“Do we really want love? Can we tolerate togetherness?”
The thistle threatens, “Touch me Not.”
It is inevitable that we experience Merging on some level as Identity Loss. This is the source of the power struggle which plagues, and should plague, all relationships: who’s going to drive this bus? (The answer is Each/Both/Neither. Power flows in, out and between, like the tide.)
If “who will drive” doesn’t emerge into consciousness then the problem lies very deep and must be urgently addressed. It’s always important to keep in mind that one soul isn’t “absorbed” while the other “inflates”! That’s not how it works at all!
For example, those who study the contemporary meanings of the word ”fuck” will be justifiably alarmed. If you are “fucked” you’ve been “taken.” You’ve been “had,” emptied, eviscerated, exploited. You are left worse off.
One person is diminished, the other is a conqueror in this scenario. Soulmating cannot and will not happen under such conditions – both souls will be erased. Considering that sex is the glue that fuses souls, exploitational thinking is profoundly destructive. “Mated” is a much better term, but even that fails to encompass the transfer of self into a central Us that is so much desired, feared, dreaded and resisted.
You desperately need each other’s pollen to ignite true fertility in the soul. Relax. Experiment. Allow the Other to instruct you in their Wildness. Offer up your own exotic difference. Join.
#HAIKU: The Thistle
Pry me out I fly back hard Invigorate world With wilder honey
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.
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.
We were amorphous seacreatures once. We breathed liquid through our gills and rubbed our silvery sides against our mates. In the womb we roiled and reveled in our oceanic environment. Whenever we float, eyes closed, we channel what it felt like, shivering and shimmering in an upside-down world. So is the dexterity of melting into a concatenation of dizzyingly different avatars a souvenir of ancestral past or a premonition of some liquid, undiversified future? What can it tell us about recognizing our soulmate?
We are reminded of skills we haven’t even tried yet, and our deep connections to inhabitants of universes we cannot even see. In the tantric garden, sex, gender, and identity are fluid; compromised constructs we create and share only with the Beloved. Let your imagination billow outwards, absorbing the Other. Our bodies express our memories, personhoods, dreams; evoke our aspirations and our lives. What does it mean to be truly open to another human? The level of trust must be so great the future vanishes into an endless present.
God knows, we are willing. To be full of another is the ultimate mindfulness; we touch brains, hopes, memories as well as skin.
I see myself in you –
Moth to flame Your meteoric dust Drips ash into my upturned mouth. I taste stars. What manner of being Have you become? I only know you’re something that I need Your mirrored endlessness partakes Of nothing human; suggests an Completion. I’ll take that promise; your shadow arches Like an angry lover Refusing satisfaction. My hunger burns more purely in the titillation of neglect. Without you I’m just myself With you I’m everything; God of Worlds. Anyone can be born: eternity is The lover’s privilege.
In Dawn we are between two worlds; our feet in night and our heads in the future yet to come. Sometimes we can’t wait to shake off the darkness; even pretend it never happened; other times we are sluggishly unwilling to give ourselves over to the cares of daylight hours. The ancients celebrated each “return” of the sun’s light as a religious and philosophical triumph; a sign that the mighty ones have forgiven us the past and will allow us to continue the grand experiment of life for another day.
There is a special quality of light to Dawn when ordinary objects look different; magical, even the air feels different, full of portent and excitement. Often we find ourselves wishing this transitional period would last forever. Dawn is the Future itself; perhaps more thrilling as we contemplate its possibilities than when we begin the hard slog of making them come true.
Dawn signals a freshening, a slackening of tension. We confronted Night alone; now we are going to get some company. We were all keyed up – now we are going to get a break. This can be interpreted as a Reward – finally! Some little crumb to keep us going. When we have been trying so hard and are allowed to relax, it’s almost as if a sense of shock sets in.
We’re so exhausted from all our effort we don’t even want to TRY to figure out what’s REALLY going on. We just want to roll with it, for now. Get our breath back. Recover our mojo. We are plunged into a new dream-like state of particular value to Skryers hoping to Discern their future: Day Dreaming. As our “night terrors” subside, we are flooded with images, ideas, memories, yearnings, disconnected at first. Go with it.
