Effort is the quintessence of Aspiration. “Success” is a different matter entirely. The struggle to achieve absorbs our attention; rest offers us the opportunity to dream yet another Aspiration.
Contemplate the construction of our bodies; the muscle mass and muscle fiber, the growing bone and sinew that power the temples of our quotidian existence. Resting regenerates, but exercise makes them strong. So, aspire we must, nor can we ever stop aspiring. When we relax to plan a new assault, we should concern ourselves less with whether our goals are reachable and more with whether they are worthy.
As we construct a disciplined path to create & curate our Best Other, we cultivate the perfect combination of both Present & Future living. We honor the beauty of our coming Soulmate by taking care of ourselves now. The worst thing that could happen would be if our Soulmate couldn’t recognize us because we dimmed our light in a bloat of self-indulgence. So even though we know loneliness, we feel at peace, because the future promises us glorious togetherness. Our Aspiration says so!
Impure Women
Between my breath And your breath Beneath the phallic Philanthropic statues Volcanic dragstrip Of my city The wounded in the scorched earth policy Of love Muster Linger Await Embodiment. We seek new flesh: Pills to make their Hearts race faster Stopped their faces Dead as clocks That witness Crimes unspeakable To mothers Versed in tabloid gore. Who will bring them Absolution now that I am gone? In the fresh wounds of a Seconal summer The stopped children meet And kiss.
Meditation is the Art of Looking Deeply. It takes concentration and practice and all the gifts that makes us human – but our physical, mental and cultural “tics” – fight against our cultivation of this vital skill. We must master our physicality to engage our brain in Deep Looking.
Begin with the breath, inhale, exhale, calm the tumult in our blood. As thoughts appear, set them one by one before your Inner Eye and turn each over in your mind without judgment. We are just floating by. The goal is to learn to feel compassion for the creatures of this earth; so that ultimately we can calm the tumult in everyone’s life journeys.
Before our eyes now is our yearning for our Other Half. If we are living in the past growth hurts like a requiem for a Lost Self. Yet deep looking into our “now” will rescue us from past suffering. We see past the pain of our perceived unworthiness and the inadequacy of others to the universal healing magic that is love. We perform the “thought experiment” of transforming our minds in order to recognize the Beloved and be recognized by them. This is the most powerful charm; a transformation that solves our earthborn dilemma.
Meditation is quieting and emptying. Once we soothe the rattle of panic and hysteria that infects each of us through the pressure of living, learn not to react to the “what ifs” and “shoulds”, the fears and preconceptions, we will become our own crystal ball. Push gently on the inevitable thought-balloons drifting through the cathedral of our minds and let them go. When we master the breath, we seize control of life itself.
Find a “mantra.” Some use prayer – I suggest St. Julian of Norwich’s “All will be well, and all things will be well.” or “the light in me honors the light in the world” or “I am peace” works as well. Feel free to invent your own mantra. Give yourself permission to take loving charge of thoughts and body. Be a tender mother to your new self. When you support your shy new self, you practice welcoming the Beloved. Picturing ocean waves rushing in, then rushing out again along the sand. Relax all your muscles, one by one. Wait. Begin again. Continue until flooded with peace.
The Poet on Her Walk
Who dares malign The intellectual consolations of this morning When every leaf becomes the corner of a star And every pond a covenant. Where Isles of light illumine Tracts of water – blind the Spaces where I first saw you. Transfix my grief with Arrows of wisdom Dissolve the veil that Separates me from Myself; eight years old.
Who are you that I should fear to Stroke you wrong, dissolving pride in Mansions of darkness that hood your eyes; the Terrible readiness , the Dissipated resolution; Deepening the silence Deepening between us Like the ocean between us; The silence of wheatfields Waiting for wind
Life is always a collaborative venture. Cooperation makes the world go round; you are not going to find a SoulMate without carefully orchestrating your dance steps together. Working together on constructive plans that will pass from one generation to another has created multiple marvels of engineering and design.
