“Express your emotions the better to understand them”
We are not the only Creators in the Garden. We are surrounded by nest-makers and musical artists without whose Birdsong we would be tragically impoverished. Birds sing for the same reasons we do; to celebrate, to warn, to differentiate. To bond, and for the sheer joy of being alive in the Garden. Birdsong represents the artistic collaboration and complexity without which our lives would be meaningless.
Art is our rescuer. Art forges connections at the deepest levels; preconscious & collective conscious. Art finds us when we are lost, can even locate love itself when we misplace it. Art sums up the mystery of what it’s like to be alive, questioning, yearning, negotiating, refusing, demanding.
Back when we were mute children, longing to communicate and participate in the thrilling adult world surrounding us, we figured it was just a question of acquiring the tools of language.
Education disabused us of that easy sentimentality. There will always be something within us that is wordless, a secret unknown to ourselves that we long to share. But what does it mean? Who can understand it? We artists devote our lives to fathoming these vast problems. Each question brings a new forest of questions. Each answer produces an ocean of answers.
As our life crests its rise and heads for the downslope we are forced to conclude that we wish to express nothing more than our uniqueness, our exquisite irreplaceability – just like everyone else.
The depth of the Tantric connection provides relief from the echo chamber – together we create a whole new force, immortal in feeling, universal in its application. We sing to each other in courtship, in despair, in longing, and the Soulmate sings our song back, in a different form, inviting collaborative collusion that will buttress our hopes and re-make our world.
HAIKU: Birdsong
Without your chord Duets are soulless; speechless without your harmony
Outside the carefully groomed garden lies the true Wilderness; the ungroomed terrain. At first the eye is confused by the plethora of wildflowers, the riot of wild grasses, the proliferation of low shrubs. The fallen and the dying have not even been tidied away.
Slowly our senses adjust to pick out hovering butterflies, nesting birds and evidence of even wilder visitors such as rabbits, skunks, weasels and raccoons. This is their world; they prefer it to ours.
We must admit they have a point: how can something so haphazard radiate such magnetic beauty? Sometimes we’re forced to judge their world the winner; it is definitely more intricate, majestic and evocative than our carefully raked paths. We study it to comprehend, learn, possibly mimic its effects. And as we absorb their ethos we become one of them, lowly commoners of earth, enjoying a bounty of goodness, even wealth, poured out without regard to our intent or purchasing power.
Destiny warns; “It’s not about you.” “Fundamental attribution error” in the social sciences means confusing individual causation as determinative when mass social movements are actually predeterminative. We would like to believe that we have control over keeping our parents together, preventing war, stopping climate change, averting pandemics, getting promotions, guaranteeing the constant love of worthy Soulmates. How much control do we really have over those things?
We are tiny creatures – out of many – finding ourselves momentarily in a tiny corner of an ever-changing wilderness. This is not our “fault”, but still, we must live our lives as best we can. Can we guarantee our future good health? No, but we can improve it. Can we guarantee our Soulmate’s future health? No, but once again, we can lead a joint healthy life, together.
Can we avoid sorrow? Most likely not; sorrow is endemic to those who think and feel. It’s how we manage sorrow that counts. The Dalai Lama says pain is unavoidable, but suffering is voluntary.
We are creatures of wish & fear. The wish is that we will stay alert for dangerous and destructive incidents and behaviors. Our fear is that Fate is out to get us. And in a way, it is. Age stalks us. History stalks us. But if anxiety about the future only ruins the enjoyment of today, it is not doing its job, it is sabotaging you.
With a Soulmate, you possess two souls, two futures plus a joint Soul and joint future. This gives us not just a reason but a mandate to celebrate the ecstasy, the bliss of every moment. You are Mine and I am Yours.
EVOLUTION The world that seems to us so still And echoes no reflection of our will Somehow produced the seed that in us all Resurrected us from worm to fish, to crawl Upon the earth, to stand and then Return a child to creep and crawl again In some unending pattern, sane or not Judging by the brain that this same seed begot And yet within our every cell lies curled A revolutionary flag to be unfurled To lead us on to who knows what potential end Beyond the reach of enemy or friend? Can it be that simple balls of spinning glass Possessed the strength to lift from this morass All that we are; though we don’t understand This torch we pass so tenderly from hand to hand?
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
“Begin anew with the Day, as Nature does” says George Woodberry. What good advice! Every dawn is a fresh chance for us to put new principles into practice, make original resolves and absorb consequent lessons and engender successful strategies that bring us closer to our goals. If, as the sages say, “it’s the journey not the arrival that matters” then each and every day is, literally, the first day of the rest of our lives.
