Persistence is about not giving up. How could we accomplish anything without it? 99% of life is “just showing up” Woody Allen advises. “I didn’t fail,” said Edison, “I found ten thousand methods that didn’t work.” In other words, “trial and error” was a life style for him, a “modus vivendi.” He considered existence itself just one experiment after another. You can see that for somebody like that, “success” is, by definition, right around the corner. What a happy way to live!
When passion flags, when courage fails, when even grit founders, there is only determination. We will keep going. Our Other Half, our Lost Self is calling us and there is no going back. If we gave up now we would be at a place of cosmic distrust. It can’t happen. We may groan. We may collapse. We must sleep, the better to summon dreams to our assistance.
Sometimes we have to ask the uncomfortable questions: what am I missing? WHO am I missing? We summon up a distinctive song we want our Soulmate to hear, perhaps a song that ONLY our soulmate can hear. And we buckle up and keep on going.
VIRGINIA WOOLF: The Membraned Sieve
O bliss to be red admiral afeast Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily Woke to Leonard bringing milk Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke To pain; cylindrical as seasons Burning white and burning blue like friends. The words fell fast, the blood fell faster; Split the membraned sieve. She raced the whitecaps out to sea Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.
“Are you ready to take care of the Beloved? Or do you just want to receive care?”
Nurturing is Stewardship plus Love. It is a non-exploitative relationship many of the fruits of which the Steward may not even live to see. Nurturing requires both Sensitivity and Balance; an appropriate combination of love, modeling and support which is constantly changing.
Nothing can be decided by rote; intelligence and commitment must be involved and practice and experimentation is required. Experiments mandate a certain proportion of failure: let’s face it; a high proportion. Failure requires recovery and forgiveness – of self and others – and a learning curve. We need to understand “what works” and forge new plans keeping new discoveries in mind. We are all caught up in the physics of existence. Many people who call themselves religious or spiritual wonder why, if there’s a loving God, Earth isn’t already Heaven.
Heaven is (so far as we know) a mental construct exhibiting all the pleasures & joys of earthly existence without the suffering and struggles of this painfully real world. Unfortunately a large proportion of our earthly pleasure revolves around taking, hoarding, and excluding.
Nurturing focuses on producing successful flourishing health and productivity. It literally makes the universe go round. I think it strongly suggests what Heaven really will be like: caring for others in general and promoting universal, not just personal well-being.
Are we patient, loving mothers to our struggling selves? Or are we looking for someone else to assume this role? The Nurturing card reminds us that to find a worthy, healthy other, we must be healthy and worthy ourselves. The symbiosis card told us that reciprocity is key, that this is not going to be a one-way street.
What are our nurturing capabilities? Do we have a pet? Have we mentored? Do we teach? We will represent a mystical wilderness to the Other as we represent a mysterious universe to them. There is so much we can share. There is so much we need to be given to have our Wisdom Eye fully opened.
Cedarwood Chest
Grandpa died young that’s why Grandma never opened The Cedarwood chest Till my twelve years unlocked The scent of dreams preserved Like mullet in red wine.
Never used the wilting nightgowns Featherstitched sheets Between whose coffee-colored creases Bay leaves crumbled (like my reserve when you laid hands upon it)
how it comes back that mossy sad perfume! I want to lay you away in darkness and tissue but I can’t I must use you and risk Your wearing out
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
“If we open ourselves, don’t we lose control over our transformation?”
Rendering a garden makes order out of chaos. And yet we want Nature – in all its rude, obstreperous glory – to pour out constantly through and on our little carefully tended patch – without, hopefully, overwhelming or destroying it. The Waterfall is a perfect metaphor for organizing chaos, making it beautiful and extracting our necessary nourishment from its dangerous jaws.
The Waterfall represents sudden, possibly violent change. Surprise reversals. In our quest for soulmate, we have to hold ourselves ready for these astonishments, because they are the essence of what the universe has to teach us. Right when we think we have it all figured out is when we are most in need of a surprise.
Often this comes in the form of chemistry: who we are attracted to versus who we THINK we are attracted to. At the beginning of our lives, our minds were unformed. Our wild, unique self lay still undiscovered. We often THINK we desire a High Status Individual, someone the Pod – the amorphous mass we came out of – would approve (even envy.)
Friendship often teaches us the delight of the quirky. Someone who loves us, whose face lights up when we share, becomes beautiful to us. Someone who reveals themselves, takes chances with us, becomes magical. There is a reason that rom-coms focus on the “surprise” in love; learning that the person who is good for you is not the source of dangerous thrills you’ve been desiring. That’s because this is often the way long-term love gets going. So – better be ready for your own Surprise.