But among human beings, at least, the chain breaks down when some of our less attractive tendencies toward competition, paranoia and greed rear their ugly heads. And there is little that can be accomplished on the human plane at least without seemingly endless slatherings of goodwill. In the animal world, cooperation goes much more smoothly, with social insects routinely building cities that rival the Eight Wonders of the World.
Human marriage is a two-way support system; that is the reason for its longevity. Divorce and dissolution come when someone feels they’re getting too little. Cooperation always offers chance for communion, that vital sense we have of being a necessary part of something bigger, more long-lasting and more important.
Division of Labor – We’ll never be able to do everything to achieve our goals. We are going to need help. How do we get other people on board? How delegate effort? We need to brace ourselves for “pushback” as in, “Why should I help you?”
We may have to help other people with THEIR goals! When we made our list of resources, other people figured prominently. Now we decide how to “sell” our ideas as well as ourselves! Why are we worthy of help and assistance in a world that is begging for it? As so often happens, the best advice is to “start small”. Offer a friendship transaction: “I’ll pick up this item for you if you pick up that item for me.”
“Cooperation” is reciprocity. We are looking for an equal relationship that respects our essential differences. We not only need support on our life path, we are eager to support the Beloved.
“Cooperation” protects us from one-way relationships. Above all, we don’t want to get sucked into another’s cycle of destruction. This pathology currently goes by the name “narcissism”.
“Narcissists create a shared fantasy of victimhood.” Narcissists LIVE in fantasy. They create not only a fantasy version of themselves but also a fantasy version of YOU!! This is critical for comprehending the anguish caused by abuse. They are excellent manipulators; they create an idealized version of the victim, and narcissists somehow convince the victim that they should play along to receive the benefits that they seek.
The narcissist secures the “power” of shattering this fantasy whenever they choose (known as the devaluation and discarding phase.) They threaten to deprive you of your perfect self-image! That is why we experience so much pain. We are not grieving the loss of narcissists. We are not grieving the time we spent with narcissists. We are grieving our idealized lives and selves!! Narcissists are filled with a senseless, secret hate (usually based on envy) that requires them to degrade and disappoint you – probably some “magical” re-enactment of a catastrophic disappointing degradation THEY experienced once upon a time. You can’t be their therapist.
As soon as it becomes apparent that cooperation is not only impossible but that your suffering is required, you need to GET OUT NOW. Willingness to give is the necessary foundation of SoulMating.
Solitude is required for reflection, and reflection is required for growth. Growth is required for choosing a soulmate, because the choice cannot be haphazard but the result of self-knowledge.
Solitude is not loneliness; it is the Art of Being Alone. Wise Ones have told us that ultimately each of us is only alone; we are born alone and we die alone. Plainly, this cannot be true. We are as social a species as the ants and termites. But just as one could argue that every worthwhile achievement has been a collaboration, one could also argue that every worthwhile idea was conceived in solitude.
I prefer to think of our “mental, emotional and spiritual pores” having both an “on” and “off” position. There is outflow, there is in-flow and there is no flow. All are necessary to the health of the human being and all are necessary to the maximization of human potential. Depth psychology merely systematizes the layers of human consciousness and sub-consciousness whose existence dreams have always demonstrated.
Meditation and mindfulness seek to capture the exact moment when the soul experiences itself. This is not possible without regular periods of scheduled and enforced solitude. In-breath must equal outbreath until suddenly the lips of the psyche part and, as in a “magic eye” painting; the familiar world dramatically shifts to reveal under-worlds and over-worlds of multiple meanings and intense possibilities.
Self-Sufficiency: How panicked are we by the idea of being “alone”? Even those of us who are introverts are sustained by a complex net of relationships, any adjustment to which could drive us back to infancy. Are we alone even within our relationships? Are we alone on our planet? In the universe? It is surprising how much this fear can be seen lurking behind our consciously assumed states of mental “good cheer”.
