior female who would enrage me with her inferiority and submission. I am terminally and unconditionally in love with you. God, the happiness I’ve had being with you and talking to you – mind to mind and soul to soul. I don’t care so much for the physical part. You are the best thing I have ever had in my life. I will never be content, now, with second best.
VIRGINIA And here am I, a failure, childless, no writer and insane. You confessed your sins before we married, but I knew I was insane with a mad sister and a madder uncle and yet I married you.
LEONARD Tell me the truth. Why did you marry me, the penniless, trembling Jew?
VIRGINIA Perhaps only because you were my beloved brother Thoby’s best friend. He said, I’ve met a man so violent, so savage, he trembles with contempt for the whole human race. And that was you.
LEONARD Thoby was so beautiful it was difficult to speak with him of iniquity or despair.
VIRGINIA Thoby had the kind of beauty that defends itself from caress.
LEONARD And you’re the same. With such gestures one falls in love for a lifetime.
VIRGINIA Thoby and I were so close until he went away to that school, where the boys fought and buggered. When he came back he was so different, harsh and cruel. He beat me. I just stood there and let him pound me with his fists, feeling the most awful sadness; why hurt another person? He showed off by abusing me. I refused to surrender the space we used to have, but he said, Girls must give up. That’s what it means to be a girl. It was essential for the fellowship of men that I be kept out. Because you were his greatest friend I hoped the best of him lived on, in you. But you are nothing like him.
LEONARD The Goth was always a law unto himself. He didn’t acquire friends, he annexed worshippers. You and Vanessa looked so like him our Circle called you “Visigoths.” Misses Virginia and Vanessa Stephens, so beautiful that dogs turned to look at them in the street.
VIRGINIA Trust me, it’s not that pleasant having dogs turn to look at one in the street. So, you married me, thinking I was like Thoby and you were disappointed.
LEONARD Virginia, you must stop thinking everything is your fault. We were primed to fall in love because of our friendships, but we actually fell in love because we saw each other’s true selves.
VIRGINIA I saw how shocked you were when you realized you had married a madwoman.
LEONARD Life may be an obstacle race but that doesn’t mean one would want the obstacles removed.
VIRGINIA I should have told you!
LEONARD Did I tell you my tremor is hereditary? My father had it, too. Should I have confessed that? We didn’t want to talk about our families. We wanted to revel in each other’s hopes and dreams.
VIRGINIA When we talked, I forgot everything except the joy of our conversation. Originality and freedom, purity and restraint, we discussed it all. Here’s someone who cares, I thought, about the hidden pockets of emotion, someone who wants to work like a steam engine at uncovering the truth. I needed to know that when I weep, I am not the only weeper. You almost persuaded me we could change the world with just our two brains.
LEONARD Nothing’s more important than the two of us united.
VIRGINIA Yet somehow here I am, locked up in a madhouse.
LEONARD Virginia, this isn’t a madhouse and you are not insane. But we need the doctor’s permission for you to leave. We must figure out, the pair of us, how you can assume control. I don’t believe in guilt or apologies. I know what it is to be driven beyond endurance but I know I can avoid the whirlpools if you help me, Virginia. Let me help you learn how to assume control.
VIRGINIA What’s the use of men talking to women, we’re too different. We must hate and fear each other. Women can’t even step outside their doors with any safety. If you could strip off my skin you would see my nerves gone white with fear of you.
LEONARD You’re talking to the member of a despised race rooted out as pests wherever we settle. My nerves should be white with fear of your kind. It’s a fetid, sordid world. Yet we two are somehow different. In Ceylon, I took out my gun to put an end to the utter foulness, the stupid blind vindictive foulness of everything. You see, we have that in common.
VIRGINIA You did? You really tried to shoot yourself?
LEONARD I thought that the only reason one doesn’t commit suicide is that one is either a selfish coward or already dead and rotten. The one thing that saved me was a vision of you, the beautiful Miss Stephen who wrote like an angel and quoted Plato. I longed to meet you. But I was so afraid of making a fool of myself my very soul and stomach trembled.
VIRGINIA You stayed alive because of me?
LEONARD I did. So you must return the favor. Lytton Strachey and I wrote long letters back and forth. He argued against suicide and insisted that I propose.
VIRGINIA Lytton asked me to marry him once. Thank God, I didn’t. The very idea of his criticisms would have kept me from writing anything.
LEONARD He understood all that. He said the only person who was right for you was me.
VIRGINIA But he didn’t know about my spoiled, ruined body.
LEONARD You have a perfect body!
VIRGINIA Currently being stuffed like a Strasbourg goose, thanks to you. Strapped down, force fed, shot with drugs.
LEONARD All because you refuse to eat. Let me order dinner right now and feed it to you. How about that?
VIRGINIA I’m not hungry. Oh, let me die, Leonard! Let me go! Find a girl who can love you properly! I failed in the bedroom – you made that perfectly clear.
LEONARD Perhaps copulation is inherently degrading. Really, horseback riding is more pleasurable.
VIRGINIA But there’s children to look forward to, surely.
LEONARD I don’t want children and if you really read The Wise Virgins, you’ll know why.