What do these visions say to you? How do you feel about it? It is in moments like these that we may get some unexpected insight. We may realize that the high-status Soulmate we THOUGHT we wanted (Financial bro! Super-model! Sports star!) is not what we want AT ALL. We feel new yearnings, for someone more in tune with our REAL lifestyle and our cherished, secret sense of self.
As dawn breaks, the game re-sets. We get to start again! Allow yourself to celebrate all the fresh possibilities suddenly poured so generously into your lap.
THE TREEHOUSE
Eager I was to initial your flesh Mark it mine forever A fairly short forever as I recall. Trilling up my drainpipe
Your hot unvaried song – “Who will know?” We were the ones who did not know. The treehouse was our yearbook –
Memory’s coffin; there You swallowed me whole A circus act, a disappearing act None saw
Insects feasted on our Unwatched blood Bursting to the rhythm Of our bursting.
If I mistake your face these days In a flower-field of faces Shifting to moon pressure Swaying to wind pressure
Listing according to laws unknown Count me not along your abacus of traitors; I am she. The blood still flows, still glows In the treehouse.
“Going to sleep in one world we awaken in another”
Night offers a frightening universe of the invisible and the unfamiliar. How many of us have lain in our comfortable bedrooms and imagined tossed clothes as threatening monsters and scratchy tree-branches as iniquitous invaders?
Night is the domain of nocturnal creatures we imagine are up to no good; otherwise, why seek darkness? Night is the land of dreams when all worries and anxieties bubble up from the deepest depths of our own brains and terrify us with startling and vivid visions. Childhood is largely spent trying to get used to this strange rhythm of sleep and wake, of brooding and action, of quiet and frenzy and attempting to master the suspicions and fears it rouses.
Isn’t sleep like death and isn’t night like Hell? Where is the sun? What has happened to our loved and loving world? It helps to fall in love with Night and uncover its beauties as well as its secrets.
Waking in the middle of the night for some exciting enterprise like Christmas, meeting a beloved, for some family ritual or religious vigil, can be a time of awe-inspiring discovery. In the Planetarium they deliberately create a mockery of Night to show us the majesty of stars and planets.
Lovers wait for night like thieves. This is when most children are conceived, most children are born and the most powerful dreams – the ones that reveal the future – are dreamed.
The night is a mysterious, unsettling boundary. Sages say we go to sleep in one world and wake in another. I say we go to sleep as one person and wake up as someone else. Both are true. But, quite possibly, we don’t like it. We fear the meanings, the realities, the potential behind all of this.
Desires come to us unbidden. Do dreams separate or unite? Sleep is the land of the subconscious, the unconscious, the preconscious and the collective conscious. These are worlds we need to integrate into our Being. “Balance” is a skill that allows us to make the best of all these worlds.
The Subconscious is just beneath the surface. We glimpse it frequently during the day through our reactions to art, music, jokes, accidents and friendly interactions. ‘Freudian slips” are meaning to say one thing and “accidentally” stating the opposite. Our Subconscious is our Mastermind. It can be relied on to recognize the Beloved.
The Unconscious is deeper. We cannot access it except through dreams. Hypnosis will not take you deep enough. The Unconscious is a huge repository of fear and dread. It manifests in our daytime self as anxiety, panic attacks and psychosomatic illness. “Dream therapy” teaches lucid dreaming, when we begin to recall, learn from, even manage our dreams.
The Preconscious is our Unborn Self. These are our Multiverse selves who chose another path, past incarnations and possible selves. It manifests itself in our daily life through mysterious attractions to styles of art, episodes of history or pattern re-enactments. Our Preconscious might recognize the Beloved because you were together in another life/world. Sometimes forging of this bond will be the most advanced stage of your souls’ journey. In both cases, recognizing and blending with the Other is a vital step in your Becoming.
The Preconscious and the Collective Unconscious alike are activated through study, research and learning to accept and enjoy art and history. The Collective Unconscious is our group dream on this planet. It is positively expressed through Art, Shamanism and acting. It is negatively expressed by addictions, circumstances when you know you are acting outside your own control (and against the best interests of your life, health and safety) or when you are “channeling” the soul of another – acting like someone you aren’t but you can’t seem to stop.