Most of us work in collaborative ventures; nothing we do would be worthwhile without, at the very least, someone to assess or appreciate. It is time to take stock of our internal personal resources; those that owe nothing to the support of others.
Opportunity; Much of what we think during the day is in fact a dialogue. It is salutary to ask ourselves: who are we talking to? Is this person imaginary, dead, alive? Are they helpful – or cruel? It’s common knowledge that we speak more insultingly to ourselves than we might to anyone we know! Time for a “voices” upgrade. These are part of ourselves talking to each other; possibly parts of ourselves we could do without.
And is that the best way to accomplish our set goals? Now’s the time to understand that, given education and culture, we can never be “alone” in the sense of bereft of help. We have countless models we’ve been choosing from childhood up. Who are they? Do we need upgrade them, or just name them and learn to deploy them more effectively? Some of us are surrounded by a mix of celebrities (Humphrey Bogart in “Play it Again, Sam”) some of us by the loving dead (Granma and Grandpa) others by cultural icons (for me Shelley, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson) some of us by imaginary friends or even angels.
What’s working for us and what isn’t? After all, we furnish our own brains. Let’s decorate by design.
Danger! An important component of the confidence we desire to cultivate is freedom and self-determination. We all know how unsettling a date’s visible desperation can be. We instinctively back away as from a sinking ship whose whirlpool threatens to suck us in. In other words, the best way to gain a soulmate is to be able – visibly! -to live without one. This sounds nonsensical; but look at it this way, you ARE living without one. Is your desire to change your life based on the indisputable fact that your life is a mess? If so, we have to turn our attention to THAT first thing, otherwise we are the sinking ship no one wants to get near, much less, on.
Challenge! To increase our chances of finding the best person who is right for us right now AND in our future, we have to GIVE ourselves a future. No other person can be our “future.” We need to have a vision of a future we are working towards. That is what we want to hear about our date, and that is what they will want to hear about us. It’s time to become your own best friend, the one who really cares about you and gives such good advice
HEDGEHOG CROSSING ROAD
Spines erect as swords She waits To tilt the windmills rushing by Machined from hell to trap Her tiny weight of soul and fur.
She fears not. He who protects the sparrows Comforts her. The air is sharp With winter not With false regret –
She lifts her head to gauge The moment ripe for flight Unaltered in her captaincy of self. She’ll reach eternity or the pond
“If you don’t have a loving relationship with yourself, no one else will.”
Several times on your path you will feel the need to “re-boot” and start over. “Rebirth” is available to us any time, following a period of reflection, retreat and re-centering.
“Recovery” begins to happen we manage to repel a demonic force that kept us in thrall – addiction, illusion, corruption, compulsive behavior; even a poisonous culture. Sometimes, we were hostage to another human being who didn’t have our best interests at heart.
What ARE our best interests? As our brains begin to clear we begin to understand. Ernest Hemingway used to say we are “stronger at the broken places” and Nietzsche expressed it as “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” but obviously these maxims only hold true if a complete healing has taken place.
Complete healing provides peace as well as joy. We give thanks that we have started on the journey.
Second Chances – Expect to stumble. Watching toddlers try to “rise and walk” we must consider what a good thing it is that they don’t mind being laughed at. (In fact, they love it.) It takes them quite awhile to figure out this new challenge. Like beginning skiers, they cling to objects, sway exaggeratedly back and forth, slam into others, and plop down SPLAT; not just once or twice but over and over. In fact the toddler hasn’t been born who suddenly vaults up suavely and starts swanning around in a sophisticated manner.
And those are the ones with no impediment to walking – watched hungrily by the less fortunate who only wish they could be blessed with this magical opportunity to make public fools of themselves.
Once we take in the meaning of these facts we embrace the last step of Recovery: “Expect to go splat.” Of course we don’t WANT to – fingers crossed – it’s dangerous and bruising. We’d better arrange to have someone around – just in case. But you don’t fail unless you refuse to rise again. Don’t even bother counting the times you were “brave”. It’s only the “getting back up” that counts. As long as you’re doing that, you’re a true winner.