PREPPY
Corseted with verbs French teacher sweeps Cherry blossoms from the tennis court As she would like to french The cherries, squelch them soundly Beneath her soccer-spiking shoes
While the headmistress Cello-breasted Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin In Chaucerian High English, And the girls – Nun-white, nun-blue
Soar above the hockey fields like Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked In narrow hope chests ripening on Amphetamines Free Love Bad dreams.
Youth is hungry long before dinner is ready. We recall youth as a rollercoaster of highs and lows, a mix of aspiration, beauty and joy keen as a knife’s edge. Let us never forget that sense of Spring when all things were possible and we were the linchpins holding up the universe.
Youth’s sense of power is so disproportionate to reality it almost seems as if wisdom prohibits action rather than informing it. Like the smarter you are, the less you can accomplish! Youth rushes in places Wisdom fears to even think about. Yet the sense of possibility and the delight in discovery are so heady nothing balks Youth for long. It’s all over far too fast.
We have discussed the fact that if you want a soulmate, you will have to kill dragons – both yours and theirs. There is trauma potential, to say the least. Every one of us have experienced trauma, many of us have forgotten it, most of us deny it. How we represent the scars of life to ourselves has everything to do with how we represent ourselves to others.
Today’s meditation is about “snapping back,” not just “recovery” but Plan B. We may need a Plan C, D, and E. The fact that the dragon got the best of us on one or two occasions is no surprise. Remember learning to drive?
We are really about learning to learn, learning what to fear and not to fear, learning how to react to constantly new sets of circumstances. We are resilient, we are flexible. We are cagey, we are wily.
By the time we meet our soulmate we will have our own dragons under control, and we will have many stories to share about The Ways of Dragons.
A BRUISE A CUT A FEVER
Dragons exist. From my tree perch I watched them Uncaring of rules and bored by Their games, I wrote down Statistics In gold crested diaries. Fairy-tale beginnings Augur sour endings. Pole-axed by Europe. “This stuff matters frightfully” And I was affrighted.
Culture-mad-Mother Forced us to look Then forced us to blink; Her timing was off. Dad sought his oceans In history, in pictures, in The madness of Nature; Encapsulates daughters in Unsinkable Fiberglas; That captain lied when he said We were all going home.
Loathed masculine privilege I disliked you on sight Teased your editorials Insulted your proctoring Reviled, you prevailed. Kindling a clove-scented ecstasy; Inflaming my fevers at the same time as Quenching them.
Sweeping West you Pulled the Atlantic behind you, smothering Both of us; I fought back with Monogrammed luggage.
Swimming nude in your rapture we Posed for Swedish love manuals Under the falls. I thought I knew everything till I met your parents; Your father’s impressionist: Your mother convinced me That monsters can flourish.
I dust you with my glitter as you peel my shock-pants; Our children wait impatiently To get their lives started. “Ask him to marry you Mommy! Ask him! Ask him!”
Symbiosis is interdependence: far from being exploitation, most species require another’s contribution in order to flourish. Sometimes symbiosis is unacknowledged, especially if one of the partners is using “win/lose” reasoning and agonizes about who’s getting “more” out of the relationship.
Turning a mutually beneficial relationship into a struggle for dominance marks the end of what could have been a thriving partnership.
You can have rapturous sex with anybody. You can have devoted friendships with lots of entertaining, interesting people. Soulmating is deeper than that.
You need each other. You can’t live without each other. Yes, you can bail out now if this sounds scary. Otherwise, that’s what you’re in for. You’re going to have to reveal – often discovering it for the first time yourself – what your needs are, and you’re going to have to be willing to put your shoulder to the other person’s wheel. You nourish each other.
You’re going to slay each other’s dragons and set each other free FOREVER. This is NOT for the faint of heart. Better leave now if you were just hoping for a nice date, delicious sex, or someone to take home to Mom. Because the dragons WILL show themselves.
Haiku: I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead
Only soulmates can Slay each other’s dragons Says Tibetan Master
Loss = SUFFERING “Two Lovers Contemplate the Seawrack”
“Hostage to fortune”
Something vital you have relied upon is simply gone. This Loss creates in us an almost hallucinatory state of core wrongness. The world must be rotten if such vibrancy can be destroyed. Einstein says matter cannot be erased, only transformed, so where has our Precious gone?
Possibly it never had a physical manifestation; perhaps it was an illusion. Or do we identify the Beloved with it its physical presence so totally that even change or sickness or age will turn it into something different? We must think about the unseen world as well as our more familiar evolving world to understand Loss.
Loss changes us; clearly, we will never be the same again. Loss is an opportunity to confront Reality; the Reality within our heads as well as in our hearts.