We are launched on the journey of a thousand steps. Isn’t it the ideal to make each step as blissfully supportive as possible?
On our quest for a soulmate, aren’t we really looking to be freed from the hum-drum round of daily ordinariness into the ecstatic upper stratosphere, the bliss of the spiritual? Isn’t that what we’re really after? This is what causes our frustration with where we’re at, right now.
What we need is to infuse the ordinary with the spiritual, and like any skill, this attitude can be practiced and IMPROVED and we can start NOW. In Tantric Attachment, “Day” represents your supportive routine (both conscious and un.)
Today’s goal is to make your habits conscious, improve them with mindfulness, then allow them to sink into the subliminal where they can be accessed emotionally and kinetically. We plan to turn OURSELVES into the exact life partner we have been looking for!
Some of us are morning people – others most definitely Not. I started out in life as a night owl and after kids, I changed. Now I don’t think I can write anything intelligent past 3 PM! (It’s currently 7:25 AM.) Every morning must contain spiritual, physical and refreshment practices. Our great enemy is all this anxious doom-scrolling we all do, when we can clearly see it raises, rather than lessens our distress and confusion. Let’s figure out a way to contain it, because that helpless victim can never be our best self.
In a frantic, worried or angry condition nobody can share or enjoy anything. The best choice would be a morning of thought, prayer, gratitude, healthful eating, gentle exercise but if this is not possible let’s keep our survey of The News, Email, etc. to a specific low number. To be loved, we must love ourselves. This is an inflexible rule. Therefore, you must keep telling yourself, “I love you. That’s why I’m taking such good care of you.” Commit to The Day!
ON READING THE ALUMNI DIRECTORY
I’m surprised So few of us have made it. The years seemed quiet The years seem far between. Through interstices the Class clowns fall – Sluts & giants; the Nobodies – Possessed & hunted Now as they were then; Haunted. “Address unknown” “Lives with Mom” “Religious cult” “Deadbeat” “Moved…nowhere.” My blood-mate’s still unmarried I wonder how We’d get along. I translate terpsichore to unknown Tongues, he’s Law and Journalism; how’s that Compatible? He lives so far away. Time off’s a bitch, plus They got my address wrong.
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
Mysteries lure us in; we are born puzzle mavens. It takes experience to learn that not every Mystery has a solution; or that some solutions only redefine the mystery into even larger questions.
Sometimes by the time the answer comes back we find that we ourselves have changed. The answer to “Who’s out there?” as could well be “Who’s asking?” as well as “Why ask?” Problems tend to be solvable only as far as we can define them. Framing the question frames the answer.
We turn a corner philosophically when we learn to enjoy Mystery for its own sake and welcome its presence in our lives, salute its effort to instruct our limitations and listen to whatever message it can deliver. There is the majestic silence of the universe, the explosive power of a single cell, the eye that looks upon us from the forest. We are part of the Mystery. It can’t be processed, absorbed or put behind us; it can only be lived. The Mystery is Us.
Our Soulmate can’t be “solved” any more than the tiger can cease his “burning bright” or the hound of heaven his pursuit. There will be things about our Soulmates that we never know, just as there are things about ourselves that we will never see.
This realization is an important one for Love, Acceptance and Ecstatic Communion to take place. Realize that “solutions” and “explanations” are language and time-bound, but you and your Soulmate meet in a place beyond language and time.
When you touch, you speak a deeper language, you meet in a timeless place that is eternal. Arguments and misunderstandings fade away – they are captured in Language and you, your Spirit and the ecstasy your union engenders are not trapped by words. You are free of promises, mistakes, even aspirations.
You are two rivers blending, two clouds merging, exchanging psychic atoms of thought and feeling that alter the definition of Being. You are One, you are Two In One, you are Whole.
The Bridesmaid
Yes, I know everything. You’re my poor relation. I know of your daddy’s desk where you Fucked with formaldehyde fingers Heard you tell your sad Rosary of abortions, I know everything. We made love on your letters undisturbed As two icons. She’s imperfect He told me. Unseated by hierarchy We two take our place With the king’s crazy mistresses; Brewing menstrual blood coffee And mandrake root tea. Swim away, little bridesmaid, You’re too young I’m in love – we’ve got Too much in common ever to meet.
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.
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.
Alysse Aallyn 