As we study ourselves with a desire to put our best foot forward we are increasingly overwhelmed with despair. This old self won’t do. We are the club no one wants to join; us included.
We have to ask ourselves if part of our desire for the Other is a longing to be rid of Self. But how is this to be accomplished, when we know that any relationship built on fakery must surely fail. How can a New Self be the Real One?
Fortunately, there is a model for this in the recovery movement – legions of people giving up self-destructive habits and birthing a fresh new self. They say the relief is glorious, everything is more meaningful as their confidence grows. We want some of that. We must abjure all the behavior that have caused us suffering in the past. What are they, exactly? Let’s identify and enhance the wonderful things about us, the self we want to keep.
And in the Hour of Our Death
I am wind sucked The tempest starts without me Scuttled like a leaf
I loose your hand My words come fire My blood blasts forth
And vomits out This darkness Some god commands
I push I flee – I won’t be born – I push
And then relax. It can’t happen all at once. The corpses dance
The trees devour their own roots I’m spat like pulp I push –
I’ve gone too far To get back now. I’ve lost your cord
Threaded in the frenzy That is life. My lips are ceremonies
My hips are burial grounds. Silence rushes in to bear me up and I explode To atoms.
What is this new lightness? Into this furnace of stars I collapse my burdens like
A house of cards, I soar, I flirt My strength Is limitless
The Garden we wish to share is an island in the universe that is Earth. As we travel, we soon find out that Earth itself is another Garden, almost too large for us to comprehend, containing many wonders.
We are creatures of this planet that nourishes us; but who’s taking care of who? Gardens need a lot of care. The quality of the soil, timing and positioning of the plants, their symbiosis and synchronicity are critical. If we block the sun and clog the air with burning smoke we all suffer.
Earth is our mother and we are her children. Mothers get old; they welcome renewal but they can’t last forever, so it is good to study sensible policies about health and healing. The key here is whether we even try to give back as much as we have received. If we make the effort, benefits will overflow.
Our care for the earth is a model of the care we offer the Beloved Other. Is it an attractive deal? Are we givers as well as takers? Or are we just searching for a complicit Other to despoil the planet with?
When it is a question of what we can give, we must examine our resources. This is the source of the famous kneeling offering of a diamond ring. Cynics would say a “taker” is hoping she’ll be so dazzled she won’t notice that’s ALL she’ll be getting. A honeymoon over before it even started.
So what are the resources we are taking for granted? Often, having earth under our feet and a roof over our head is something we barely even think about. Familiarity breeds contempt, as the saying goes. Our vision stretches so far down the road to imagined “somedays” that we are impatient with “today”. Today seems so modest, so ordinary. It isn’t until we really consider the people and places that have “always had our back” that we even form the words, “thank you.” A soulmate with contempt for the familiar doesn’t trust intimacy.
Part of the reason we lose interest in our humblest resources is that we’ve done nothing to deserve them. It’s embarrassing for us even to admit there are resources we have no control over, that come to us just by virtue of where we chance to live, or work, or who we’re related to. It makes sense to add them up and give thanks for them right now. Sometimes we find that we can assume the reins of these neglected resources after all; sharpen them up, improve them, modify and share them into an aspect of our life-plan after all.
A good example is the rude health that often comes to all of us simply as part of our youth. We can’t rely on that forever! Are there ways that we abuse good health, good sleep, warm familial connections and may even be unconsciously reducing our future opportunities of enjoying them? Let’s make them part of our conscious plan today and stop taking them for granted.
Why do we harm our own resources? Why can’t we use the resources that we have? Why waste our time pining for those we DON’T have? Descending deeper through the subconscious we uncover the powerful, devastating wish is to be the exact opposite to what we actually are. Our fantasy is so powerful, we can picture this person – us, but better proportioned, more beautiful, intelligent, relaxed, powerful, magnetic. Mustering all these imagined resources, we yearn to attract someone who is ALSO just like that.