These patterns are broken by Rehabilitation Therapy that seeks to connect you to your True Soul, which is always waiting for you to claim it.
Sometimes in our quest for the other we are assaulted by demonic forces masquerading as love. This is easily recognized by the question: does your Beloved improve or worsen your psychic health? If Your spiritual integrity is under threat, you will need help escaping this demon. Don’t hesitate to ask for it.
RESURRECTIONIST
Unearth me, lover I’m a jewel now Melted In that crevice you once loved so Well; it’s an ingot now, a socket For our mingled liquid Essence Suck it up with Dust-lathered lips Strip The flesh as you once did The clothes; I’m burning Cinder-hot – Let me astound you with My time-perfected skill
What happens when we discover that to accept a New Soulmate, we too must become entirely new? We must turn our comically ugly caterpillars into gorgeous butterflies. It turns out that in wanting the Beloved what we were yearning for was a new self, as beautiful and as magical as we imagined the Beloved to be.
Transformation is more than mere shape-shifting; it is a complete cellular mutation; a quantum victory of design over matter.
In the garden transformation is law. The oldest things become new when seen through fresh eyes or a shift of visual imagination. Plants capture or seduce; pods fly into silks, colors wither, embolden or whiten, dust balls eject a thousand baby spiders, a worm becomes frog.
When you “transform” you are reborn into a new being. Unlike simple masking or disguise, this change interpenetrates the very soul. When we tire of our selves, our path, our very thoughts, nothing will satisfy but complete and total rebirth.
Seeking wholeness, we are slowly transformed by our own longing into a receptacle for the Beloved. But they must contain us, too, Two Truths will blend together into a singular, mighty Truth. To become The Lover, we must give up the griefs, the imperfections, the pettiness, the vindictiveness of the past.
If we accept that our future is entirely new, we can be born freshly into this fresh moment. It is this deep looking, deep seeing, deep yearning and deep acceptance that attracts our tantric lover to our sphere. Yes, terrible things have happened outside the golden chalice we now offer. Sad lessons were learned.
There has been triumph, vengeance, loss and play. No need to dwell on any of this, it no longer describes or confines us. What does describe us?
The peace of perfected selfhood. We are now ready to merge with yet another enlightened Self.
Dawn walk
Thunder crusts a gelid sky Light or rain – Feathering My nest with longing Stippled soul flushing out New growth; bursting from The steepled trees.
This is my world and I release it Stelliform; Readied For flying – tough as spidersilk – Unrecognized – Unrecognizable – Even to those who birthed me Spent my life creating this; now
Spring means beginning, freshness, newness. It starts small – barely recognizable – the tiniest frond of green among the blackness, calling forth an answering shiver from somewhere deep inside us.
We are told that every cell in our body replaces itself in seven years, so springtime is a constant within us. The best thing about Spring, to my way of thinking, is that it replaces winter. I am not a winter person, though I am told some are. I usually experience a sense almost of hopelessness, right before the end. Spring is the cure for hopelessness. Spring is hope itself.
In the darkest season of loneliness, we must find reason for hope, and the reason is always the same: refreshment and rebirth are coming. We participate in the rejuvenation of the world. We transform ourselves into turnaround specialists, turning around hopelessness and a quitter mentality into can-do optimism & strategies.
The green plant finds a way to surge forth, the beetles wait in the earth until their time is right, the egg contains a perfect hummingbird. So we strip away our fears, negativity and hopelessness to foster the growth inside, growth in the belief that our Soulmate is right around the corner.
PEACOCK PAVEMENT
Femininity has its Everests – I will climb them daily. The crow’s belly’s is black,
Envy his womb-less contentment as I stroll Among the old wrappers, used condoms; Joints rolled tight as bedsheets
Letters used – abused – discarded. Crow envies me my Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom,
Battering-ram jaw, baroque nose, the Greek depths through which My eyes record their wanderings
Outside the convent walls, between The stalls, corrals, the chained-up lambs, The leaf-filled swimming pools:
First act, second act, third act Epilogue. Number days by counting Depth marks round your taproot
Showing off sporadic questings not my own Belonging to some future – all Unknowing what anyone will make
Of these Portentous Pleiades: Disparate sisters, Me, myself and I.
Alysse Aallyn 