VIRGINIA But we won’t raise them in a strict Jewish home!
LEONARD There’s your prejudice again! It wasn’t the Judaism, it was the endless striving for dominance of tiny minds. How I hated it!
VIRGINIA Father shrieked and screamed that we were sending him to the poorhouse with our expensive household bills. I brought him a catalog of King’s College classes for Ladies but he said he couldn’t spare me because it was my turn to pet him, soothe him, cut his meat! I wanted to write, but I couldn’t keep it private. Once I had a diary with a lock but Thoby stole it, so I pasted my secret pages into a book.
LEONARD After my father died we really were headed for the poorhouse. My brother had to work to support the family.
VIRGINIA Don’t you think every family is a lonely caravan, absolutely private, silent and unknown? I see us wedged in together, surrounded by vast space we couldn’t cross. It seemed impossible to break through the dark cloud and shed light on those shrouded, curtained rooms. Censors, visionary figures everywhere admonished us. Father told me no intelligent being had any right to believe in God, but when I was six years old, I dreamed that I was God.
LEONARD And your mother?
VIRGINIA Mother said there couldn’t be a God because no just God would have killed the splendid Herbert Duckworth, her first husband. She loved him so. She never told my father she loved him.
LEONARD
Never?
VIRGINIA
Never. I wrote stories in which clever, courageous children rescue their families and bring hope to the sick. Do you believe in God, Leonard?
LEONARD No one believes in God. Virginia, we must refuse to be determined by our pasts. Our parents had too many children to cope but we won’t make the same mistake. Don’t you want to be free, Virginia? With so many mouths to feed, freedom’s never possible.
VIRGINIA I know you’re only saying that because Dr. Hyslop insists the mad should never propagate.
LEONARD I swear I’m not. Nessa has children – and with all her lovers looks to spew many more – wouldn’t that be enough for you?
VIRGINIA (turning away)
Surely loneliness destroys us. Futile and infertile – aren’t those more than adequate reasons for self-murder?
LEONARD We’ll never be futile, not us. You’ve written a wonderful novel, Virginia. I know you’ll write many more.
VIRGINIA Received by my family in complete silence.
LEONARD They’re barely literate. My whole point is that family shouldn’t matter. I’ve freed myself – I never see my mother if I can help it. Remember how upset she was to be excluded from our wedding? Surely an ambitious person’s gaze should widen, take in more?
VIRGINIA Take in who? Society, like the Countess of Carnarvon? Publishers like Gerald?
LEONARD How about other modern thinkers, trying to do what we are doing? Finding new ways to be, see, think, do, connect. Roger Fry with his “significant form”. Maynard Keynes with aggregate demand, E. M. Forster’s clever novels. The literary impressionism you attempted in Voyage Out.
VIRGINIA Forster isn’t clever. He thinks women should be banned from the London Library Board and never allowed on the grass at Cambridge. How on earth can dry, dusty books ever make up for real, live children?
LEONARD Was your childhood really anything you’d care to revisit, Virginia?
VIRGINIA Yes, yes, yes. If I could only tell you, or anybody. Oh, the magic summers at St. Ives! Lost, gone forever. Paradise before, catastrophe after. Now whatever it is I want I cannot tell. I was born with extraordinary capacities for feeling, but you say bury my emotions or they will never let me out.
LEONARD Not bury them, Virginia. Manage them. We need to convince the world that you are fine and well. Let’s get to the bottom of the ideas that torment you. How many years was that paradise of childhood, really? Two or three? We have our whole, long, fruitful lives ahead of us.
VIRGINIA It was paradise before the deaths began.
LEONARD There’s no escaping death, Virginia.
VIRGINIA You intimate that children would drive me mad?
LEONARD They would certainly stop you working. Can you see a house filled with nannies, nurses, servants, their followers and lovers? Cockney quarrels and endless Bedlam difficulties? You once described your nursery as a cage where you were forced to perform compulsory tricks.
VIRGINIA And what do you call this damnable house? Cousin Madge says you’re mean and think of nothing but money.
LEONARD Madge is an idiot. Let’s resolve to cut all idiots on principles of health.
VIRGINIA If that were only possible! Here I am in George’s house, sentenced to eternally hawking Gerald’s books!
LEONARD But George isn’t here. And there are other publishers in the world besides Gerald.
VIRGINIA Worse ones, doubtless. Did you read Gissing, or even Meredith?
LEONARD Then we’ll publish our books ourselves.
VIRGINIA (turning to face him)
Could such a thing be possible?
LEONARD Of course, it is. You know your Women’s Cooperative promotes apprenticeships. I think the Working Man’s College teaches printing.
VIRGINIA Oh, imagine if that were so! How I’d love to print! I used to bind books, I liked that. The tools were so beautiful. Papers from Italy, leathers from Africa. The smell alone was heavenly.
LEONARD Don’t these doctors recommend handiwork?
VIRGINIA Tat-work! Or crochet!
LEONARD Let’s defeat them, then. Can’t we, together, push the world our way? Or at the very least carve out a tiny corner where we can live and thrive?
Alysse Aallyn 