Cat-fishers know this and try to lure us into their web with borrowed pix, false profiles and Fear of Missing Out. Fantasy not only WON’T save us, it makes us hate ourselves! Now is the time to study our REAL resources – they are UNIQUE. Is it our wonderful family? Our stubborn determination? Fantastic teeth? Interesting job? Ability to laugh? Interest in others? Generosity? Friends? Faith? All these things? Think about your resume, which describes where you ACTUALLY WENT and what you ACTUALLY DID. Now try to write one about what you learned and who you became and where that stands on the path to who you want to be.
Didn’t the mistakes lead to insight? Didn’t the suffering deepen your compassion? Are we stronger at the broken places? The further into this exercise you go the more likely you are to realize your soulmate will be lucky to have you!
Green Thumb
You tend my body so well you can’t Surprise me anymore You’re the surprise and I’m used to you Folding back my lettuce leaves with your tongue Coaxing the reluctant caterpillar While I lie awake giddy with Self preservation until The final firecracker moment When you release and flourish The fragrant butterfly
In Memory lies our Identity. There are probably no sadder words than “I don’t remember you.” We are born with wild, unexplored ambitions and we spend our lives trying to live up to them by learning & acquiring partnership, discipline & practice. And sometimes, trying to forget negative conditioning and poor patterning.
Memory is the foundation of art, science and law as we try to reflect back what we have learned. Memory gives us the words to say to build and express our emotions & intent. Luckily our bodies have memories, too. Memory resides in hearing, touch, taste, sight and muscle; long after words have gone.
Past Patterns – Sometimes we recognize a pattern coming around again, but more often, we don’t. We’re accustomed to treating each new crisis as if it blew in out of nowhere. This is where journaling can really pay off for us as we ask a series of questions: have I been here before? And what did it look like that time? Is there anything different – really new – about now?
Negative Conditioning is when we learned unhelpful or destructive practices. If we grew up with parents who couldn’t forge strong intimate connections there is a danger we will re-experience all their trouble. We also learn from patterns experienced through art or viewed from a distance. And then there are “cultural ideals” – some of which are downright unhealthy and must be discarded.
Sometimes we only see a situation clearly when it’s happening to someone else! What advice does our past self have to give us – our cockier, more youthful self? How about our wiser self – the mature self who can see the whole picture — the one who’s “arrived”?
Memory is not just who we are, memory is where we live. Our Soulmate is not a mind-reader, so communication is constant and evolving. Memories change, as we change. Different aspects of our own story emerge into importance as we evolve. Previously, we might not have even noticed aspects of our own story that we now see as key. This has important implications for the presentation of self that is critical to our connection with another person.
Are prepared for this “other” to dramatically transform the way we see ourselves; to change our story’s “meaning” as well as altering our past and empowering our future? There is an Official Version of our past we like to tell others as we introduce ourselves; now is the time to ponder the Secret Version. The version we only tell our most significant other.
Is it secret because it is shameful? Soulmate Love is not an opportunity to escape our past but to heal it. That toxic shame may be the exact lens through which you and the Soulmate first “see” each other. Your connection will start as a series of conversations, which may be physical, verbal, or non-verbal.
In literature, the tale of Cupid & Psyche embodies these processes, as Psyche (“The Soul”) first thinks she is married to a monster with whom she can only mate in darkness. She “steals a glance” at him when he is sleeping but, when he catches her, he is furious and flees. The plot twist: he was actually a beautiful young man, but he didn’t know it so was not ready to reveal himself. The “monster” was his toxic shame. How does the story end? You and your Soulmate will find out.
PRACTICE CUTS
The dead gush cruelly after dying. High time to make some changes; Get religion, have visions See god, become a nun
Some self worth knowing. Time is gunning for me Arthritic fingers Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing old tunes Scratchy now, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck That old deus ex machina Disaster; blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty & Bringing back a taste for life. Reduce me, silence: fortify Some other ego, mine’s too tired.