The one thing that scares people so much about Soulmating is the prospect of loss. This is so frightening some of us would rather opt out of emotion altogether rather than even imagine experiencing the pain when Precious is lost.
What is really happening here is that we are re-viewing memories of terrible past traumas and our Soul is thinking, “I can’t go through that again.” These are unresolved terrors; we need to resolve them. Our Soulmate – just the knowledge that Soulmating is possible – is one of the ways we can do this. You need the belief that the two of you can create an eternity where you will always be together.
Yes, the prospect of loss deepens when you love, as does Love itself. It will give us a new heart, fresh eyes, stronger hands. Love teaches us that the Universe is our Soulmate – we were born for it as it is born for us. Love can never be erased – it can only enlarge us.
TWO LOVERS CONTEMPLATE THE SEAWRACK
He lost her Spoke too soon As men are wont Affinity flew overhead Danced with gulls A jazz-mad snowflake. His words Freighted by their inner logic Fell to earth and lay Prey to busy bristle-footed worms Who tidily dismantle Subject, verb & predicate; Sucked out the sense and left The elegiac bones to rot Amid kelp-wigged rock & glass-rope sponge Cheek by jowl with Long dead fishermen’s wives Punished now for ill-set dough and Worse-set hair Mouths agape in imitation of The badly sutured wounds of childbirth. Secrets told; corpses left to nourish Nature’s counting-house One season only; sharing space With shattered petrels Feathers spewed like pillow-stuffing Frenzied passade of love-struck boys – Strewn among the shavings of these once great ships Built by hearts & backs of men Who loved their daughters far too well Losing them to sailors Crueler than the great sea-god himself; He who stirs our sleep these nights With grief-crazed cries of loons Casting on the waters for their Far-flung children Lost forever now As we are lost as He lost her.
The Chrysalis looks dead; that is its disguise. A simple, broken leaf, soon to be swept away by wind or rain. But in fact, it’s a puzzle box that holds the whole universe inside itself; an unbroken chain of DNA, an augury of “becoming” dating from the dawn of Life itself. So is each of us a Chrysalis…of what? For what?
We are powerhouses seeking ignition. We can feel the slow-gathering strength within, but we are still mysteries to ourselves. We need the Other to become a Full Being. Plato posited that man/woman are separated angels endlessly seeking their other half. Your duty is to protect the chrysalis so that it can unfold in its own good time. Be patient, your day of flight and connection comes ever closer.
HOT PROWL
Don’t wake up. Surveilled by night Your chiseled torso Slackened with exhaustion. Touching things that once You touched, Listening to your apnea; I turn away before you turn. Making peace with all my choices. It’s been worth everything – Winning in divorce a Hard-won superpower: Invisibility
Marriage can be a spiritual partnership of equals, a conscientious joining of two lives seeking to shape a common purpose animated by love. If either partner is looking for a mule, hostage, trick mirror or foot soldier, the partnership will fail. The fact that our higher purpose can only be discovered after we have sealed the deal makes marriage the riskiest enterprise any of us can expect to tackle in a lifetime, but if we succeed, the payoff is tremendous and all effort, achievement and joy will be raised to the greatest power.
Alliances: Very little in life is accomplished alone. We long to double and triple our efforts, to see 360 degrees at once , and to work while sleeping, like some double-headed god! We spend years fantasizing about the perfect partner who will provide the invisible cloak, the seven league boots, who will take over from us in the relay race while we are fainting or shivering with fever psychological or physical.
And then there’s the love that give us x-ray vision; loving the person we learn from, seek comfort from, who gives us strength. Marriage is a blending; our partner bringing out gifts we didn’t know we had.
Who can we partner with for today’s challenges? What does our soulmate seek in us? What can we do to be worthy of their faith? Marriage Card is a multiplicitous maximizer of power and potential as well as risk.
Alliances are critical in life. None of us can survive, much less flourish, without some kind of team. The size of the team often determines our success, sometimes called “social capital.” This presents a special challenge to introverts, like me, who not only like but actually need to be alone, just to recharge, work and hear our own thoughts. The Fully Committed Other therefore has even more importance in our lives.
Marriage is the ultimate commitment, publicly forswearing all others unless you specifically rewrite your vows differently (or take no vows at all.) Is marriage too great a step for you? Unimaginable, in fact? Or is this the future towards which you have been working? If so, you need a Beloved who truthfully companions, instead of pretending to agree.
Marriage License
This policy does not insure against disfigurement (controlled or uncontrolled)
delirium; anguish approximate or anguish remote; dismembering scars that fever-chart a graph of life immutable to prayer
intransigent of purpose; does not insure against my someday knowing you
forcing pores to open where once you had no skin dining on your heart while you
dine out on mine. When I forget this I know You will remind me
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.
Alysse Aallyn 