Ebb out along the tide, Cauterize this woof-warp of a pattern So plain even I can see it.
Reduce me to unbending bones of My essential self: sweet sister; she; The soul I was before I became me.
We are all Sun Worshippers. It is easy to understand how this star became a deity to the ancients considering it warms and replenishes us into activity and strength. Turns out, all of us are batteried by solar power, just like the reptiles. Our doctors and cosmetologists tell us to “stay out of the sun” and get our Vitamin D in a pill but we ignore them, drawn by the need to sun ourselves on the nearest rock, eyes closed into seeming vulnerability while our planet perpetually circles this fiery blaze. The Sun therefore represents in our lives a nourishing force which could make us stupid should we over-indulge.
Light defeats darkness. To understand what this means we need to shed any “nocturnal prejudices” we may have and concentrate on light as the necessary enabler of Sight. In total darkness, we are at a loss; we see nothing. To “shed light” on a problem means to finally “see” it for what it is. Light, in other words, is knowledge. Understanding. We finally get it! It’s the “forehead clapping” moment when the “magic picture” resolves itself into shapes that make sense. Without this basic road map we are unmoored – can make no meaningful plans.
Light, then is the Beginning of Intelligence. Light is Truth. It helps us to see each other for what we really are so we can forge meaningful connections, create meaningful plans and map out shared goals. Even the blind can make important use of Light – and all of us are partially blind in one way or another. But it is what we can “see” –and share – that matters.
If Truth is so important, why do we all lie? The religion of advertising is both ethos and atmosphere in American life. A policy of presenting yourself in “your best light” becomes researching other people’s needs and weaknesses to find out what they can’t resist and pretending you’re that thing. This is no way to locate a Soulmate.
The anger, suspicion and mistrust, the contempt, derision and manipulation behind these ideas does not magically go away. Therefore, we hate others for forcing us to be fake, and they hate us for not accepting their real selves. It’s a perfect storm of secret rage that torpedoes any possibility of authentic relationships.
The way out is to commit to a different “religion” – that of honesty and sharing. But honesty requires knowing oneself, and we’ve discussed how difficult (and discouraging) that can be. Still, there’s no other way. We are who we’ve BEEN, who we ARE, but also who we WANT to be. And we need to want to be that person for a better reason than it looks good on TikTok or it might exert appeal over someone who turns us on.
Fearful that you’ll be lonely forever? Au contraire! It turns out all of us have been yearning to bask in the comfort, the promise, the safety of reality, a place where growing things can freely evolve and connect, in peace.
SUNBATHER
Poor periwinkle hides within the final spiny spiral of his shell, no stronghold that from hungry file-worms’ whippet tongues nor sun-mad amateur biologists nor ten year olds; while I more evolved, lie among the oval-jointed shells, the sheepswool sponges, camouflage my breasts as comb-jellies, my hair as seaweed, fooling none yet impressing those I can’t deceive.
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.
In the Tantric Garden, Sex is sacred. In blindness we reach out to touch, to connect. This garden of existence demands that we inhale life through our every pore, and the central need of life is that we must share the flame that warms us or risk its ultimate extinction. There could be no garden without the mystery and joy of pollination and propagation; doubling and tripling not just our chances of survival but intensifying our savor and our senses.
The garden becomes a hugely hungry mouth, a pulsating groin, and we moan with it. The shock of the sublime. To live the dream is to become the dream. We are constituted for pleasure; igniting and increasing pleasure in a firework display that mimic the creation of the universe itself. Relationships solidify; two strengthen into one; frail flesh solidifies and love itself becomes unbreakable.
Spring is mating. We are searching for our lost half, our better AND our worse self. As we transform from a helpless to an intentional person, we seek the self we have been all along, as they seek themselves in us.
Alysse Aallyn 